Managing Research, Development, and Innovation: Managing the Unmanageable, Third Edition

4.2. PHYSICAL LOCATION AND COMMUNICATION

Another aspect of job design concerns the way jobs are physically located in relation to each other. Considerable literature indicates that arranging jobs in such a way that communication is either increased or decreased can result in improved performance in research and development jobs. For example, Allen (1977) and Szilagyi and Holland (1980) have indicated that the probability of communication increases rather sharply with a decrease in the distance between co-workers. Moreover, Szilagyi and Holland (1980) have reported that increased social density (a situation in which there are many employees per square foot who are able to talk to each other quickly) resulted in such employees experiencing task ...