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Keywords
Privacy, Team performance, Office layout
Abstract
One way organizations increase their competitive advantage is through innovative strategies that improve human performance. Human performance can be enhanced or constrained by situational factors that are introduced into the organization's work environment. One situational factor is the organization's workspace. This study examines the impact of a new workspace technology on individual privacy and on team interaction. The research found that the participants were generally satisfied with the visual privacy but not with the auditory privacy. The research also found that the participants were satisfied with the workspace's ability to facilitate team interaction. Implications of the findings are discussed.
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Most organizations are looking for a sustainable competitive advantage that results in increased profits, greater market share, and or improved stock price. Recent articles have advocated that a sustainable competitive advantage can be achieved through:
* information technology (BenTov, 2001);
* knowledge management (Ofek and Sarvary, 2001);
* learning (Sloan et al., 2002);
* integrated global sourcing (Trent and Monczka, 2002, Ireland et al, 2002);
* political means (Schuler et al, 2002);
* alliance management (Ireland et al, 2002);
* trustworthiness (Barney and Hansen, 1994); and/or
* human resources (McWilliams et al., 2001).
Most of the approaches revolve around one of three critical resources of the organization:
(1) People.
(2) Technology.
(3) Process.
Barney (1991) has argued that any single resource or combination of resources can lead to a sustained competitive advantage if the resource is: valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and not easily substitutable. Starting in the 1990s, organizations embraced the perspectives of knowledge creation (Nonaka, 1991), knowledge management (Davenport, 1997), learning organizations (Senge, 1990), team sense-making (Ashmos and Nathan, 2002), and knowledge workers (Drucker, 1993). However, these new perspectives lead to new limitations since these perspectives are heavily dependent on the human capabilities of the organization. This change in strategic perspective has led to organizations pursuing new technology to improve the human performance of organizational members.
The classic expression for human performance (P) is that it is a function of ability (A) times motivation (M) (i.e. P = f(A ×...