![approaches economics with a view to the impact of human activity on the
surrounding environment. Subsequent definitions have varied considerably in
their desiderata: maintaining inter-generational welfare; maintaining the
existence of the human species; sustaining the productivity of economic systems;
maintaining biodiversity; and maintaining evolutionary potential (Kane 1999).
Most, however, have retained the Brundtland Report emphasis on the economy
and economic development as central to achieving sustainability—overturning
the previous wisdom that economic development can only take place at the
expense of the environment.
Sustainability is the [emerging] doctrine that economic growth and
development must take place, and be maintained over time, within the
limits set by ecology in the broadest sense—by the interrelations of human
beings and their works, the biosphere and the physical and chemical laws
that govern it…It follows that environmental protection and economic
development are complementary rather than antagonistic processes.
(Ruckelshaus 1989)
Earlier notions of sustainability referred simply to the natural, physical
environment, and environmental sustainability undoubtedly remains the driving
force behind all approaches to the subject. This was true of the 1970s, with the
first widespread realization that worldwide development and economic growth
were finite, and could not be sustained indefinitely. It was equally true of the
1990s, with a growing awareness of environmental problems, ranging from the
release of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gas” emissions into the
atmosphere and the consequent climate problems, to deforestation,
desertification, interruptions of fresh water supply, soil degradation, marine
resources depletion and food production challenges. But the understanding of the
concept had grown: the 1992 Rio Conference3 recognized that sustainability
includes aspects of socio-economic and cultural development as well as resource
utilization.
A healthy economy is a prerequisite to financing and supporting sustainability
in all senses. Sound (balanced) budgets are necessary to prevent passing on
today’s costs to future generations, as well as enabling the extension of economic
benefit to people the world over. The Rio Conference acknowledged the right of
all people to a reasonable standard of living, but also accepted that the present
lifestyle of the developed world cannot be extended to all within the limits of
existing technology.
The immediate constraint to global economic development is environmental,
associated with material use and transfers. Economic and social sustainability are
closely connected, although economic growth by no means guarantees increased
equity or a reduction in social deprivation. Global patterns of economic
production and distribution need to correspond to worldwide social and cultural
requirements, as well as to ecological needs. Social sustainability has various
2 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/946537-250622152240-886eabfe/85/The-Distributed-Workplace-Sustainable-Work-Environments-Andrew-Harrison-16-320.jpg)
![terminals in fixed
positions served by
mainframes.
wide variety of settings.
Technology used to
support creative
knowledge work, both
individual and group.
File servers serve a
variety of IT tools,
including PCs and
laptops, and shared
specialized equipment.
Source: Duffy (1999).
Given the complexity of business organizations, none can be characterized as
functioning entirely as a den, club, hive or cell—rather, they are combinations of
these. Further, the relative demand for each layout will change over time, and the
model provides indicative directions of that change. As Duffy (1997) writes: “It
is expected, as information technology changes, that many examples of the
offices now identified as being for ‘group processes’ [dens] or ‘concentrated
study’ [cells] will tend to converge into what has been called the ‘transactional’
office [club] where, through deft management of time and space, both interaction
and autonomy will be maximized.”
Using the terms of the NEW model, knowledge work can be characterized as
that which involves high levels of interaction and autonomy. Concurring with
this, Nonaka also suggests that an important component of knowledge work is
accessing critical information and converting it into explicit knowledge in order
to become more innovative, and more productive (Nonaka/Takeuchi 1995).
Based on the assumption that work processes in the knowledge economy are
characterized by the growing relevance of communication and interaction,
Becker and Sims (Becker and Sims 2001, p.52) suggested an alternative way of
thinking about the office: “Rather than thinking of the office as a place primarily
for solitary activity, from which one occasionally breaks out in time and space to
settings intended for social activity, the office is designed primarily as a social
setting, from which one occasionally seeks out more private places for
contemplation, concentration and confidentiality.”
Answering the following questions may show the relative importance of
solitary and collaborative work activities for knowledge work.
• How much time do knowledge workers spend working on individual,
concentrated, heads down work activities and how much on collaborative or
social activities?
• What is the relative importance of different activities that make up the work
process?
THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORKPLACE 29](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/946537-250622152240-886eabfe/85/The-Distributed-Workplace-Sustainable-Work-Environments-Andrew-Harrison-43-320.jpg)
![The perspective of nursing presented here is notably different
from most conceptual models and general theories in the field. The
most radical difference becomes apparent in the form of the call for
nursing. Most extant nursing theories, modeled after medicine and
other professional fields, present the formal occasion for nursing as
problem, need, or deficit (e.g., Self-Care)
Deficit Theory [Orem, 1985], Adaptation Nursing [Roy and
Andrews, 1991], Behavioral System Model [Johnson, 1980], and
[Neuman, 1989.] Such theories then explain how nursing acts to
right the wrong, meet the need, or eliminate or ameliorate the
deficit.
The theory of Nursing as Caring proceeds from a frame of
reference based on interconnectedness and collegiality rather than
on esoteric knowledge, technical expertise, and disempowering
hierarchies. In contrast, our emerging theory of nursing is based on
an egalitarian model of helping that bears witness to and celebrates
the human person in the fullness of his or her being, rather than on
some less-than-whole condition of being.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/946537-250622152240-886eabfe/85/The-Distributed-Workplace-Sustainable-Work-Environments-Andrew-Harrison-67-320.jpg)
The Distributed Workplace Sustainable Work Environments Andrew Harrison
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- 6. The Distributed Workplace The rise of a global knowledge economy—to a large extent enabled by increasingly integrated communications and computer technologies—has changed many aspects of organizational life almost beyond recognition and in the process has cruelly exposed the inadequacy of traditional models of workplace management. Based on extensive EU-funded research into the creation of sustainable, collaborative workplaces across virtual and physical spaces, this unique book makes the case for a distributed workplace model that takes f ull account of the pressures acting on the modern organization. It proposes a radical reappraisal of both demand and supply sides of workplace procurement, provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the significance of changing work patterns and offers detailed guidance on workplace design for all professionals concerned with the procurement, design and provision of today’s workplace. The Distributed Workplace will be an invaluable point of reference for everyone responsible for developing workplace strategies in end-user organizations, and for suppliers of office buildings, information and communications technologies and building operation services. The book is of special relevance to public sector bodies and other organizations concerned with sustainable development and sustainable workplaces.
- 7. The Distributed Workplace Sustainable work environments Edited by Andrew Harrison, Paul Wheeler and Carolyn Whitehead DEGW plc LONDON AND NEW YORK
- 8. First published 2004 by Spon Press 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Spon Press 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Spon Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2004 DEGW plc All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The distributed workplace: sustainable work environments/edited by Andrew Harrison, Paul Wheeler and Carolyn Whitehead. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-415-31890-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) —ISBN 0-203-61657-X (ebook) 1. Commercial buildings—Designs and plans. 2. Sustainable architecture. 3. Work environment. I. Harrison, Andres. II. Wheeler, Paul. III. Whitehead, Carolyn. NA6210.D58 2003 725′.2047–dc21 2003012471 ISBN 0-203-61657-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-34488-X (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-31890-4 (Print Edition)
- 9. Contents Foreword vi Preface vii Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 Sustainability 1 The new economy and new ways of working 8 Alternative workplaces 14 1 The evolution of the workplace 20 Changing demands 22 New environments for working 27 The intelligent city 42 2 Workplace evaluation 48 From efficiency to effectiveness 48 Limitations of existing approaches 57 Sustainability-grounded measures 63 3 Space environment models 68 Initial distributed workplace model 68 The SANE space environment model 82 Matching work activities and workscapes 99 4 Creating a methodology 114 A methodology of place 114 ICT issues 125 Human interaction and communications issues 133
- 10. 5 Implementation strategy 138 Organizational culture 138 Workplace change management 149 Towards a sustainable workplace strategy 156 6 Costing strategies 166 Constructing the business case 167 Preparation of space and cost models 168 Prototype model results 181 7 Design and the distributed workplace 185 Requirements of the knowledge economy 186 The shared workplace 191 Sustainability metrics for the distributed workplace 211 Notes 229 Bibliography 232 Appendix One Glossary 241 Appendix Two Case studies 246 Appendix Three An outline of CSR initiatives, guidelines and principles 255 Appendix Four Sustainability indicators, systems and standards 262 Index 273 v
- 11. Foreword Our workplaces must inevitably reflect what we do and the tools we use. When these change, so must our workplaces. Europe has set itself the objective of becoming a dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy by 2010. We are already well on the way: most people provide knowledge-based services, and over 50 per cent of those in work now use a desktop PC connected to the internet for at least part of their day. We still, however, commute to work in offices designed decades ago, and whose continued use is both inefficient and unsustainable. The next 5–10 years will see a major transformation in work. Wireless communications will allow us to work anywhere and voice recognition will liberate us from the keyboard. Information and communications technologies will become more pervasive, yet social contacts will become more important and more diverse. This research opens the wider debate about the workplaces we will need in the future. It begins to build the bridge between the European ambitions for wide participation and creativity in work, and of sustainable development. In supporting this research, the European Commission has appreciated the open spirit of enquiry and collaboration between the architecture and technology communities in Europe. We look forward to further fruitful collaborations in the future. Peter Johnston Head of Unit, Evaluation and Monitoring European Commission Directorate General Information Society
- 12. Preface SANE—sustainable accommodation for the new economy—was a two-year, multi-disciplinary research project supported by the European Commission. It was set up to consider the combined impact of the new economy on place, people and process, and its objective was to enable space designers, technology developers and other professionals concerned with the workplace to move from a location-centric to a location-independent approach. Europe-wide teams of experts provided the European Commission with detailed reports of their investigations into their area of expertise. Space environment modelling focused on the architectural aspects of the human envi ronment in organizational settings. Human environment modelling examined communications and interaction in physical and virtual environments. Processes and tools provided a physical base for these packages in terms of understanding current and likely future technology tools and processes. The key operational goal of the project was to develop a unified framework for the creation of sustainable, collaborative workplaces for knowledge workers across Europe, encompassing both virtual and physical spaces. The work of the team charged with creating the space environment model forms the basis of the present book.
- 13. Acknowledgements SANE (Sustainable Accommodation for the New Economy) was a two-year, multi-disciplinary, European-wide research project partially funded by the European Commission under the Fifth Framework Information Society Technologies programme. We would like to acknowledge the diverse contributions of all the SANE partners to the production of the space environment model described in this book. The earlier internal project deliverables, the outputs from consortium partners and other contributors, the meetings and communications throughout the project have all contributed greatly to the development of concepts outlined in this book. Members of the SANE research consortium have included: DEGW Tim Allen Guy Briggs Monica Cottafavi Bethan Curtis Nicola Gillen Andrew Harrison Despina Katsikakis Lysanne LaPierre Bryant Rice Jacqui Surtees Leslie de Swaan Felicity Swaffer Carolyn Whitehead Paul Wheeler Royal Holloway, University of London Mary Jo Crisp Simon Foley Stavros Kammas Mirja Lievonen Duska Rosenberg Telenor John-Willy Bakke
- 14. Erik Bergersen Ove Arup & Partners International Ltd Michael Andrews Helen Crosby Thomas Fernando Jim Read Jacqui Webber Institut Cerda Xavier Passaret Fernandez Jose Ramon Sanchez FAW Ulm Holger Mettler Thomas Rose Michael Willadt IAT, University of Stuttgart Udo-Ernst Haner Jutta Strickner In addition we would like to acknowledge the work of Lorna Walker and her team at Arup Environmental, and the contribution of Connel Bottom (Bernard Williams Associates) to the development of costing strategies based on the space environment model. ix
- 15. Introduction The relationship between sustainability and the built environment has always been a tortuous one: close but not warm. They’re an uneasy pair. Sustainability with its sometimes conflicting imperatives: ethical, practical, physical, economic. The built environment—a work of will masquerading as a force of nature. Perhaps a clash of fact and value. But at least, in certain key aspects, fixed. No longer. Sustainability, once a simple matter of better resource use— difficult but achievable—now claims its rightful place at the shifting centre of all the issues raised by globalization. And the built environment—particularly the work environment- loses its monolithic status to stand revealed as a mercurial participant in the new economy. It is evident that the workplace is evolving in a distributed form to deal with these changed circumstances. It is equally evident that the fluidity of the distributed workplace will set society some urgent problems—not least in the field of sustainability. SUSTAINABILITY Definitions of sustainability all agree on one key point: that however we use our world and its resources, we should preserve the ability of future generations to do the same. This concept first found broad expression in Western culture in the words of Thomas Jefferson: “Then I say the earth belongs to each…generation during its course, fully and in its own right, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence” (Jefferson 1789). This principle is picked up in the definition set out in the 1987 Brundtland Commission1 Report, “Our CommonFuture”, in which sustainability is defined in terms of development: “Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”2 This definition established the benchmark on which all subsequent definitions have been based. The Brundtland Report emphasizes the need for economic development to take place in a manner that meets the basic needs of the world’s poor, and
- 16. approaches economics with a view to the impact of human activity on the surrounding environment. Subsequent definitions have varied considerably in their desiderata: maintaining inter-generational welfare; maintaining the existence of the human species; sustaining the productivity of economic systems; maintaining biodiversity; and maintaining evolutionary potential (Kane 1999). Most, however, have retained the Brundtland Report emphasis on the economy and economic development as central to achieving sustainability—overturning the previous wisdom that economic development can only take place at the expense of the environment. Sustainability is the [emerging] doctrine that economic growth and development must take place, and be maintained over time, within the limits set by ecology in the broadest sense—by the interrelations of human beings and their works, the biosphere and the physical and chemical laws that govern it…It follows that environmental protection and economic development are complementary rather than antagonistic processes. (Ruckelshaus 1989) Earlier notions of sustainability referred simply to the natural, physical environment, and environmental sustainability undoubtedly remains the driving force behind all approaches to the subject. This was true of the 1970s, with the first widespread realization that worldwide development and economic growth were finite, and could not be sustained indefinitely. It was equally true of the 1990s, with a growing awareness of environmental problems, ranging from the release of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gas” emissions into the atmosphere and the consequent climate problems, to deforestation, desertification, interruptions of fresh water supply, soil degradation, marine resources depletion and food production challenges. But the understanding of the concept had grown: the 1992 Rio Conference3 recognized that sustainability includes aspects of socio-economic and cultural development as well as resource utilization. A healthy economy is a prerequisite to financing and supporting sustainability in all senses. Sound (balanced) budgets are necessary to prevent passing on today’s costs to future generations, as well as enabling the extension of economic benefit to people the world over. The Rio Conference acknowledged the right of all people to a reasonable standard of living, but also accepted that the present lifestyle of the developed world cannot be extended to all within the limits of existing technology. The immediate constraint to global economic development is environmental, associated with material use and transfers. Economic and social sustainability are closely connected, although economic growth by no means guarantees increased equity or a reduction in social deprivation. Global patterns of economic production and distribution need to correspond to worldwide social and cultural requirements, as well as to ecological needs. Social sustainability has various 2 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 17. sub-sets, one of which is community sustainability, which requires investment in education, infrastructure, accommodation and services in areas where (industrial) jobs have disappeared. Cultural sustainability, though sometimes referred to in isolation, is also effectively a subset of social sustainability. It seems plausible that cultural diversity is as important to human society as biodiversity is to all living species and the ecosystem as a whole. Cultural pluralism is a source of human progress, and an essential basis for development (Information Society Forum 1997). Sustainable development requires the pursuit of lasting economic benefit, in terms of investment, employment, incomes and wealth, enhancing the capacity of areas to maintain a continuing and stable level of economic activity. From a perspective informed by ideas about sustainability, such an economic pursuit can only be successful in the longer term if it is undertaken within an approach that recognizes that there are limitations to the exploitation and use of current resources, and that exceeding this carrying capacity threatens long-term sustainability. This implies an acceptance that the social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainability are interrelated, and a willingness to use consultation, empowerment and partnership processes as the means of mobilizing, informing and encouraging changes in attitudes and behaviour. Respect for diversity, and the corresponding commitment to equity at local, national and international levels (both in terms of current inequalities and the needs and aspirations of future generations) are the route to the realization of the strengths that can be built from the co-existence of difference and variety (DETR 2002). Sustainability needs to be seen as a dynamic process, not a fixed and attainable state. It is rather like the mathematical concept of a limit—an end point that does not exist as such, and cannot be reached, but represents the hypothetical end point of a tendency. There are four key areas for innovation and change towards achieving the “limit” of sustainability: economic systems and value; technology; individual behaviour; and social systems. Any one of these taken in isolation is likely to be at best ineffective, at worst detrimental. All need to be taken together, under a holistic approach, if progress towards sustainability is to be achieved. There is a general agreement among economists working within the sustainability agenda that worldwide economic systems need some kind of modification. In particular there should be a new emphasis on qualitative economic growth rather than quantitative economic growth, with an associated de-coupling of economic growth and the consumption of non-renewable resources. There is, however, considerable debate over the extent of change required. This debate principally centres on the concept of value —the problem of attaching value to resources and measuring that value. Our current systems of value are measured according to the global market system, governed by a framework established by the World Trade Organization and the financial markets. The framework, characterized by the principles of free trade and INTRODUCTION 3
- 18. deregulation, is insufficient to value resource consumption and its social and environmental costs. Value is, after all, a relative term. There are differential meanings—market value; value to humanity; and overall value to ecosystems. The market is ill- equipped to value resources effectively—potentially an extremely dangerous short-coming. The very narrow and ephemeral f ramework of marketbased valuation can hardly begin to take into account the total value of biodiversity to the human species. As long as we remain in the one-dimensional, timeless and spaceless hierarchy of market exchange, even the destruction of resources essential to the long-term survival of our species can be justified. (Gowdy 1999) The debate over how far the framework needs to change is split between two camps, termed roughly the “environmental economists” and the “ecological economists” (Köhn 1999). The first camp views the natural environment as simply a source of inputs to be allocated for economic production. The second views the economy as the subsystem of a larger human society and its institutions, and of the still larger biophysical world. The first view implies progressing towards policy solutions that aim to ensure resources are used in the most economically efficient way possible. This might require, for example, extending property rights to environmental resources—to ensure that prices of goods and services reflect their environmental costs and benefits—and educating the public about these environmental costs and benefits (through, for example, carbon trading). There is a benefit involved in changing the price of goods to take into account ecological cost, but it does not alter the economic fundamental of expansion that governs markets as they exist today— that more consumption is better than less. Environmental pricing therefore does not challenge the key driver of unsustainable resource use—the continued consumption of materials (Schütz 1999). The second view states that if these resources are deemed irreplaceable and essential requirements for human existence, assigning property rights with taxes and subsidies will be insufficient: some factors simply cannot be assigned a meaningful price. This implies a different, more complex, agenda. The belief here is that the economist’s concept of value must be broadened beyond one that holds that biodiversity is a substitutable market good like any other—it must include both market prices and those unquantifiable human cultural and environmental features (Köhn 1999). The existing market system favours the individual, and the present or short term. Sustainability is only capable of being conceptualized, let alone achieved, in terms of the collective, the system, and the long term. Through the market, the individual is able to act unchecked, limited only by the extent of personal financial resources. The greater the individual success in the market, the more 4 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 19. the goals of the system are likely to be undermined, to the extent that at a certain point the system is no longer able to adjust to change sufficiently to ensure its survival. Individual actions are not necessarily themselves the problem, provided they are subservient to the purposes of the system as a whole (Schütz 1999). Various sources see increasing technological progress, particularly in information and communications, as the route towards a sustainable and inclusive world. Information and communications technologies (ICT), so the wisdom goes, allow the possibility of economic growth and increased prosperity with reduced impact on the physical environment and less consumption of non- renewable resources. This is achieved largely through the process of de- materialization, whereby the amount of material extracted, synthesized and dispersed in any process or product is reduced. De-materialization is realizable in a number of ways: via process improvement, product improvement, substitution of a service for a product, and structural change. Although ICT potentially reduces the environmental effects of products and processes via de-materialization, it is also a major driver of globalization, which in itself is causing increasing social and environmental burden. Moreover, although new technology enables production to occur with reduced resource consumption per unit, the subsequent increased availability of products and services stimulates demand, thus increasing resource use overall. These factors are known as the rebound effect. For example, production of the silicon chip has massively increased computing power per unit of output compared with computers based on ferrite core memory, but the dematerialization that this engenders is insignificant in the context of the massive increase in the number of personal computers that this has encouraged. Linked with the volume of materials consumed in the production of these machines are several other factors causing environmental degradation, including: the toxicity involved in the production of the silicon chip; the enormous amount of power consumed by the increased number of computers: and the massive increase in paper consumed as computer users are able to print countless drafts. A further example of the rebound effect is given by the use of mobile technology, which has increased rather than decreased personal mobility as we use these systems to set up more meetings with more people. Telework, which enables people to work anywhere, anytime, while remaining linked to information networks, also allows them to travel and work at the same time. This represents a considerable increase in the overall potential for travel (Radermacher 1997). The driving processes behind technological change are still predicated on increased consumption and exploitation of resources. As long as they remain so, information and communications technologies will be powerless to bring about increased sustainability. The great dilemma faced by most advocates of sustainability is that global concern for social equity apparently requires economic growth to raise the quality of life of the poor nations relative to that of the rich. The production and INTRODUCTION 5
- 20. consumption factors of such growth, however, seem likely to have global environmental consequences, which will themselves impose serious limitations to future growth. The key question is whether economic growth and resource use can be de-coupled? Some definitions of sustainable development have described it as a process of “improving the quality of life while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems” (Chambers et al. 2000). Conventional measures of the quality of life usually assess rates of consumption. Above a certain threshold, however, further consumption adds little to human quality of life. Because the cumulative environmental impact of the processes of production is a direct function of consumption levels, increased consumption can in fact become detrimental to our quality of life. Where consumption is greater than nature’s carrying capacity, it becomes by definition unsustainable (Chambers et al. 2000).4 Keynesian economics supposed that consumption would be the driving force of the economy. Current theory, however, suggests that ideas—new ways of thought leading to technological advances and inventions—will be the economic driving force of the future. Economic growth will therefore be dependent on doing more with less, or doing without (Hansen 1999). One of the driving factors behind the emerging interest in sustainability is the principle of scarcity, requiring conservation and management. Conventional market economics attaches value to what is scarce: “Market economics values what is scarce—not the real work of society, which is caring …we have to find a way of rewarding contributions to it” (New Economics Forum).5 From a wider perspective, however, human resources are not at all scarce, and yet are valuable in terms of talent, skill and knowledge. The conventional approach to valuing, rewarding and exploiting these resources—that is, the market and money—fails to do any of these effectively. Monetary reward buys consumables, which by definition are unsustainable, but does nothing for social cohesion, community value and so on: in fact it detracts from these. Social capital, which involves the investment of people’s time, is the principal factor in creating sustainable social structures, and is therefore a prerequisite to effecting economic and environmental sustainability. If achieving social sustainability is the prerequisite for physical (environmental) sustainability, the implication is that global societal frameworks will have to be modified.6 Moreover, responsibility is a key factor, requiring the formation of a globalized body politic and global community. According to the Information Society Forum, the “European Way” (defined as liberty, equality, fraternity, solidarity and sustainability) offers the best model for a sustainable global framework. The relative primacy of politics over economics has brought about European integration and will facilitate the development of a global civil society (Information Society Forum 1997). Conventional approaches to sustainability focus on environmental versus economic issues, neglecting deeper explanations, which find that the problem of sustainability is not just environmental, nor economic, but also, and 6 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 21. fundamentally, social. The global problems of sustainability (or lack of it) have their origin in local action. At the same time, the global environment has significant local impacts. Cities are open social systems integrated into the broader systems of the global economy and environment. They are also globally connected to one another in a complex web of links: in production systems; finance; resource usage; and in the environmental problems caused and suffered by them. The conventional argument states that cities are the antithesis of sustainable development, as massive consumers and producers of waste. Cities are also closely associated with crime and vandalism, deprivation, unemployment, deteriorating infrastructure, decay, socio-economic problems and neighbourhood collapse— that is, they are seen as socially unsustainable. However, although the created urban environment may exhibit some of the most serious symptoms of unsustainable development, it provides at the same time the greatest opportunities for its remedy through the concentration of population and activity (Chen-chong Wu 1998). As well as providing the theatre for the re-invention of societal structure, the form of the city itself represents the greatest potential for achieving a sustainable future. It is the ability to adapt that is the major characteristic of sustainable urban form, achievable through built in overlap and redundancy, and robustness (Scoffham and MaratMendes 2000). The various themes and processes of sustainability need to be considered together. Acting in only one arena will simply tip the balance of pressure elsewhere, without moving towards a real solution. The holistic approach therefore required has its roots in systems theory, and sees society and the earth as a single system. In the view of Joachim Schütz and others (Schütz 1999), the world we inhabit is composed of a series of interconnected systems. It is not simply an assemblage of objects, but made up of multiple mutual relations between elements. Systemic co-operation takes precedence over individual competition. The broad focus of the sustainability debate is towards determining the limits of resource use and species survival. However there also needs to be a shift to consider the potential for the added benefit of cocreation that will be attained through fostering relationships and systems rather than by examining the objects between which those relationships exist.7 This is the key to the creation of a holistic outlook linked to the recognition of individual and collective responsibility: systemic competence, co-operative structures and biodiversity are interrelated. Systemic competence is dependent on three interdependent sources: positive practical experience of diverse systems and co-operative behaviour; the rationale of systems thinking; and identification with other elements of the biosphere. Our current economic system of private goods in competitive markets asks for significantly less systemic competence than club goods, public goods, INTRODUCTION 7
- 22. commons or even global commons do…there is no way to achieve a high level of system efficiency under conditions of low biodiversity, non co- operative behaviour, and a low standard of systemic competence, as it is proposed by current economic reasoning. (Schütz 1999) Melinda Kane furthers the argument in a discussion of the ways in which complex layers of human society—social, economic, ethical, technological and biological -function in conjunction with the biosphere and its various components operating at different scales of geographic scope and time. Each human layer is associated with a different dimension of time and spatial impact on the biosphere; decisions made with respect to one layer may have unpredictable consequences for others (Kane 1999). The environmental problems experienced today are, she maintains, the result of economic decisions based on only one or two layers. For sustainability to be achieved, all layers must be included in individual and collective decision- making processes. Sustainability within a layer is often confused with sustainability of the whole system. Other writers have taken the argument to its logical conclusion, arguing against the subdivision of sustainability into social, economic and environmental categories, since they consider that the concept refers simply to the resilience of a system to absorb change. “Sustainability in a systemic and evolutionary perspective is the ability to absorb disturbance and reorganize, self-regulate and evolve” (Köhn 1999). Sustainability is simply a unifying and guiding principle of social and social- environmental interaction, which, if it is to be achieved, requires the emergence of a “political economy of sustainability” (Köhn 1999). All the various themes and processes described above, although emphasizing different areas of the sustainability debate, share a common goal that involves worldwide acceptance of responsibility for sustainable development. THE NEW ECONOMY AND NEW WAYS OF WORKING In the wake of the dot.com boom and bust it may seem paradoxical to place the new economy at the centre of an argument on the future of the workplace, particularly an argument that attempts to embrace issues of sustainability. If we are to argue that the new economy is to play a critical role in shaping how and where we will work in the future we are obliged to offer some definition, distinguishing it from the dot.com economy. By the new economy we mean the structural change in the forces shaping our society. First there was the agricultural revolution, then the industrial revolutions. Now, there is the digital revolution—the radical reshaping and restructuring of society caused by digital technology. This digital revolution— 8 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 23. the result of a convergence between communications and computing technologies —allows individuals and organizations to connect in ways, and on scales, that were previously inconceivable. The digital revolution is premised on the increasing importance of digitizable knowledge products in the economy, and the shift to knowledge as the fundamental source of value. This digital revolution is creating the new economy. If we accept the proposition that the digital revolution is transforming the economy we may, though we cannot predict what the impacts on our society will be, be able to understand something of the direction in which we are being driven. The world we live in today was shaped by the explosion of productive power and economic potential released by the industrial revolution. The dynamic of the industrial revolution has governed how we experience time, space and human society. Time became more sharply segmented into work and life as discrete realms. The centralization of production, driven by the need to bring people together to exploit the potential for economies of scale generated by early industrial machinery, has shaped our cities, driving a wedge between workplaces and living places, now evident as business districts and suburbs. Less visibly, the role of work in relation to our experience of society has also undergone a major shift. As new forms of social structure emerged in response to the changing economic base—structures such as corporations, mass political movements and trade unions—other structures have declined and withered. In contemporary developed societies, for a large proportion of the population the organization in which they work provides the only organized social group of any scale in which they participate. Work overwhelmingly provides the context within which we negotiate and understand our identities and our place in society. The new economy is characterized by an increasing virtualization of products, processes, organizations and relationships. New economy production no longer requires people to work together in the same physical space to access the tools and resources they need to produce their work. Production can be spatially decentralized and reintegrated back into other aspects of life. Once work and life are no longer rigidly separated in space, the temporal boundaries between them can be refashioned according to different imperatives. If the demarcation between work and leisure is no longer a lengthy period of commuting, a much finer granularity of interplay between work and leisure becomes possible. These changes are contingent on changes in organizational behaviour. Those with responsibility in organizations will have to learn to move from management-by- observation to management-by-results. This shift in management approach is just one aspect of a wider shift that is realigning organizational structures with the imperatives of the new economy. The industrial economy was characterized by vertical institutions, bureaucracies and large-scale factories. The new economy of ideas, intelligence and knowledge demands a horizontal economy characterized by non-hierarchical, horizontal institutions. INTRODUCTION 9
- 24. The discussion above may suggest to some that the impact of the new economy is restricted to a small number of businesses in particular sectors of highly-developed countries—that even in the most economically-developed countries, the old economy accounts for the majority of GDP. To accept this argument would be mistaken. The new economy is in the driving seat and it is the new economy’s dynamics that are shaping our future. Approximately 60 per cent of the GDP of North America is attributed to knowledge work. Even in the car industry, the major proportion of value created is attributed to knowledge work. A “knowledge worker” has been defined as: anyone who creates, develops, manipulates (including selecting and organizing), disseminates or uses knowledge to provide a competitive advantage or some other benefit contributing towards the goals of the organization. Thus, the product of a knowledge worker’s work is intangible: knowledge is the addition of meaning, context and relationships to data or information (this is sometimes referred to as “mature content”). Knowledge workers typically work in a team (whether local or virtual), and make extensive use of IT. (SANE 2001a) The rise of knowledge work has been accompanied by a shift from valuations based on tangible assets to intangibles. Emphasis on intangible assets such as “brand” and “customer ownership” has increased with competitive pressure. Both “brand” and “customer ownership” are heavily leveraged to preserve margins and market share in the new economic climate. While the principle of scarcity may no longer apply to the production of certain goods, it holds with increasing force with regard to “attention” in a society suffering from information overload. This transformation has been clearly expressed by Jeremy Rifkin: “ownership of physical property -formerly the bulwark of capitalism—has become a liability” (Rifkin 2001). The accelerated business cycle accompanying this transformation has further stressed the relationships between organizations and their physical assets. Fixed physical assets cannot be reconfigured to meet changing business needs as quickly as organizational processes and structures may be modified. They may act more as a brake than a springboard for change. Patterns of work and structures of organizations are evolving faster than the built environment can be transformed to meet their needs. Competitive economic pressures should encourage more intensive space use. This does not necessarily have to be detrimental to the quality of the environment and can even improve it. Use of space does not conform to the same pattern of consumption as applies to most other natural resources. Oil reserves once consumed cannot be replenished. The act of consumption destroys the 10 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 25. resource. Physical space, while finite in its extent, is, however, infinitely recyclable overtime. This cycle is most obvious over the long term as land use changes; for example, historically, use may have shifted from rural to urban and possibly back to rural. The potential recyclability of space over the shorter term provides the potential for increasing the intensity of space use. The high-value business centres of most developed cities are empty and unused overnight and at weekends. From a financial perspective, no airline would think of leaving an expensive capital asset such as a 747 un-utilized for over 50 per cent of the time. The environmental impact of under-use of urban space is the expansion of the city, as “night time” activities take place in other locations —dormitory suburbs or entertainment zones. The social impact is the creation of “dead” neighbourhoods. The more intensive use of space over time in our cities, facilitated and supported by the digital revolution, would relieve them of many of their most pressing problems. Intensifying the use of space must be considered in conjunction with the experience or values attached to the consumption of space. Different cultures attach different values to space and this affects their rate of consumption and maximum capacity that any space can absorb. Pressure for more intensive space use, combined with the potential of emerging technologies, will allow organizations to re-evaluate their property portfolios. As noted above, companies can reconfigure processes and organizational structures far faster than physical assets. Flexibility of physical space will, therefore, be at a premium. Flexibility may be afforded through the construction and design of highly re-configurable buildings, but could more easily be created through a flexible approach to property ownership. Rather than viewing physical property simply as a liability, the challenge of the new economy may be that it allows us to change how property adds value for organizations. This change has already started, notably in the retail industry. The potential to move from retailing based on physical real estate to virtual shopping has already produced a new trend, as retailers review the role that physical property can play in their business. Environments such as NikeTown use physical space as built advertising, with the strengthening of the brand image taking precedence over maximizing sales per square metre. Early entrants into e- retailing have taken physical space in high-throughput locations to act as display cases, allowing consumers to see, feel and, in some cases, try on the products while still handling sales through a virtual channel. Dickson CyberExpress at Kowloon Station, Hong Kong, was an early adopter of this strategy. We are in a period of transition from the old rules and systems of organization to those associated with the new economy. This period will be lengthy and uneven. The capacity for technological and perhaps organizational change will outstrip the capacity of the built environment to transform itself. For example, in the UK, commercial off ice premises are replaced at about 1 per cent of the total stock each year. Many of the environmental ills observed today are legacies of INTRODUCTION 11
- 26. the physical transformation that accompanied the industrial revolution. The environmental consequences of attempting to accelerate the transformation of the building stock to match a new economy imperative would be severe. The digital revolution and the technologies associated with it fortunately provide us with a new realm of space, capable of virtually infinite extension without the excessive resource consumption that accompanied the industrial revolution. The early internet enthusiasts and the dot.com entrepreneurs could be seen as the first two waves of pioneers colonizing these new spaces. This transition period may involve a change to the frame of reference (such as group norms, communication, work environments) within which people and organizations are used to operating. Where work processes have been virtualized in the form of a series of abstract information spaces, performance has frequently suffered as participants in these processes no longer have access to the implicit social clues that previously guided their behaviour, even in what were understood to be highly formal processes. Attempts to recreate “naturalistic” interaction through the construction of virtual representations of physical environments have, however, met with some limited success, though rarely in the world of work. At any one time, a popular virtual environment such as Habbo Hotel may have thousands of users (www.habbohotel.com). Re-creating the physical world online in this direct, representational way may prove to be a temporary, transitional and perhaps necessary step in order to provide people and organizations with familiar landmarks and iconography in an otherwise unfamiliar environment. Precedents taken from the physical world can be understood to be useful in this transition but should not necessarily be simply applied to a non-physical- virtual—organization. New systems and norms need to be developed: “the nature of work and operating patterns of organizations that stem from the Age of the Machine, no longer make sense in the revolutionary Age of the Network” (Zuboff 1988). Once people have adapted to the new environment, it should be possible to create new iconography and environments that will not simply copy or replicate traditional and accepted forms from the physical world. Behaviour is conditioned by environment. Virtual environments afford opportunities for the development of new forms of co-operation and collaboration. These developments must, however, be grounded in the understanding that the physical world remains an integral part of the environment we experience. The major challenge facing those concerned with both the design and management of working environments is to harness the strengths of both the physical and virtual environments—creating a hybrid space that matches the needs of individuals and organizations. Far from reducing the importance paid to physical space, the focus on knowledge work and increasing productivity in the new economy should lead to increased emphasis on creating the “right” working spaces. Although technologies have the potential to enable people to work anywhere, people will still always choose to work somewhere. If their choice is no longer conditioned 12 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 27. by the need to be in a specific place in order to have access to information or to communicate with colleagues, other factors will come into play. The social importance of the workplace is likely to be increasingly emphasized. Human beings are social animals: we need contact with others to give us a sense of purpose and worth (and it’s worth remembering that at the beginning of the twentieth century, alienation for workers was commonly associated with production line manufacturing) (Chinoy 1955). The assumption that social contact with others occurs primarily through face- to-face interaction is based on our empirical observations of people working in contemporary organizations with current technologies. While this may characterize social interaction today, we cannot conclude that this is immutable. Generational differences in the use of technologies such as mobile phones suggest that forms of social interaction in this sense are quite plastic. The growth of virtual communities online also suggests that for some, satisfying and in some sense real social interaction is taking place. New and emerging technologies will increase the range of possibilities, allowing people and organizations, over time, to make different choices about how they use hybrid environments to satisfy professional and social needs. In the near term, the increased social role of the workplace is likely to continue to blur the division between work and leisure. Some organizations are already acknowledging this blurring, and are looking at a “homing from work” rather than a “working from home” strategy (Cullliford 2001). This can involve breaking down traditional components of work and office space to introduce domestic and social elements. It also suggests giving work a centrality in people’s lives that many find uncomfortable. Movement in this direction will face considerable resistance. While few people today would endorse the Marxist thesis of an irreconcilable contradiction between the interests of labour and capital, real conflicts of interest exist between businesses determined to extract productivity from their workers and individuals attempting to lead balanced, fulfilling lives. The emergence of 24/7 business cultures places people under pressure to lead 24/7 business lives. A significant minority may already find the once distinct spheres of work, life and play woven into a seamless satisfying whole. For the majority, however, this transformation has not occurred. Within this new work/life culture, the balance of interest between employer and employee will need to be renegotiated. Through the last half of the twentieth century, a consensus emerged on aspects of employment such as the length of the normal working week, with working time outside these limits considered overtime. Expressions such as 9-to-5 reflect the widespread acceptance of this consensus. The idea of “24/7” potentially threatens this consensus. Some groups affected by these changes are able to negotiate their terms and conditions of employment on an equal footing with their employer, but this is not the case for many groups. In the realm of work, existing social legislation may act as a brake, preventing transition to more productive and sustainable INTRODUCTION 13
- 28. ways of working. In many countries, for example, legislation sets a maximum for the number of hours that can be worked in a week. This is intended both to protect workers from unscrupulous exploitation and to broaden participation in the workforce. While neither of these goals should be abandoned, the mechanisms used to achieve them will have to be radically rethought in the context of the new economy. Limiting the number of hours spent in the office, as the legislation currently does, serves to advance neither the protection of workers from exploitation, nor to broaden participation in the work force. Inertia inherent in social and physical structures must be overcome if the potential of the new economy is to be realized: if society as a whole is to reap in full the potential benefits of the new economy a new consensus reflecting the interests of all must be constructed. Even if we remain optimistic about the capacity for technologies to change the ways in which we work and the work we do, we shouldn’t presume such a transformation inevitably to be for the better. ALTERNATIVE WORKPLACES 1980 was the year in which IBM introduced the personal computer (PC) and the world of office work and office design was changed forever. The computer began its escape from the confines of the computer room and started to proliferate on office desks. The consequences are continuing to drive innovation in office use and design. Between 1983 and 1985, DEGW and others carried out the Orbit studies into buildings and information technology. These multinational client-sponsored research programmes that established the new parameters for office buildings able to cope with IT and the changing nature of the corporate organization in Europe and the US (Duffy and Chandor 1983; Becker et al. 1985). The first study identified the impact of cabling requirements, heating and cooling, and pressures on space for the office building. It also investigated the indirect effects of changing organizational structures, staff profiles and patterns of work affected by the new technologies. The trend whereby the interior design of offices had become disassociated from the characteristics of the base building shell was overturned by the impact of IT. IT demanded a radical re-thinking of the use, servicing and base building design for the office. One of the central tenets of the second study, Orbit 2, was that not only are organizations different from one another, but each organization has different needs at different stages as it changes under external or internal pressures. The position of an organization can be plotted against two dimensions: the degree of change and the nature of work. For example, building features suited to a high change, non-routine organization (or part of an organization) may not be suitable for a low-change, more routine organization. Change may be caused by internal reorganization, and measured by the frequency of relocation within the building; 14 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 29. or it may be caused by change in staff size, measured by differences in headcount. The nature of work is defined by the extent to which most organizations are routine and predictable or varied and unpredictable. The more non-routine the work, the more likely it is to involve the integration of different forms of expertise, increased networking, and more personal meetings. On the other hand, companies with more routine work tend to use conventional hierarchies to maintain control, and are more likely to rely on a central mainframe and a knowledgeable management information systems group than on dispersed computing intelligence. Today’s corporate back offices and high tech organizations, now so different in nature and work technique, will tend to move closer to each other in the future as the former becomes less routine and the latter more so. Similarly, small start- up companies characterized by high change, non-routine work tend, over time, to become more hierarchical, more differentiated, with more routine work and less change. Very stable, mature companies typically find that they also have to innovate to remain competitive. Change occurs in all kinds of organizations. The recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the associated collapse of the office real estate boom in Europe and North America, and the need for corporate organizations to re-invent what they were doing in order to survive, threw the world of office work, office design and office development into a tailspin. All of the old certainties disappeared. The Anglo-American standardized model of the speculative office building— the central core skyscraper or the groundscraper-plus-atrium-was no longer valid. Nor could the high cost and expense of the tailor-made, owner-occupied, northern European office building be sustained. Only the very richest organizations could afford to cater to the unique preferences of their particular culture in the design of their own buildings. The northern European organizations were being forced to re-think their needs for expensive custom designed buildings for their exclusive use; the Anglo- American developers were being forced to link up more closely with end users through joint ventures or pre-lets. A double shift has, therefore, occurred in the expectations of what buildings should offer end users: on the one hand, the developers are being forced to pay more respect to the complex, varied and changing needs of end users; on the other hand, the end users are demanding buildings and office environments that can add value to the ways they want to work, but in ways that minimize their overall costs. In other words, the tyranny of supply-driven development that dominated the UK and US throughout the 1980s has been broken. In its place a new world of office organizations, of ways of working both in and out of offices, has placed entirely new demands on the ingenuity of designers at all levels of the provision of the workplace environment. INTRODUCTION 15
- 30. The Responsible Workplace, a major multi-client research project in the early 1990s, captured this shift in perspective (Duffy et al. 1993). The aim of this project was to link the evolution of the organizational structure and technology- enabled work process to the types of office environment that best support the corporate objectives of structure/culture and business direction. The project analysed the dimensions of interaction and autonomy to establish an organization’s current position and its plans for the future—interaction being the degree of face-to-face contact necessary to undertake the work process, and autonomy being the degree of choice available as to when, where and how the work process may be undertaken. The traditional “office factory” of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century involved little face-to-face interaction or autonomy. It was an environment in which individuals were co-located and clearly directed to undertake specific prescribed tasks. Contemporary management thinking departs substantially from the rigours of prescribed tasks and hierarchically driven work processes. The office of the future relies heavily on highly-motivated individuals who are enabled by technology to have a high degree of autonomy and who use face-to-face interaction to increase the richness of their business transactions. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the drivers for building design were based on reducing costs and the design solutions relied on tightly prescribed, centrally controlled standards of design and specification that corporations rolled out globally. In contrast, today’s multinationals must balance reducing costs with the value of increasing productivity. Work process tasks such as brainstorming and the importance of horizontal interaction across organizational divisions generally enhance the nature and quality of the business undertaken. The corporate management objectives should therefore be to find ways that buildings can support the new methods of working. This approach can thus generate the link between the new management theories and design in ways that enhance efficiency and effectiveness. Alternative models for offices are therefore required as a result of: • the changing nature of business organizations requiring greater flexibility in the use of space and time; allowing rapid responses to operational needs; and responding to higher expectations of employees for quality • the location of office work being far less constrained as a result of information technologies enabling work to take place in a wide variety of locations both within and outside the conventional office building • the ubiquitous provision of information technology, which means that although workstation design will remain important, other shared working settings, meeting rooms, and other intelligent environments will become more significant. The demand to add value to organizational performance means that the office is not merely a place of information and control but a place for stimulating intellect 16 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 31. and creativity. The office has to provide high quality and attractive features for demanding office workers. But this has to be achieved alongside the pressure to drive down occupancy costs in ways that use space more efficiently. Moreover, offices also have to respond to the demands for healthy and environmentally responsible buildings. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, awareness of the principles of sustainability became a global phenomenon. The field of the built environment does, however, offer huge potential for abuse of the key principles involved in sustainability and this, coupled with an accelerated rate of change in the ways in which we work, imposes an urgent imperative for a clear and well-informed course of action. Current best practice in office design has begun to embrace a variety of architectural and construction solutions to the problem of creating more energy efficient and environmentally comfortable office buildings. However, there is little attempt to question the prevailing workplace accommodation paradigm. In this paradigm—a descendant of the planning principles formulated under the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and espoused by planners and architects ever since—office workers are employed in dedicated office buildings, often remote from other urban and social functions. Within this paradigm, there have been significant advances in terms of creating individual buildings that are more “environmentally sustainable”, in the sense that they consume less energy and produce less waste per measure of office space created. There are two main aspects to this: the first involves the construction process; the second involves the building itself. The construction process has been the focus of attempts to reduce the amount of material and energy consumed in building erection, through, for example: increased pre-fabrication to reduce construction time and material waste; reduction in water consumption; reduction in transport distances and costs; use of self-finished materials; and recycling of construction waste. In short, those responsible for building delivery should be driven by what Taylor and Twinn have simply termed “good neighbourliness” (Taylor and Twinn 2001). In response to the need for an objective building construction assessment method, Rab Bennett for the Movement for Innovation is currently devising six environmental sustainability indicators (Bennett 2001). These measures include: • operational energy consumed during the construction process • embodied energy of building materials • transport energy consumed in bringing materials to and from site • waste produced in the construction process • water consumed • the maintenance of biodiversity on the site. Construction energy costs are increasingly important as building life cycles shorten. The requirements for flexibility in use may require greater turn-over in INTRODUCTION 17
- 32. building stock, thus increasing the significance of construction energy against energy in use. For a building of a 60-year life span, the embodied construction energy represents some 10 per cent of the energy cost of the building, with the remaining 90 per cent being energy in use. If the building life span is reduced to 30 years, the embodied energy makes up some 20 per cent of the energy cost. In terms of the building itself, key ideas that have contributed to its environmental sustainability include the following: thermal mass; increased passive ventilation or simple mechanical ventilation; passive cooling; reduction of internal heat gains; solar control, glare control and orientation; ease of operation; increased user interface; and the introduction of monitoring programmes. Environmental sustainability, as expressed in these aspects, focuses on the interdependence of building structure, environmental services and building fabric. This approach should result in higher quality workplaces, and therefore in increased productivity, if one accepts that environmentally benign buildings are usually better liked by their users. In this way, to some extent, the environmentally sustainable office building becomes part of the wider agenda embracing social and economic sustainability, if measured in terms of user satisfaction and productivity. Social sustainability, however, requires that the building works both for its users inside, and is responsible to others into whose broader community it fits—that is, what does the building give back to the city? What is needed is a redefinition of the term “workplace”. It needs to be broadened from the narrow focus on the office building, to incorporate the various work environments embraced by the new economy and new ways of working. This, of course, represents both a challenge and an opportunity. According to a report published by Information Society Technologies, the sustainable workplace will have positive net business benefits; positive net societal impacts (both internally in terms of human resources and externally on wider society); and low net environmental impact (especially through material and energy consumption). Rather than referring to the workplace, we should perhaps begin to talk about “work systems” or “work environments”. Any realistic attempt to create sustainable office accommodation must take a broader view than the design of individual buildings. It should be asking some of the following questions: • What is a more sustainable way of work, of operating an economy? • What is the nature of the sustainable working environment? • How should we house office workers—in dedicated buildings or elsewhere? • Where should these working environments be located? • How should people move and communicate between working environments, and between these and other environments? 18 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 33. • What elements should be incorporated into the sustainable working environment, both to increase productivity and efficiency, and to reduce consumption? It is these questions that this book addresses. While it does not provide all the answers—indeed, the idea of fixed answers is probably misguided—it raises some of the relevant issues, implications and concerns. INTRODUCTION 19
- 34. 1 The evolution of the workplace During the course of the twentieth century the workplace became increasingly associated with the office building, so that by the end of the century the two concepts had become almost synonymous. But this obscures the relative newness of the office as a building form. Only in the late nineteenth century, with the increasing bureaucracy associated with governing nation states,8 or running large corporations, did office buildings emerge as a specialized type. Previously, office work was accommodated in buildings derived from palaces, industrial buildings (in particular mills) or collegiate forms. In its contemporary form, which has outwardly changed little since the early days, the office building emerged largely thanks to American innovation in construction and the need to service a burgeoning economy. Chicago in particular, with its rapid growth in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, provided the archetype, with the high-rise office building now symbolic of the corporate workplace. This building form was the product of what then could be described as a “new economy”. This “new economy” was the product of a change in the way in which business was organized —a change that was made evident by the emergence of the corporation with its separation of ownership and management, and the resulting professionalization of the management role. The impact of this new management culture on both demand and supply sides of the building development equation, in conjunction with new construction and information technologies, gave rise to this new building form. The dominant business ideology of the time was based on a mechanistic view of office workers as units of production, to be housed in a unified and controlling space. The system of building supply, where developers became the intermediary between users and owners, perpetuated this paradigm in both Europe and America until after the Second World War. Following the destruction wrought in Europe and the extreme shake-up of civil and economic society, more democratic, or user orientated, forms of office planning emerged, although in the rest of the world the American model retained its dominance. Over the four decades leading up to the end of the twentieth century, the design of off ice buildings in Europe evolved alongside changing trends in business management. In the 1960s the office was seen as a communications system, with the floorplan opening up to facilitate the free flow of information
- 35. across the open plan (bürolandschaft or office landscaping, pioneered by the German Quickborner Team). This office concept is characterized by interlocking, fluid and organic working spaces with minimal divisions and area makers designed for groups of up to 20 people. The office landscape was intended to foster communication and flexible teamwork. In this context it may be considered to be the precursor to today’s open offices and flexible furniture systems. In the 1970s, increasing labour power in Europe and the consequent articulation of users’ interests saw the development of the office as a place of social engagement. Issues of privacy, acoustic control and the provision of individual rooms and healthy and personally controllable environments became increasingly important. In Europe, therefore, floorplates became increasingly narrow and highly articulated, while in North America the reverse was happening as office buildings became deeper and simpler, more generic and less responsive to individual control. In the late 1970s, Swedish designers invented the combioff ice—private cells grouped around a common space. This concept represents a special form of the traditional European cellular office—with enclosed space for one or two persons. The 1980s saw a workplace revolution as the computer moved from the computer room to the desktop. At the same time, new network technologies facilitated the increasing globalization of particular industries (especially financial and professional services), with a corresponding demand for consistent worldwide guidelines to regularize patterns of space provision. European financial centres, in particular, began to import North American design practices. The distributed intelligence of desktop PCs required increasing facilities management, and saw the emergence of the so-called “intelligent building”, defined as a building with integrated management and information communication technologies systems providing a robust infrastructure for ubiquitous information technology, and one that is more responsive to changing user demands. In the 1990s a second workplace revolution saw the introduction of “new ways of working”—a response to the realization that information technology was transforming cultural, social, technological and construction processes. The virtual world and digital tools reduce the need for synchronous, face-to-face communication and co-location of office workers for the purposes of carrying out defined tasks. Although the history of office buildings in the twentieth century is strongly associated with the high-rise buildings of North America, many of the innovations in interior office design have been pioneered in Europe (Van Meel 2000). Since the mid-twentieth century, the development of off ice concepts in Europe was influenced by different “office philosophies” and innovative office concepts (Gottschalk 1994). None of these philosophies or office concepts completely replaced the other. Rather, they are all still in use, representing THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORKPLACE 21
- 36. different basic options for office design (Figure 1.1). Figure 1.2 illustrates the principles of these basic office concepts. CHANGING DEMANDS During the early 1980s, two key factors can be identified that had a significant impact on the design of office space. First, economic changes during this period prompted a reevaluation of ways of working for many organizations,beginning the move towards more flexible, distributed 1.1 Development of office philosophies and office concepts in Europe. Source: adapted from Gottschalk (1994) Office concept Office philosophy Period of time Number of people Cellular office Representative arrangement 1950s 1–2 persons (Up to 4– 6 persons) Open-plan office Organizational flexibility Mid 60s >20 work stations Group office/ Office landscape Ergonomic work environment Late 60s 6–20 work stations Combi office Communicative space structure 1980s 1 person cellular office+ multifunctional zone and knowledge-based work processes, and second, the widespread introduction of IT systems facilitated the emergence and adoption of these working processes. Trends in building provision up to this point, particularly in North America, were towards maximizing economy by providing spaces generic enough to suit unknown (or multiple) end users. The emergence of IT demanded a radical re- thinking of this means of provision as user requirements for office space now had significant implications for the servicing and form of the base building. Innovative ICT-solutions were now driving the emergence of more flexible patterns of work—new ways of working practised by increasingly mobile and flexible knowledge workers working at different locations inside and outside the office. Appropriate hardware and software configurations had to provide knowledge workers with access to information, enabling different work tasks to be accomplished effectively f rom any location and at any time. Organizational decision makers were faced with a range of possible solutions to their need for new office buildings that would support their business more appropriately. Developments in the field of office design had to reflect changing concepts of configuring and using workspaces. As Van Meel points out, “office buildings are the materialization of norms and values about issues such as hierarchy, interaction and privacy. They reflect ideas about the meaning of work and opinions about how work should be performed. As these ideas change over time, so does the office” (Van Meel and Voss 2001, p.325). 22 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 37. The move towards building intelligence The Orbit studies conducted by DEGW and others between 1983 and 1985 identified the key factors deter mining the ability of office buildings to cope with IT (Duffy and Chandor 1983; Becker et al. 1985). They were of particular importance to the field as they provided the first direct link between IT, user demand, and building form in the design of what were becoming known as “intelligent buildings”. A key assertion of Orbit 2 (Organizations, Buildings and Information Technology) is that organizations differ from each other typologically, and change over time along key dimensions as they are subjected to internal and external pressures (Figure 1.3). This has two implications first, that different building features would be more or less suitable for different types of organizations, and second that buildings unable to cope with changes to the 1.2 Principles of different office concepts. Source: Van Meel, J. (2000) THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORKPLACE 23
- 38. organizations that occupy them or in the IT used would become prematurely obsolete and require substantial renovation or demolition. Thus an “intelligent building” was defined as that which contained a collection of technologies able to respond to organizational change over time. During the 1990s, DEGW was instrumental in a series of multi-client research projects—in Europe (DEGW/ Teknibank 1992), South East Asia (Harrison et al. 1998) and Latin America (IBR Ltd 1998)—that further explored intelligent building issues. The initial study classified buildings into four types: • exchange value buildings, developed speculatively anddesigned as a commodity to be sold • use value buildings, custom designed for the end user organization • image value buildings, designed to maximize the image value of the building at the expense of efficiency or other qualities • business value buildings, which reflect user, exchange and image values in a building in which technology is exploited to maximize the range of options for end users. The key driver in the development of use value and exchange value buildings is the provision of efficient buildings. In contrast the business value building aims to provide effective spaces which both drive down occupancy costs through the 1.3 Organizational classification model from Orbit 2 (Organizations, Buildings and Information Technology) 1985. 24 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 39. efficient use of space, but which also support the changing work practices of high technology, knowledge based organizations. Conceptualized this way, IT becomes a tool that can either help, or hinder the ability of a building to support its users, rather than the critical factor in building intelligence. The categorization of office building types according to functional value highlighted the difference between the continental European approach, where buildings were developed primarily for their use value with high levels of amenity and space provision, and that in the UK (influenced by trends in North America) where buildings were developed for exchange, with deeper floorplates and a lower level of user control. The studies further defined intelligent building types according to their location and capacity for technological provision, giving four potential building types: • Obsolete IB—poorly located, inaccessible and with lack of shell adaptability likely to constrain occupants • Underachieving IB—well located and accessible but with lack of adaptability in building shell level of technological provision or adaptability • Misplaced IB—adaptable building but poorly located and inaccessible • Business value IB-accessible and well-located, flexible and adaptable for a range of uses. The measures used in determining a building’s intelligence included its sectional height and floor depth, floor size and configuration, planning and partition grids, communications infrastructure and building skin. As a business value building the intelligent building is seen to combine the other f unctional values with the additional ability to support ICT, so that it is user driven, yet highly adaptable and of a high quality. The high specification atrium building, with 18-metre deep f loorplates (glass-to-glass)9 emerged as the primary type, especially in the UK. Visionary concepts The opportunities created by information technology, alongside discussions about the role of the “office” in a knowledge society, have driven the continual development of a range of workplace concepts, often considered futuristic and visionary as they emerge. Architects, consultants and scientists have described the “future office” using concepts such as “business-club”, “non-territorial- office”, “desk-sharing”, “hotelling”, “fraktales büro”, “funky office” (Duffy 1997, Kern et al. 1994, Gibson 2000, Van Meel and Voss 2001, Van Meel 2000). These “new” office concepts ref lect a move towards more f lexible use of off ice space and work locations. Some of them combine aspects of the basic office concepts illustrated in Figure 1.2 with new elements and systems for sharing space. Growing awareness about different work activities, work processes and work styles, together with a stronger focus on the variety and scope of user requirements THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORKPLACE 25
- 40. have led to the development of these new office concepts. In this context, terms such as “work activities” and “communication structures” indicate which office concept may be useful to support the needs of a specific user or user groups. This approach is crystallized in a loose grouping or movement often called “alternative officing”, led by practitioners such as Fritz Steele, Frank Becker and Francis Duffy. Alternative officing developed new concepts for working space based on the interaction between people, space and working culture, combining insights from the different fields such as architecture and environmental psychology (Nathan and Doyle 2002, p.5). Gottschalk et al. (1992) undertook a number of empirical studies, observation exercises and interviews examining work styles in a range of organizations. From this research they clustered the work styles of different user typesaccording to certain criteria (Figure 1.4). 1.4 Work styles of different user types Workplace-mobility Time spent at the workplace, time spent sitting, frequency of ways Communication patterns Frequency of communication, number and type of communicators Distributing time Copying, getting and bringing back files/mail/documents, etc. Source: adaptation from Gottschalk et al. (1992). This clustering of typical features resulted in the following four basic types of work styles: • the sitting worker • the walking worker • the talking worker • mixed types. According to the findings of Gottschalk et al., these generic work styles can be used to describe the behaviour of individuals and predict their special needs and requirements at the levels of the individual workplace, the surrounding space and the building (Gottschalk et al. 1992). The authors point out that different needs might lead to conflicts—for example, if in an open plan environment a “sitting worker” who does concentrated heads-down work is located beside a “talking worker” having intensive communication with other colleagues. In the case of knowledge workers in call centres, undertaking homogeneous work tasks and hence having similar needs, the use of such categories may be useful in developing appropriate work environments. However, when knowledge workers are doing complex work, including phases with different activities and job roles, providing adequate work settings for these diff erent needs and 26 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 41. minimizing conflicts between them becomes a more difficult task for workplace designers. This requires a deeper understanding of space-related implications of work processes and work styles, such as the amount of planned and ad hoc work processes and the phases of communicative or concentrated individual heads down work. The relationship between work activities and work settings is discussed in more detail in Chapter Three. NEW ENVIRONMENTS FOR WORKING In 1997 DEGW, in collaboration with the Building Research Establishment (BRE), conducted a study on the implications of modern working practices for the specification and performance of building form and environmental systems — New Environments for Working (NEW) (Laing et al. 1998). This project led to the development of a model for “design logic in the new office”, comprising four alternative officelayout typologies according to the types of activities they support. These were designated “den”, “club”, “hive” and “cell” (Figures 1.5 and 1.6). These layouts are based upon the organizational variables of interaction and autonomy. Interaction relates to the face-to-face contact required to complete work tasks, and autonomy to the degree of control, responsibility and discretion each office worker has over the timing, method, location and tools of the work process. Each layout type has quite different patterns of occupancy and IT requirements, as indicated in Figure 1.7. 1.5 Patterns of work—four major types. Reproduced from Laing, A. et al. (1998) by permission of BRE. THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORKPLACE 27
- 42. 1.7 Implications of new ways of working. Conventional office New ways of working Patterns of work Routine processes Individual tasks Isolated work Creative knowledge work Groups, teams, projects Interactive work Patterns of occupancy of space over time Central office locations in which staff are assumed to occupy individually owned workstations on a full- time basis, typically over the course of the 9–5 day. The office assumes one desk per person; provides a hierarchy (planned or enclosed); and is occupied typically at levels at least 30% below full capacity. Distributed set of work locations (which may be nomadic, mobile, in the office or at home) linked by networks of communication in which autonomous individuals work in project teams. Daily timetable is extended and irregular. Multicultural work settings are occupied on an as-needed basis. Daily occupancy of space near to capacity. Type of space layout, furniture systems and use of space and buildings Hierarchy of space and furniture related to status. Individual allocation of space predominates over interactive meeting spaces. Multiple shared group work and individual task- based settings. Setting, layout and furniture of the office geared to work process and its tasks. Use of information technology Technology used for routine data-processing Focus on mobility of IT equipment used in a 1.6 Patterns of space occupancy. Reproduced from Laing, A. et al. (1998) by permission of BRE. 28 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 43. terminals in fixed positions served by mainframes. wide variety of settings. Technology used to support creative knowledge work, both individual and group. File servers serve a variety of IT tools, including PCs and laptops, and shared specialized equipment. Source: Duffy (1999). Given the complexity of business organizations, none can be characterized as functioning entirely as a den, club, hive or cell—rather, they are combinations of these. Further, the relative demand for each layout will change over time, and the model provides indicative directions of that change. As Duffy (1997) writes: “It is expected, as information technology changes, that many examples of the offices now identified as being for ‘group processes’ [dens] or ‘concentrated study’ [cells] will tend to converge into what has been called the ‘transactional’ office [club] where, through deft management of time and space, both interaction and autonomy will be maximized.” Using the terms of the NEW model, knowledge work can be characterized as that which involves high levels of interaction and autonomy. Concurring with this, Nonaka also suggests that an important component of knowledge work is accessing critical information and converting it into explicit knowledge in order to become more innovative, and more productive (Nonaka/Takeuchi 1995). Based on the assumption that work processes in the knowledge economy are characterized by the growing relevance of communication and interaction, Becker and Sims (Becker and Sims 2001, p.52) suggested an alternative way of thinking about the office: “Rather than thinking of the office as a place primarily for solitary activity, from which one occasionally breaks out in time and space to settings intended for social activity, the office is designed primarily as a social setting, from which one occasionally seeks out more private places for contemplation, concentration and confidentiality.” Answering the following questions may show the relative importance of solitary and collaborative work activities for knowledge work. • How much time do knowledge workers spend working on individual, concentrated, heads down work activities and how much on collaborative or social activities? • What is the relative importance of different activities that make up the work process? THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORKPLACE 29
- 44. • What activities are more critical for the overall performance and success of the company? Empirical evidence from observations on knowledge worker activities in ten companies of several branches across Europe shows that people (still) spend a great proportion (more than 60 per cent) of their time on solitary activities. Another study on work activities of computer programmers in different companies in the United States features differing proportions of solo work (ranging from 20 per cent to 64 per cent) and collaboration (ranging from 70 per cent to 19 per cent). Empirical research such as this may provide valuable insights about the amount of different kinds of activities. However, it is uncertain to what extent these empirical results are representative, when considering the possibility that work activities might differ across branches, f unctions and so on. Nor do the status quo observations reflect what might be optimum or necessarily reflect best practice. Collaborative work spaces With the rise of knowledge work, the provision of spaces for collaborative work is becoming more important. There are indications both that collaborative work is increasing as a proportion of work time, and that it yields the highest value for an organization, compared with other activities. In addition, developments in ICT have meant that non-collaborative, concentrated work can increasingly take place outside the base office. Activity settings The concept of activity settings is based on the premise that, in the context of knowledge work, a single workstation an all-purpose workstation—is no longer sufficient. The aim is to offer a variety of spaces to accommodate the range of specialist activities undertaken within an organization. Staff are at liberty to choose the activity setting that best fits their task and move between alternative spaces for specific needs during the day (DEGW 2000): • small rooms/booths for concentrated work, or confidential telephone calls • open areas for informal meetings • quiet open plan areas • touch-down desks for ad-hoc or short-term users. Such a flexible way of working in different activity settings requires rules for the use of shared workstations to ensure that an appropriate working culture is established. A clear desk policy supports the availability of non-owned workstations, which may be occupied on an ad-hoc basis (“hot-desking”) or after 30 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 45. reservation through a hotel-like booking system (“hotelling”), which allows booking of rooms with special equipment such as video-conference systems in advance. At St. Luke’s, an advertising agency located in London, activity settings are used to encourage creativity and collaboration (see Appendix Two). As Myerson and Ross point out, creativity seems to be increasingly important to organizations even in “conventional” business sectors. Interest and feedback from users in events and discussions related to the topic of creativity (Wheeler 2001 b, Bullinger et al. 2001) emphasize the relevance of the question of how creative processes may be supported in an office environment. The types of settings provided will be contingent upon the specific needs and nature of the organization. The activity settings included in the workspace at St. Luke’s might not, for example, be applicable in larger, or more conventional, organizations. Further, different examples of innovative practice within the same market sector highlight the fact that the creative process can be understood in a variety of different ways and that to any one set of requirements there will be a variety of spatial solutions involving different workplace design concepts and elements. This leads to the conclusion that “one kind of solution does not fit all”, because the amount and relevance of individual and social activities differ across individuals and companies according to work styles and culture. Hence, the deliberate analysis of activities can provide sound evidence about the appropriate kind of office solution for an individual organization, at that time, in that cultural and business context. Zoning Zoning is one option to deal with different needs related to a variety of work activities and individual preferences for concentration. This means that some areas in an open environment are designated as being for particular activities (such as concentrated, heads down work), based on the spatial requirements of different work modes. For example, at the German company dvg (see Appendix Two), the office is comprised of three zones supporting a variety of different styles of work. Other examples include St. Luke’s, where the library offers quiet open space for solitary activities such as reading, individual thinking or designing new concepts, and Jazztel (see Appendix Two), where open space is divided into zones for different organization units as well as zones for activities such as informal communication or quiet solitary work. THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORKPLACE 31
- 46. Nomadic workstyles Multiple workplaces Until the 1990s, most office concepts were based on the assumption that every employee would occupy an “owned”, mostly mono-functional, individual work space in an office building. More recent approaches acknowledge the fact that knowledge workers are often absent from the office, spending a large part of their working time on the road or at customer or client locations. This may allow an intensified, and hence more efficient, use of office spaces by sharing workplaces between a number of knowledge workers who are able to use the work settings when they are in the building. Nathan and Doyle (Nathan and Doyle 2002, p.6), for example, state that the average office desk is occupied for only 45 per cent of the office hours—the rest of the time the worker will be in meetings, visiting clients, on holiday, training or sick. The number of workstations provided in desk-sharing systems corresponds normally to only 50–80 per cent of the actual number of employees (Kern et al. 1999). The authors of the ECaTT Final Report on “New ways of working and new forms of business across Europe” expect that, in future, “individual types of telework will become something of a menu from which highly qualified and flexible workers can choose according to their personal and especially business needs” (ECaTT 2000, p.11). For example, a highly-qualified employee might divide working time between spells at the office (to communicate face-to-face with other staff members), out on the road (to stay in touch with customers and business partners) and at home (to do some concentrated work). The ECaTT Final Report shows that, in 1999, the extent of telework practice still varies considerably between member states. The proportions of teleworkers among the working population differ significantly among European countries. While the northern countries—Finland, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands- find themselves at the top, with around 15 per cent of teleworkers among the working population, southern countries like Spain and Italy which only recently began the practice of telework are situated at the lower end with rates of 2 to 3 per cent of teleworkers. In 1999, nearly half of the European teleworkers (about 4 million) lived in Great Britain and Germany. The European Commission, which is actively promoting and supporting telework developments, expected there would be about 10 million teleworkers in Europe by the year 2000. A forecast about the development of telework in Europe until 2005 (based on a survey of 1999) indicates there will be growing percentages of teleworkers across all European countries (Figure 1.8). According to the ECaTT report, telework’s great leap in Europe still has not truly become reality, although the possibilities are numerous, given the interest expressed by workers and companies alike. The projections for 2005 indicate a considerable increase in teleworkers to an average of 10 per cent of the working 32 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 47. population in Europe. The ECaTT report describes the situation at the end of the 1990s as follows: At the end of the 1990s the time is ripe for dislocated working. Efficient and inexpensive information and communication technologies allow employees to work when and where they wish. Successful forerunner organizationshavedemonstratedthatteleworkcanbeappliedtotheadvantageofbusinesses 1.8 Telework—growth potential among European countries. Adapted from Empirica (eds.) (2000) All Teleworkers in % 1994 1999 2005 (projection) Denmark – 10, 5 19, 4 Finland – 16, 8 29, 4 France 1, 8 2, 9 4, 8 Germany 1, 4 6 12, 6 Ireland – 4, 4 7, 7 Italy 1 3, 6 7, 1 Netherlands – 14, 5 25, 2 Spain 1, 7 2, 8 5, 4 Sweden – 15, 2 24, 3 U.K. 5, 4 7, 6 11, 7 EU10 – 6, 1 10, 8 as well as employees, and have urged many other businesses to follow suit. A great number of campaigns, support measures and support programs of the EU commission and the various Member States were probably also of assistance. (ECaTT 2000) Qvortrup (1998) points out that the dominant trend in Europe seems to be that telework is performed by skilled information workers using computers and telecommunications for flexible work—that is, working part time at home, part time in the office, and also working on portable computers on trains, aeroplanes and hotels or in shared facility centres. According to Qvortrup, this type of telework is called “flexiwork” or “e-work”, which means work performed “everywhere” (at the office, at home, during the course of travel) using computers and telecommunications (Qvortrup 1998 p.21). Current trends in flexiwork in Europe seem to indicate that knowledge work in the future will no longer take place just at a single workstation—in the owned office—but at multiple locations: in a network of places such as at a company’s THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORKPLACE 33
- 48. headquarters, at home, at a customer’s locations or in hotels, restaurants and train stations. One application of this concept can be seen at Sun Microsystems (see Appendix Two). In consequence, remote workers will need a network of semi- public spaces where they can carry out their work adequately and undisturbed (SANE 2001). Remote working Mobile workers may use a range of different locations for working purposes: trains, airport lounges, hotels or even museums. Hotels can provide not merely accommodation, serving the basic needs of guests, but space in which mobile workers live and work for a certain period of time. In order to support the needs of mobile workers, some hotels provide infrastructure for internet connectivity (necessary to communicate with customers, colleagues) and customized space for different kinds of meetings in a location with easy access to transportation services. The Nordic Hotel in Stockholm, inaugurated in January 2001, is an example of how hotel space can be designed to support the needs of mobile workers. Rooms are all provided with broadband connections, and may in the future contain additional office facilities such as fax or printers, which enable guests to maintain effective communication with clients and collaborators all over the world. Itinerant workers also spend a considerable amount of time in spaces such as airports waiting for connections. What environments can be provided that will support people using their time effectively? One innovative example is the SAS Lounge at Vantaa Airport in Helsinki (see Appendix Two), that is equipped with a system that provides wireless links between laptops and the internet. Known as “HomeRun”, the service is available throughout the Nordic countries at 450 locations including airports, hotels, roadside taverns and conference centres. Changing office cultures Blurring boundaries of places used for work purposes and private life As markets require companies and their staff to become more flexible and mobile in order to establish and maintain good customer relationships, working hours will be extended beyond the traditional 9-to-5. On the other hand, new mobile ICT applications, which enable work to occur everywhere, should facilitate effective technology-mediated communication and thus reduce the necessity for travelling and face-to-face contacts. The example of Neumann & Neumann, a German facility management consultancy, shows how ICT and different (work) settings may support both 34 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 49. employees’ mobility and flexibility to serve customers’ needs on site, as well as the achievement of a sustainable work/life balance. This company demonstrates how blurring boundaries of spaces used for working and for private purposes may benefit both employees’ and the company’s objectives (see Appendix Two). The workplace as expression The examples discussed so far feature innovative office solutions for companies of different sizes, acting in different locations across Europe. All companies examined can be described as traditional businesses that have adapted the workplace, or working practices, in order to respond to market requirements to increase the flexibility, efficiency and effectiveness of their businesses. The following example will focus on office solutions for new organization forms likely to emerge in the global knowledge society of the twenty-first century. SOL (see Appendix Two), a cleaning services company, shows how one organization has translated the norms and values of their working culture, characterized by freedom and empowerment of staff, into a corresponding office environment. From a company’s management perspective, workplace design may be considered as a tool to express the ideology, norms and values of corporate organizational culture: in other words, a means of translating intangible values and norms into tangible artefacts. In a recent study, which examined what distinguishes successful companies from their less successful competitors, Collins and Porras described the key features of companies that have preserved a leading market position over long periods of time—so called “visionary companies”. They suggested that “visionary companies translate their ideologies into tangible mechanisms aligned to send a consistent set of reinforcing signals” (Collins and Porras 2000, p.135). Plant and office layouts that reinforce the organization’s norms and ideals are one of the measures adopted by leading companies. SOL represents one example of how values, norms and culture may be translated into corresponding features of space. The idea of using the workplace as means of brand expression is becoming increasingly important. Traditional means of communicating brand drew a sharp distinction between public and private spaces, keeping separate the external corporate brand communicated via building exteriors and internal public spaces, and the unbranded “private” workspace. Recent examples of workplace design such as that seen at J.Walter Thompson (JWT) are re-thinking this idea (see Appendix Two). At JWT the brand values of the organization are fully reflected in the design of the space throughout the whole building. The brand becomes intrinsic to the way the employees of the organization work and interact, and to clients’ experience of the “total environment”. Much of this has been influenced by the developments in ICT and working practices described thus far. With developments in distributed working and THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORKPLACE 35
- 50. remote technology, visibility and communications within a company are becoming more of a concern. As the workplace functions more as a “hub”, accommodating a transient population of both staff and clients, rather than a place where all work is carried out, it is increasingly important that the space ref lects the ideas and philosophies of the organization in question, to maintain the coherence and unity of the organization. Distributed workplaces Flexible work as part of a broader transformation of organizations SUN Microsystems and Neumann & Neumann provide a model of how new ways of working and telework may be practised in a context of changing spatial and temporal patterns of work and organizational structures. As Qvortrup (1998) suggests, telework should be seen as part of a broader transformation of organizations involving the dispersal of activities in space and time. He stated that, “where telework has been promoted, based on the notion that it is technologically feasible and economically desirable to reduce office space, eliminate commuting and start working at home, results have often been poor” (Qvortrup 1998, p.12). This seems to indicate that if concepts of remote working are to be realized successfully, it is important to develop an integrative approach that relates spatial issues to work processes, functions of IT tools, and organizational structures. The case studies provide insight into how different types of organizations, from small to global, manage to integrate spatial, technical and organizational issues into a holistic concept. As practised at SUN Microsystems, the concept of loosely-coupled settings involves the use for working purposes of different places (locations in different buildings, such as headquarter, satellite office, home office) and spaces (with open or enclosed layout). Loosely-coupled settings include settings both inside and outside the office, including the home, that are closely connected by the physical movement of people and the electronic movement of information. Employees are equipped with the technological support (high speed network access and laptop computers) that allows them to work f rom wherever they choose, depending on the work they are doing, and the stage of the project they are in (Becker and Sims 2001, p.50). Figure 1.9 features a range of places, spaces and related use concepts which may be considered elements of loosely coupled settings (Van Meel 2000). 36 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 51. 1.9 Loosely-coupled settings. Place Location in relation to other workplaces Central office A building where the workplaces of employees from the same unit or department are located Telework office A workplace that is physically disconnected from the central office Satellite office A telework office facilitated by the employer Business office A telework office facilitated by a commercial provider Guest office An office located in the building of a principal or client organization Home office A workplace located in the residence of an employee Instant office A workplace instantly created by the user in a place which is not primarily designed for office work (e.g. airport lounge, train) Space Physical enclosure of workplace: physically disconnected or collocated Cellular office An enclosed space designed to accommodate 1–3 workplaces Group office An enclosed space designed to accommodate 4–12 workplaces Open-plan-office An enclosed space designed to accommodate 13 or more workplaces Combi-office Cellular office situated in an open space which is designed to accommodate common facilities and groupwork Use Personalized use (owned workplaces) or sharing systems for workplaces Personal office A workplace used exclusively by a single employee Shared office A workplace assigned to two or more employees, who use the workplace on a rotating basis Non-territorial office A number of workplaces assigned to two or more employees Hotelling Employees make reservations for workplaces in advance First come first serve Workplaces are assigned to employees upon arrival at the office building Source: Van Meel, J. (2000) The framework presented by Van Meel distinguishes between office solutions at three levels—place, space and use: • How many different/which locations do knowledge workers use for work? (Place.) • What are layout features of the places? (Space—for example, enclosed/open layout.) THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORKPLACE 37
- 52. • Which concept of use is practised to allocate space? (Use—for example, personalized/shared workplaces.) Diversified workplaces: primary and secondary places Kishimoto distinguishes between primary and secondary places for work according to the frequency and availability of ICT tools, supportive services and purposes of use (Kishimoto 1996). He suggests that people with nomadic work styles would have primary places such as: • a base for working where they can meet other team members and utilize work tools and services (such as the hub at SUN Microsystems or office space for freelancers as provided by United Spaces: see below) • a base for living where they can spend time with their family. These spaces are not entirely separate. Blurring boundaries between working life and private life will lead to the temporary use of primary working spaces for private purposes or the use of primary living space for working purposes. Furthermore, Kishimoto distinguishes between primary offices (the base where mobile/nomadic workers belong) and secondary offices (facilities such as public spaces, commercial spaces, transportation facilities, which can serve as temporary offices used for remote work). A primary office might be a facility which functions like a club for the exclusive use of its members. Equipped with individuals’ home bases, interaction areas, shared focus spaces and group work spaces and staffed with full time support workers with professional expertise, the space offers various services to each member, either directly or through networks (Kishimoto 1996, p.1). In contrast, temporary offices may be facilities such as libraries (public spaces), coffee bars (commercial spaces) or airports (transportation facilities). The kinds of work that can be carried out in these “temporary offices” will vary depending on the performance of the tools carried by the nomadic/mobile worker and/or the equipment and qualities inherent in the space. The spatial, technological and communicative requirements of a particular work activity should determine the design and selection of appropriate environments. What is important is what you want to do or what the place enables you to do. Spaces, just like tools, should be…used selectively to suit the content of work. Although it may be possible to have a desktop conference on the train, you may not feel comfortable to do so in the presence of strangers. In such a case, it would be more reasonable to do a job that can f it into a short span of time, such as working out a day’s schedule. (Kishimoto 1996, p.1) 38 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 53. Office solutions for the e-lance economy Malone suggests that a new economic system is emerging, which he calls the “e- lance economy”. This includes new types of organizational structures such as networks of e-lancers (also called self-employed people, free agents, freelancers) who join companies or networks for a certain period of time. This seems likely to make traditional concepts of centralization and decentralization of discrete organizations outmoded, substituting a structure based on fluid networks where knowledge workers become members of ad hoc groupings formed around particular projects (Malone 1999). United Spaces, a company that provides shared workspace for freelancers, is one example of the type of environment that may support e-lancers and new types of networking organizations (see Appendix Two). United Spaces goes beyond simpler concepts of “telecentres” or “shared facility centres” that provide access to technology or low-cost office accommodation. The concept of United Spaces reflects the idea that even self-employed people, so-called “free agents”, need to build relationships with partners and potential customers. Research conducted by Becker and Sims confirms mobile workers’ need for social interaction in physical space. The following statements reflect mobile workers’ motivation for coming to the office. They want to come to the office at least several times a week, not because it has specialized equipment or they have insufficient space at home, but because they miss the camaraderie and social interaction at the office. They miss the opportunities for tacit learning, and for mentoring; the opportunities to get clear direction about the projects they are working on, and timely feedback about the progress they are making. They miss the energy that motivates them, and makes work tolerable, if not fun and exciting. People also come to the office to concentrate. (Becker and Sims 2001, p.5) These statements highlight the fact that, even in the context of remote working, face-to-face contacts are important for activities such as tacit learning and mentoring as well as making contact and networking. As presented in this chapter, technology-enabled new ways of remote working can be characterized by the use of different public and private locations and spaces, inside and outside the “office”, for working purposes. The “nomadic work styles at multiple places”—as featured in the case studies—represent knowledge workers who adapt more efficient, effective and flexible work styles, which may enhance their own or their companies’ performance and competitiveness. This leads to a new interpretation of the term “office”, which goes beyond the traditional understanding of office spaces. The office, in this context, may be any public or private space used for working purposes. Results of research done in THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORKPLACE 39
- 54. Europe, the US and South East Asia support the need for a framework for integrating the different dimensions and categories of workplace design discussed in this section. In this context, “privacy”—the ability of knowledge workers to have control over access of others to a particular workplace—seems to be an essential characteristic of different places and locations. From physical to hybrid workplaces Integrating the physical and the virtual Mark Weisner describes three eras of computing, of which the third wave is just now beginning. These eras are characterized by the number of users per computer. Era 1: mainframe era: one computer to many workers (this era is now over) Era 2: personal computing era: one person to one computer (status quo) Era 3: ubiquitous computing era: one person to many computers (just starting) Each era represents a different stage in the physical presence of the computer. Over time, the visibility of technology diminishes. According to Weisner: “the most profound technologies are those that disappear—they weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it” (Weisner 1996). As technologies become increasingly integrated into the physical realm, we move towards the idea of hybrid spaces that span both physical and virtual space. Acting within a hybrid space can be described as “any scenario in which an activity is executed in a combination of physical and virtual realm where ICT is an implicit and necessary component in the completion of that activity”. In their vision of the future office, Bullinger et al. assume that ICT will have two important functions—supporting interaction between knowledge workers and bringing a new quality to working and meeting rooms (Bullinger et al. 2000). Electronic wallpapers, for example, help to create knowledge-landscapes, changing space into virtual project offices, or enabling the transference of knowledge in other creative spaces. Workflow and document management systems, electronic brainstorming tools and live boards will increasingly change work processes in future office environments. In the global business context, the use of the internet and related ICT and applications are becoming essential channels for business activities. The integration of physical and virtual processes is considered to be critical for the success of businesses. At Swisshouse (see Appendix Two), a consulate located in both the physical and virtual realm, technology is used to enable interaction to occur between users, regardless of their geographical location. Several spaces such as the non-physical, digital “Idea Market Place”, and the physical “Nomadic Learning Spaces”, “Soft Lounges”, the “Kinetic Arena” or 40 THE DISTRIBUTED WORKPLACE
- 55. Random documents with unrelated content Scribd suggests to you:
- 56. meaningless. Similarly, this view transcends an earlier view of nursing theory that treated the unitary phenomenon of nursing as being composed of concepts that could be studied independently or as "independent and dependent variables." Nursing as caring resists fragmentation of the unitary phenomenon of our discipline. In subsequent chapters, we will more fully explore implications of this view of nursing as a human science discipline and profession.
- 57. REFERENCES Allen, D.G. (1985). Nursing research and social control: Alternative models of science that emphasize understanding and emancipation. Image, 17 (2), 59-64. Allen, D.G. (1987). The social policy statement; A reappraisal. Advances in Nursing Science, 10 (I), 39-48. American Nurses Association. (1980). Nursing: A social policy statement. Kansas City: American Nurses Association. Aykin, A., & Schoenhofer, S. (1990). Caring in nursing: Analysis of extant theory. Nursing Science Quarterly, 4, 149-155. Carper, B. (1978). Fundamental patterns of knowing in nursing. Advances in Nursing Science, 1, 13-24. Chinn, P, & Jacobs, M. (1987). Theory and nursing. St. Louis: Mosby. Cooper, M.C. (1988). Covenantal relationships: Grounding for the nursing ethic. Advances in Nursing Science, 10 (4), 48-59. Fawcett, T. (1989). Analysis and evaluation of conceptual models of nursing. Philadelphia: F.A. Davis. Flexner, A. (1910). Medical education in the United States and Canada. New York: Carnegie Foundation. Gadow, S. (1980). Existential advocacy: Philosophical foundations of nursing. In S. Spicker & Gadow, S., (Eds.), Nursing: Images and Ideals. New York: Springer, pp. 79-101. Gadow, S. (1984). Touch and technology: Two paradigms of patient care. Journal of Reli-gion and Health, 23, 63-69. King, A., & Brownell J. (1976). The curriculum and the disciplines of knowledge. Huntington. NY: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Co.
- 58. Mayeroff, M. (1971). On caring. New York: Harper & Row. Nursing Development Conference Group. (1979). Concept formalization in nursing: Process and product. Boston: Little, Brown. Packard, S.A., & Polifroni, E.C. (1991). The dilemma of nursing science: Current quandaries and lack of direction. Nursing Science Quarterly, 4 (1), 7-13. Parse, R. (1981). Caring from a human science perspective. In M. Leininger (Ed.). Car-ing: An essential human need. Thorofare, NJ: Slack. (Reissued by Wayne State Uni-versity Press, Detroit, 1988). Phenix, P. (1964). Realms of meaning. New York: McGraw Hill. Pribram, K,H. (1971). Languages of the brain: Experimental paradoxes and principles in neuro-psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Roach, S. (1984). Caring: The human mode of being, implications for nursing. Toronto: Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto. Roach, S. (1987). The human act of caring. Ottawa: Canadian Hospital Association. Roach, S. (1992 Revised). The human act of caring. Ottawa: Canadian Hospital Association. Rodgers, B.L. (1991). Deconstructing the dogma in nursing knowledge and practice. Image, 23 (2), 177-81. Silva, M.C. (1983). The American Nurses' Association position statement on nursing and social policy: Philosophical and ethical dimensions. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 8 (2), 147-151. Tillich, P. (1952). The courage to be. New Haven: Yale University Press. Trigg, R. (1973). Reason and commitment. London: Cambridge University Press. Walker, L., & Avant, K. (1988). Strategies for theory construction in nursing. Norwalk, CT: Appleton & Lange. Watson, J. (1988; 1985). Nursing: Human science and human care, a theory of nursing. Nor-walk, CT: Appleton-Century-Crofts. White, C.M. (1984). A critique of the ANA Social Policy Statement ... population and environment focused nursing. Nursing Outlook, 32 (6), 328-331.
- 60. CHAPTER II. — NURSING AS CARING In Chapter 2, we will present the general theory of Nursing as Caring. Here, the unique focus of nursing is posited as nurturing persons living caring and growing in caring. While we will discuss the meaning of that statement of focus in general terms, we will also describe specific concepts inherent in this focus in the context of the general theory. If you recall, in Chapter 1 we discussed the several major assumptions that ground the theory of Nursing as Caring: * Persons are caring by virtue of their humanness * Persons are whole or complete in the moment * Persons live caring, moment to moment * Personhood is a process of living grounded in caring * Personhood is enhanced through participating in nurturing relationships with caring others * Nursing is both a discipline and profession In this and succeeding chapters, we will develop the nursing implications of these assumptions. All persons are caring. This is the fundamental view that grounds the focus of nursing as a discipline and a profession. The unique perspective offered by the theory of Nursing as Caring builds on that view by recognizing personhood as a process of living grounded in caring. This is meant to imply that the fullness of being human is expressed as one lives caring uniquely day to day. The process of living grounded in caring is enhanced through participation in nurturing relationships with caring others, particularly in nursing relationships. Within the theoretical perspective given herein, a further major assumption appears: persons are viewed as already complete and continuously growing in completeness, fully caring and unfolding
- 61. caring possibilities moment-to-moment. Such a view assumes that caring is being lived by each of us, moment to moment. Expressions of self as caring person are complete in the moment as caring possibilities unfold; thus, notwithstanding other life contingencies, one continues to grow in caring competency, in fully expressing self as caring person. To say that one is fully caring in the moment also involves a recognition of the uniqueness of person with each moment presenting new possibilities to know self as caring person. The notion of "in the moment" reflects the idea that competency in knowing self as caring and as living caring grows throughout life. Being complete in the moment also signifies something more: there is no insufficiency, no brokenness, or absence of something. As a result, nursing activities are not directed toward healing in the sense of making whole; from our perspective, wholeness is present and unfolding. There is no lack, failure, or inadequacy which is to be corrected through nursing—persons are whole, complete, and caring. The theory of Nursing as Caring, then, is based on an understanding that the focus of nursing, both as a discipline and as a profession, involves the nurturing of persons living caring and growing in caring. In this statement of focus, we recognize the unique human need to which nursing is the response as a desire to be recognized as caring person and to be supported in caring. This focus also requires that the nurse know the person seeking nursing as caring person and that the nursing action be directed toward nurturing the nursed in their living caring and growing in caring. We will briefly discuss this theory in general terms here and more fully illuminate it in subsequent chapters on nursing practice (Chapter 4), education (Chapter 5), and scholarship (Chapter 6). We will address administration of nursing services and of nursing education programs in Chapters 4 and 5, respectively. Nurturing persons living caring and growing in caring at first glance appears broad and abstract. In some ways, the focus is broad in that it applies to nursing situations in a wide variety of practical settings. On the other hand, it takes on specific and practical
- 62. meaning in the context of individual nursing situations as the nurse attempts to know the nursed as caring person and focuses on nurturing that person as he or she lives and grows in caring. When approaching a situation from this perspective, we understand each person as fundamentally caring, living caring in his or her everyday life. Forms of expressing one's unique ways of living caring are limited only by the imagination. Recognizing unique personal ways of living caring also requires an ethical commitment and knowledge of caring. In our everyday lives, failures to express caring are readily recognized. The ability to articulate instances of noncaring does not seem to take any particular skill. When nursing is called for, however, it is necessary that nurses have the commitment, knowledge, and skill to discover the individual unique caring person to be nursed. For example, the nurse may encounter one who may be described as despairing. Relating to that person as helpless recalls Gadow's (1984) characterization of the philanthropic paradigm which assumes "sufficiency and independence on one side and needy dependence on the other" (p. 68). The relationship grounded in nursing as caring would enable the nurse to connect with the hope that underlies an expression of despair or hopelessness. Personal expressions such as despair, or fear, or anger, for example, are neither ignored nor discounted. Rather, they are understood as the caring value which is in some way present. An honest expression of fear or anger, for example, is also an expression of vulnerability, which expresses courage and humility. We reiterate that our approach is grounded in the fundamental assumption that all persons are caring and the commitment which arises from this basic value position. It is this understanding of person as caring that directs professional nursing decision making and action from the point of view of our Nursing as Caring theory. The nurse enters into the world of the other person with the intention of knowing the other as caring person. It is in knowing the other in their "living caring and growing in caring" that calls for nursing are heard. Of equal importance is our coming to know how the other is living caring in
- 63. the situation and expressing aspirations for growing in caring. The call for nursing is a call for acknowledgement and affirmation of the person living caring in specific ways in this immediate situation. The call for nursing says "know me as caring person now and affirm me." The call for nursing evokes specific caring responses to sustain and enhance the other as they live caring and grow in caring in the situation of concern. This caring nurturance is what we call the nursing response. NURSING SITUATION The nursing situation is a key concept in the theory of Nursing as Caring. Thus, we understand nursing situation as a shared lived experience in which the caring between nurse and nursed enhances personhood. The nursing situation is the locus of all that is known and done in nursing. It is in this context that nursing lives. The content and structure of nursing knowledge are known through the study of the nursing situation. The content of nursing knowledge is generated, developed, conserved, and known through the lived experience of the nursing situation. Nursing situation as a construct is constituted in the mind of the nurse when the nurse conceptualizes or prepares to conceptualize a call for nursing. In other words, when a nurse engages in any situation from a nursing focus, a nursing situation is constituted. In the Scandinavian countries, for instance, all the helping disciplines are called caring sciences. Professions such as medicine, social work, clinical psychology, and pastoral counseling have a caring function; however, caring per se is not their focus. Rather, the focus of each of these professions addresses particular forms of caring or caring in particular ranges of life situations. In nursing situations, the nurse focuses on nurturing person as they live and grow in caring. While caring is not unique to nursing, it is uniquely expressed in nursing. The uniqueness of caring in nursing lies in the intention expressed by the statement of focus. As an expression of nursing, caring is the intentional and authentic presence of the nurse
- 64. with another who is recognized as person living caring and growing in caring. Here, the nurse endeavors to come to know the other as caring person and seeks to understand how that person might be supported, sustained, and strengthened in kis or her unique process of living caring and growing in caring. Again, each person in interaction in the nursing situation is known as caring. Each person grows in caring through interconnectedness with other. Calls for nursing are calls for nurturance through personal expressions of caring, and originate within persons who are living caring in their lives and hold dreams and aspirations of growing in caring. Again, the nurse responds to the call of the caring person, not to some determination of an absence of caring. The contributions of each person in the nursing situation are also directed toward a common purpose, the nurturance of the person in living and growing in caring. In responding to the nursing call, the nurse brings an expert (expert in the sense of deliberately developed) knowledge of what it means to be human, to be caring, as a fully developed commitment to recognizing and nurturing caring in all situations. The nurse enters the other's world in order to know the person as caring. The nurse comes to know how caring is being lived in the moment, discovering unfolding possibilities for growing in caring. This knowing clarifies the nurse's understanding of the call and guides the nursing response. In this context, the general knowledge the nurse brings to the situation is transformed through an understanding of the uniqueness of that particular situation. Every nursing situation is a lived experience involving at least two unique persons. Therefore, each nursing situation differs from any other. The reciprocal nature of the lived experience of the nursing situation requires a personal investment of both caring persons. The initial focus is on knowing persons as caring, both nurse and nursed. The process for knowing self and other as caring involves a constant and mutual unfolding. In order to know the other, the nurse must be willing to risk entering the other's world. For his or her part, other person must be willing to allow the nurse to enter his or her world
- 65. this to happen, the acceptance of trust and strength of courage needed, person in the nursing situation can be awe-inspiring. It is through the openness and willingness in the nursing situation that presence with other occurs. Presence develops as the nurse is willing to risk entering the world of the other and as the other invites the nurse into a special, intimate space. The encountering of the nurse and the nursed gives rise to a phenomenon we call caring between, within which personhood is nurtured. The nurse as caring person is fully present and gives the other time and space to grow. Through presence and intentionality, the nurse is able to know the other in his or her living and growing in caring. This personal knowing enables the nurse to respond to the unique call for nurturing personhood. Of course, responses to nursing calls are as varied as the calls themselves. All truly nursing responses are expressions of caring and are directed toward nurturing persons as they live and grow in the caring in the situation. In the situation, the nurse draws on personal, empirical, and ethical knowing to bring to life the artistry of nursing. When the nurse, as artist, creates a unique approach to care based on the dreams and goals of the one cared for, the moment comes alive with possibilities. Through the aesthetic, the nurse is free to know and express the beauty of the caring moment (Boykin & Schoenhofer, 1991). This full engagement within the nursing situation allows the nurse to truly experience nursing as caring, and to share that experience with the one nursed. In Chapter 1, we noted that each profession arose from some everyday service given by one person or another. Nursing has long been associated with the idea of mothering, when mothering is understood as nurturing the personhood of another. The ideal mother (and father) recognizes the child as caring person, perfect in the moment and unfolding possibilities for becoming. The parent acknowledges and affirms the child as caring person and provides the caring environment that nurtures the child in living and growing in caring. The origins of nursing may well be found in the intimacy of parental caring. The roles of both parent and nurse permit and at
- 66. times even expect that one be involved in the intimacy of the daily life of another. The parent is present in all situations to care for the child. Ideally, parents know the child as eminently worthwhile and caring, despite all the limitations and human frailties. As we recognized in Chapter 1, professions arise from the special needs of everyday situations, and nursing has perhaps emerged in relation to a type of caring that is synonymous with parenthood and friendship. The professional nurse, schooled in the discipline of nursing, brings expert knowledge of human caring to the nursing situation. In the early years of nursing model development, nursing scholars endeavored to articulate their discipline using the perspective of another discipline, for example, medicine, sociology, or psychology. One example of this endeavor is the Roy Adaptation Model, in which scientific assumptions reflect von Bertalanffy's general systems theory and Helson's adaptation level theory (Roy and Andrews, 1991, p. 5). Parson's theory of Social System Analysis is reflected in Johnson's Behavioral System Model for Nursing and Orem's Self-Care Deficit Theory of Nursing (Meleis, 1985). A second trend involved declaring that the uniqueness of nursing was in the way in which it integrated and applied concepts from other disciplines. The emphasis in the 1960s on nursing model development came as an effort to articulate and structure the substance of nursing knowledge. This work was needed to enhance nursing education, previously based on rules of practice, and to provide a foundation for an emerging interest in nursing research. Nursing scholars engaged in model development as an expression of their commitment to the advancement of nursing as a discipline and profession, and we applaud their contributions. It is our view, however, that these early models, grounded in other disciplines, do not directly address the essence of nursing. The development of Nursing as Caring has benefited from these earlier efforts as well as from the work of more recent scholarship that posits caring as the central construct and essence (Leininger, 1988), and the moral ideal of Nursing (Watson, 1985).
- 67. The perspective of nursing presented here is notably different from most conceptual models and general theories in the field. The most radical difference becomes apparent in the form of the call for nursing. Most extant nursing theories, modeled after medicine and other professional fields, present the formal occasion for nursing as problem, need, or deficit (e.g., Self-Care) Deficit Theory [Orem, 1985], Adaptation Nursing [Roy and Andrews, 1991], Behavioral System Model [Johnson, 1980], and [Neuman, 1989.] Such theories then explain how nursing acts to right the wrong, meet the need, or eliminate or ameliorate the deficit. The theory of Nursing as Caring proceeds from a frame of reference based on interconnectedness and collegiality rather than on esoteric knowledge, technical expertise, and disempowering hierarchies. In contrast, our emerging theory of nursing is based on an egalitarian model of helping that bears witness to and celebrates the human person in the fullness of his or her being, rather than on some less-than-whole condition of being.
- 68. REFERENCES Boykin, A., & Schoenhofer, S. (1991). Story as link between nursing practice, ontology, epistemology. Image, 23, 245-248. Gadow, S. (1984). Touch and technology: Two paradigms of patient care. Journal of Religion and Health, 23, 63-69. Johnson, D.E. (1980). The behavioral system model of nursing. In J. Riehl & C. Roy (Eds.), Conceptual models for nursing practice (2nd ed.). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Leininger, M.M. (1988). Leininger's theory of nursing: Cultural care diversity and universality. Nursing Science Quarterly, 1, 152-160. Meleis, A. (1985). Theoretical nursing: Development & progress. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippencott. Neuman, B. (1989). The Neumans systems model. Norwalk, CT: Appleton & Lange. Orem, D.E. (1985). Nursing: Concepts of practice (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. Roy, C., & Andrews, H. (1991). The Roy Adaptation Model: The definitive statement. Norwalk, CT: Appleton & Lange. Watson, J. (1985). Nursing: Human science and human care. A theory of nursing. Norwalk, CT: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
- 69. CHAPTER III — NURSING SITUATION AS THE LOCUS OF NURSING The concept of nursing situation is central to every aspect of the theory of Nursing as Caring. We have claimed that all nursing knowledge resides within the nursing situation (Boykin & Schoenhofer, 1991). The nursing situation is both the repository of nursing knowledge and the context for knowing nursing. The nursing situation is known as shared lived experience in which the caring between the nurse and the one nursed enhances personhood. It is to the nursing situation that the nurse brings self as caring person. It is within the nursing situation that the nurse comes to know the other as caring person, expressing unique ways of living and growing in caring. And it is in the nursing situation that the nurse attends to calls for caring, creating caring responses that nurture personhood. It is within the nursing situation that the nurse comes to know nursing, in the fullness of aesthetic knowing. The nursing situation comes into being when the nurse actualizes a personal and professional commitment to the belief that all persons are caring. It should be recognized that a nurse can engage in many activities in an occupational role that are not necessarily expressions of nursing. When a nurse practices nursing thoughtfully, that nurse is guided by his or her conception of nursing. The concept of nursing formalized in the Nursing as Caring theory is at the very heart of nursing, extending back into the unrecorded beginnings of nursing and forward into the future. Acknowledgement of caring as the core of nursing implies that any nurse practicing nursing thoughtfully is creating and living nursing situations because, whether explicit or tacit, the caring intent of nursing is present.
- 70. Remember that the nursing situation is a construct held by the nurse, any interpersonal experience contains the potential to become a nursing situation. In the formal sense of professional nursing, the nursing situation develops when one person presents self in the role of offering the professional service of nursing and the other presents self in the role of seeking, wanting, or accepting nursing service. The nurse intentionally enters the situation for the purpose of coming to know the other as caring person. The nurse is also allowing self to be known as caring person. Authentic presence, like most human capacities, is inherent and can be more fully developed through intention and deliberate effort. Authentic presence may be understood simply as one's intentionally being there with another in the fullness of one's personhood. Caring communicated through authentic presence is the initiating and sustaining medium of nursing within the nursing situation. The nurse, with developed authentic presence and open to knowing the other as caring, begins to understand the other's call for nursing. A call for nursing is a call for specific forms of caring that acknowledge, affirm, and sustain the other as they strive to live caring uniquely. We must remember as well that calls for nursing originate within the unique relationship of the nursing situation. As the situation ensues, the call for nursing clarifies. The nurse comes to know the one nursed more and more deeply and to understand more fully the unique meaning of the person's caring ways and aspirations for growing in caring. It is in this understanding that the call for nursing is known as a specific situated expression of caring and a call for explicit caring response. The nursing response of caring is also uniquely lived within each nursing situation. In the nursing situation, the call of the nursed is a personal "reaching out" to a hoped-for other. The nursed calls forth the nurse's personal caring response. While the range and scope of human caring expression can and must be studied, the caring response called forth in each nursing situation is created for that moment. The nurse responds to each call for nursing in a way that
- 71. uniquely represents the fullness (wholeness) of the nurse. How I might respond to such a call would and should reflect my unique living of caring as person and nurse. Each response to a particular nursing situation would be slightly different and would portray the beauty of the nurse as person. The nursing situation is a shared lived experience. The nurse joins in the life process of the person nursed and brings his or her life process to the relationship as well. In the nursing situation, there is caring between the participants. Further, the experience of the caring within the nursing situation enhances personhood, the process of living grounded in caring. Each of these components of the construct of the nursing situation raises questions for immediate and continuing discussion. How can an unconscious patient be a participant in a nursing situation? Can "postmortem care" be considered nursing? How can the nurse know that the other is truly open to nursing—can the nurse impose self into the world of the other? What about an unrepentant child rapist or a person responsible for genocide, can we say that person is caring, and if not, can we nurse them? Does the nurse have to like the person being nursed? Does the nurse seek enhancement of personhood in the nursing situation? If so, might the goals of the nurse be imposed on the one nursed? If the nurse gains from the nursing situation, isn't that unprofessional? In part, these legitimate questions raise larger issues about the uniqueness and scope of nursing as a discipline and professional service in society. Certainly the study of these questions adds clarity to the purpose of nursing actions. To nurse, situations in a general sense are transcended and transformed When they are conceptualized as nursing situations. From the perspective of the Nursing as Caring theory, the study of these questions would require that the nurse transcend social or other situational contexts and live out a commitment to nurture the person in the nursing situation as they live and grow in caring. Persons with altered levels of consciousness, measured on normative scales developed for medical science purposes, can and
- 72. do participate in nursing situations. Nurses committed to knowing the unconscious as caring person can and do describe their ways of expressing caring and aspirations for growing in caring. Nurses speak of the post-anesthesia patient as living hope in their struggle to emerge from the deadening effects of the anesthesia; as living honestly in fretful, fearful thrashing. Nurses help these persons sustain hope and extend honesty through their care. The profoundly mentally disabled child lives humility moment-to-moment and calls forth caring responses to validate and nurture that beautiful humility. Nurses speak of caring for their deceased patients as nursing those who have gone and are still in some way present. The nurse, connected in oneness with the one known and nursed, holds hope for the other as the other's expression of hopefulness lives on in the consciousness of the nurse. Thus, a sense of connectedness does not dissipate when physical presence ends, but remains an active part of the nurse's experience. Nursing another is a service of caring, communicated through authentic presence. Nursing another means living out a commitment to knowing the other as caring person and responding to the caring other as someone of value (Boykin & Schoenhofer, 1990, 1991). In its fullest sense, nursing cannot be rendered impersonally, but must be offered in a spirit of being connected in oneness. "To care for" seems to require that the caregiver see oneself as caring person reflected in the other (Watson, 1987). The theoretical perspective of Nursing as Caring is grounded in the belief that caring is the human mode of being (Roach, 1984). When a person is judged by social standards to be deviant and even evil, however, it is difficult to summon caring. This points to the contribution nursing is called upon to make in society. When we speak of nursing's contribution here, we are invoking earlier discussions of discipline and profession. Each discipline and profession illuminates a special aspect of person —in effect, what it means to be human. The light that nursing shines on the world of person is knowledge of person as caring, so that the particular contribution of nursing is to illuminate the person as caring, living caring uniquely in situation and growing in caring. In
- 73. nursing, practiced within the context of Nursing as Caring, the person is taken at face value as caring and never needs to prove him or herself as caring. The nurse, practicing within the context of Nursing as Caring, is skilled at recognizing and affirming caring in self and others. Being caring, that is, living one's commitment to this value "important-in-self" (Roach, 1984), fuels the nurse's growing in caring and enables the nurse I turn to nurture others in their living and growing in caring. The values and assumptions of nursing as caring can assist the nurse to engage fully in nursing situations with persons in whom caring is difficult to discover. Nursing knowledge is discovered and tested in the ongoing nursing situations. Once experienced, nursing situations can be made available for living anew, with new discovery and testing. Aesthetic representation of nursing situations brings the lived experience into the realm of new experience. Thus, the knowledge of nursing can be made available for further study. Re-presentation of nursing situations can occur through the medium of nursing stories, poetry, painting, sculpture, and other art forms (Schoenhofer, 1989). Aesthetic re-presentation conserves the epistemic integrity of nursing while permitting full appreciation of the singularity of any one nursing situation (Boykin & Schoenhofer, 1991). Here, then, is one nurse's story of a shared lived experience in which the caring between nurse and the one nursed enhanced personhood. This story is offered as an example of nursing situation, re-presented as an open text, available for continuing participation by all who wish to enter into this shared lived experience of nursing. In fact, we invite the reader to enter into this nursing situation, which may then be used in classroom or conference settings to stimulate general or specific inquiry and dialogue. CONNECTIONS One night as I listened to the change of shift report, I remember the strange feeling in the pit of my stomach when the evening nurse reviewed the lab tests on Tracy P Tall, strawberry-blonde and freckle-faced, Tracy was struggling with the everyday problems of adolescence and
- 74. fighting a losing battle against leukemia. Tracy rarely had visitors. As I talked with Tracy this night I felt resentment from her toward her mother, and I experienced a sense of urgency that her mother be with her. With Tracy's permission I called her mother and told her that Tracy needed her that night. I learned that she was a single mother with two other small children, and that she lived several hours from the hospital. When she arrived at the hospital, distance and silence prevailed. With encouragement, the mother sat close to Tracy and I sat on the other side, stroking Tracy's arm. I left the room to make rounds and upon return found Mrs. P. still sitting on the edge of the bed fighting to stay awake. I gently asked Tracy if we could lie on the bed with her. She nodded. The three of us lay there for a period of time and I then left the room. Later, when I returned, I found Tracy wrapped in her mothers arms. Her mothers eyes met mine as she whispered "she's gone." And then, "please don't take her yet." I left the room and closed the door quietly behind me. It was just after 6 o'clock when I slipped back into the room just as the early morning light was coming through the window. "Mrs. P," I reached out and touched her arm. She raised her tear-streaked face to look at me. "It's time," I said and waited. When she was ready, I helped her off the bed and held her in my arms for a few moments. We cried together. "Thank you, nurse," she said as she looked into my eyes and pressed my hand between hers. Then she turned and walked away. The tears continued down my cheeks as I followed her to the door and watched her disappear down the hall. Gayle Maxwell (1990) This nursing situation is replete with possibilities for nurses, and others, to understand nursing as nurturing persons living caring and growing in caring. A dialogue ensues on the nursing situation that allows participants an opportunity to experience both resonance and uniqueness as personal and shared understandings emerge. As the reader enters into the text, the nursing situation is experienced anew, now within the presence of two nurses, not one. Though intentionally entering the situation, the second nurse experiences d affirms being connected in oneness with both nurse and nursed as caring lived in the moment. Gayle entered into Tracy's world that night open to hearing a special call. Gayle's openness was partly a reflection of her use of the empirical pathway of knowing, the data given in report, the comparison of empirical observations against biological, psychological, developmental, and social norms. Before discussing our understanding of Gayle's response from the theoretical per- perspective represented, it might be helpful to compare how the call for nursing may have been interpreted if approached, for example,
- 75. from a psychological framework. If the nurse responded from a psychological framework, the problem identified would perhaps be conceptualized as denial on the part of Tracy's mother. It could be assumed that Tracy's mother was avoiding the reality of the impending death of her daughter. Here, the nursing goal would be assist the mother in dealing with her denial by facilitating grieving. Denial is only one psychological concept that could be applied in this situation; avoidance, anxiety, and loss are others. When nursing care is based on a psychological framework, however, the central theme of care is likely to be deemphasized in favor of a problem-oriented approach. The perspective offered by a normative discipline requires a reliance on empirical knowing. Using only the empirical pathway of knowing, the richness of nursing is lost. Gayle's personal knowing, her intuition, however, was the pathway that illuminated the appreciation of this situation and prompted her acknowledgement of a call. She heard Tracy's call for intimacy, comfort, and protection of her mother's presence as she (Tracy) summoned courage and hope for her journey. Gayle intuitively knew that the specific caring being called forth was the caring of a mother. Gayle's caring response also took the form of the courageous acknowledgement of a call for nursing that would be difficult to sub- stantiate empirically. Beyond telephoning Tracy's mother, Gayle continued her nursing effort to answer Tracy's call for the presence of a mother as she supported Mrs. P. living her interconnectedness, in being with Tracy. Gayle heard Mrs. P.'s calls for knowing, knowing what to do and knowing that it would be right to do it, for the courage to be with her daughter in this new difficult passage. Her response of showing the way reflects hope and humility. The caring between the nurse and the ones nursed enhanced the personhood of all three, as each grew in caring ways. It is possible that the caring between the original participants in the nursing situation and those of us who are participating through engagement with the text continues to enhance personhood.
- 77. REFERENCES Boykin, A., & Schoenhofer, S. (1991). Story as link between nursing practice, ontology, epistemology. Image, 23, 245-248. Boykin, A., & Schoenhofer, S. (1990). Caring in nursing: Analysis of extant theory. Nursing Science Quarterly, 4, 149-155. Maxwell, G. (1990). Connections. Nightingale Songs, 1 (1). P.O. Box 057563, West Palm Beach, FL 33405. Paterson, J., & Zderad, L. (1988). Humanistic nursing. New York: National League for Nursing Press. Roach, S. (1984). Caring: The human mode of being, implications for nursing. Toronto: Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto. (Perspectives in Caring Monograph 1). Schoenhofer, S. (1989). Love, beauty and truth: Fundamental nursing values. Journal of Nursing Education, 28 (8), 382-384. Watson, J. (1987). Nursing on the caring edge; Metaphorical vignettes. Advances in Nursing Science, 10, 10-18.
- 78. CHAPTER IV. — IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE AND NURSING SERVICE ADMINISTRATION Foundations for practice of the Nursing as Caring theory rest on the nurse coming to know self as caring person in ever deepening and broadening dimensions. While all nurses may have (or at least, may have had) a sense of self as caring person, practicing within this theoretical framework requires a deliberate commitment to developing this knowledge. In many settings where nurses find themselves practicing, there is little in the environment to support a commitment to ongoing development of a sense of self as caring person. In fact, many practice environments seem to support knowing self only as instrument, self as technology. When one perceives of one's "nursing self" as a depersonalized, disembodied tool, nursing tends to lose its flavor and the devoted commitment to nursing burns out. So how to sustain and actualize this fundamental commitment must be a point of serious study for the nurse who desires to practice nursing as caring. Mayeroff's (1971) caring ingredients are useful tools to assist the nurse in developing an ever-present awareness of self as caring person. Taking note of personal patterns of expressing hope, honesty, courage, and the other ingredients is a good starting place. Understanding the meaning of living caring in one's own life is an important base for practicing nursing as caring. In reflecting on a particular lived experience of caring, the nurse can seek to understand the ways in which caring contributed freedom within the situation—freedom to be, freedom to choose, and freedom to unfold. Because nursing is a way of living caring in the world, the nurse can turn his or her attention to personal patterns of nursing as
- 79. expressions of caring. As self understanding as caring person accrues, the nurse sometimes realizes that such self-awareness was there all along—it was only waiting to be discovered. Because many nurses were trained to overlook their caring ways instead of attending to them, nurses may now need something similar to, or indeed "sensitivity training" itself, to rediscover and reown the possibilities of self as caring person, possibilities specific to nursing as a profession and a discipline. This redirection of focus away from caring may have been related to several historical social movements. First, of course, is the move toward science, which for nursing meant that for a period of several decades nursing education seemed to reject, either partially or totally, the art of nursing in order to discover a scientific base for practice. Another related process, the technology movement, led nurses to understand care as a series of sequential actions designed to accomplish a specifiable end. In this context, nursing care became synonymous with managing available technologies. Third, there existed in the history of nursing education an era(s) in which nurses were taught to treat symptoms patients expressed, rather than to care for the person. Fourth, maintaining a professional distance was a hallmark of professionalism. Now, and rightly so, the tide has turned. A reawakening of knowing self as caring person becomes paramount so that the profession of nursing returns caring to the immediacy of the nursing situation. With personal awareness and reflection, developed knowledge of caring also arrives through empirical, ethical, and aesthetic modes of knowing. There is a growing body of literature in nursing that both attests to that fact and to the process of how nurses communicate caring in practice (e.g., Riemen, I 986a, 1986b; Knowlden, 1986; Swanson-Kauffman, 1986a, 1986b; Swanson, 1990; Kahn and Steeves, 1988). Given the various perspectives offered by the authors just mentioned, the individual nurse can enhance his or her ethical self-development as a caring person by cultivating the practice of weighing the various meanings of caring now extant in actual practice situations and then by making choices to express caring creatively. In pursuit of this end, aesthetic knowing often
- 80. subsumes and transcends other forms of knowing and thus may offer the richest mode of knowing caring. Appreciating structure, form, harmony, and complementarity across a range of situated caring expressions enhances knowing self and other as caring persons. Knowing self as caring enhances knowing of the other as caring. Knowing other as caring contributes to our discovery of caring self. Without knowing the other as caring person, there can be no true nursing. Living a commitment to nursing as caring can be a tremendous challenge when nurses are asked to care for someone who makes it difficult to care. In effect, it is impossible to avoid the issue of "liking" or "disliking" the patient. Is it possible to truly care for someone if the nurse doesn't like him or her? In this light, another question arises: How can 1 enter the world of another who repulses me? Am I expected to pretend that this person (the patient) has not treated others inhumanely (if that is the case)? Must I ignore the reality of the other's hatefulness toward me (if such exists)? These are questions that come from the human heart. They express legitimate human issues that present themselves regularly in nursing situations. The commitment of the nurse practicing nursing as caring is to nurture persons living caring and growing in caring. Again, this implies that the nurse come to know the other as caring person in the moment. "Difficult to care" situations are those that demonstrate the extent of knowledge and commitment needed to nurse effectively. An everyday understanding of the meaning of caring is obviously inadequate when the nurse is presented with someone for whom it is difficult to care. In these extreme (though not unusual) situations, a task-oriented, non discipline-based concept of nursing may be adequate to assure the completion of certain treatment and surveillance techniques. Still, in our eyes that is an insufficient response—it certainly is not the nursing we advocate. The theory, Nursing as Caring, calls upon the nurse to reach deep within a well- developed knowledge base that has been structured using all available patterns of knowing, grounded in the obligations inherent
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