New Technology, Work and Employment 25:3

ISSN 0268-1072

Multi-locational knowledge workers in the

office: navigation, disturbances and
effectiveness ntwe_247 183..195

Petra M. Bosch-Sijtsema, Virpi Ruohomäki and

Matti Vartiainen

Drop-in desks are increasingly common as companies have

more mobile employees. However, what happens to mobile
workers once they come to the office? In our research, we found
that mobile workers perceived lower productivity, had diffi-
culty in navigating in the office and suffered from distractions,
lack of storage and identification.

Knowledge workers in multiple places

Currently, in global technology firms, knowledge workers receive more and more
attention. A knowledge worker is defined as anyone who creates, develops, manipu-
lates, disseminates or uses knowledge to provide a competitive advantage or some
other benefit contributing towards the goals of the organisation (Harrison et al., 2004).
One important aspect of knowledge workers is that they often work in many places
(Gareis et al., 2006). Many knowledge workers spend their working time at a number
of different locations either in the office being campus mobile or outside the office (at
customers, at home, while travelling). This trend has been made possible by mobile
technologies, which have liberated work from being bound to a particular place and
time. For this phenomenon, the terms ‘multi-locational work’ or ‘mobile work’ are used
as employees not only work in many places but also travel between them (Vartiainen,
2008). Others discuss the hybrid workspace (Halford, 2005) or spatial mobility and
define this as mobile telework, which is a form of working at a range of locations,
spending regular and significant amounts of time away from any office or home
location they have (Hislop and Axtell, 2007; 2009). Studies focusing on mobile telework
usually mainly look at employees working at home or outside the office; however,
employees working in multiple locations of the firm (i.e. in different office locations
globally) are not often taken into account. Next to the trend of multi-locational knowl-

Petra Bosch-Sijtsema (petra@petrabosch.com) is a researcher at the Laboratory of Work Psychology

and Leadership at the Aalto University School of Science and Engineering, Finland and a visiting
scholar at the Project Based Learning Lab at Stanford University. Her research focuses on innovation,
knowledge creation and transfer in project-based environments and distributed teams. Virpi Ruo-
homäki (virpi.ruohomaki@tkk.fi) is a senior researcher at the Helsinki Laboratory of Work Psychology
and Leadership. Her research interests include knowledge work and teamwork, work environments
and workplaces. Matti Vartiainen (matti.vartiainen@tkk.fi) is Professor of Learning Organisation at the
Helsinki Laboratory of Work Psychology and Leadership. He leads the Virtual and Mobile Work
Unit (http://vmwork.tkk.fi) and his research interests cover organisational innovation, mobile distrib-
uted work, reward systems, knowledge and competence building, collaboration and new working
environments.

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA, 02148,
USA

Multi-locational knowledge workers in the office 183

edge work (KW), we also find that more organisations notice that not all office space is
used efficiently (since many people work in different locations) and therefore, try to
reduce costly spaces of the offices. Various solutions for workers who work in many
places are presented in facility management, for example, ‘hot-desking’ and ‘touch-
down’ or ‘drop-in desks’, in which office workers do not have a fixed desk or office
(Brown and O’Hara, 2003; Felstead et al., 2005). Several studies discuss these solutions
and their impact on knowledge workers; however, their relationship to productivity
and performance of knowledge workers is hardly touched upon. In this paper, we will
focus on knowledge workers who mainly work with non-assigned desks (in this paper,
we use the term mobile desks) and other variable campus locations when they come to
the office of the company. We are mainly interested in the impact of mobile desks for
KW and KW effectiveness.
The structure of the paper is as follows. In section two, we briefly discuss research
performed on KW and effectiveness or productivity and literature on workplaces.
Section three focuses on the methodology used for collecting data from the case
company, section four describes the main findings of the research and in section five,
we discuss these findings and relate them to literature.

KW and effectiveness
KW is perceived as an important aspect of our current society (Drucker, 1991; Pyöriä,
2005). However, no clear consensus about what actually constitutes KW is presented.
Based on a literature review (Bosch-Sijtsema et al., 2009) from different disciplines, we
define KW as follows: KW involves the creation, distribution or application of knowl-
edge (intangible resources) as task contents by highly skilled and/or trained workers
who have autonomy in their work who use tools (e.g. Information and Communication
Technology (ICT)) and theoretical concepts in order to produce complex, intangible
and tangible results to provide a competitive advantage or some other benefit contrib-
uting towards the goals of the organisation.
A large amount of research has been performed on knowledge workers; however,
few studies discuss the impacts of spatial mobility on the effectiveness of knowledge
workers. In an analysis of working in multiple places (Vartiainen, 2008), it was con-
cluded that there are two dilemmas. From the management perspective, there is the
dilemma of control versus trust and empowerment and from the employees’ perspec-
tive, there is the dilemma of full accessibility and availability (which implies that you
can be contacted by anybody through various communication technologies any time
such as online chat, network tools, awareness tools, maps) versus autonomy. The
change from the one-place office—be it home or any other permanent place—to the
multiple-place office, which could be called a mobile virtual office for multi-locational
collaborative work, is a long jump. It may increase employees’ self-regulation, control,
productivity, happiness and time spent with clients because of reduced commuting
time and especially, reduced space and occupancy costs from the viewpoint of a
company. At the same time, it may reduce professional and social interaction between
employees and between employees and management, reducing employees’ rights and
connections to the organisation and upset the balance between work and life. As Becker
and Tennessen (1995) concluded in their early case study on mobile work: ‘A consistent
finding in studies of employee responses to flexible work practices that involve
working remotely from a central office is that employees feel organisationally discon-
nected and socially isolated.’

Productivity of KW
While KW is becoming more multi-locational, it becomes important for companies to
understand how to improve the process and outcome of KW. Discussions on KW
productivity have gained a lot of interest in literature (Drucker, 1999); however, few
shared definitions and measurements have been developed (see Ramírez and Nemb-
hard, 2004). KW is intangible and hard to measure with traditional productivity

184 New Technology, Work and Employment © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
measurements; it seldom has one single correct result or correct way of doing it
(Orlikowski, 2002), and it is difficult to quantify (Quinn, 2005). Outcomes of KW are
often not comparable, take a long time to develop and have value only manifested
when used by customers (Antikainen and Lönnqvist, 2005). Productivity is mainly
defined as the ratio between input and output; however, for KW, there is not neces-
sarily a direct relation between input and output as there are often other influential
variables. These variables are related to the nature of task, work processes and work-
place and organisational contexts, for example, the task performed and its complexity,
interdependency and ambiguity, work processes, the workplace of knowledge
workers, organisational or team structure and context, organisational policy and
strategy (see review of Bosch-Sijtsema et al., 2009). In this study we, however, focus
mainly on effectiveness measures ‘as doing the right things’ as ratios of output relative
to goal or expectation, for example, the ratio of satisfied service needs versus identified
service needs. Effectiveness is defined as performance, member attitudes and be-
havioural outcomes.
Effectiveness and efficiency have been discussed in work psychology and team
literature as defining productivity; however, spatial mobility has been neglected to a
large extent. Some studies have been performed on performance in distributed teams;
however, productivity has hardly been taken into account (Martins et al., 2004; Powell
et al., 2004; Hertel et al., 2005). Distributed teams are composed of members who work
remotely; however, they do not necessarily have to be spatially mobile. Martins et al.
(2004) reviewed literature in this field and stated that task type, time and social
context (e.g. openness and critical behaviour) are moderators for distributed team
performance.

Workplace for multi-locational knowledge workers

In this paper, we focus primarily on the influence of physical space (see Davenport
et al., 2002; Gjerskvik and Blakstad, 2004; Heerwagen et al., 2004) on work of multi-
locational knowledge workers when they are in the office. KW, however, can be
separated into individual and collaborative KW (Heerwagen et al., 2004). For individual
work, knowledge workers need space to think and develop ideas, draw on their own
memory, insight and analytical skills. For collaborative KW, space should provide
possibilities for conversations and interaction, allowing thoughts embedded in one
person’s mind to be externalised and become accessible to others through writing,
speech or graphic visualisation. Vartiainen et al. (2007) found that knowledge workers
work in solitude, asynchronously with others, virtually online and in face-to-face
collaboration with others. It is often rather difficult to separate working in solitude from
collaborative work, even when teleworking at home. Working in solitude takes place in
‘pseudo-privacy’, which is interrupted by numerous e-mails, text messages, calls and
online virtual meetings. The increasing awareness of others’ locations and availability
reduces the feeling of autonomy and increases that of external controllability. Thus, the
nature of work seems to have become more blurred at several levels.
Recently, some authors also discuss the importance of workplace design as impacting
productivity (Davenport et al., 2002; Chan et al., 2007; Haynes, 2007; Vischer, 2007) and
effectiveness (Heerwagen et al., 2004). Haynes (2007) mentioned that few studies focus
on measuring these aspects and empirical evidence is limited (Heerwagen et al., 2004).
Architectural and spatial design may contribute to organisational effectiveness by
supporting employee satisfaction and morale (Peponis et al., 2007). In our study, we
study effectiveness of KW by including indicators on what kind of work is performed
together, how people collaborate, where they work together and how the organisation
supports their activities. In this paper, we mainly focus on the workplace, which has an
impact on perceived effectiveness of mobile employees.

Mobile desks in the office

Working from home and drop-in desks enables organisations to reduce costs by the
disposal of office space. According to Felstead et al. (2005), employees within a building

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Multi-locational knowledge workers in the office 185
might have no place they can call their own and instead, may be required to occupy
different places in the building throughout the day (e.g. use drop-in desks). Different
terminologies are applied for these kinds of workplaces such as drop-in desks, touch-
down desks, mobile desks, free address desks and not assigned desk. In this paper, we
mainly focus on the mobile desks (drop-in desks). Mobile desks are set aside for use by
anyone in the organisation, and they cannot be reserved beforehand. Several studies
discuss hot desks. These are similar to drop-in desks; however, hot desks can be
reserved. Some research performed on hot-desking discusses that mobile workers had
to manage decorporalisation in their access to colleagues (Brown and O’Hara, 2003).
They found that their work could lose much of its physical character, that they did not
share an office with close colleagues any more and that many of their work relation-
ships had to be managed ‘at a distance’.

Data and methods

Our focus is on studying the impact on KW and its productivity when employees do
not have a permanent workplace to work. For this, we apply an in-depth case study
with multiple data collection methods. The case study concerns a global Fortune 500
firm working in the high-tech industry. For this paper, we collected data from a
Northern European office of the global company performing technology solutions,
customer service and support functions. At this office, we studied two types of employ-
ees: ‘mobile workers’ (n = 81) and ‘dedicated workers’ (n = 138). Mobile workers were
employees with mobile or free address desks that could not be reserved and who
worked less than 20 hours per week in the office, whereas ‘dedicated workers’ worked
mainly in the office and had a dedicated or fixed desk. Both dedicated and mobile desk
workers worked in a large open office plan and mobile desks were located in multiple
areas in between the dedicated desks areas and always close to an informal coffee or
meeting space. The mobile desks are a combination of several types of non-assigned
spaces such as free address or mobile desks and drop-in desks. The drop-in desks are
smaller and meant for shorter usage. The mobile desks are meant to be used by those
knowledge workers who either work in multiple locations, come from other sites
(guests or remote workers), are part-time in the office or who do not need a stand-alone
computer and storage space. In the remainder of the paper, we apply the term mobile
desks for all non-assigned desk types. The office offers small quiet rooms (spaces for
concentrated and private individual work that cannot be reserved), conference rooms
(which can be reserved for meetings or presentations), informal meeting areas (semi-
closed or open areas for meetings) as well as small phone booths for telephone calls.
During this study, the employees had been working in this new office solution for one
year. In Table 1, the use of workplaces is presented.
We collected data by semi-structured context interviews, a walk-through observation
technique, photographs and floor plans and used secondary data from a post-
occupancy survey of the firm. We triangulated the statistical analysis and significant
correlations, and observations with the qualitative data in order to increase understand-
ing and insight in these findings. We discuss these methods in detail later.

Post-occupancy survey
A web-based post-occupancy survey was conducted in the office by the firm’s global
unit in order to measure the perception of the workplace after a change towards more
non-assigned areas and desks. The total number of responses was 219, of which 37 per
cent were ‘mobile workers’ (n = 81) with mobile desks and 63 per cent were ‘dedicated
workers’ (n = 138) working mainly in the office and having a dedicated or fixed desk.
The questionnaire focused on the following issues: use of different physical places of
the office for individual work and collaboration, evaluation of places and satisfaction
with them. The use of places was evaluated by answering items varying from 1 to 4
(‘strongly disagree’–‘strongly agree’). We were interested in how mobile desk workers
and dedicated desk employees differed in these evaluations and the statistical signifi-

186 New Technology, Work and Employment © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
 Table 1: Use of office workplaces (%) by dedicated and mobile workers

Type of workplace Dedicated Mobile

workers workers
(n = 139) (n = 82)

Mobile desks (combined free address and touch down)

Frequent use (>20 hours per week) Not used 27
Occasional use (ⱕ20 hours per week) Not used 40
Never use Not used 21
Not applicable Not used 10
Quiet rooms
Frequent use (>2 times per week) 18 16
Occasional use (ⱕ2 times per week) 36 38
Never use 45 44
Not applicable 2 1
Conference and meeting rooms
Frequent use (>2 times per week) 42 71
Occasional use (ⱕ2 times per week) 56 28
Never use 2 1
Team areas
Frequent use (>2 times per week) 19 23
Occasional use (ⱕ2 times per week) 50 49
Never use 27 22
Not applicable 4 6
Informal meeting areas
Frequent use (>2 times per week) 20 24
Occasional use (ⱕ2 times per week) 56 56
Never use 24 17
Not applicable 2
Frequent use is >two times per week, while occasional use is ⱕtwo times per week.

cance was performed with an independent samples t-test to reveal a statistically reli-
able difference between mobile and dedicated desk users. We also applied a Pearson
two-tailed correlation test to certify our findings. The statistical significant difference
was considered if the error margin was below 5 per cent. Besides the quantitative data,
we also had access to open questions of the survey. The comments mentioned in the
open questions were analysed qualitatively: coded, categorised and labelled, and fre-
quencies were counted and related to our interviews and observation notes later on. In
all, 62 remarks were received.

Interviews and observations

In order to understand the organisational context, the tasks performed and the work-
places and policies within the office, we collected data by five unstructured and
semi-structured interviews (1–1.5 hours each) with key contact persons of the office,
which are managers in real estate and workplace services as well as the human
resource manager. We discussed personal tasks of interviewees, KW and elements of
productivity of KW in their company. Furthermore, workplace-related questions were
asked, such as workplace policy locally and globally, culture, and hindrances and
enablers of the current workplace.
Based on the context interviews, literature review and the post-occupancy survey
findings, we designed an observation scheme for the study (Ruohomäki and Bosch-

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Multi-locational knowledge workers in the office 187
Sijtsema, 2008). We applied a walk-through method that offered an overview of the
workplace to find indicators of its usability and utilisation, which is how well the
building works (e.g. Bias, 1994; Hansen et al., 2005). The observation study was based
on an extensive observation scheme that was divided into two parts: the observation of
the physical workspace usage (e.g. artefacts, facilities, lights, acoustics, usability, places
for privacy, concentration and interaction and sources of distractions) and observation
of the social use of workplaces (e.g. following workplace policy, signs of concentration,
signs of productivity, potential distractions or interruptions, social interaction and
communication as well as signs of organisational identity, signs of cooperation usage of
places).
We validated our observation findings by triangulating them with the post-
occupancy survey data and the interviews in the Northern European office. The obser-
vations gave insights in how people really used the workplace instead of how they
perceive their usage (as was represented in the survey). Combining both the observed
way of working with the perceived way of working gave us a deeper understanding of
the impact of the open office on dedicated desk users and mobile workers.

Impact of mobile desks to KW

In this section, we describe the use of findings of how knowledge workers navigated
through, the office and perceived distractions and perceived productivity of those
knowledge workers who work in the office with mobile desks. In order to clearly
distinguish our findings, we relate our data with data from dedicated desk employees.

Navigating and finding colleagues

Navigating
Survey findings suggest that although the personnel in all can navigate quite well in the
open plan office, the mobile desk workers were a bit more critical on navigation than
dedicated desk workers, which is shown in Table 2. In the survey, the mobile desk
workers also answered another item related to navigation: ‘I can find a drop-in desk to
work when I need one’. The result shows that 10 per cent strongly agreed, 39 per cent
somewhat agreed, 34 per cent somewhat disagreed and 10 per cent strongly disagreed
with this item. One employee commented in the survey:
I spend a lot of my time walking over the office trying to find something, or deferring meetings with
customers until I can find a spare meeting room that suits our calendars.

Reaching colleagues
Especially for mobile desk workers who work less than 20 hours a week in the office,
it was important to be able to find their way and to reach colleagues quickly for
collaboration and to find appropriate spaces for interaction with their team members.
It was more difficult (significant difference, see Table 2) for mobile desk workers to find
an appropriate place for interaction than for dedicated desk workers. One employee
mentioned in the survey the following:
Certain areas for mobile workers are too small. Often one needs to move to other mobile areas,
which basically takes away the advantage of sitting close to your colleagues. One of the most
important things about being at the office is to be able to speak with my colleagues when I’m here.
If I’m placed somewhere else, I won’t have a possibility to interact with my colleagues. After all they
are the ones I most need to speak with.
Another employee commented in the survey on reaching people promptly:
Moving into a more mobile environment creates situations of inefficiency because you can’t reach
the people that you need ‘on the spot’, e.g. to get signatures in documents. The problem is quite
significant when dealing with confidential material that you are forced to hold on to until you
physically meet the person who needs to sign it.

Finding appropriate places for different tasks (e.g. team place, silent place)
Mobile desk workers who drop in from other locations for occasional meetings or team
activities had difficulties in finding appropriate physical places that met their needs for

188 New Technology, Work and Employment © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
 Table 2: Survey results of dedicated and mobile desk knowledge workers (mean and standard deviation) and significant differences between
dedicated and mobile desk workers (1 = strongly disagree, 4 = strongly agree)

Survey questions Dedicated Mobile t-test p value Pearson

workers workers value (two-tailed)
(n = 138) (n = 81)

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Mean SD Mean SD

Navigating in the office

I can navigate and find everything 3.29 0.74 3.09 0.77 1.968 0.05 –0.132
I can find appropriate space to interact with others 2.98 0.79 2.70 0.86 2.489 0.014 –0.166*
I can find quiet places to work 2.43 0.95 2.21 0.89 1.664 0.098 –0.144
Noise, distraction or quiet places
Workplace support private conversations 2.65 0.92 2.39 0.86 2.317 0.021 –0.157*
Nuisance, noise and distractions do not impact my ability to get my job done 2.52 0.91 2.31 0.88 1.597 0.112 –0.109
Storage
I have adequate storage available to do my job 3.05 0.96 2.5 1.14 3.482 0.001 –0.230**
Identity
The workplace allows me to identify with and feel connected with the company 3.04 0.91 2.8 0.87 1.719 0.087 –0.116
Effectiveness
Workplace inspires me to be creative and innovative 2.47 0.82 2.25 0.85 1.860 0.064 –0.131
I can find appropriate spaces that meet the need of my different work activities 3.03 0.85 2.68 0.99 2.757 0.006 –0.184*
Workplace supports the way I work and helps me get my work done 2.99 0.77 2.74 0.88 2.217 0.028 –0.151*
My own productivity has improved in the new workplace 3.05 0.74 2.65 0.91 3.384 0.001 –0.231**
*Correlation is significant a = 0.05 level (two-tailed); **Correlation is significant a = 0.01 level (two-tailed).

Multi-locational knowledge workers in the office

189
work. For example, the mobile desks are all located in an open office space, and to find
a more private place for meetings or phone calls was sometimes a challenge. Private
places for phone calls or for concentrated work were usually occupied; there were only
a few private places (in the form of quiet or phone booths) in the whole office. Another
aspect we observed was that sometimes employees took one of the private places and
used them as their private office for a couple of hours. This was against company policy,
but we observed this a couple of times. Furthermore, for mobile desk workers, no
shared team areas were available, such as for people with a dedicated desk who are
clustered in a certain area when they work on similar tasks. Mobile desk workers use
the space that is available to them and have to book meeting rooms in order to work
with their team. From our observations, we noticed that especially mobile desk workers
were searching for suitable places that were not occupied. For example, when receiving
a telephone call, several mobile desk workers started to look for a quiet place, but when
they were not able to find such a place quickly, they started walking around with their
mobile phone in their hand in order not to disturb others. One employee commented
in the survey:
We are lacking privacy at the office which more or less forces me to work outside normal office hours
or from home, in order to finalize demanding tasks. There is a clear need for private rooms . . . and
most of the private rooms are all the time reserved, opposite to the instructions of the place. An open
office is not suitable for every role.

Distractions
Survey results state that noise and distractions in the workplace somewhat impact the
ability to get the job accomplished (Table 2) for mobile desk workers as well as for
18 per cent of the open question remarks deal with interruptions and distractions. This
result is supported by our observations that showed difficulties in concentrating in an
open space (with mainly mobile desk workers) and the lack of privacy, for example, to
have confidential calls, discussions and handle materials. The mobile desks are organ-
ised in such a way that the area becomes a lively social environment where people can
easily interact with each other. Since mobile desk workers mainly come to the office to
meet colleagues, interact and collaborate, this open environment is beneficial.
However, it also creates disturbances for those who need to concentrate or need a
private place for other reasons. We observed that especially the mobile desk areas were
noisy in relation to the dedicated desk areas in the open plan office. Some employees
mentioned in the survey:
It is not possible to concentrate on work in the office. I consider of moving to work from home to get
better working conditions.
It’s often better to stay working at home than come to a restless mobile desk in the office.
If there is a possibility to acoustically improve the office space, it would improve the quality and
productivity. One cannot whisper in the office and speaking with normal tone (e.g. in phone)
disturbs and you can see several people continuously trying to find a quiet place to talk on the
phone.
One comment was related to confidential material on the computer:
I don’t feel comfortable sitting with my back facing the hallways and people coming by from behind
(comment placed on confidentiality and security issues).
In the mobile desk area, we observed the following sources of interruptions and
potential distractions:
1. People talking on their mobile phone and walking around: for example, we
observed nine people walking and talking on their mobile phone for 15 minutes at
the mobile desks and seven people for 10 minutes at the touch-down desks.
2. Two or more people talking near you, but not to you: we observed several ad hoc
meetings in between the mobile desks of groups of three to five people for longer
periods of time (>15 minutes).

190 New Technology, Work and Employment © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
3. People passing and walking behind or near you: in one of the mobile desk areas,
people used a walking path through the mobile desk area, towards the coffee and
informal corner, even though this was not a designated pathway. This path was
used heavily during our observation days and the facility manager confirmed the
use of this path. Furthermore, people gathered around the mobile desk areas to talk
and drink coffee.
4. People leaving and coming to desks near you: the mobile desk area was a very
lively area in which people constantly came to check email and went away for
meetings or other activities.
5. Concluding, we can state that working in a mobile desk area in an open office is,
on the one hand, positive for stimulating interaction between mobile desk workers
who occasionally come to the office. However, on the other hand, the environment
can be distracting to the task that needs to be performed.

Storage
The mobile desk area was set up in such a way that little storage was available.
Furthermore, dedicated desk workers had decreased their storage access when the firm
transferred to an open plan office. In the survey, the employees’ evaluated availability
of storage with the item ‘I have adequate storage available (electronic and physical) to
do my job’. Dedicated desk workers perceived that they had adequate storage and
36 per cent strongly agreed, 41 per cent somewhat agreed, 12 per cent somewhat dis-
agreed and 10 per cent strongly disagreed, while mobile desk workers were less posi-
tive with 24 per cent who strongly agreed, 23 per cent who somewhat agreed, 27 per
cent who somewhat disagreed and 24 per cent who strongly disagreed. Mobile desk
workers were significantly less satisfied with availability of storage (see Table 2).
An important issue for mobile desk workers is that it becomes difficult to take
materials with them, and storing papers and documentation becomes more difficult.
Furthermore, the company applied a clean desk policy so no material could be placed
on the mobile desk. We observed several mobile desk workers who were continuously
carrying tools such as a laptop, a mobile phone and materials in their hands. Due to the
fact that mobile desk workers have no fixed desk, employees carry all their material
around. All the mobile desk workers had a big box that they can carry around to store
their documents and papers. However, for many mobile desk workers, these boxes
were overloaded, and extra piles of papers were placed on top of these boxes. In the
survey, several employees complained about the fact that they had to take all their
belongings home every day (such as their computer, documents, papers, bags) since
there was no place for storing these items. One employee mentioned in the survey:
I would like to easily keep my materials in the working place, not carrying everyday so much
material to home and back next day. My family complains of moving office stuff home instead of
keeping it in the working place (office). Rather work at one place than trying to keep several offices.

Identification
According to the survey results, the workplace allows the employees to identify them-
selves with the company. Identification was measured with the item ‘The workplace
allows me to identify with and feel connected with the company’. The results showed
for dedicated desk workers: 20 per cent strongly agreed, 55 per cent somewhat agreed,
20 per cent somewhat disagreed and 5 per cent strongly disagreed. For the mobile desk
workers, 10 per cent strongly agreed, 65 per cent somewhat agreed, 15 per cent some-
what disagreed and 10 per cent strongly disagreed. There was no statistically significant
difference between the mobile desk and dedicated desk knowledge workers.
However, the loss of identity might be a risk for some people who only work in
multiple places with mobile desks. People who only occasionally come to the office
have no fixed space for their documents, material and individual items such as photos
and trophies, which are often used as identification artefacts of the workplace. The

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Multi-locational knowledge workers in the office 191
office worked with a clean desk policy meaning that once you leave the desk, you have
to clear it completely of papers, documents, etc. During our observations, we noticed
several notes on desks to focus on the clean desk policy with a cluttered desk or other
desks carried notes that they did not want to follow this policy. For mobile desk
workers, this clean desk policy implies that mobile desk workers have to carry their
individual documents with them all the time. Furthermore, since employees did not
have a fixed area or desk space, their social environment changed weekly or even daily,
making their belonging to a certain group difficult and decreasing informal inter-
actions. One employee mentioned that the open office space meant that more people
would work from home.
People working more and more at their home office, which has a negative effect on team work, and
the commitment level is going down.

Perceived productivity of mobile workers

The survey findings showed that working in a mobile desk was negatively and signifi-
cantly related to perceived productivity or effectiveness in all items after the changes in
the workplace towards an open plan office (see Table 2). Perceived productivity was
measured in the question of ‘my own productivity has improved in the new work-
place’. Next to perceived productivity, we also measured perceived workplace effec-
tiveness in terms of: ‘the workplace supports the way I work and helps me get my work
done’. Workplace effectiveness was also significantly related to the mobile desk worker
(see Table 2).
Furthermore, mobile desk workers responded lower in evaluations than dedicated
desk workers in terms of finding appropriate spaces that meet the need of one’s
different work activities. The items on creativity and finding appropriate spaces of
different work activities have an indirect impact on the output of the work and the
performance. Mobile desk workers perceived lower scores for finding appropriate
workplaces (2.68 mean mobile worker and 3.03 for dedicated workers) and workplaces
inspiring creativity (average of 2.25 for mobile workers and 2.47 for dedicated
workers).
Other aspects that to some extent have a negative impact on the effectiveness of KW
are the aforementioned findings of being able to navigate through the open office space,
being able to reach colleagues with non-assigned desks quickly and being able to find
suitable places for specific activities or tasks for non-assigned desk workers. Further-
more, distractions and noise are, on the one hand, positive for creating an interactive
environment; however, on the other hand, they might cause distractions in case of
more focused and concentrated work tasks.

Discussion and conclusions

Physical mobility and working in multiple locations are becoming issues that are
researched more and more (Hislop, 2008; Hislop and Axtell, 2009). Furthermore, many
companies want to cut their office space costs. This implies that their employees work
more in mobile desk areas (e.g. drop-in desks), at home or other available places.
Increasingly, the multi-locational workforce is something many high-tech companies
consider in the near future.
In our study, we found that the current use of mobile desks in an open office plan
support only one type of communicative tasks, but not all work tasks of knowledge
workers are supported in an open plan office. The use of mobile desks supports
interaction and creates a lively but also restless work environment. Mobile desk
workers navigate through the open plan office to find an appropriate workplace, such
as a meeting room or quiet place, according to their tasks at hand, especially the mobile
desk areas in the open plan office created distractions for those knowledge workers
who perform creative, concentration-demanding tasks. Based on the observation study
supported by survey results, several hindrances for KW productivity of knowledge
workers with mobile desks were identified. We discuss these hindrances in more detail
later.

192 New Technology, Work and Employment © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
 In this study, we focused on the impact of mobile desk workplaces on work and
effectiveness of knowledge workers. Productivity (measured in terms of perceived
productivity and effectiveness) of KW is difficult to measure (Ramírez and Nembhard,
2004), and therefore, we used as its indicator the perceived productivity of mobile desk
workers versus dedicated desk workers. As authors, we are aware of the limitations of
only measuring perceived productivity and effectiveness in surveys; however, the
employee perception differences give some insight in how mobile workers and dedi-
cated desk workers perceive the impact of the new workplace on their work. We found
that perceived productivity of mobile desk workers was significantly lower than of
employees with a dedicated desk. Besides perceived productivity, we observed several
aspects that could hinder the KW effectiveness due to a stronger focus on mobile desk
work and reduced office space: navigation through the office space might be more
difficult for mobile desk workers who only occasionally come to the office, problems in
finding and reaching colleagues face-to-face, having a lot of distractions in the mobile
desk workspaces, having lack of storage for their documents, loss of visibility of mobile
desk workers face-to-face and not being able to identify with the team and colleagues.
These elements can be perceived as hindrances of productivity of mobile desk knowl-
edge workers and can be viewed as hidden costs for companies.
The findings can be related to some extent to earlier work performed in workplace
literature (e.g. Kidd, 1994), work psychology literature on distributed and mobile
working in teams (e.g. Martins et al., 2004; Hertel et al., 2005; Vartiainen et al., 2007), and
literature on interruptions in KW (e.g. Mark et al., 2005). However, few studies discuss
KW productivity hindrances related to mobile or dedicated desk workers. From
empirical studies on knowledge workers and their spatial layout and materials (Kidd,
1994), we know that many knowledge workers have extremely cluttered desks and are
seriously disrupted by changes made to their desk or by needing to move offices
regularly. According to Kidd (1994), knowledge workers seem to use physical place
(like desks) as a temporary holding pattern for input and ideas that they cannot yet
categorise or even decide how they might use. In our study, the firm used a clean desk
policy, and little storage was available for paperwork. Kidd (1994) also found that
having a visible pile of work or material on your desk also could be related to a
demonstrable (tangible) output. Kidd mentioned that papers on a desk are tangible
objects to which workers can point to show others how much progress they have made.
This is a possible way of measuring their productivity.
Studies on interruptions at work show that they often interfere with the workflow of
knowledge workers in offices as in our study. For example, Mark et al. (2005) observed
day-to-day activities of 24 knowledge workers over a period of three days. They found
that multitasking was very common; knowledge workers worked in an average of 11.7
different working spheres during a day, their work was highly fragmented and 57 per
cent of their working spheres were interrupted. Mark et al. (2005) studied internal and
external interruptions. Internal interruptions are due to personal work, for example, an
employee stops a task on his own volition, whereas most external interruptions, for
example, phone ringing or a colleague entering a worksite, are due to the work they are
responsible for. Informants said that interruptions are most disruptive when they lead
them to shift working spheres. Interruptions were not nearly as bad if they were related
to the project a person was already working on. Being forced to leave one working
sphere and enter another was highly disruptive. In our case, the mobile desk workers
experienced many external interruptions once they visited the office, and this could
impact their perceived productivity.
Although little research has been performed on relating mobile desks to productivity
of knowledge workers, some studies have focused on hot desking and identity (Mill-
ward et al., 2007). Millward et al. (2007) found that work team identity is more salient
than organisational identity when desks are assigned, whereas organisational identity
is more salient when they are not. This was explained partly by the physical arrange-
ments that had a significant bearing on the way in which employees engage with the
organisation as well as whom they are most likely to engage with (i.e. impacting on the
type and focus of organisational participation). In our study, we did not separate

© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Multi-locational knowledge workers in the office 193
between organisational or team identity, but we found from statements and interviews
that it was difficult sometimes to sit with the team members and this had an impact on
team cohesion and identity as well as on their collaboration process. Brown and
O’Hara (2003) discussed the location of the desk as part of the social organisation of the
workplace. Brown and O’Hara (2003) also discussed that mobile workers had to
manage decorporalisation in their access to colleagues. This is confirmed in our study
in which the mobile desk workers mention that they spend more time in finding and
reaching colleagues, as well as that they can not easily find appropriate spaces to
interact with their colleagues. Furthermore when these mobile workers come to the
office, they spend a large amount of their time in meetings and discussions with their
colleagues and less time with informal talks between workers who would normally sit
next to them in an assigned desk area. These findings are in line with Halford (2005),
who argued that space makes a difference to outcomes in terms of working practices,
relationships and management. The mobile desk area is, in this case, developed in
order to stimulate ad hoc interaction for mobile workers, and working on these desks
imply a change in working practices for interacting, storing material and individual
work tasks. However, as has been discussed in literature as well (Brown and O’Hara,
2003), knowledge workers find ways to change their work practices by, for example,
using more digital communication (such as email or chat) to find and contact team
members as well as having less paperwork and more documents on their laptops and
carrying their phones and laptops with them everywhere.
Concluding, we can state that the reduction of space and the usage of mobile desks
for knowledge workers represent several hindrances for effectiveness of KW.
The prevalence of new types of workplaces, such as, for example, mobile desks,
has increased rapidly during the last 10 years and will continue to do so (e.g.
Felstead et al., 2005; Gareis et al., 2006; Hislop, 2008). Telework and mobile work has
increased dramatically the last couple of years in Europe and America. Therefore, it
becomes more important to continue to study mobile desk workers in relation to
their workspaces (physical, virtual and social workspaces) to understand the impact
of multi-locationality on their work and effectiveness. It also seems evident that
multi-locational workers need and long for face-to-face encounters with their col-
leagues to socialise formally and informally as Becker and Tennessen (1995) already
noticed. In future work, the productivity issues of mobile workers are investigated
and related to the different workspaces for case studies in Europe, in the USA and in
Asia.

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