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Dr. Thomas A. Norton works as a Human Factors Consultant and Behavioral Specialist at Arup in London. He graduated with a PhD in Psychology from the University of Queensland in 2016. His research focuses on the contextual and motivational processes involved in workplace green behavior. He has published in leading journals such as the Journal of Organizational Behavior, Organization & Environment, and the Journal of Environmental Psychology.
Open-plan office (OPO) layouts emerged to allow organizations to adapt to changing workplace demands. We explore the potential for OPOs to provide such adaptive capacity to respond to two contemporary issues for organizations: the chronic challenge of environmental sustainability, and the acute challenges emerging from the great COVID-19 homeworking experiment. We apply a socio-technical systems perspective and green ergonomics principles to investigate the relationship between an OPO environment and the occupants working within it. In doing so, we consider relevant technical and human factors, such as green technology and employee green behavior. We also consider how a green OPO might provide non-carbon benefits such as improving occupant well-being and supporting the emergence of a green organizational culture. Our investigation highlights several avenues through which an OPO designed with green ergonomic principles could benefit occupants, the organizations they work for, and the natural environment of which they are a part and on which they depend. We find reason to suspect that green OPOs could play an important role in sustainable development; and offer a research agenda to help determine whether it is true that OPOs can, indeed, exemplify how “going green” may be good for business.
Thomas Norton; Oluremi Ayoko; Neal Ashkanasy. A Socio-Technical Perspective on the Application of Green Ergonomics to Open-Plan Offices: A Review of the Literature and Recommendations for Future Research. Sustainability 2021, 13, 8236 .
AMA StyleThomas Norton, Oluremi Ayoko, Neal Ashkanasy. A Socio-Technical Perspective on the Application of Green Ergonomics to Open-Plan Offices: A Review of the Literature and Recommendations for Future Research. Sustainability. 2021; 13 (15):8236.
Chicago/Turabian StyleThomas Norton; Oluremi Ayoko; Neal Ashkanasy. 2021. "A Socio-Technical Perspective on the Application of Green Ergonomics to Open-Plan Offices: A Review of the Literature and Recommendations for Future Research." Sustainability 13, no. 15: 8236.