{"id":188,"date":"2012-05-23T10:03:39","date_gmt":"2012-05-23T14:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/?p=188"},"modified":"2012-05-23T10:03:39","modified_gmt":"2012-05-23T14:03:39","slug":"open-cubicles-and-behavior-settings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2012\/05\/23\/open-cubicles-and-behavior-settings\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Cubicles and Behavior Settings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, I get a little freaked out when the New York Times has stories that seem to be focused all towards issues and interests in my own life. \u00a0(I’m sure that’s what all the paranoids say, but I’m way too optimistic to be a paranoid. \u00a0I just think how lucky I am the NY Times caters to me!!)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In any case, this Sunday’s New York Times had a very interesting article on open cubicle floor plans<\/a> that have become popular with some organizations. \u00a0What I find so interesting about this topic is not the use of pink noise<\/a> to drown out one’s co-workers’ conversations, but that organizational scientists have neglected the importance of the built environment in understanding employees and organizations. \u00a0I know that some I\/O psychologists think this is the realm of human factors, but it is not. \u00a0This is the issue that Wanda Orlikowski<\/a>\u00a0has been trying to raise: we who study organizations need to look beyond just the social processes and incorporate the physical, built environment into our theories and research<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I don’t know what the answer is here. \u00a0Though I am so interested in environmental psychology<\/a>, even I don’t know what the obvious theoretical approaches would be here much less easy solutions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nonetheless, I would approach the study of open cubicles from the perspective of behavior setting theories<\/a>. \u00a0Behavior settings are a unit of analysis (bigger than a group, smaller than an organization) that can be used to understand behavior and cognitions as people interact within each other and the environment. Two other key components I think are relevant here are that behavior settings have boundaries and they have setting programs<\/em> (i.e., patterns of behavior that accomplish some goal of the setting).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

An accessible example would be a coffee shop. \u00a0 The setting program is the ordering, preparing and consumption of coffee and perhaps some food. \u00a0The boundaries are the both real and psychological: \u00a0the walls around the space, the coffee counter, the door to the back room. \u00a0The physical objects (tables, chairs, counters, coffee makers, doors, cash registers, etc) can facilitate or hinder the setting program. \u00a0It’s more complicated than that, but that’s a good introduction.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I think one issue with open cubicle floor plans is that there are there are likely multiple behavior settings in one space that do not have clear physical boundaries between them which affects the psychological boundaries and disrupts the enactment of the necessary setting programs for the employees to accomplish their work. I would imagine some organizations have worked to solve these problems, but others haven’t. \u00a0The resulting employee frustration or work facilitation likely has to do with how much the organization has allowed or encouraged employees to modify the environment–and the work processes–to enact the setting program.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I know I do a lot of virtual research, but this would be such a fun and interesting and important study to do. \u00a0Any takers!?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, I get a little freaked out when the New York Times has stories that seem to be focused all towards issues and interests in my own life. \u00a0(I’m sure that’s what all the paranoids say, but I’m way too optimistic to be a paranoid. \u00a0I just think how lucky I am the NY Times […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p67nDP-32","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":217,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2013\/02\/22\/time-in-organizations\/","url_meta":{"origin":188,"position":0},"title":"Time in Organizations","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"February 22, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"When I went back to school after working in the \"real world\" for 4 years, one of the differences that struck me was differences in time in the organization. \u00a0I have not studied time in organizations, which is an important area of research. \u00a0What I want to talk about is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":90,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2011\/06\/17\/welcome-to-my-professional-blog\/","url_meta":{"origin":188,"position":1},"title":"Welcome to My Professional Blog","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"June 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Welcome to the blog. You might note that the \"blog\" entries before are from a bazillion years ago when this was just a regular web site. Now that we've moved up to a much better web system for our faculty, I'm hoping to more regularly update this blog with thoughts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":323,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2018\/03\/12\/spring-break-study-abroad-to-prague-part-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":188,"position":2},"title":"Spring Break Study Abroad to Prague: Part 1","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"March 12, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"We just returned from Prague for a Spring Break Study abroad program focusing on successful international employees, teams, and leaders.\u00a0 I'm dividing this debriefing blog into two parts. Today, I'm talking about what we learned and did.\u00a0 Tomorrow, I'm talking about what it's like to be a professor in close\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":130,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2011\/08\/09\/sociomaterialism-and-emergent-social-media\/","url_meta":{"origin":188,"position":3},"title":"Sociomaterialism and Emergent Social Media","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"August 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"In the past week, danah boyd has written a couple of very interesting posts about Google + and their policy of not allowing people to post using pseudonyms. \u00a0In my research, it's rare to find people who want to be anonymous in their ongoing online interactions. \u00a0But many people do\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":325,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2018\/03\/13\/spring-break-study-abroad-to-prague-part-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":188,"position":4},"title":"Spring Break Study Abroad to Prague: Part 2","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"March 13, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday, in Part 1, I talked about some the intellectual benefits of our Spring Break Study abroad program. \u00a0 Today, I want to talk about what I perceive as the personal benefits of this sort of trip. It actually surprised me after my first Study Abroad trip to Berlin how\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2018\/03\/Novartis-300x169.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":338,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2018\/04\/13\/academic-colleagues\/","url_meta":{"origin":188,"position":5},"title":"Academic Colleagues","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"April 13, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I understand how it can go both ways in academia.\u00a0 You can have colleagues who are really part of your family.\u00a0 And you have colleagues you are, um, not. Whichever way it happens, academic colleagues are completely unlike colleagues in other organizations. Academia is the last career in which you\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":189,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions\/189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}