Page 136 - WHERE WE WORK - Schlegelmilch

Ideas in place
opportunities to encounter each other and interact (Khazanchi et al., 2018). This principle has been well established in studies within and beyond the office context. For example, when moving from traditional cell offices to multi-room or open offices (and hence being closer to each other), employees interacted almost three times more in the new location (Boutellier et al., 2008). Also, when employees were more than 18 meters apart from each other, they interacted less with each other (Sailer & Penn, 2009). In turn, bringing employees closer increases the frequency of face- to-face (Sailer & Penn, 2009) and the exchange of work-related information (Boutellier et al., 2008), such as ideas. There is also evidence that the principle holds at a bigger scale beyond one office location, such that Agrawal, Kapur, and McHale (2008) demonstrated that co-location increased the knowledge flow between inventors by 24% amongst Indian innovators in the US. These examples indicate that the degree of geographical closeness between colleagues affects their interactions.
Drawing on previous research on workplace flexibility, we argue that employees sharing a place (low workplace flexibility) are more likely to interact with their colleagues for idea sharing and implementation. This is because they have more opportunities to do so (Boutellier et al., 2008), for example, by crossing each other’s path intentionally and by chance. When employees have access to information about their coworkers (behavior, presence, and expertise) (i.e., workplace transparency), physically crossing paths (low workplace flexibility) makes them more likely to use this information and interact with their coworkers (Borgatti & Cross, 2003) for idea sharing and idea implementation. Thus, low workplace flexibility should strengthen the impact of transparency on innovative behaviors. In contrast, employees with high workplace flexibility simply cannot benefit from access to information (workplace transparency). Mainly this is because employees spend less time geographically close, thereby reducing the opportunities to engage with colleagues and act upon information towards idea sharing and implementation. In other words, the degree of workplace flexibility is likely to moderate the relationship between workplace transparency and idea sharing, idea implementation respectively. This leads
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