Collaboration, Physical Proximity and Serendipitous Encounters: Avoiding collaboration in a collaborative building
研究发现在看似促进协作的建筑中，员工会采取四种策略避免协作，从而减少意外相遇和新合作的形成，解释了为何空间干预常达不到预期效果。
Despite the adoption of collaborative buildings and office spaces to improve collaboration, the expected benefits of spatial interventions often fail to materialize. In a study of an ostensibly ‘collaborative building’, we identified strategies that employees use to avoid collaborating (i.e. ‘focusing on existing collaborations’, ‘reinforcing group boundaries’, ‘enacting legacy policies’ and ‘minimizing social interactions’). These strategies combined to minimize serendipitous encounters, which led to the avoidance of new collaborations. Our findings address a theoretical tension in the literature as to whether proximity facilitates or inhibits collaboration. We also show that, while it is often difficult to facilitate serendipitous encounters in an ostensibly collaborative building, serendipity nonetheless plays a central role in the development of new collaborative partnerships.