Page 28 - WHERE WE WORK - Schlegelmilch

Introduction
conduct a survey with 368 respondents at a Dutch construction company, BuildCo, which implemented open-plan office in combination with a workplace flexibility policy. I hypothesize that workplace transparency will be positively related to both innovative behaviors but that the relationships will be dampened by high workplace flexibility. The regression analysis follows to test our hypotheses, thereby providing insights into effective interactions in the sedentary setting.
1.4 Dissertation outline
In this dissertation, I conduct three studies with specific research questions using different approaches and methods as discussed above. A summary of the three studies can be found below and in Table 1.2.
In chapter 2, I follow my curiosity to understand an emerging phenomenon of nomadic workers who – other than mobile knowledge workers (Brown & O’Hara, 2003) – combine working with traveling for pleasure and digitize work processes to achieve location-independence. I investigate how these digital nomads create temporary workplace through interacting with their physical environments. Taking an affordance lens (Fayard & Weeks, 2007; Gibson, 1979), I ask the research question: How are workplaces enacted in nomadic work? Through in-depth interviews and observations, I show that – while digital nomads aim for location- independence by digitizing their work processes – the workplace is actually in the foreground of their organizing. I start by identifying the challenges of nomadic work: working across places, conducting focused work, and embedding socially. Then, I show how the nomadic workers solve these challenges by enacting three affordances of nomadic work: malleability, privacy, and instant sociality. Additionally, I compare three typical workplaces of nomadic work based on the prevalence of the affordances. I conclude that many places have the potential to become a workplace depending on how the worker perceives the physical and social features, and which type of work they intend to conduct there. This provides insights to the hyperspatial work settings and I reflect on these findings and what
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