Purpose – The activity-based office concept of the modern office is set to increase productivity through the stimulation of interaction and communication while retaining employee satisfaction and reducing the accommodation costs. Although some research has gone into understanding the added value, there is still a need for sound data on the relationship between office design, its intentions and the actual use after implementation. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue. Design/methodology/approach – An evaluative study on the effectiveness of activity-based office concepts was carried out to gain more insight in their use. The study included relevant literature on workplace design, combined with an observation and a survey of 182 end-users from four different service organizations in The Netherlands. Findings – The findings from these case studies underline some known benefits and disadvantages of activity-based office concepts, and provide insight in the importance of several physical, social and mental aspects of the office environment in employee choice behavior. This study shows that the office concept is not always used as intended what could result in a loss in productivity, illness and dissatisfaction. People's personal preferences seem to have a bigger effect on the use of certain types of workplaces than some workstation facilities, although ergonomics and IT equipment and systems are expected to be satisfactory everywhere. Misusage of the concept is often the consequence of critical design (process) failures. Originality/value – The originality of this research lies in the combination of studying the program of requirements, a questionnaire and most of all the observation in a quiet period, providing new information on choice behavior.

Over the past decades, the use of mobile technology has increased and the attitude towards work has changed, making it possible to work anywhere at any time. However, workers still seek work environments that stimulate networking and collaboration possibilities. This has led to the growing popularity of co-working spaces. However, little is known about the specific preferences of co-working space users. The aim of this research is to analyse user preferences for co-working space characteristics. Stated choice data were collected by means of a questionnaire which was completed by 219 respondents of 25 co-working spaces in the Netherlands. A mixed-multinomial logit model was used to analyse the user preferences. Results show that the main motivations for co-workers to work in a co-working space were that they were looking for a workplace outside their home that allows them to work in an inspiring work environment where the accommodation is affordable. Accessibility and atmosphere/interior are the most important characteristics when choosing a specific co-working space. These results provide owners or managers of co-working spaces with clear insights about how to cope with co-worker preferences by offering co-working spaces with good accessibility by car and public transport, a semi-open layout and a homelike interior.

Coworking spaces have become a central component of new work environments, with large international chains. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether user preferences for the physical workspace design are consistent across countries, which the uniformity of such chains seems to suggest. A comparison between the user preferences of coworking spaces between the Netherlands (n = 219), Germany (n = 98) and the Czech Republic (n = 79) is performed using a mixed multinomial logic model for each country. Besides statistical utility of attributes, also motivations for working in coworking spaces are analysed. The findings show that there are some consistencies in preferences across countries. Typical real estate characteristics like accessibility and contract options came forward to be the most important attributes in choosing which coworking space to work at in all three countries. However, significant differences in the desired quality levels of specifically these attributes were found between the countries as well, and only the less important attributes showed similar preferences internationally. This suggests that identical world-wide implementations of the same concept, might serve multi-nationals but possibly will not attract local users. The identified differences in preferences can help to position more specific, dedicated coworking spaces within local markets.

Employee satisfaction is pivotal for companies as it enhances perceived productivity and organizational performance. Office concepts and their workspaces can affect employee satisfaction. However, these effects are still ambiguous, particularly regarding the activity-based concept. Therefore, in this study employee satisfaction with the work environment is investigated from a holistic approach. The effects of both personal characteristics and workspaces used by the employee on work environment satisfaction are described and measured, including mediating effects of the perceived importance of employee needs. Data was collected using an online questionnaire among 327 employees of 13 knowledge-based organizations. Path analysis was used to determine the direct and indirect effects of personal variables, environmental variables and perceived importance of needs on satisfaction. It demonstrated that both personal and environmental variables affect satisfaction, and that a considerable number of these effects are indirect through the perceived importance of needs. In particular, the effects of used workspaces were extensive.