Skip to main content

Lund University Publications

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

The association between office design and performance on demanding cognitive tasks

Seddigh, Aram ; Stenfors, Cecilia ; Berntson, Erik ; Bååth, Rasmus LU ; Sikström, Sverker LU orcid and Westerlund, Hugo (2015) In Journal of Environmental Psychology 42. p.172-181
Abstract
The physical office environment has been shown to be associated with indicators of both health and performance. This study focuses on how memory performance is affected in normal working conditions compared to a quiet baseline (with low amount irrelevant stimuli) in different office types, including individual office rooms, small open-plan offices, medium-sized open-plan offices and large open-plan offices. The results showed that the drop in performance from the quiet baseline to normal working conditions was higher in larger, compared to smaller, open-plan offices. However, contrary to our hypothesis we found that employees in individual office rooms had as high drop in performance as employees in large open-plan office environments.... (More)
The physical office environment has been shown to be associated with indicators of both health and performance. This study focuses on how memory performance is affected in normal working conditions compared to a quiet baseline (with low amount irrelevant stimuli) in different office types, including individual office rooms, small open-plan offices, medium-sized open-plan offices and large open-plan offices. The results showed that the drop in performance from the quiet baseline to normal working conditions was higher in larger, compared to smaller, open-plan offices. However, contrary to our hypothesis we found that employees in individual office rooms had as high drop in performance as employees in large open-plan office environments. These results indicate that employees in small open-plan offices, in comparison to large, have better possibilities to conduct cognitively demanding tasks and that individual office rooms might not be as advantageous as previously thought. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
; ; ; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Productivity, Individual office rooms, Immediate free recall, Cognitive performance, Office type, Open-plan office
in
Journal of Environmental Psychology
volume
42
pages
172 - 181
publisher
Elsevier
external identifiers
  • wos:000356741700018
  • scopus:84942124795
ISSN
1522-9610
DOI
10.1016/j.jenvp.2015.05.001
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
68358e16-4a49-4085-b1e6-28e0e1ba8a5e (old id 5368121)
date added to LUP
2016-04-01 11:02:31
date last changed
2022-03-27 21:49:46
@article{68358e16-4a49-4085-b1e6-28e0e1ba8a5e,
  abstract     = {{The physical office environment has been shown to be associated with indicators of both health and performance. This study focuses on how memory performance is affected in normal working conditions compared to a quiet baseline (with low amount irrelevant stimuli) in different office types, including individual office rooms, small open-plan offices, medium-sized open-plan offices and large open-plan offices. The results showed that the drop in performance from the quiet baseline to normal working conditions was higher in larger, compared to smaller, open-plan offices. However, contrary to our hypothesis we found that employees in individual office rooms had as high drop in performance as employees in large open-plan office environments. These results indicate that employees in small open-plan offices, in comparison to large, have better possibilities to conduct cognitively demanding tasks and that individual office rooms might not be as advantageous as previously thought.}},
  author       = {{Seddigh, Aram and Stenfors, Cecilia and Berntson, Erik and Bååth, Rasmus and Sikström, Sverker and Westerlund, Hugo}},
  issn         = {{1522-9610}},
  keywords     = {{Productivity; Individual office rooms; Immediate free recall; Cognitive performance; Office type; Open-plan office}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{172--181}},
  publisher    = {{Elsevier}},
  series       = {{Journal of Environmental Psychology}},
  title        = {{The association between office design and performance on demanding cognitive tasks}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2015.05.001}},
  doi          = {{10.1016/j.jenvp.2015.05.001}},
  volume       = {{42}},
  year         = {{2015}},
}