Identifying the Key Questions
The topic of this assignment is about the new changes that are taking place in the social context and the organizations. The real world organizations in the 21st century are going through a radical change relating to the changing scenario that is taking over the business organizations. One of the most important aspects of this change revolves around the workspace changes in the offices. This is the main focal point of the discussion as per the provided article. The given article deals about the workspace changes in different organizations in the world. The biggest organizations or companies nowadays do not look upon the offices as the only place where the working proceedings can take place. In this modern context, the theme is to provide more space to the workers to enhance their skills and help them to bring out their credentials. The lesser the working space should be, the lesser the productivity would cost. According to the critics, workspace has a lot to do with the performance and the productivity of the organization. The motive of this discussion is to present an overview on the working spaces of organizations; a literature review has to be conducted after identifying the key questions in the given article.
The primary aim of the assignment is to understand the key questions that are associated with the article. These key questions have to be discussed thoroughly and their impacts should be evaluated through the literature review. The workspaces in the organizations need to be modified in the recent history. These key questions address the main purpose of this article. Here in this assignment, there can be some questions on the impact of bigger workspaces and its impact on the current working environments and its implementations. The key questions that can be identified from the given article are-
Importance of co-working in the organizations
Importance of more open spaces in the offices
Interacting with more people to increase communication
These are the questions that have to be focused on to conduct the literature review. The chosen questions have a direct relation, or in other words, they are co-related with the growth of the companies or the organizations.
In this part, a short literature review is to be conducted to see the impact of workspace in the growth of the organizations.
Digital communication or communication through using digital equipments has become an unavoidable phenomenon of the modern world (Lee and Messerschmitt 2012). A striking difference can be seen in the modern day offices that the use of telephones has been an outdated idea. Almost all the sectors from the real estates to the accounting firms, hospitals to other sectors have adopted the digital communication systems. It makes faster communications within a very short span of time. In the olden days, the structure of the offices comprised of the most areas being surrounded cubicles and some percentage was an open area. These surrounded cubicles contained phones and the use of digital communication through laptops and other devices was very low. The situations have changed and the total area of the surrounding area has been cut down to give access to the devices like laptops or computers by the employees. An effective part of this implementation is that the entire connectivity of the devices would be done through one central communication system that would connect all the PCs, laptops, printing machines, fax machines and others. These would be connected through faster LAN systems and probably Wi-Fi systems. The business strategies have evolved a lot in the last decade. It has become faster and the people are connected with each other very swiftly. The business partners or the clients can be connected o each other in a few seconds and one simple work can be completed within a very short time. This is unlike the past time when a work or a business assignment took several days to be completed. The result of this is the increase in productivity of the companies because the more the clients can work in the offices through digital communications, the more work can be done in shorter periods and the impact will be a positive one on the organizations. Another important aspect of installing digital communication is the advantage of storage of data in the system. Previously, the crucial data was stored manually. The use of digital communication helps to store the data in the hard disk and it stays forever if not voluntarily deleted. It is a great advantage for them.
Literature Review
The habit of co-working is a very healthy thing in the workplaces nowadays. The business environment can go through a big change in the context of the co-working (Baim 2013). Co-working can make the workers better team members. In the habit of co-working, very frequently, people of different skills, companies have to work together. There is a very little scope for internal politics or competition between each other. As a result, the workers can grow a relation of support between them as they do not have to do the same kind of works. This always makes the working environment more interesting than ever. Co-working is very much encouraging because in a co-working atmosphere, the employees become from various backgrounds and thus they can contribute to the working environments in different ways. This caters to the gathering of various kinds of knowledge in the same place. The co-workers can provide different skill sets to the community members. As a matter of fact, people who work together feel to be a member of the same community and have better team skills. The team members can help each other in completing various jobs. The studies have found that if the offices have more space, the employees will feel free to express themselves and they will work more efficiently and their performance graph will surely go upwards. This will directly impact the productivity of the organization. One way to free the space in the office is to eradicate the idea of ‘one employee, one desk’. It takes a lot of money to provide personalized cubicles or desks for the employees. On the other hand, if the arrangements can be done to provide a space for some of the employees to sit together, it would be much affordable. The employees can sit in a wide space together and discuss the working matters. This will be very helpful for the organization and the jealousy, competition between the employees will go down, building a friendly atmosphere between them.
Another important aspect in the new trends of business environments is the importance of more open spaces in the offices. The traditional lay out of the offices have begun to change in the recent times. In the olden times when the staff used to sit in separated cabins, the supervisors had to go to each staff and convey important messages. In the contemporary context, the newer lay outs have to be implemented for various reasons. In the idea of open space offices, there are no separating shelves or cubicles to separate the employees and they have to sit together side by side. There are some immediate advantages of introducing open space offices. It reduces cost of money and it saves a lot of space in the rooms. The employees are able to adapt to the changes very easily. There is an added advantage for the supervisors that they can supervise all the staffs within a single room and they do not have to roam about different rooms (Harris 2015). It will be easier for the supervisors to motivate the staff within a same team. The team members can influence each other and this holds a good impact on the performance of the team that yields good productivity (Salas et al. 2015). This leads to a larger impact on the leadership skills as the leaders have to control the team members of different abilities and skills. Their leadership skills can be enhanced through the implication of open office as well (Kim and de Rear 2013).
The world today has become a global village. No distance is supposed to be far enough as there are a huge range of communicative devices and vehicles to reach the desired destinations. Social media is a very helpful platform to achieve the targets of the organizations. Multinational companies have to spread their business throughout the world (Cavusgil et al. 2014). Their target markets are not confined only within the local markets only or the local customers only. In the recent times, the flourishing of an organization depends on how much they have catered to attract the global customers. It was not easy to communicate the people of the other countries in the olden times because there was no media or proper marketing strategies to attract the people. In order to attract the people of foreign countries, one has to interact with them at first. The social media platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram and other platforms help to come close and discuss about the various strategies and implement them. The business tycoons also take the help of the social media to get in touch with each other and communicate with each other. This creates a good working atmosphere and a collaborating ambience so that both the parties are benefitted with better business results (Aral, Dellarocas and Godes 2013). In the given article, the chosen questions are given a brief overview and in this literature review, the practical implications and its results have been explained briefly.
Conclusion
After a brief discussion on the given topics and the chosen questions, the study of the article, it can be concluded that the business environments are changing very rapidly in this world. Some topics have been sketched out to be discussed. The matter of discussion was chosen after going through the article. The business environments needed to be changed thoroughly to achieve better results in this fast changing world. The chosen topics have been discussed thoroughly with the practical implications in the social context. The roles of marketers and the organizational leaders have been discussed as well to discuss the scenario. The need of open offices and the need of co-working between the employees have been discussed and it should be implemented in no time to achieve the targets and gain a better business environment. The outlook of the society needs to be changed to present a new, updated world.
References
Aral, S., Dellarocas, C. and Godes, D., 2013. Introduction to the special issue—social media and business transformation: a framework for research. Information Systems Research, 24(1), pp.3-13.
Baim, C., 2013. Mindful Co-working: Be Confident, Happy and Productive in Your Working Relationships. Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Cavusgil, S.T., Knight, G., Riesenberger, J.R., Rammal, H.G. and Rose, E.L., 2014. International business. Pearson Australia.
Harris, R., 2015. The changing nature of the workplace and the future of office space. Journal of Property Investment & Finance, 33(5), pp.424-435.
Kim, J. and de Dear, R., 2013. Workspace satisfaction: The privacy-communication trade-off in open-plan offices. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 36, pp.18-26.
Lee, E.A. and Messerschmitt, D.G., 2012. Digital communication. Springer Science & Business Media
Salas, E., Shuffler, M.L., Thayer, A.L., Bedwell, W.L. and Lazzara, E.H., 2015. Understanding and improving teamwork in organizations: A scientifically based practical guide. Human Resource Management, 54(4), pp.599-622.