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Ideas in place
4.2.3 The moderating role of workplace flexibility
Workplace flexibility is defined as the ability to work flexibly between physically distant, alternative locations (based on MacDuffie, 2007). Working across multiple workplaces has become more common as working is not constrained to “permanent and fixed locations” anymore (Hislop & Axtell, 2009, p. 60). Alternative locations include, but are not limited to, the home, cafés, and public places (Ashford et al., 2007; Bailey & Kurland, 2002; Boell et al., 2016). Workplace flexibility serves as a way for the workforce to cope with the decreased amount of available seating in open offices, which have the goal to reduce facility costs (Lee & Brand, 2005). For employees, it offers flexibility to manage work-life demands better (Harpaz, 2002; Rockmann & Pratt, 2015) or get more work done (Bailey & Kurland, 2002; Rockmann & Pratt, 2015). Also, in some cases, employees work more outside of the office because too few employees remained in the office that coming to the office was not perceived as beneficial anymore (Rockmann & Pratt, 2015). Previous research established that workplace flexibility has an impact on individual and collective outcomes (Gajendran & Harrison, 2007; Hertel et al., 2005). For example, several studies indicated that the degree of co-location in teams has a profound impact on interaction frequency (Bailey & Kurland, 2002; MacDuffie, 2007; Rockmann & Pratt, 2015), collaboration (Kiesler & Cummings, 2002), and awareness of coworker’s roles and responsibilities (Hinds & Cramton, 2014). Also, workplace flexibility policies may be similar across companies, but it is the variety in how much employees make use of such policies (MacDuffie, 2007) that has an impact on the relationship between workplace transparency and idea sharing and implementation. Thereby, we agree with O’Leary and Cummings’ (2007) argument that it is not a dichotomous relationship between being close and being remote to your colleagues but rather a matter of degree.
The principle that informs our hypothesizing about the moderating role of workplace flexibility in the relationship between workplace transparency and employee behavior is the propinquity principle. The propinquity principle states that when people are close, there are more
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