Digitalization of Work

8 Working in a Coworking Space: What are the Psychosocial Issues?

8.1. Introduction

Established in the 2000s, specifically in 2005 in San Francisco, coworking spaces have since expanded internationally (Moriset 2014). In 2013, there were about 3,000 coworking spaces worldwide, and an estimated 100,000 people frequented such spaces to work (Kubátová 2014). More recently, several thousand coworking spaces and more than 1.18 million users have been recorded (Seo et al. 2017). The first references to coworking in multidisciplinary scientific literature appeared in 2007–2008 and, from 2012 onwards, coworking has gradually become a research topic in its own right (Flipo and Lejoux 2020).

Although the size, membership model and professional orientation of coworking spaces vary (Bouncken and Reuschl 2018), there is consensus on their definition. These places are thus described as open spaces (Blein 2016), shared by workers who have different profiles (Gandini 2015) but are generally independent (Kubátová 2014). Moreover, it is thought that ICT professionals are the main users (Ross and Ressia 2015). Finally, coworking spaces are characterized by the work-related autonomy and flexibility they offer those who frequent them (Blein 2016; Bouncken and Reuschl 2018).

In order to better understand the psychosocial issues and the impact of the implementation of these new workspaces, we have divided this chapter into three parts. First, we will take a more detailed look at the definition of ...