Digitalization of Work

7 The Flex Office: What are the Challenges for Organizations and Users?

7.1. Introduction

The implementation of the flex office, which consists of putting an end to the paradigm of the personal and dedicated workstation, is not without its share of questions. However, the research that has been conducted to date on this phenomenon in management sciences remains rather limited. This research has been developed mainly through two prisms: corporate real estate and theories of organizations. In this chapter, we propose to review the main scientific contributions relating to the flex office, first, by reviewing the genesis of this spatial organization of work, then by proposing a summary of what the existing research says about the opportunities and risks associated with the flex office, and finally, by showing why the Covid-19 health crisis could greatly accelerate its development.

7.2. The origins of the flex office concept

7.2.1. Towards greater flexibility

In a way, the flexible office appeared in the 1980s as a spatial translation of the situation following the Trente Glorieuses (the 30 years that followed the end of World War II in France). The term “non-territorial office” is mainly used to refer to how space is used, and IBM had already designed this by 1970 in the United States through its unallocated cellular offices equipped with a variety of spaces dedicated to functions other than individual production tasks. We can see the beginnings of flexibility in the form of ...