Purpose

In large organizations, space planning relies on workgroup leaders to indicate spatial adjacency preferences. However, many factors affect workgroups’ adjacency preferences, and it is not clear how the choices are made. This paper aims to explore whether the adjacency preferences are influenced by the collaboration relationship or constrained by the organizational structure.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors studied a large company’s spatial adjacency planning with an in-depth analysis of its formal organizational structure and collaboration network. A sample of 183 managers was surveyed regarding groups with whom they want to be spatially adjacent and groups with whom they mostly interact. The data enabled us to test three structural factors related to adjacency preference: department affiliation, workgroup’s prestige and collaboration relation. The authors used the quadratic assignment procedure analysis to examine the correlations between network matrices.

Findings

The results suggest that department affiliation and collaboration relations are significantly correlated to adjacency preferences. The authors did not find evidence supporting the notion that a workgroup’s prestige affects the preference. Among the three factors, collaboration relation best predicts the preference, which echoes Pena et al.’s (1977) argument that space planners should look into how groups function, rather than merely following the organizational chart.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research was the first to explore the choice of spatially adjacent workgroup through a detailed network analysis of the formal structure, work collaboration relations and other group-level characteristics. The findings have noteworthy cross-disciplinary implications, given that spatial proximity can be taken as a human resource management strategy to facilitate the overall interactions between workgroups.

中文翻译：

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网络化的“泡沫”：使用社交网络分析方法研究工作组的空间邻接偏好

目的

在大型组织中，空间规划依赖于工作组领导者来指示空间邻接偏好。但是，有许多因素会影响工作组的邻接偏好，并且尚不清楚如何做出选择。本文旨在探讨邻接偏好是受协作关系影响还是受组织结构约束。

设计/方法/方法

作者通过对大型公司的正式组织结构和协作网络进行深入分析，研究了大型公司的空间邻接计划。对183位管理者进行了抽样调查，以了解他们想在空间上相邻的群体以及他们经常互动的群体。数据使我们能够测试与邻接偏好相关的三个结构性因素：部门隶属关系，工作组的声望和协作关系。作者使用二次分配过程分析来检查网络矩阵之间的相关性。

发现

结果表明，部门的隶属关系和协作关系与邻接偏好显着相关。作者没有找到支持工作组声望影响偏好的观点的证据。在这三个因素中，合作关系可以最好地预测偏好，这与Pena等人的观点相呼应。的（1977）的论点是，空间规划师应该研究群体的运作方式，而不是仅仅遵循组织结构图。

创意/价值

就作者所知，该研究是第一个通过对形式结构，工作协作关系和其他小组级别特征进行详细网络分析来探索空间相邻工作组的选择的方法。鉴于可以将空间邻近性视为促进工作组之间整体交互的人力资源管理策略，因此这些发现具有跨学科的意义。