Learning-by-Moving: Can Reconfiguring Spatial Proximity Between Organizational Members Promote Individual-level Exploration?
研究利用一家电商公司的自然实验，发现将员工工位调至离原本疏远的同事更近，能促进个体探索行为，且对经验丰富或缺乏联系的员工效果更明显，最终提升财务绩效。
This research proposes that individual-level exploration can be promoted by reconfiguring the spatial proximity between organizational members’ workspaces. To test this idea, I exploit a natural experiment in an e-commerce company where the spatial distances between organizational members’ workspaces were reconfigured. Consistent with the theory I develop on learning, results suggest that individuals whose workspaces were moved closer to those of previously separated peers engaged in more individual-level exploration. This pattern was stronger for individuals who had higher prior organizational experience and those who did not have ties with previously separated peers. Finally, I found that the relocated individuals also achieved higher financial performance. Overall, this study highlights the importance of an underexamined organization design element—spatial design—and its implications for organizational learning, individual-level exploration, and firm performance. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2019.1291 .