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Guest editorial

Guest editorial The physical environment of organizational behavior (OB) Scholarly interest as to how workers might improve their efficiency and productivity can be traced back to Taylorism (Taylor, 1911). The “Taylorism era” was associated with a 19th- century model of work (Duffy, 1999) where employees were brought together in a specific location and at a specific time to be supervised (Vischer, 2008) in line with their employer’s economic objectives. Ayoko and Ashkanasy (2020a, b) argue that an unspoken backdrop to Taylorism has always been the physical context of employees’ work. Indeed, the link between the physical context of work and employee productivity was a key research question for the Hawthorne study team 90 years ago (Roethlisberger et al., 1939), which found that human relations factors were the main drivers of employee performance (Jones, 1990). More recent evidence (e.g. see Vischer, 2008) suggests that physical environments of work (PEW), such as buildings, furnishings, equipment, lighting and air quality (as well as the arrangements of these objects), constitute essential determinants of social interactions, including territoriality (Monaghan and Ayoko, 2019), productivity and well-being in the workplace. Additionally, contemporary researchers such as Lee and Brand (2005) have shown that the physical environment of work encompasses http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Managerial Psychology Emerald Publishing

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References (48)

Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
© Emerald Publishing Limited
ISSN
0268-3946
DOI
10.1108/jmp-05-2021-711
Publisher site
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Abstract

The physical environment of organizational behavior (OB) Scholarly interest as to how workers might improve their efficiency and productivity can be traced back to Taylorism (Taylor, 1911). The “Taylorism era” was associated with a 19th- century model of work (Duffy, 1999) where employees were brought together in a specific location and at a specific time to be supervised (Vischer, 2008) in line with their employer’s economic objectives. Ayoko and Ashkanasy (2020a, b) argue that an unspoken backdrop to Taylorism has always been the physical context of employees’ work. Indeed, the link between the physical context of work and employee productivity was a key research question for the Hawthorne study team 90 years ago (Roethlisberger et al., 1939), which found that human relations factors were the main drivers of employee performance (Jones, 1990). More recent evidence (e.g. see Vischer, 2008) suggests that physical environments of work (PEW), such as buildings, furnishings, equipment, lighting and air quality (as well as the arrangements of these objects), constitute essential determinants of social interactions, including territoriality (Monaghan and Ayoko, 2019), productivity and well-being in the workplace. Additionally, contemporary researchers such as Lee and Brand (2005) have shown that the physical environment of work encompasses

Journal

Journal of Managerial Psychology – Emerald Publishing

Published: Apr 27, 2021

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