Psychological Benefits of Control Over Office Environments (07-01-10)

Knight and Haslam corroborated the findings of environmental psychologists, who have established the importance of workers’ control over their physical office environments.  The Knight/Haslam experiments compared various psychological factors in offices that were  “lean” (without plants or art), decorated by the experimenter with plants and art, by their users with plants and art, or by the users with plants and art and then redecorated by the experimenter:  “We examined the impact of these conditions on organizational identification, well-being, and various forms of productivity (attention to detail, information processing, information management, and organizational citizenship). . .  superior outcomes are observed when offices are decorated rather than lean. However, further improvements in well-being and productivity are observed when workers have input into office decoration. Moreover, these effects are attenuated if this input is overridden.”  The findings reported here indicate that organizations should provide space users with control over their workspaces: “employees . . . should be empowered to design their own workspace rather than having predetermined space configurations thrust on them.”

Craig Knight and Alexander Haslam.  2010.  “The Relative Merits of Lean, Enriched, and Empowered Offices:  An Experimental Examination of the Impact of Workspace Management Strategies on Well-Being and Productivity.”  Journal of Experimental Psychology:  Applied, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 158-172.