Work (Un)Interrupted: How Non-territorial Space Shapes Worker Control over Social Interaction

Abstract

Organizational research has long emphasized the importance of physical space in structuring opportunities for social interaction among workers. Using 14 months of field research during an office redesign at a large team-based sales company, I find that the adoption of non-territorial space—a change from assigned cubicles to an unassigned mix of spaces—substantially increased worker control over social interaction. Whereas the old territorial space rendered workers constantly accessible to others, the new non-territorial space altered information about workers’ location and availability preferences, enabling new strategies for hiding in the space and signaling availability to others through workspace selection. This led to greater reliance on virtual or asynchronous communication technologies, and less unwanted interruption in the new non-territorial space. The findings identify how the non-territorial dimension of office space affects worker control over social interaction. They also reveal the social practices through which individuals actively use material and symbolic resources in the physical environment to avoid cognitive and temporal costs of unwanted interruption. The study complements dominant structural accounts with a richer theorization of individual agency—while physical spaces certainly structure opportunities for social interaction, they also structure the strategies that individuals can use to actively manage social interaction.