A Socio-Technical Perspective on the Application of Green Ergonomics to Open-Plan Offices: A Review of the Literature and Recommendations for Future Research

Abstract

Open-plan office (OPO) layouts emerged to allow organizations to adapt to changing workplace demands. We explore the potential for OPOs to provide such adaptive capacity to respond to two contemporary issues for organizations: the chronic challenge of environmental sustainability, and the acute challenges emerging from the great COVID-19 homeworking experiment. We apply a socio-technical systems perspective and green ergonomics principles to investigate the relationship between an OPO environment and the occupants working within it. In doing so, we consider relevant technical and human factors, such as green technology and employee green behavior. We also consider how a green OPO might provide non-carbon benefits such as improving occupant well-being and supporting the emergence of a green organizational culture. Our investigation highlights several avenues through which an OPO designed with green ergonomic principles could benefit occupants, the organizations they work for, and the natural environment of which they are a part and on which they depend. We find reason to suspect that green OPOs could play an important role in sustainable development; and offer a research agenda to help determine whether it is true that OPOs can, indeed, exemplify how “going green” may be good for business.

Crafting Green Culture Around the Components and Challenges in the Higher Education Institutes in Pakistan

“…The literature has discussed green culture with the synonymous terms of organizational green culture (Qu et al, 2021), environment or eco-friendly culture (Chen, 2011), green organizational culture (Norton et al, 2021), proenvironmental culture or climate (Tahir et al, 2019), and green work climate (Norton et al, 2014). Despite of the diversity in terms, the concept of green culture has been explained in the literature using Schein's definition of organizational culture (Gürlek & Tuna, 2018;Norton et al, 2021;Tahir et al, 2019).…”

“…The literature has discussed green culture with the synonymous terms of organizational green culture (Qu et al, 2021), environment or eco-friendly culture (Chen, 2011), green organizational culture (Norton et al, 2021), proenvironmental culture or climate (Tahir et al, 2019), and green work climate (Norton et al, 2014). Despite of the diversity in terms, the concept of green culture has been explained in the literature using Schein's definition of organizational culture (Gürlek & Tuna, 2018;Norton et al, 2021;Tahir et al, 2019). According to Schein (2017), the culture of an organization is a set of shared assumptions learned by a group of organizational members over time while solving problems of external adaptation and internal integration and are passed on to the new members of the group over years.…”

“…Notably, green culture is beyond firm's eco-friendly initiatives and efforts to reduce pollution (Pan et al, 2022). Researchers including Norton et al (2021) have studied the organizational green culture in the context of green ergonomics for understanding relationship between office layout and employee well-being and performance. Pan et al (2022) established empirical evidence for interplay among green culture and CSR in cultivating proenvironmental behavior among employees beyond the organizational setting.…”

“…However, there is a need to build a theoretical connection between the two. A particular notion of this article is to establish an understanding of the substantial role of green culture in achieving the ILO decent work agenda through creating opportunities for respectable employment (ILO, 2012), better working conditions (Duffy et al, 2016;Hughes et al, 2021), improved health and well-being (Duffy et al, 2016;Norton et al, 2021) and cultivating environmental consciousness among employees (Lasrado & Zakaria, 2020).…”

Who needs nature? The influence of employee speciesism on nature-based need satisfaction and subsequent work behavior.

“…As Norton et al note, biophilic work design involves the “interaction between people and their environment” (2021, p. 13), suggesting that the effects of nature exposure at work may be shaped by employee differences in how they view natural elements (Klotz & Bolino, 2021). However, like other organizational trends that became widespread before being subject to scholarly scrutiny, such as open office designs (Ashkanasy et al, 2014; Norton et al, 2021), the study of employee exposure to nature has proceeded largely without exploring boundary conditions of its effects (Gilbert et al, 2018). Given that nature is suffused with living organisms, employees’ feelings—or prejudice—toward other forms of life likely influence the need-satisfying effects of nature exposure at work (Dhont et al, 2019).…”