Lovaglia’s Law and Open Office Plans

One of my very earliest posts here talked about Lovaglia’s Law.  Michael Lovaglia, a Professor and Department Chair in the Sociology Department at the Iowa, proposed this hypothesis to Jeff Pfeffer and me in email last year:

Lovaglia’s Law: The more important the outcome of a decision, the more people will resist using evidence to make it.

I suggested back then that the law may hold because, the more important a decision is, the more political behavior and unbridled-self interest is provoked. Plus there is also evidence that when a decision is framed as “big,”  the associated anxiety, anger, passion and related strong emotions lead to cognitive narrowing by all parties, and thus some decision-making biases become even more pronounced.

I was reminded of the law this week as a result of a discussion that I was having with some colleagues about the trade-offs between open and closed office designs.  I thought of Lovaglia’s Law because there is now so much faith in the wonders of open office designs. Yet I wonder if many of these decisions to put people in open offices are made despite rather than because of the evidence. There are certainly places where open office designs make sense,  like labs and other settings where intensive collaboration and “visual” contact with colleagues helps the work move along. Indeed, much of  the Stanford d.school is open, which works well for our teaching and intensive teamwork (although I notice that, the longer we are in our flexible d.school building -- where people are constantly prototyping the space -- the more that the spaces occupied by folks who spend day after day there look like closed offices). Also, administrators and accountants usually like open offices because they cost less to build, furnish, heat, and cool – so they are motivated to make arguments that people will like open designs better and work more effectively in them.

BUT the best evidence I can find tells a much different story. It turns out that although there is a lot of hype from companies that sell open office furniture and related goods about how fantastic open offices are, and all that, research published in peer review journals clashes with the hype. In every study that I can find that has survived the peer review process, people in open settings are found to be less satisfied, less productive, and experience more stress than people who work in closed offices. And when people move from closed to open offices, they like them less, report being less productive, and report more stress.  So long as people are doing work that is largely “individual” and that requires thinking and intense individual concentration, these findings make a lot of sense to me.

Yet, as Lovaglia’s Law predicts, many administrators and building designers seem to be have a hard time “hearing” such evidence and keep pushing for open office designs – they prefer to talk about selected anecdotes instead. Indeed, there are popular articles on how management can overcome such “irrational” resistance to change. But those articles don’t seem to mention that, at least for people who don’t do highly interdependent team based work such as is done in engineering and scientific labs, open offices don’t appear to work very well, So such resistance to open offices might, in fact, be rational.

I spent a bit of time reviewing this research today. I am not done, but from what I can tell –- although many of the studies could be stronger and more research is needed –- the evidence that we have thus far is remarkably consistent. To give you a taste, here are abstracts of articles showing that moving to an open office is associated with dissatisfaction and motivation. An especially counter-intuitive study by Mary Jo Hatch of workers in high-tech companies shows that the more physical barriers there are between employees (including doors), THE MORE interaction that takes place between them. And, turning specifically to academic settings, a study of 100 faculty and 356 students at a community college by Franklin Becker and his colleagues found that “Faculty in open-private offices reported significantly more difficulty working efficiently and concentrating. Both faculty and students reported that faculty were less available in open-private as compared to closed-private offices, and both groups reported that the quality of performance feedback either given or received suffered in the open plan compared to traditional shared or single-occupancy offices.”  Also, here is a New York Times article that talks about Gloria Mark’s research on how it takes about 25 minutes for the average worker to return to as task after being interrupted – and there is good reason to believe that interruptions will happen far more often in open than in closed offices from existing research.

I will keep reading the literature.  But I also suspect that, since most of this research was published (In the 1980s and 1990s), a higher proportion of people with jobs that require time to think and intense concentration are now put in open offices, or semi-open offices (especially cubicles, ala Dilbert). There also might be generational differences here: perhaps young people expect to work in open settings and like them more than old baby boomers like me.

I would appreciate any comments that people have about their experiences with different office arrangements. For now, I will assume that Lovaglia’s Law explains the widespread and apparently growing move toward open office design, but I am happy to listen to alternative views. I have a strong bias against open offices at the moment, but it is weakly held (to paraphrase from the folks at the Institute for the Future, who encourage people to have strong opinions, that are weakly held)

Comments

[Tallcedars]

I had a talk with the senior administrator at a company I once worked for on this subject while he was in the process of arranging the conversion of all of the software development offices there from private to semi-open. I'd been through that before and had concerns. He couldn't stop talking about how much money it would save on real estate costs. That's what he was being graded on that year, so it was a foregone conclusion. Now I have a name for that interaction. Thanks.

I didn't stay long after the switch, but it was for long enough to notice increased dissatisfaction and decreased interaction.

[Louktarnz]

I second that; I'm in New Zealand, the latheh system isn't perfect but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in the US based on the current income that I earn; no system is perfect and any system created by humans will have its flaws but to claim that the free market has the pixie dust to deliver everything anyone needs at the magical rock bottom price that all can afford simply ignores what the reality is.

[Cosma]

Call my cynical, but I've always thought the obvious explanation for why bosses like open-plan offices is that it makes it easier to see what what their subordinates are doing, without giving them any warning that their about to be surveilled.

[Bryan]

As a person who is a year removed from College and is 6 months into my first corporate job, I feel like I am one of the young people you say come to expect open office environments. In that regard, you are right. When I first arrived at my employer, I really liked the open office environment, as it gave the office a more relaxed feel (something that, at the time, was important to me coming right out of school). As time has gone on, however, I have drifted away from that mindset. I find spending a full workday at my open office desk almost stressful in and of itself.

Luckily, my office is set up in such a way that there are a number of free-use meeting rooms that you can step into without having to reserve them. There are enough that I have never had a problem finding one, and they offer a great alternative to me when I am trying to sit down and work exclusively on one project for an extended period. A lot of my day to day work (I am in sales) involves short quick tasks, so having an open office environment is helpful. I agree with the point that an open environment encourages cooperation and teamwork, and having coworkers readily available for help and advice has been invaluable for me.

I think for me having a readily available mix of usable space is the best. As you said in your post, there are distinct advantages and disadvantages to each side, and I think it will be hard to find a job that is perfectly suited to either type of layout exclusively.

[Sandy Piderit]

Hi Bob -- just wanted to point you toward engineers' recent storytelling, at:

http://www.siliconvalley.com/opinion/ci_7630229?nclick_check=1

and toward my story of working in the Peter B. Lewis building in Cleveland:

http://worklifechronicles.typepad.com/worklife_chronicles/2007/12/open-offices-a.html

All anecdotal, of course. You may want to check out Leslie Perlow's work on time and interruptions for empirical evidence about related issues.

[Wally Bock]

Maybe I'm not getting it, but it seems like Lovaglia's Law is the sort of thing that academics come up with when their wise counsel isn't followed. The word that's throwing me is "important." I'm wondering who defines that. It seems like it has a lot to do with your objectives.

In the case of open systems the decision made by an administrator might be on the basis of their performance against budget when open-plan costs less than full walls and closed offices and therefore makes it more likely that they'll look good and make more money. For an administrator maximizing performance that way, ergonomic concerns might not be a consideration.

[Aaron M]

The "benefits" of open offices have been debated by the ergonomics community for years. Ergonomists recognize that, depending on the environment, open offices are disruptive to concentration and lower productivity.

Unfortunately, as you stated, those in management do not look at the evidence which confirms this, and they may be driven by the wrong incentives from their management team.

When managers are in charge of organizing office space, they may be incented to make the "best use of space". This is a fuzzy concept. Does "best use" mean lowest cost per worker, most people in the space, or something else? Productivity is tangible and can be measured, but often it isn't. Instead, what is measured are headcounts and budgets. Managers are then held responsible for costs, but not necessarily for productivity. It takes a very savvy manager to understand that productivity and human performance are important factors to consider when organizing the office. Unfortunately, I have yet to meet any managers who are that savvy, so I've stocked up on earplugs.

[Hans-Eric Grönlund]

The increase of interaction could be explained by the fact that people don't like to disturb others, and so they feel more comfortable to speak in closed spaces.
I've noticed this myself. We have mixed workspaces, some are open and some closed. I don't go to talk to someone in an open workspace unless I really have to. I rather email, a less effective form of communication.
In the past I have been an advocate of open offices, especially if everyone is a part of the same team, or work on the same project.
I now have to reconsider that standpoint. I have been taking for granted that it would be good for communication to work in the same room. I would never have guessed it could be the other way around.
Lovaglia eh? I'd better pay more attention to him.

Regards

[Robert Mooney]

I'm an engineer. I've worked in a mix of open, semi-open and closed environments.

In general, I agree that the open environment is distracting if you are working with a number of people, some collaborating more closely than others. When I am in the same mode as my peers, driving towards a particular goal, I've found that proximity and synchronicity actually drive me.

Closed environments offers a much better sense of autonomy and focus, and being in lock-step with my peers isn't as important. The disconnect, however, can be troublesome especially when I need to be in close contact: offices tend to be cramped and meeting areas (in my experience) are often taken or are only available for a brief period. I lose a bit of that drive when my peers aren't more visible or accessible.

I suspect there's a happy medium between both environments, where one might have an isolated quiet space, and varying degrees of (isolated) collaborative space. I'm trying to find that now myself.

[Nivi]

A good article on offices for thinkers by Joel Spolsky: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html

The classic Peopleware has several chapters on office with references to literature: http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Tom-DeMarco/dp/0932633439