The impact of the behavioral environment on office productivity.
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the role that the behavioral environment plays in office productivity. The paper reviews the literature from the occupier perspective. This approach enables a greater appreciation of the social context of offices. The review establishes the need to link work process with the office environment. It identifies the need to understand how occupiers make sense of space through personalism. The balance between the positive interactions in the office and the negative distractions are explored. The review of the literature reveals that by adopting the occupier perspective potential tensions can be identified between individual, private, and team-based collaborative work areas. These tensions can have an impact on the office occupier’s productivity. This paper establishes that to ensure office environments are designed for optimum productivity considerations must be given to the role of the behavioral environment. Office environments need to be designed to enhance collaboration, whilst at the same time ensure individual private work is not compromised.