Computing dynamic organizational proximity: The PROXTIME computer program

Abstract

Psychologists have long been interested in the role that proximity plays in determining various aspects of human behavior, such as communication and interaction (Festinger, Schacter, & Back, 1950; Newcomb, 1961), attraction (Kahn & McGaughey, 1977), and impression formation (Tesch, 1979). During the past decade, psychologists have begun to explore the relationship of proximity to a variety of variables important to the work place, such as performance (Conrath, 1973), job satisfaction (Quinn, 1977), and commitment (Conrath, 1973; Monge & Kirste, 1980). Monge and Kirste (1980) developed a definition and operationalization of proximity that is more appropriate for research in contexts than are earlier methods developed from interpersonal studies. The definition contains three elements that distinguish proximity in organizations from the same construct in interpersonal settings: (1) that a person's proximity is usefully conceptualized in terms of meaningful work spaces that facilitate or inhibit the opportunity for faceto-face communication, (2) that each person in an organization is proximate to multiple others, and (3) that a person's proximity to these multiple others is dynamic and changes over time. The index developed for this definition provides the conditional probability of an individual's spending time in the same physical with each other person in the organization. It varies from 0, representing complete isolation from all other individuals, to 1, representing continuously sharing the same work space with all other individuals. A second index, indicating the proximity of each person to all others in the organization, can also be computed. Recently, Monge, White, Eisenberg, Miller, and Kirste (Note 1) reported research on the dynamics of organizational proximity, an aggregate-level measure for an entire organization, which is defined as the degree to which people within an organization share the same physical during the same periods of time; there is assumed to be both the opportunity and psychological obligation to engage in face-to-face communication. Data were gathered in IS-min intervals for 1 workweek on the amount of time that employees spent in the different locations that constituted the entire organization. A single measure of proximity indicating the density of people across all was computed for each of the 205 time periods for the week and subjected to time-series analysis. The results indicated both a significant daily variation in the congregation and isolation of people and a systematic day-to-day pattern. Since more than 50,000 data points are required to represent 2S0 people in different during a workweek, it is extremely helpful to have access to a computer program that computes the values of proximity. Data collection typically requires that all individuals in the organization record the where they spend their time for predetermined intervals (e.g., each 15 min) over some period of time (e.g., a day, week). PROXTIME, the computer program described in this report, can be used to compute proximity values for each (user-defined) time interval, as well as individual proximity values for each person. These values may be utilized in other analyses to test relevant theories and hypotheses.