Physical Workspace Research Articles

Cobots and Digital Twins are Ushering in Industry 5.0

Digital transformation disrupted both manufacturing and services. Implementation of Industry 4.0 and its equivalents resulted in smart factories, intelligent automation, and robots working as colleagues of humans. Digital twins facilitate seamless integration of physical and virtual workspaces. However, there is a need to incorporate sustainability and a focus on human well being and Industry 5.0 champions this holistic approach.

Organizational, economic or cultural? Firm-side barriers to employing women in Saudi Arabia

All-male firms are common around the world, particularly in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, where local norms often favor gender segregation. The integration of women into these previously all-male firms is an important driver of growth in economic opportunity for women. However, the determinants of firm integration decisions are complex and engage a broad set of issues including leadership priorities and beliefs, physical workspace constraints, organizational structure, regulatory compliance, and labor costs. We systematically analyze the results of a survey of firm owners and hiring managers in Saudi Arabia on the barriers to integrating women into the workplace. We show that personal opinions and manager demographics are of core importance: the features that are best able to identify firms that employ women are the respondent’s perceptions of women’s personal qualities, the cultural appropriateness of professional tasks, and the respondent’s own demographic characteristics. Other tangible costs or operational constraints to female hiring are second-order in a statistical sense. Firms that employ women are much more likely to view female employees favorably, and this seems to be the result of experience with women in the workplace rather than a manager’s broad attitude toward employing women.

Surge in Extramarital Affairs During Work from Home: What We Know So far

Traditional physical workspaces have gone after the pandemic has happened. Individuals working at home have distractions that they would have not faced earlier. The usual working hours have taken a toll after they have started to work from home. Mental health and emotional support are not the same for professionals. Infidelity or extramarital affairs are also increasing in this situation where the individual is trying to date someone outside their marriage for emotional or mental support. The negative effect of an extramarital affair is expected to be exacerbated for the individuals working from home and involved in infidelity. The process of healing can also take time making a huge influence on the family relationships including children. In India, extradyadic relationships are not commonly talked about because of the wide cultural and societal influence. But the ground reality according to research studies is that there are many who indulge in the same. This article gives a brief background of extramarital and infidelity research carried out in the past 10 years (2012–2021) and sees how the extramarital affair in families has evolved and impacted individuals working from home during the pandemic.

Design and Evaluation of an Augmented Reality Head-mounted Display Interface for Human Robot Teams Collaborating in Physically Shared Manufacturing Tasks

We provide an experimental evaluation of a wearable augmented reality (AR) system we have developed for human-robot teams working on tasks requiring collaboration in shared physical workspace. Recent advances in AR technology have facilitated the development of more intuitive user interfaces for many human-robot interaction applications. While it has been anticipated that AR can provide a more intuitive interface to robot assistants helping human workers in various manufacturing scenarios, existing studies in robotics have been largely limited to teleoperation and programming. Industry 5.0 envisions cooperation between human and robot working in teams. Indeed, there exist many industrial tasks that can benefit from human-robot collaboration. A prime example is high-value composite manufacturing. Working with our industry partner towards this example application, we evaluated our AR interface design for shared physical workspace collaboration in human-robot teams. We conducted a multi-dimensional analysis of our interface using established metrics. Results from our user study (n = 26) show that, subjectively, the AR interface feels more novel and a standard joystick interface feels more dependable to users. However, the AR interface was found to reduce physical demand and task completion time, while increasing robot utilization. Furthermore, user’s freedom of choice to collaborate with the robot may also affect the perceived usability of the system.

Satisfaction with activity-support and physical home-workspace characteristics in relation to mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic

Previous research indicates that employees’ mental health might be influenced by their satisfaction with physical office characteristics, such as noise, daylight, and ventilation. However, similar research on mental health in relation to working from home (WFH) is limited. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the relationships between satisfaction with physical home workspace characteristics and support of work activities and mental health while WFH during the COVID-19 pandemic. Relationships were analysed using a path analysis approach, based on a sample of 1219 office workers, who had to work fully from home. The internal relationships between the ten considered mental health variables were also studied. Results showed that satisfaction with daylight, artificial light, greenery, and views outside were directly related to one of the mental health variables and indirectly to several others. Surprisingly, satisfaction with temperature, noise, ventilation, and air quality did not seem to play a role at the home workplace. In addition, unlike at the office, personal characteristics did not relate to workspace satisfaction nor perceived support of activities at home. Furthermore, all mental health variables were related to at least one other mental health variable. Workplace managers could use these insights to formulate recommendations for employees on how to design their home-workspace.

A novel AR remote collaborative platform for sharing 2.5D gestures and gaze

Although sharing gestures and gaze can improve AR remote collaboration, most current systems only enable collaborators to share 2D or 3D gestures, and the unimodal HCI interface remains dominant. To address this problem, we describe a novel remote collaborative platform based on 2.5D gestures and gaze (2.5DGG), which supports an expert who collaborates with a worker (e.g., during assembly or training tasks). We investigate the impact of sharing the remote site’s 2.5DGG using spatial AR (SAR) remote collaboration in manufacturing. Compared to other systems, there is a key advantage that it can provide more natural and intuitive multimodal interaction based on 2.5DGG. We track the remote experts’ gestures and eye gaze using Leap Motion and aGlass, respectively, in a VR space displaying the live video stream of the local physical workspace and visualize them onto the local work scenario by a projector. The results of an exploratory user study demonstrate that 2.5DGG has a clear difference in performance time and collaborative experience, and it is better than the traditional one.

Sustainability in the new remote and hybrid worlds of work

Purpose This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies. Design/methodology/approach This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings This research paper concentrates on understanding the relationship between sustainability performance, new approaches to work (NAW), workspace usage patterns, and physical workspace reduction practices by companies and their employees. It was found from the surveys of executives and managers at Indian IT companies that NAW does lower the use of workspaces, thereby boosting a company's sustainability performance. This finding is a confident signal to executives and managers that remote working is very much here to stay, meaning they can build a full people infrastructure around this paradigm shift that's already implanted itself in the worldwide employment psyche. Originality/value The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

COVID-19 AND THE CHANGING FACE OF WORK/INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS IN NIGERIA

Industries are usually places of production and of manufacturing. They are places were good are produced and services rendered. These are made possible by the presence of and /or interaction of persons referred to as actors or participants. In industries therefore, there are two key actors; the employee and the employer having the State as an umpire. These actors in the course of material production engage in interaction. It is this work relation/interaction in conjuncture with the environment that translates into tangential goods and services for societal consumption. In Nigeria, the emergence of the covid-19 pandemic saw the alteration of the existing work relations in the country whereby the work relations assumed a new form and nature. It ushered in a spatial as against a physical work space, personalized as against collectivized (group) work process, authoritarian as against democratized work relations etc. The altered work relations off-course has implications on work relations in the industries (workers/management) as well as the country in general. The attendant implications include, job rationalization, spiritless trade unionism, labour exploitation, income/revenue reduction/decline etc. From a sociological perspective and in the attempt to situate the study within a given theoretical perspective the paper adopted the theoretical biasness of the Marxian conflict theory in the exposition of the study problem. The paper therefore suggests that there should be legislation by government regulating work relations in the country in terms of slashing of salary and arbitrary laying-off of workers in the name of right-sizing.

Managing physical and virtual work environments during the COVID-19 pandemic: improving employee well-being and achieving mutual gains

AbstractContemporary organisations continue to use flexible workspace configurations and increasingly are adopting more automated and intelligent digital systems to organise work. Workspace configurations have various forms and arrangements composed of the physical workspace (such as open-plan office spaces) and virtual workspace (e.g., teleworking). The aim of this Special Issue (SI) is to stimulate inquiry into the role of management, organisation and HRM in promoting mutual gains for employers and employees working in these environments. The essence of mutual gains is that HRM practices lead to greater employee well-being and increased employee performance, the latter being especially important to employers for achieving organisational goals. In ‘managing physical and virtual work environments during the Covid-19 pandemic’, we consider how work is organised in challenging physical and virtual workspace configurations as well as how people engage in activities that are paced and informed by automated and digital technologies. Our aim is to encourage exciting research on the role and implementation of management, organisation and HRM in physical and virtual workspace configurations, stimulate new scholarly discussions on the topic, and increase understanding of the application of new technology systems and tools. A specific objective of this SI is therefore to increase academic knowledge on the opportunities and challenges faced by employees working in different physical and virtual workspace conditions, and consider the consequences for employee well-being (Guest, 2017; Van De Voorde, Paauwe, & Van Veldhoven, 2012).

Understanding, Modeling and Simulating Unintended Positional Drift during Repetitive Steering Navigation Tasks in Virtual Reality.

Virtual steering techniques enable users to navigate in larger Virtual Environments (VEs) than the physical workspace available. Even though these techniques do not require physical movement of the users (e.g. using a joystick and the head orientation to steer towards a virtual direction), recent work observed that users might unintentionally move in the physical workspace while navigating, resulting in Unintended Positional Drift (UPD). This phenomenon can be a safety issue since users may unintentionally reach the physical boundaries of the workspace while using a steering technique. In this context, as a necessary first step to improve the design of navigation techniques minimizing the UPD, this paper aims at analyzing and modeling the UPD during a virtual navigation task. In particular, we characterize and analyze the UPD for a dataset containing the positions and orientations of eighteen users performing a virtual slalom task using virtual steering techniques. Participants wore a head-mounted display and had to follow three different sinusoidal-like trajectories (with low, medium and high curvature) using a torso-steering navigation technique. We analyzed the performed motions and proposed two UPD models: the first based on a linear regression analysis and the second based on a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) analysis. Then, we assessed both models through a simulation-based evaluation where we reproduced the same navigation task using virtual agents. Our results indicate the feasibility of using simulation-based evaluations to study UPD. The paper concludes with a discussion of potential applications of the results in order to gain a better understanding of UPD during steering and therefore improve the design of navigation techniques by compensating for UPD.

The social structure of 70 years of literature on Human Reliability

From its first applications to the military domain, HRA progressed to applications in Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) operations, when development and validation of methods mainly targeted their use in Probabilistic Risk Assessments. In recent years, advances in HRA include the extension to various application fields, the development of new methods or enhancement of existing ones, data collection efforts, among others. These advances are possible due to the increasing number of authors on HRA and collaboration between them. Systematic literature reviews have been increasingly used for understanding various aspects of a research field. While recent reviews have provided an overview of the topics addressed by HRA research, the social structure of the field has not yet been fully explored. This paper discusses the social structure of HRA through 70 years of literature. The review aims at responding to how the links between different authors groups were created, that is, which large-scale projects, geographical proximity, or research topics contributed to these connections. The results indicate that (1) while the research on HRA was mostly based in the U.S.A. before 2000, China, Japan, and South Korea are significant contributors to the recent literature; (2) despite the increasing diversity of application fields, such as applications to the maritime and offshore industry, the main focus on NPPs operations is persistent since the 1980s; (3) due to large research projects, favored by a connected world, the physical workspace does not limit current collaboration among authors.

Physicality As an Anchor for Coordination: Examining Collocated Collaboration in Physical and Mobile Augmented Reality Settings

Design and co-creation activities around 3D artifacts often require close collocated coordination between multiple users. Augmented reality (AR) technology can support collocated work enabling users to flexibly work with digital objects while still being able to use the physical space for coordination. With most of current research focusing on remote AR collaboration, less is known about collocated collaboration in AR, particularly in relation to interpersonal dynamics between the collocated collaborators. Our study aims at understanding how shared augmented reality facilitated by mobile devices (mobile augmented reality or MAR) affects collocated users' coordination. We compare the coordination behaviors that emerged in a MAR setting with those in a comparable fully physical setting by simulating the same task -of the shared physical dimension for participants' ability to coordinate in the context of collaborative co-creation. Namely, participants working in a fully physical setting were better able to leverage the work artifact itself for their coordination needs, working in a mode that we term artifact-oriented coordination. Conversely, participants collaborating around an AR artifact leveraged the shared physical workspace for their coordination needs, working in what we refer to as space-oriented coordination. We discuss implications for a AR-based collaboration and propose directions for designers of AR tools.

No Room of her Own: Married Couples' Negotiation of Workspace at Home During COVID-19.

The current study examined the right to a professional workspace and separation between private and public within the home as an arena of gendered negotiation and struggle between spouses working from home during the COVID-19 crisis. Using a qualitative, inductive approach based on grounded theory, we conducted in-depth interviews with fifteen professional couples in Israel about their experiences with working from home and the division of labor and space between spouses. Our analysis revealed three key issues related to these experiences: the division of physical workspace between the spouses, the division of work time (compared to home time), and bodily-spatial aspects of the infiltration of workspace into home through the Zoom camera. The patterns described here suggest that the gendered power relations between spouses working from home are reproduced through an unequal negotiation of space and time in the home, so that in practice, men’s work was prioritized in spatio-temporal terms, whereas women’s workspace and time was more fragmented and dispersed throughout the home and day. These findings illuminate women’s right to workspace in the home as an issue of gender equality that has been amplified by the current global pandemic, and how gendered divisions of space and time serve to reproduce the gender order.

Will interfaces take over the physical workplace in higher education? A pessimistic view of the future

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to argue for the sustained need for the physical workplace and real-life encounters in higher education even in the digital age despite being seemingly transformable into the virtual sphere as seen during the COVID-19 situation.Design/methodology/approachThis study is based on a collaborative autoethnography by a group of seven higher educators with an overall 2,134 student encounters during the study’s time span. The authors then connect these practitioner observations with relevant COVID-19-related studies thereby adding to research on higher education as a workplace.FindingsThe data suggest that the physical workplace strongly bolsters the personal experience and effectiveness of higher education through contributing to its dynamics. Spaces predetermine the scope and levels of human interaction of teaching and learning. In a physical setting, all senses serve as mediators, whereas, online, only two senses are involved: vision and hearing. The two-dimensional screen becomes a mediator of communications. In the physical space, actors are free to adjust the working space, whereas the online working space is limited and defined by platforms.Practical implicationsAlthough higher education institutions may indeed fully substitute most practices formerly in a physical setting with online solutions, real-time encounters in the physical working space belong to its deeper raisons d'être.Originality/valueThis paper highlights the necessity of the physical workplace in higher education and describes the depriving potential of the exclusively online higher education teaching setting.

Creating spaces of learning in academia: fostering niches for professional learning practice

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the move by an Australian university faculty to a new building featuring open plan and alternative workspaces. Through the lens of the theory of practice architectures, the paper examines how the new built spaces both enabled and constrained the professional learning practices of academics. Drawing on a case study of the transition, the paper explores the ways in which the move to the new building disrupted existing ecologies of practices around professional learning, and how academics subsequently sought to establish new ‘niches’ to foster professional learning practices. The six study participants, who are also the authors and represent a range of career stages, made efforts to establish conditions for professional learning practices and a praxis of ‘becoming an academic’. They did so by working with, around, and against the pre-figuring arrangements of the new built environment. The paper contributes to knowledge about how workspaces can disrupt and reconfigure the professional learning practices of educators. It addresses a gap in the literature on academics’ professional learning in relation to changes in physical workspaces, making visible the ways in which academic practices are shaped by and shape new arrangements for professional learning in response to the built environment.

Local Physician Practice Migration and Changes in Practice Style

Much interest exists in identifying strategies for changing physician practice style as research demonstrates that many physicians practice in a way that is not aligned with the best available scientific evidence. We investigated the extent to which a physician’s work environment influences practice style versus training and personal preferences. We used multiple data sources to track physician migrations to new practice settings within a single state over a span of eight years to assess changes in practice style. For practice style, we focused on inappropriate use of diagnostic imaging as we had data showing that rates of inappropriate imaging varied markedly by practice settings. Drawing from contextual shift and social contagion theories, we examined changes in physician practice style at two levels of a work environment, the practice organization comprised of peers who shared administrative arrangements, and practice site comprised of peers who shared actual physical working space. Study results indicate that migrating physicians changed their practice style for imaging quickly and substantially in conformance with the prevailing pattern of their new work environment regardless of whether or not the pattern was aligned with evidence-based standards for diagnostic imaging. The magnitude of change was greatest for shared physical space but effects also diminished as variability in the use of inappropriate imaging increased within the peer group. Policy makers and healthcare managers do have leverage for improving physicians’ adherence to evidence-based guidelines but strategies should most likely be directed toward developing strong peer influence at the physicians’ local work environment.

Gains and Losses in Virtual Mentorship: A Descriptive Case Study of Undergraduate Mentees and Graduate Mentors in STEM Research during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Participating in mentored undergraduate research experiences can improve students’ grade point averages, retention, and job placement. Graduate students also benefit from serving as mentors, as they gain teaching and research management experience. In early 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic caused many institutions to shut down physical work spaces and move research and teaching online. In this study, we explore how graduate student mentors and undergraduate student mentees at Washington University in St. Louis adapted to virtual research mentoring during the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined changes in mentoring methods, research productivity, and the impact on the future plans of both mentors and mentees across six science/engineering departments. Survey responses from 79 mentees and 38 mentors indicated that a majority of mentees were able to have meaningful and productive virtual mentoring experiences, while other mentors failed to adequately involve their mentees in continued mentoring. Focusing virtual research experiences on activities such as literature review and data analysis and collaborating on goal setting can serve as a way for mentors to engage mentees even when they are unable to access lab equipment. Data from the present study reveal opportunities and challenges of virtual mentoring and can be used to inform effective research mentoring practices in the future.

Beyond algorithmic control: flexibility, intermediaries, and paradox in the on-demand economy

ABSTRACT The existing literature on labor control of on-demand platforms primarily concentrates on algorithmic management. Based on the case study of Didi Chuxing, China’s ride-hailing giant, this article introduces some additional complexities into the dominant storyline by bringing two managerial elements to the fore, namely, labor intermediaries and communication technologies. Although both have long been integral to the control of flexible labor forces in the post-Fordist era, they remain underexplored in the context of the on-demand economy. I argue that labor intermediaries emerge as quick solutions to the indeterminacy of labor mobility power, a critical problem inherent in the just-in-time labor strategies that challenge on-demand platform companies. Communication technologies are crucial for the functioning of this mediated relationship, formulating a virtual space where daily managerial practices take place. Ultimately, I stress that, while the labor process of on-demand platforms represents a shift towards fluid workspace, it does not mean the elimination of the organization-based control that usually occurs in a physical and formal workspace. This case study urges scholars to understand labor control of on-demand platforms as a regime of hybridity that features both continuity and renewal of the various forms of managerial strategies common to flexible production.

The Correlation Between Spatial Configuration and User Satisfaction: A Case Study of an Activity-based vs a Conventional Office

Very few studies have discussed the quantitative correlation between office space configuration and user satisfaction. This research aims to provide more concrete results comparing the spatial configuration of Activity Based Office (ABO) and Conventional Offices (CO) to its users' satisfaction. Data collection is taken with sixty respondents who are ABO and CO. User satisfaction will be measured by the comfort aspect. Satisfaction assessment includes the comfort of social interaction distance and the uniformity of the workspace between colleagues, distance to office facilities, distance to the resting place, and distance to the office's informal socialize area. Metric measurements on physical distances and workspace areas between colleagues are compared to the user's subjective comfort. Objective data measurement using the calculation of metric line, and the workspace area differences, while subjective data collection of users using questionnaires. The statistical analysis that will be used is the cross-tabulation method. Cross tabulation will give an overview of the comparison between comfort level to the objective distance and workspace area differences. The study results show that the physical distance comfort of an activity point will vary according to the needs of its user preference. Comparison of spatial to the activity-based and conventional offices will also influence the perception of the uniformity of the user's workspace, and the behavior of users in the elections performs several activities within the office.

Towards Accessible Remote Work

Working from home has become a mainstream work practice in many organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. While remote work has received much scholarly and public attention over the years, we still know little about how people with disabilities engage in remote work from their homes and what access means in this context. To understand and rethink accessibility in remote work, the present paper studies work-from-home practices of neurodivergent professionals who have Autism Spectrum Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, learning disabilities (e.g., dyslexia) and psychosocial disabilities (e.g., anxiety, depression). We report on interviews with 36 US-based neurodivergent professionals who have been working from home during the pandemic. Our findings reveal that while working from home, neurodivergent professionals create accessible physical and digital workspaces, negotiate accessible communication practices, and reconcile tensions between productivity and wellbeing. Our analysis reconsiders what access means in remote work for neurodivergent professionals and offers practical insights for inclusive work practices and accessibility improvements in remote collaboration tools.