Space and Structure: The Interplay Between Proximity, Unit Boundaries, and Supervision in Shaping Workplace Interactions

Organizations commonly colocate employees in the same office to foster collaboration, yet spatial interventions often fail to deliver their intended benefits. Conflicting evidence in the proximity and office design literatures highlights the need for a better understanding of when and how physical space shapes workplace interactions, particularly across organizational units. Drawing on theories of attention, we propose that spatial arrangements and organizational structures intersect to influence employees’ attentional processes. We argue that (1) proximity’s effects on work-related interactions should be stronger for same-unit dyads than cross-unit dyads because organizational relationships determine who is most likely to stand out in a busy office environment, and (2) proximity to supervisors should reduce cross-unit interactions as employees focus on demonstrating unit-focused productivity to nearby authority figures. We find evidence consistent with these hypotheses in a field study in which employees were quasi-randomly assigned to desks following a headquarters relocation, creating exogenous variation in proximity between employees from different units and between employees and their supervisors. This research contributes to the literatures on boundary spanning, physical space, and organizational attention by demonstrating that office design’s impact on collaboration depends critically on the organizational relationships among the employees within the space.

Funding: This work was supported by Duke University, Fuqua School of Business.

Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2024.19786.