Participatory activity-based workplace re-design and hybrid working: a longitudinal case study in Italy

Digitalization and flexible work practices have pushed many organizations to implement new office concepts and re-design traditional workspaces as new working spaces matching new employees' working lifestyles and expectations for flexibility. COVID-19 has significantly contributed to accelerate this trend: hybrid working has been announced to be the "new normal" and the role of office has become even more important than before the pandemic outbreak (Raghavan et al., 2021). Within this scenario, Activity-based working (ABW) has surged in importance, being considered a "win-win" solution for organizations and employees (Marzban et al., 2022). However, literature on this workspace design innovation is still in its infancy stage. In detail, there are still conflicting results about the outcomes associated with the implementation of ABW both at individual and collective level. As most research tends to examine the impact of ABW on specific outcome variables by adopting a quantitative approach and surveys, mechanisms producing those outcomes remained black-boxed. Finally, very few studies adopted a longitudinal research design (e.g., Babapour, 2019), so that long-term effects produced by ABW on individuals and their organization are still largely unknown. This paper relies on a case study design and a qualitative approach (Yin, 2009). It selected an organization which implemented ABW adopting a participatory approach to res-design its offices in Italy with the goal of exploring the temporal dynamics of change produced by ABW implementation in relation to hybrid working. The study aims at shedding light on how employees, both as individuals and/or team's members, witnessed the changes produced by specific ABW features in relation to new working conditions, such as territoriality and visibility (Wohlers & Hertel, 2017) and how they managed tensions to gain advantage and mitigate adverse impacts of ABW. Semi-structured interview with employees and managers were integrated with secondary data collected during the early stage of office re-design. The study will advance existing knowledge on workplace innovation by identifying new mechanisms explaining the impact of ABW on individuals and their organizations. Practical implications for effective office re-design and workplace flexibility management will also be provided to organizations intended to implement this innovation.