The structure of office workers' experience of organizational environments

In most developed Western nations the majority of employees are now office based. Despite this there is little place given to the physical environment of the office in organizational theory. Most research in the area is concerned with individual aspects of the environment such as lighting. There are few studies which have attempted to uncover the basic underlying dimensions or facets of workers' experience and evaluation of their offices. The limitations of those studies are discussed, and the criticisms of them addressed in the design of the present work. Using the approach of facet theory, four facets of worker experience are proposed: level, organizational unit, referent and focus. An office evaluation questionnaire was developed using the proposed facets. A survey of 215 employees in four organizations was carried out. The data were analysed using the MDS technique of smallest space analysis. The results support the proposed facets. They also show that central to people's evaluations are the affective rather than the instrumental functions of the office environment.