The relation between office type and workplace conflict: A gender and noise perspective

Accepted Manuscript The office type’s impact on workplace conflicts: A gender and noise perspective Christina Bodin Danielsson, PhD Architecture, Lennart Bodin, PhD, Professor in statistics, Cornelia Wulff, PhD, psychology, Töres Theorell, PhD Medicine, Professor Emeritus PII:

S0272-4944(15)00033-X

DOI:

10.1016/j.jenvp.2015.04.004

Reference:

YJEVP 938

To appear in:

Journal of Environmental Psychology

Received Date: 29 April 2014 Revised Date:

28 January 2015

Accepted Date: 15 April 2015

Please cite this article as: Danielsson, C.B., Bodin, L., Wulff, C., Theorell, T., The office type’s impact on workplace conflicts: A gender and noise perspective, Journal of Environmental Psychology (2015), doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2015.04.004. This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.

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The office type’s impact on workplace conflicts: A gender and noise perspective (new title)

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Authors: Christina Bodin Danielsson*, PhD Architecture The Stress Research Institute, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden

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School of Architecture & Built Environment, The Royal Institute of Technology, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden Phone: +46 73 255 78 58/+46 8 16 20 00, E-mail: christina.bodin.danielsson@ su.se

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Lennart Bodin, PhD, Professor in statistics, Karolinska Institutet Intervention & Implementation Research, Institute of Environmental Medicine Nobels väg 13, SE-17177 Stockholm, Sweden Phone: +46 8 524 83 257 E-mail: [email protected]

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Cornelia Wulff, PhD, psychology Mälardalen University, HVV Box 883 SE-721 23 Västerås, Sweden E-mail: [email protected]

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The Psychology Department, Stockholm University, Phone: +46 73 964 48 14 SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden

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Töres Theorell, PhD Medicine, Professor Emeritus, The Stress Research Institute, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden Phone: +46 70 5432325 Fax: +46 8 789 553 00 E-mail: [email protected]

* Corresponding author. E-mail:

[email protected]; [email protected] [email protected]

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT The relation between office type and workplace conflict: A gender and noise perspective

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Abstract This exploratory study aimed to investigate the impact of the office design on workplace conflicts, with a special attention to noise in the office. A gender perspective was applied. The sample consisted of 5,229 employees from the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health 2010 (SLOSH), working in

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different office types. In the multivariate analysis office type was used as the explanatory variable with adjustments for age, supervisory position and labour market sector. Analysis stratified for gender was used.

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Among women a significant impact of office type per se on workplace conflicts was found, but not among men. For women several office types differed significantly from the cell-office with regard to prevalence of conflicts during the past two years, but for men only the combi-office differed from the cell-office. Noise had an impact on workplace conflicts, but is not the only explanatory factor since the effect of office type

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remained also after adjustment for noise in multivariate analyses. Other environmental factors inherent in the office type might thus explain the occurrence of conflicts.

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sensitivity

office type; workplace conflict; noise; gender; interpersonal relationships, environmental

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Key terms:

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 1.

Introduction Conflict is a natural outcome of human interaction, and as such it is common at our workplaces. It arises

in situations where individuals, groups, or organizations are striving to attain their objectives, and these are incompatible or inconsistent to one another. This is because they may desire a similar resource that is in short

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supply, have different behavioural preferences regarding joint actions or that they have different attitudes, values, beliefs and skills (Rahim, 2011). Conflicts in organizations can be categorized as either affective or substantive conflicts (Guetzkow & Gyr, 1954). A further division of workplace conflicts by Rahim (1985) includes: 1) intrapersonal conflicts, 2) interpersonal conflicts, 3) within (work) group and 4) between (work)

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groups.

Moderate levels of conflicts are regarded as healthy and dynamic for the work culture. Whether

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conflicts will have positive or negative outcomes depends on the type of conflict. It has e.g. been found that both relationship conflicts (problems with the personalities of co-workers) and process conflicts (about assignments of duties or resources) in work teams can be detrimental to performance (Jehn, 1997). The same study suggests that groups with norms that accept task but not relationship conflicts are the most effective

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ones. Other studies have also found that task-related conflicts can highlight various viewpoints and creative alternatives, thus improving the organization's performance and growth (e.g., Eisenhardt & Schoonhoven, 1990).

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However, unsolved workplace conflicts are detrimental for all parties. From an individual perspective workplace conflicts are often negative since it causes people to be negative, irritable, suspicious, and

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resentful (Jehn, 1997). Smaller conflicts may cause increased levels of strain (Fuller et al., 2003), while more stressful events such as verbal aggressions from supervisors, co-workers and customers are related to emotional exhaustion (Grandey, Kern, & Frone, 2007). Unsolved conflicts have negative health consequences, e.g. increased risk of work disability (Appelberg, Romanov, Honkasalo, Heikkilä, & Koskenvuo, 1996), poor self-rated health (Oxenstierna et al., 2011), fatigue (Bültmann, Kant, van den Brandt, & Kasl, 2002) and stress. Unsolved conflicts are also costly at an organizational and societal level. Extreme workplace conflicts, such as harassments and bullying may cause, besides suffering and bad feelings against work, withdrawal and resignation from the organization (D'Cruz & Noronha, 2010). Also smaller problems may trigger decisions to report sick (Hultin et al., 2011) and lead to dysfunctional groups (Ross, 1989). Conflicts make organizational members focus on reducing threats, increasing power, and building of cohesive groups instead of focusing on work, with negative effects on performance, job

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover and turnover intentions (e.g., Jehn, 1997; Jha & Jha, 2010; Maertz & Kmitta, 2012). Workplace conflicts not only have serious consequences at an individual, organizational and societal level, they are also common. A Finnish study found e.g. that 50 percent of the respondents had been in

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workplace conflicts with co-workers and 60 percent with supervisors (Appelberg, 1996). Another more recent national survey conducted by the Swedish Work Environment Authority shows that twelve months prior to the survey 26 percent of the workforce had conflicts with supervisors and 32 percent with coworkers (Work Environment Statistics, 2012). It was also found that conflicts with co-workers were more

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frequent than conflicts with supervisors, and that men had more conflicts than women. The social status at work appears to be important for workplace conflicts, with more conflicts among employees in higher status

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(Appelberg, 1996).

1.1 Workplace conditions

The predominant explanation for workplace conflicts has been individual, psychological factors,

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although organizational factors also may generate workplace conflicts (Oxenstierna et al., 2011). Organizational risk factors are e.g. lack of resources, categorization, role ambiguity, change, poor physical environment, stress and overtime work (e.g., Meyer, Allen, & Smith, 1993), whereas preventive factors are

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social support from colleagues and supervisors and career advancement opportunities (De Raeve, Jansen, van den Brandt, Vasse, & Kant, 2008). These factors are related to organizational culture and organizational

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climate, which describe the characteristics of an organization. The former, organizational climate, develops more slowly in contrast to organizational climate that both forms and alters more rapidly (Moran & Wolkwein, 1992).

1.2. Stressors in the offices Beside psychosocial or organizational factors, a workplace also includes physical environmental factors. The environmental factors often classified as stressors in open plan offices are privacy (e.g., Kim & de Dear, 2013), noise (e.g., Jahncke et al. 2011), and crowding (de Croon, Sluiter, Kuijer, & Frings-Dresen, 2005). Privacy is a central concept in understanding the relationship between human behaviour and environment (Oseland & Donald, 1993). Its major function is to serve the individual’s self-identity (Altman, 1975), thus

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT also classified as a copying strategy that helps individuals to control and handle environmental stress. Privacy has many definitions. Of these, Sundstrom’s definition in the two sub-categories − acoustical and visual privacy − is useful in an office context (Sundstrom, 1986). Acoustic privacy includes both speech privacy and isolation from noise, whereas visual privacy includes isolation from unwanted observation and

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visual stimuli. Crowding, on the other hand, is a psychological state of interference related to personal control. It is a result of high density and lack of space, but also of high levels of stimulation or interaction and non-desired interference with activities (Stokols, 1972). Crowding has negative physiological and behavioural stress symptoms, e.g. increased stress levels and high blood pressure, social withdrawal,

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decreased satisfaction, turnover intentions and low task performance (e.g., Charles & Veitch, 2002; Duval, Charles, & Veitch, 2002; Evans, 1979; Oldham, 1988; Oldham & Rotchford, 1983). Noise finally, defined as

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unwanted sound, being the major stressor in open office layout, causes most complaints (Evans & Johnson, 2000). It may lead to discomfort and stress in work environments, which in situations of overload may add to job related stress (Karasek & Theorell, 1990). Noise correlates negatively with both environmental satisfaction (Bodin Danielsson & Bodin, 2009; Nemecek & Grandjean, 1973) and job satisfaction

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(Sundstrom, Town, Rice, Osborn, & Brill, 1994) as well as cognitive performance (Jahncke et al., 2011). Gender differences of various types have been established. With regard to health, women and men are exposed to different risk factors (e.g., Kivimäki et al., 2007; Krantz, 2003),and women are more stressed

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and have less good health (e.g., Lundberg, 2005), and higher sickness absenteeism (Blank & Diderichsen, 1995; Niedhammer, Bugel, Goldberg, Leclerc, & Guéguen, 1998).In terms of workplace conflicts men

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appear to have more conflicts than women (Work Environment Statistics, 2012), and there is also a large body of research that shows that women are more relationship oriented than men and more attuned to relationships with others (e.g., Addis & Mahalik, 2003 ; Gabriel & Gardner, 1999). With regard to environmental stimuli, there are indications of gender differences as well. In terms of noise, it has e.g. been found that women report more noise disturbances in office environments (Kaarlela-Tuomaala, Heleniusa, Keskinen, & Hongisto, 2009) and that among women noise correlates with absenteeism among employees with high job complexity (Fried, Melamed, & Ben-David, 2002). In studies focused on possible relationships of the office type to employees’ welfare and work situations, some gender differences have also been found. The association between sick leave spells and office type appears e.g. to be stronger among women than among men working in the three traditional open-plan offices (Bodin Danielsson, Chungkham, Wulff, & Westerlund, 2014). Considering the gender differences in general and in terms of office environment

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT specifically, it is accordingly important to use a gender perspective in analyses of the relationship between office type and workplace conflicts.

1.3 Physical office environment in relation to workplace conflicts

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Open plan layouts have the past decades been advocated for economic reasons, but also because these facilitate information flow and flexibility for organizational changes (Becker & Sims, 2001; Duffy, 1999; Fischer, 1997). Our knowledge about what this shift towards more open and shared workspaces means from a workplace conflict perspective is however limited. Although we know that problems with privacy,

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crowding and noise in offices with open plan layouts may have negative behavioural, physiological and psychological consequences (e.g., Bodin Danielsson, 2008; Bodin Danielsson & Bodin, 2008; Evans, 1979;

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Evans & Johnson, 2000; Haans, Kaiser, & de Kort, 2007; Kristiansen et al., 2009). This includes e.g. escape behaviours to avoid unwanted transparency (Fischer, 1997), poor emotional and physiological health (Bodin Danielsson, 2008) and increased sickness absence (Pejtersen, Feveile, Christensen, & Burr, 2011). A recently published study found increased risks for short sick leave spells in one category of offices with open plan

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layouts − traditional open plan offices (Bodin Danielsson et al., 2014). In the Bodin Danielsson and Bodin (2008) study on office type’s influence on employees’ health status and job satisfaction, poorer outcomes were found in traditional open plan offices as well. According to Bodin Danielsson and Bodin (2008) the

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significantly poorer health and job satisfaction among employees in the traditional open plan office in comparison to the flex-and cell-office may depend on the lack of personal control these offices offer

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employees - due to their architectural and functional features. In Pejtersen et al.’s article (2011) on sickness absence the elevated risk of sickness absence found in offices with more than six people is partly explained by the higher exposure for noise disturbance, resulting in elevated stress hormones among office employees in large open plan offices (Evans & Johnson, 2000). The risk factors described above related to open shared workspaces could in our opinion give rise to increased workplace conflicts. Investigating the issue, we found however very limited research on the subject − we found only one study. This investigated conflicts in culturally heterogeneous workgroups (CHWs) in open plan offices in comparison to cell-offices (Ayoko & Härtel, 2003). It describes difficulties that may arise in shared workspaces when employees have different cultural backgrounds, and thereby hold various norms and views on physical and psychological space.

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hypothesis is that the risk of workplace conflicts increases with lack of possibility to retreat from exposure to

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT unwanted stimuli as well as exposure to others, while instead the individual’s ability for privacy and personal control moderates workplace conflicts among colleagues. The paucity of research on the office design’s impact on workplace conflicts is paradoxical in our opinion considering the elevated exposure to risk factors related to the increasingly ubiquitous open plan offices. Thus, this exploratory study aims to investigate the

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office type’s impact on different dimensions of workplace conflicts, with a focus on traditional open plan offices and possible gender differences. To summarize, the research questions addressed in this article are: (1) Is office type associated with occurrence of workplace conflicts?

(2) Is noise disturbance a factor that influences an assumed relation between office type and occurrence of

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workplace conflicts?

2. Method 2.1. Sample and questionnaire

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(3) Does gender interact with office type in an assumed relation with occurrence of workplace conflicts?

The study sample is derived from the 2010 data collection of the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational

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Survey of Health (SLOSH) (Theorell et al., 2012). This nationally representative longitudinal cohort study of work environment and health data is collected with comprehensive paper-and-pencil questionnaires mailed to the participants every second year (Kinsten et al., 2007). Participation in SLOSH is voluntary.

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In the 2010 wave the net sample was 20,291 persons and the total response rate was 57%. Of the responding participants 9,132 subjects (56% women, 44% men) were gainfully employed. Of these 3,050

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participants answered that they did not work in an office and were thus excluded. An additional exclusion was done for those who did not give sufficient information to classify in which office type they worked, thus leaving an analytic sample of 5,229 participants with a defined office type ( 2,868 women and 2,361 men). In this sample the partial drop-out for specific questions used in the analyses was not higher than 4%. SLOSH covers many different aspects of participants´ work life and spare time, including health, organizational aspects, psychosocial factors and the physical work environment with questions about which office type the participants work in and to some extent also how their office work is organized. These latter aspects make SLOSH data useful for the purpose of this article. As far as we know, no other large survey does this. Sociodemographic data of relevance for the analysis are also included in the survey.

2.2. Office definitions

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT The participants in the study worked in one of the seven office types identified in contemporary office design (Bodin Danielsson, 2007; Bodin Danielsson & Bodin, 2008, 2009). These definitions based on the work by Ahlin and Westlander (1991), and Duffy (1999) offer useful descriptive and comprehensive definitions of existing office types. The office types should be construed as both prototypes and “ideal”

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office types, since there will always exist offices that differ from the definitions. Accordingly, there exist “cross-pollinations” between certain office types. For example, there are open plan offices similar to the activity based office types that have fairly good access to back-up rooms for meetings, private conversations or telephone, something the typical traditional open plan offices lack. Cross-pollinations between flex- and

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combi-offices are not possible since the dominant feature of the flex-office is that the employees have no personal workstation, in contrast to combi-offices where employees have personal workstations.

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The seven office types are defined by their architectural features and functional features (see Table 1), which are internally dependent on each other. The architectural features are physical features of the office, of which the spatial organization is the most prominent, and the functional features relate to the actual work taking place and the organization of this, i.e. the use of the office and functions related to this. These features

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are in turn determined by factors such as functional needs, technical feasibility such as ICT (Information Communication Technology). It also works vice versa, in the sense that the technical and functional possibilities may lead to new organizations of work that affect the architectural design. The seven office

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types are briefly defined here:

(1) Cell-office (single office room)

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(2) Shared-room office (2-3 people share room) Traditional open plan offices Include three office types that are defined by employees sharing common workspace. There are no walls between individual workstations, thus screens or other artefacts such as plants often are used to reduce noise and provide some privacy. Work is often routine-based with low levels of interactions with coworkers. The office types are flexible for organizational changes. (3) Small open plan office (4-9 people share workspace) (4) Medium-sized open plan office (10-24 people share workspace) (5) Large open plan office (25 and more people share workspace)

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Insert Table 1 about here

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For details on office type definitions see Table 1.

By utilizing two questions from the SLOSH questionnaire the actual office type was determined for

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each participant. The participants classified themselves into one of the seven office types by their combined responses to the two questions, and consequently the names of the office types were not stated in the questionnaire. The first question concerned in particular the architectural features, mainly the spatial organization (how many persons work in the room), the second question was directed to the functional features as described above. This question was used to distinguish the first five office types from the latter

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two activity based types, that is, the combi-office and the flex-office. 2.3 Conflict and noise disturbance

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The following two outcomes concerning workplace conflicts were defined: 1) conflicts during the past two years, and 2) ongoing conflict at the time of the survey. To distinguish between these two items the first

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will be referred to as conflicts and the second to as ongoing conflict. In some cases a clarification of the distinction will be added.

Conflicts during the past two years, were measured with the question: “Have you been involved in any kind of conflict at work in the past 2 years with a) supervisor, b) co-workers and c) others in your work (i.e. clients, students etc.)?” For every category a) – c) the answer was categorized with Yes=1, No=0 and the sum of the three sub items was dichotomized with a cut-off at 2 (“less conflicts” with less than 2 conflicts in the past two years = 0 versus “more conflicts” with 2 or more conflicts in the past two years = 1). Ongoing conflict, measured by the question: “Is the conflict ongoing?” with the response options of “Yes” = 1 or “No” = 0. Noise disturbance was measured with the question: “Are you exposed to disturbing or tiresome noise?” on a six degree scale that ranged from 1 = “disturbed at all time” to 6 = “not at all disturbed.” The item was

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT dichotomized (1/0) with a cutoff at 4 (“disturbed” covers the range 1- 4 and “not disturbed” covers 5-6). As noise disturbance in this context will be considered a risk factor the dichotomization used 1 for presence of risk factor, 0 for absence of risk factor.

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2.4. Sociodemographic data for the sample Background information on age, supervisory position and labour market sector, i.e. if the individual works in private or public sector, stratified by office types and by gender, is shown in Table 2.

The majority of the participants work in cell-office, followed by shared-room. The smallest number of

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participants is found for flex-office. There are slightly more women than men (54.8% women, 45.2% men) and this is true for all office types, except the combi-office, where the majority is men. The majority of the

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participants are in the two older age groups, only around 8% are found in the youngest age group < 34 years old.

There is a higher proportion of male than female supervisors (55.4% vs. 35.8%), with the highest proportion of male supervisors in cell-office (63%) and female supervisors in cell-office (38.9%). The

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majority of the men (68%) work in the private sector and the majority of women in the public sector (57%). In this study, the most prevalent office types in the public sector are among men cell-office and combi-office and among women cell-office and shared-room. In the private sector the cell-office dominates among both

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men and women.

2.5. Data analysis and statistical models Descriptive statistics with relative frequencies was used to describe the background data for the respondents as well as for conflicts, ongoing conflict and noise disturbance, stratified for gender and/or office type. Our main analysis for the relation between office type and workplace conflicts was done with logistic regression models with the binary outcomes (Yes=1/No=0) for conflicts, and ongoing conflict with office type in seven categories as the main explanatory factor. We also performed a similar logistic regression analysis with noise as outcome and office type as explanatory factor to better understand the role of noise in

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT the main analysis. The outcome parameter from the logistic regression is the odds ratio (OR) and as this is a relative measure a pre-chosen reference category was used, and cell-office was selected for this purpose. Logistic regression is a preferred method in many analyses of risk and risk factors as the OR estimates the relative risk for occurrence of a non-desirable outcome, in this case workplace conflict. Interpreted as an

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effect size an OR of 1.0 for a specific office type shows no difference from the reference group (the celloffice), whereas an OR of 2.0 indicates a doubled risk of conflicts. OR below 1.0 indicates that a lower risk for conflict is expected, as compared with the cell-office. The OR:s are supplemented with 95% confidence intervals (CI) and statistical significance, OR different from 1.0, was judged against a pre-chosen criterion,

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p<.05. Kirk (2005) discusses the role of the OR as an effect size measure in medicine as well as in behavioural and social sciences. To further facilitate the interpretation of the outcome we converted the OR:s

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to an approximation of Cohen’s d according to Hasselblad and Hedges (1995). Thus we can describe the results as evidence of week, medium and strong effects with the suggested cut-offs of 0.2, 0.5 and 0.8. As with the OR the d:s in this case describe the effect size difference from the reference category, the cell-office. In addition to statistical tests of single OR:s, an omnibus test of the influence of office type on the outcome

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was also done, in this case with a likelihood ratio test, where the log likelihood of the model with a higher number of included factors was compared with the log likelihood from the model with a smaller number of factors. This test was supplemented by evaluation of Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) (Akaike, 1973)

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with a smaller number of AIC indicating a better model fit. Besides the main explanatory factor office type confounding variables describing the sociodemographic background of the respondents, that is gender, age,

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supervisory position and labour market sector were included in the analyses. Models were tested without and with interaction factors such as that between office type and gender. Statistical significance of the interaction factor was judged by likelihood ratio tests as described above. The computations were performed with SPSS, version 20 and STATA version 12. Our modelling strategy was in many respects similar to that described in Vittinghoff et al. (2012).

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Results

3.1 Descriptive results Descriptive statistics for conflicts and noise disturbance are shown in Table 3. For the conflict variables the occurrence of conflicts is around 14.0 to 17.4 % as regards conflicts during the past two years and around 12.4 to 13.8% for ongoing conflict, numbers describing males and females respectively. Our reference

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT category, the cell-office, has intermediate proportions of conflicts both for men and women, 16.5% and 13.6% for conflicts during the past two years, and 12.1% and 14.6% for ongoing conflict. The variation between the office types is however substantial, with extreme numbers from 8.1% to 22.0% for conflicts during the past two years and 6.9% to 16.2% for ongoing conflict. For noise disturbance there is a profound

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difference over the office types, and as expected cell-office is at low end with the lowest figure of 15.7 % for males, to the highest figure of 59.5% for females in small open plan offices. For noise disturbance thus, the cell-office is an extreme case. It can also be seen that respondents who report noise disturbance have a somewhat higher proportion of conflicts. As an example for males the difference is 18.9% versus 16.8% as

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regards conflicts during the past two years and for females the figures are 17.9% versus 11.7%. The remaining figures in Table 3 concerns the confounders and they are shown here to justify their inclusion as

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confounders in our subsequent analyses, but they are by themselves not the subject of any hypothesis testing.

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3.2 Results after adjustment for confounders

The logistic regression with conflict as outcome, office type as explanatory variable, and without and with inclusion of the confounders; age, supervisory position, labour market sector and gender showed that

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the inclusion of these both affected the odds ratios and improved the model fit as measured by likelihood ratio tests and Akaike’s index. A continued test of models with inclusion of the interaction between gender

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and office type did not show statistical significance for the interaction as regards conflicts for the past two years (p=.086), as well as for ongoing conflict (p=.19). A similar analysis was done with noise disturbance as outcome and the interaction was also here not statistically significant (p=.38), data not shown. However, based on the study’s focus on possible gender differences the logistic regression analyses were done separately for men and women for the rest of the study. It was also considered that the statistical test for interaction is less powerful in the statistical sense than tests of main factors and therefore less likely to show significance. Gender separated analyses with inclusion of the three confounders age, supervisory position and labour market sector for the two outcomes ─ conflicts (2 years and ongoing) and the supplementary analysis with noise disturbance as outcome ─ are shown in Table 4, illustrating both ORs and effect sizes.

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Insert Table 4 about here

Workplace conflicts. Office type had a statistically significant impact on conflicts for women, p=.002, but not for men, p=.31. For women and for individual office types in relation to cell-office, large open plan office

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had significantly smaller risk of conflicts, OR=0.5 (95% CI 0.3-0.9), in contrast to both flex-office and combi-office with significantly higher risk of conflicts, OR=1.7 (95% CI 1.0-2.9) and OR=1.5 (95% CI 1.02.0) respectively. Thus, the risk for workplace conflicts in relation to cell-office was reduced to about half for large open plan offices and almost doubled for flex-offices. Expressed with Cohen’s d these differences

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were -.35 for large open plan office and +0.30 for flex office, between weak and moderately strong effects, as compared with cell-office. However, in this metric the difference between the office with less conflicts,

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large open plan office, and the office with highest risk for conflicts, the flex office, the effect size was 0.65, thus between a moderate and a strong effect size and corresponding to an OR of 3.0, a threefold increase in the risk estimate.

In contrast to conflicts during the past two years office type in general did not show a statistically

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significant impact on ongoing conflict, p=.11 for women and p=.37 for men. There is one result that could be mentioned, and that concerns women working in large open plan office that had significantly lower risk for ongoing conflicts than cell-office, OR=0.5 (95% CI 0.3-0.9), effect size -.38. For men and the large open

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plan office the ORs were 1.2 (95% CI 0.8-1.8) for conflicts and 1.0 (95% CI 0.6-1.6) for ongoing conflict. Noise. The results for noise disturbance are to a large extent expected based on the office type’s architecture,

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that is, the cell-office is superior to the other office types in this aspect. For both men and women the statistical significance of office type is extreme, with p<.001 for both genders. Shared-room office is an intermediate between cell-office and the remaining office types. The ORs are high, approaching 6.0, and the effect sizes are also high, .40 for shared room and for all other office types they are above .85, thus a strong effect of noise compared to cell-office. Office type does affect reported noise disturbances, but is office type’s effect on conflicts only an effect of noise? In Figure 1 three analyses are shown with different inclusions of variables in the logistic regression for conflicts. Model I has only office type as explanatory factor, or risk factor. Model II also includes age, supervisory position and labour market sector as risk factors, and in Model III also noise disturbance is added to the risk factors.

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Insert Figure 1 about here

For women there is a high variation between the different office types’ OR, and this is true for all models. Model II is reported in Table 4. The statistical significance of office type is a bit less pronounced

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after inclusion of all additional variables, that is in model III, but it is still significant, p=.026, compared with p=.002 for model II, see Table 4. For men the inclusion of additional variables has little effect on the risk for conflicts, and office type does not reach statistical significance in any of the models. Hence, inclusion of noise moderates the effect of office type for women, but there is still a significant effect. Therefore we

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regard noise not as a confounder but as a mediator in the relation between office type versus conflict and to obtain the total effect of office type on conflicts noise should not be included in the model.

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Interaction effects related to noise and gender. Further analyses of conflicts for the past two years showed that the interaction noise with office type was statistically significant for women (p=.026), but not for men (p=.43). The analysis for women, stratified for noise disturbance, shows large differences between the ORs when the group reporting noise disturbance is compared with those with no disturbance. In particular the

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large open plan office and the combi-office show huge differences in risks, measured by the OR. For men there is no indication of such differences, data not shown. The perception of noise seems highly related to the

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Insert Figure 2 about here

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observed difference in how men and women report conflicts in different office types.

Discussion

In this exploratory study, we investigated whether office types are associated with occurrence of workplace conflicts (conflicts during the past two years and ongoing conflicts). Furthermore, we set out to investigate the influence of noise disturbances on the assumed relationship between workplace conflicts and office type, since noise is considered the major environmental stressor in open offices (e.g., Evans & Johnson, 2000; Jahncke et al., 2011; Sundstrom et al., 1994). Possible gender differences with regard to the former questions were also investigated. In short our results show fairly strong indications that office type has an effect on the occurrence of workplace conflicts for women with a statistical significance of p=.002, while the indications for men are

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT much weaker and not significant. For ongoing conflict the indications are weaker for both genders and statistical significance is not found. Noise disturbances increase the occurrence of workplace conflicts, but the relationship between office type and risk for workplace conflicts for women remain statistically significant after adjusting for presence of noise disturbances, although somewhat weaker, p=.026. After

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conversion to Cohen’s d the effect sizes for conflicts in comparisons with cell-office are small to moderately strong, but the difference in effect size between offices with low level of conflicts compared to offices with high level of conflicts are between medium and strong. For noise the effect sizes in comparison with celloffice approach values higher than the criterion for strong.

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Regarding our first and third research questions the risk for workplace conflicts varies between office types and gender. Our reference office type for defining risk and risk differences was the traditional cell-

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office and the results were reported through the use of odds ratios using cell-office as reference, and supplemented with effect sizes to give an additional interpretation. In traditional large open plan offices women showed a significantly lower risk for both conflicts during the past two years and ongoing conflict. As a contrast higher risks for conflicts were found in the two activity-based office types (flex- and combi-

past two years.

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office). Among men there is a significantly higher risk only in combi-office and only for conflicts during the

Our second research question concerned if and how noise disturbances interfere with the relation

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between office types and occurrence of conflicts. We find for both genders that office type has a highly significant impact on perception of noise disturbances, with most disturbances among women in traditional

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open plan offices. The greater exposure to noise in these office types is in line with previous studies on noise in open plan offices although none of these present gender separated analyses (e.g., Bodin Danielsson, 2008; Jahncke et al., 2011). We found, however, a lower occurrence of conflicts in the office types where the most noise disturbances are reported. This is especially clear among women. We can therefore not attribute the differences in risk for conflicts between office types by simply referring to variations in the presence of perceived noise disturbances. Our statistical models show presence of significant differences in workplace conflicts both without and with adjustment of noise. The most reliable estimates of risk for workplace conflicts are possibly found without adjusting for presence of noise, since noise is a consequence of the architectural and functional features of the office type, and adjusting for this will invalidate the true effect of the office type on any outcome.

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT We investigated the interaction effects related to noise and gender and found that women who reported noise disturbances had risks for conflicts that differed substantially from women without noise disturbances. It was in particular the large open plan offices and the combi-offices that differed between the ‘noise’ and ‘no noise’ groups. No such tendency was found among men. The differences in perception of noise between

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the genders might be part of an explanation why men and women differ in occurrence of conflicts in different office types. Our results thus indicate that differences in workplace conflicts are only partly attributed to differences in noise exposure between office types, instead other aspects influenced by the features that define the types of offices seems to play an important role.

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From a conflict perspective, what characterizes then the office types which were found to have a possible influence on female office employees mainly? Large open offices, where women reported both less

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conflict during the past two years and fewer ongoing conflicts, provide employees less opportunity for privacy. Furthermore, in large as well as medium-sized open offices employees and managers often share workspace - which is less common in small open plan offices. A positive interpretation is that these two factors may reduce the occurrence of conflicts and facilitate conflict resolution, a negative interpretation is

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instead that they not “allow” conflicts and these are thus hidden. However, why employees working with a larger number of colleagues, i.e. with 25 employees or more, experience less workplace conflicts is not obvious, nor why women do it. Maybe social conformity and a greater dependence on the social context

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more easily develop in this office type, and that this is more important to women than men. We found significantly more conflicts among women in both activity based office types, i.e. flex-office

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and combi-office, and among men in combi-office. A flex-office is defined by its non-personal workstation since the office space is designed for approximately 70% of the workforce to be present at the same time. Employees choose freely workstations within the office based on their need, but can also work outside the office. These factors combined with the highly independent work in the flex-office may cause lack of social cohesion at the workplace, with negative influence on the workplace conflicts. Whether lack of possibility to personalize the workstation, i.e. the expression of the personal and professional identity (Rafaeli & Pratt, 2001), in flex-offices plays any role here is also hard to say. Personalization is related to workplace territoriality, i.e. the behaviour and cognitions an employee exhibit based on perceived ownership of a given physical/social object (Brown, 2009; Brown, Lawrence, & Robinson, 2005). It is considered a basic human need to demonstrate possession and prevent intrusion of personal space, i.e. territory (Sundstrom & Altman, 1974).

Research has found that territorial infringements may trigger conflict behaviours (Brown &

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Robinson, 2011), but what lack of possibility to personalize plays for workplace territoriality is not clear. Maybe it takes other forms, and can lead to more workplace conflicts due to “lost territory” if not handled well. In conclusion, whether the higher degree of conflicts during the past two years in flex-office is explained by any of these factors we don’t know, nor why women are more sensitive to these factors from a

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conflict perspective. The other activity based office type − combi-office − stood out negatively for both men and women in terms of conflicts during the past two years. This office type has no strict spatial definition and the personal workstation can be in an individual room or in shared space with co-workers. Instead it is defined by both independent work and a high degree of team work, with more than 20% of time in team

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work at other workstations than the personal workstation within the office. That the combi-office is defined by a high degree of team work could be a risk factor for conflicts since team work based on interpersonal

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relationships inevitably leads to intrinsic problems of coordination, motivation and conflict management (Gladstein, 1984; Jehn, 1995). The fact that employees do not necessarily share workspace with team members in the combi-office may also increase the risk of conflict, since the necessity of compromises and to solve disagreements is less evident when workspace is not shared.

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To summarize our results, we see the same pattern regarding both office type and noise influence on workplace conflicts - with a greater “sensitivity” to environmental stimuli for conflicts among women than men. This sensitivity among women is illustrated by both more significant outcomes and greater variation in Our hypothesis of a greater

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the office type’s impact on female employees in different office types.

sensitivity among women than men for environmental stimuli is supported by research that has shown

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process information to be more detailed among women than men, resulting among women in a greater sensitivity to environmental factors (e.g., d’Astous, 2000; J. Meyers-Levy & Maheswaran, 1991; J. MeyersLevy & Sternthal, 1991) and being more affected by negative information (Dube´ & Morgan, 1996). Some support is also found in Lewin’s field theory, which suggests that women are more dependent on the context, i.e. field, than men (Lewin, 1942). An alternative theory regarding the found gender differences in office type’s influence on workplace conflicts is that this is not related to differences in sensitivity to environmental stimuli between men and women, but instead to differences in patterns of interpersonal relationships. These in turn may be influenced by the features that define the different office types. It is established that women receive more social support than men at work (Plaisier et al., 2007; Winter et al., 2006). They also communicate with co-workers for different reasons, their communication is more affection oriented than men’s whose communication is more

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT instrumentally oriented (Anderson & Martin, 1995). These factors combined could mean that women find more support and cohesion than men in both medium-sized and large plan office, which is positive from a workplace conflict perspective. For the same reason, women are possibly also more sensitive than men to not having a personal workstation in flex-office, since it means not having the same group of colleagues around

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the workstation every day. This latter theory, based on differences between men and women regarding ways of cultivating inter-personal relationships, finds support in the research that claims office design affects relationships at the office because of the differences in distance and spatial layout. Proximity, visibility and audibility have been shown to be key factors for support in social networks (Mok & Wellman, 2007), as well

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as for workplace friendship and positive perception of management among employees (e.g., Crouch & Nimran, 1989; Szilagyi & Holland, 1980). More recent research has also found more positive perception of

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managerial leadership among employees in medium-sized and large open plan office types than in other office types (Bodin Danielsson, Wulff, & Westerlund, 2013). In the latter study, the authors hypothesize this is due to the common sharing of workspaces between managers and colleagues in this office type. Based on this all together, it is thus not surprising that we found among women both less conflicts (during the past two

4.1. Limitations

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years) and fewer ongoing conflicts in large open plan offices.

This study is based entirely upon self-reported data, a limitation inherent in all large surveys.

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Although SLOSH is a nationally representative longitudinal cohort study, only data from the year 2010 was used. The present study is accordingly cross-sectional which implies that participants were not studied over

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time. This is a limitation, which makes causal interpretations more tentative. On the other hand one could argue that the impact of the office design on workplace conflict is direct. The major limitation is that the definition of office type based on the SLOSH 2010 does not enable us to examine whether the offices in our study fulfilled all features that define the office types studied. In addition the questionnaire does not include all environmental factors that may have an impact on workplace conflicts. It covers the major environmental stressor – noise, but not ventilation, view from the workplace or the employees´ sense of crowding. The latter is of special interest from a conflict perspective since the risk of crowding increases in shared work spaces and experimental studies have shown the negative effects, such as increased levels of stress and aggression (see review by Evans, 2003). The lack of questions on environmental factors in SLOSH may also have led to a misunderstanding of the purpose of the questions

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT regarding the office environment, which may explain: a) why questions concerning the office type were not answered by 14% of the participants, and b) the responses were not always consistent. This, in turn may lead to a lack of precision in the exposure measure but also to an underestimation of the effect of office design on

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occurrence of workplace conflict.

5. Conclusion

This exploratory study suggests that the office type could have an influence on workplace conflicts,

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primarily for women, and this influence remains to a large extent after adjustment for noise disturbances. The reported gender differences indicate an influence of office type among women that may depend on

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differences in interpersonal relationships between the genders and a greater dependence on a social context among women than men, something supported by sharing workspace with colleagues and managers. It could also be due to differences in sensitivity for environmental stimuli, such as noise disturbances, between the genders. Possible practical implications of these exploratory results are that organizations need to pay extra attention to group processes and how to support positive inter-personal relations in the activity based office

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types, and then especially among women that might be more sensitive than men to the negative influence these office types possibly have for the development of workplace conflicts. This could mean not only extra work on group processes, but also extra attention from managers on these factors. The results also indicate

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that the acoustic environment is important to consider, not only because of the negative influence of noise on employees’ stress level and cognitive performance but also because of its potentially negative impact on

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workplace conflicts.

Despite our focus on the office type’s influence on workplace conflicts, we recognize the greater impact of other factors for this such as job rank and age (e.g., Appelberg, Romanov, Honkasalo, & Koskenvuo, 1991; Work Environment Statistics, 2012). We regard this study as only a first step in investigating the impact of office design on workplace conflicts since the results give only little indications of which specific architectural and functional features in the different office types that may explain observed gender differences. The un-hypothesized results of this exploratory study need to be tested in a replication of the study before we know if they hold true. In addition to this future studies need a more precise study design and holistic approach considering the gains that can be achieved at both an individual and organizational

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT level through improved knowledge of the office design’s impact on employee well-being, including workplace conflict.

Funding acknowledgements

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Information regarding funding on separate document not to be shown for reviewers.

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The Office Environment’s Impact on Workplace Conflicts – A Gender Perspective

Funding acknowledgements

The research was supported by FORTE (former FAS), the Swedish Reserch Council for

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Health, Working life, and Welfare (Postdoctoral grant 2011-0402) and Formas, the Swedish

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Research Council for Sustainable Development (Young mobility grant no: 259-2011-1580), with additional support from Magnus Bergwalls Stiftelse (MBS). The funding sources had no

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involvement in the research other than as financial supporters.

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Table 4. Prevalence of conflicts, ongoing conflicts and noise disturbance for men and women separately. Results from logistic regression reporting Odds Ratios (OR), figures show results expressed with effect sizes converted from odds ratios to approximate Cohen’s d, see text. Analysis for each gender separately, with cell office as the pre-chosen reference category. Statistically significant results in bold.

SharedRoom

Small open plan

Females Prevalence of conflicts, (n=2641) Ongoing conflict, (n=2690) Noise, (n=2755)

1.0 1.0 1.0

0.9 (0.7-1.3) 1.1 (0.8-1.5) 2.1 (1.6-2.6)

1.1 (0.7-1.6) 0.8 (0.5-1.2) 6.3 (4.7-8.4)

Males Prevalence of conflicts, (n=2169) Ongoing conflict, (n=2211) Noise, (n=2275)

1.0 1.0 1.0

1.2 (0.9-1.7) 0.9 (0.6-1.4) 2.7 (2.0-3.6)

1.1 (0.7-1.7) 1.5 (0.9-2.3) 4.3 (3.1-6.1)

Prevalence of conflict

Flexoffice

Combioffice

0.5 (0.3-0.9) 0.5 (0.3-0.9) 5.2 (3.8-7.0)

1.7 (1.0-2.9) 0.9 (0.5-1.7) 4.9 (3.2-7.4)

1.5 (1.0-2.0) 1.1 (0.8-1.5) 5.0 (3.9-6.6)

.002 .11 .001

0.8 (0.4-1.4) 0.8 (0.4-1.5) 4.5 (3.0-6.7)

1.2 (0.8-1.8) 1.0 (0.6-1.6) 4.1 (2.9-5.7)

0.8 (0.4-1.6) 1.0 (0.5-2.0) 4.7 (2.9-7.6)

1.4 (1.0-1.6) 1.3 (0.9-1.8) 5.3 (4.1-6.9)

.31 .37 <.001

Ongoing conflicts

Noise disturbance

Females/Males

Females/Males

EP AC C

1= Cell-office 2= Shared-room 3= Small open plan office 4= Medium-sized open plan office 5= Large open plan office 6= Flex-office 7= Combi-office

0.6 (0.3-1.2) 1.0 (0.6-1.7) 5.8 (4.0-8.5)

Large open plan

TE D

Females/Males

Legend:

Medium-sized open plan

RI PT

Cell-office (reference)

M AN U

Conflicts and Noise

Outcome

Office type (p-value)*

Office type OR (95% confidence interval)

SC

Outcome

Note: Odds ratios (OR:s) comparing offices with the reference category cell-office with 95% confidence intervals. Statistically significant at 5%-level if confidence interval does not cover 1.0. The analyses include office-type in seven categories as main explanatory factor. Confounders included in all models are age (categories <34 years, 35-49 years and >49years), supervisor (No/Yes) and labour market (Public/Private). *Test if variation in conflicts and noise among the seven office categories exceeds random variation, see text concerning statistical analysis.

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Table 1. Office types – prototypes defined by architectural and functional features Architectural features

Functional features

1. Cell-office (Individual office room) - The plan layout is characterized by corridors, either a single or double corridor system - Individual room has access to a window

- Most equipment is in the own room - Work is concentrated and independent

2. Shared room office: (2-3 people share room An office type sometimes a consequence of lack of workspace. - For privacy reasons sometimes screens or other divisional elements between workstations - No individual window, shares with roommate(s)

- Team-based work or people with similar work assignment work share room - Most equipment outside of room, team based shared room tend to have own

RI PT

- Workstations freely arranged in the room

M AN U

SC

Traditional open-plan offices: Groups of employees sharing a common workspace in different configurations Found in the following three sub-categories: 3. Small open plan office: (4-9 people share workspace) 4. Medium-sized open plan office (10-24 people share workspace) 5. Large open plan office ( >24 people share workspace) - Shared workspaces within the office - Plan layout is open, based on an open flow of workspaces instead of corridor systems - Workstations freely arranged in the room or in rows in a larger workspace

- Flexible for organizational changes - Routine based work - Low level of interaction between employees - Often no amenities at workstation

TE D

Activity based and flexible office types: 6. Flex-office (no personal workstation, different work environments within office) - Flexible for organizational changes

- Different types of environments for meetings

- Dimensioned for <70% of the workforce

AC C

EP

- Plan layout is open, based on an open flow of workspaces instead of corridor systems - Rooms/environments for individual work and telephone calls

- Good information communication technology (ICT) is a necessity as the common computer system is accessible from all workstations within the office

- The choice of workstation is free, has the option to work outside of office as well

- Mainly independent work, sometimes project based

7. Combi-office: (personal workstation, team work, different work environments within office) - No strict spatial definition of office type, personal workstations which either are in individual rooms or open plan layout - Back up spaces for work activities not suitable to carry out at the personal workstation - Extra focus on rooms for group activities such as: project rooms (to be booked for longer periods) team rooms and meeting rooms

- >20% of the work in the office not at the personal workstation - Sharing of common amenities in common spaces - Work is both independent as well as interactive team work with colleagues in

- The team move around in the office on an “asneeded basis” to take advantage of the wide range of common facilities

ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT

Table 2. Sociodemographic characteristics of the subjects studied – distribution of gender, age, supervisory position and labour market sector in different office types. Small open plan office (n=472-481)

Medium-sized Large open Flexopen plan office plan office office (n=254-259) (n=444-447) (n=183-187)

Combioffice (n=724-732)

(n=5171-5229)

Gender Male Female

1046 (44.6) 1297 (55.4)

310 (39.7) 470 (60.3)

194 (40.3) 287 (59.7)

121 (46.7) 138 (53.3)

80 (42.8) 107 (57.2)

401 (54.8) 331 (45.2)

2361 (45.2) 2868 (54.8)

Age (years) Male < 34 35-49 >49

52 (5.0) 376 (35.9) 618 (59.1)

31 (10.0) 121 (39.0) 158 (51.0)

31 (16.0) 82 (42.3) 81 (41.8)

11 (9.1) 54 (44.6) 56 (46.3)

23 (11.0) 98 (46.9) 88 (42.1)

12 (15.0) 36 (45.0) 32 (40.0)

21 (5.2) 172 (42.9) 208 (51.9)

181 (7.7) 939 (39.8) 1241 (52.6)

68 (5.2) 523 (40.3) 706 (54.4)

39 (8.3) 182 (38.7) 249 (53.0)

46 (16.0) 119 (41.5) 122 (42.5)

31 (13.0) 124 (52.1) 83 (34.9)

13 (12.1) 47 (43.9) 47 (43.9)

23 (6.9) 141 (42.6) 167 (50.5)

238 (8.3) 1184 (41.3) 1446 (50.4)

18 (13.0) 48 (34.8) 72 (52.2)

SC

M AN U

TE D

Female < 34 35-49 >49

209 (46.8) 238 (53.2)

RI PT

CellSharedoffice room (n=2317-2343) (n=766-780)

All

AC C

EP

Note. Numbers of observations available for calculations differ somewhat due to missing data. Figures are numbers with percent within office type in brackets. *Supervisor includes employees at different positions that lead other employees in their job, it includes team and project leaders, group managers, but also managers at higher positions such as department and division managers to CEO.

1

ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT

Table 2 continued. Medium-sized open plan office (n=254-259)

383 (37.0) 653 (63.0)

144 (46.8) 164 (53.2)

105 (55.3) 85 (44.7)

63 (52.9) 56 (47.1)

Female No Yes

783 (61.1) 498 (38.9)

304 (65.2) 162 (34.8)

202 (71.6) 80 (28.4)

104 (77.0) 31 (23.0)

Labour market sector Male Public Private

376 (36.4) 657 (63.6)

97 (31.7) 209 (68.3)

50 (26.2) 141 (73.8)

Female Public Private

784 (60.9) 503 (39.1)

255 (55.4) 205 (44.6)

145 (51.6) 136 (48.4)

107 (51.4) 101 (48.6)

TE D

AC C

EP

21 (17.5) 99 (82.5)

56 (40.6) 82 (59.4)

Flexoffice (n=183-187)

Combioffice (n=724-732)

All (n=5171-5229)

34 (43.6) 44 (56.4)

207 (51.9) 192 (48.1)

1043 (44.6) 1295 (55.4)

152 (64.4) 84 (35.6)

69 (65.7) 36 (34.3)

202 (62.2) 123 (37.8)

1816 (64.2) 1014 (35.8)

25 (12.0) 183 (88.0)

25 (31.3) 55 (68.8)

153 (38.7) 242 (61.3)

747 (32.0) 1586 (68.0)

64 (27.0) 173 (73.0)

71 (67.6) 34 (32.4)

242 (73.3) 88 (26.7)

1617 (57.0) 1221 (43.0)

M AN U

Supervisor Male No Yes

Large open plan office (n=444-447)

RI PT

Small open plan office (n=472-481)

SC

CellSharedoffice room (n=2317-2343) (n=766-780)

Note. Numbers of observations available for calculations differ somewhat due to missing data. Figures are numbers with percent within office type in brackets *Supervisor includes employees at different positions that lead other employees in their job, it includes team and project leaders, group managers, but also managers at higher positions such as department and division managers to CEO.

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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Table 3. Workplace conflicts (conflicts during the past two years, ongoing conflict) and noise disturbance in percentage for men and women separately Percentage of subjects reporting: Conflicts during the past two years

Shared-room Small open plan Med.-sized open plan Large open plan Flex-offixe Combi-office

Male

Female

Male

Female

16.5 19.5 16.9 11.9 17.4 14.1* 20.3

13.6 12.2 15.9 8.3 8.1 22.0 20.3

12.1 11.3 15.3 8.4 10.4 11.5* 14.7

14.6 14.5 11.8 13.1 6.9 13.5 16.2

15.7 32.5 46.1 45.4 44.0 47.5* 50.5

20.0 33.0 59.5 56.6 53.6 55.7 56.3

16.8 18.9

11.7 17.9

11.0 15.8

13.3 14.7

-

-

17.4 -

14.0

12.4 -

13.8

31.5 -

36.1

23.7 18.5 15.6

22.5 14.6 12.0

12.6 12.9 11.9

15.4 15.1 12.4

37.4 36.0 27.2

37.6 37.7 34.6

13.0 21.2

11.5 18.7

10.3 14.2

12.2 16.6

35.3 28.2

37.1 35.1

18.8 16.7

14.7 13.0

15.0 11.2

15.9 10.7

31.1 31.5

37.5 34.1

Gender Male Female

Age < 34years 35-49 years >49 years No Yes

Labour market Public Private

TE D

Supervisor

M AN U

Noise disturbance No Yes

Noise disturbance Male

Female

RI PT

Office type Cell-office

Ongoing conflict

SC

Office and subject characteristics

AC C

EP

Note: Percentage of subjects reporting conflicts during the past two years, ongoing conflict and noise disturbance stratified for office types and subject characteristics. Noise disturbance is regarded here both as an outcome and as an assumed confounder/mediator.* = Figure based on smaller than 100 subjects.

1

ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT

Figure 1. Conflicts during the past two years in different office types. Comparison of odds ratio (OR) between crude and adjusted models for men and women separately. Outcome

Women

Men

RI PT

Legend:

M AN U

SC

1= Cell-office 2= Shared-room 3= Small open plan office 4= Medium-sized open plan office 5= Large open plan office 6= Flex-office 7= Combi-office

AC C

EP

TE D

Note: Comparison of Odds Ratios (OR:s) from logistic regression analyses with three models. Model I= crude OR:s, only office type included in model. Model II= model with office type and adjusted for gender, age, supervisor, labour market. Model III= model with office type and adjusted for gender, age, supervisor, labour market and noise.

1

ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT

Figure 2. Conflicts during the past two years in different office types. Comparison of odds ratio (OR) between women who report no noise disturbances and those who report noise disturbances.

2.00

Noise disturbances No noise disturbances

1.75

1.25 1.00 0.75 0.50 0.25 0.00 1

2

3

SC

Odds Ratio (OR)

1= Cell-office 2= Shared-room 3= Small open plan office 4= Medium-sized open plan office 5= Large open plan office 6= Flex-office 7= Combi-office

RI PT

1.50

Legend:

4

5

6

7

M AN U

Office type, from Cell office to Combi-office

AC C

EP

TE D

Note: Comparison of Odds Ratios (OR:s) from logistic regression analyses stratified for noise disturbances. Included confounders are age, supervisor position and labour market.

1

ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT

“The Office Environment’s Impact on Workplace Conflicts – A Gender Perspective”

Highlights Office type’s impact on workplace conflicts, with a focus on noise disturbances, is investigated

•

The sample consists of over 5,000 office employees working in seven different office types

•

A significant impact of office type per se on workplace conflicts was found among women, not among men

•

In large open plan offices both men and women report less occurrences of conflicts and in flex- and combi-offices women report higher occurrences of conflicts

•

Results indicate that features defining the office types possibly explain the outcome

AC C

EP

TE D

M AN U

SC

RI PT

•

1