Is It Possible to Innovate Work Organization? Ideas and Inspirations from Coworking Experiences
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.19245/25.05.pij.5.1.6Keywords:
job design, motivation, leadership, proactivity, job crafting, work organizationAbstract
Coworking is a recent phenomenon, but it is spreading and, even more importantly, it is evolving rapidly. It originated as a relatively simple way for freelancers to share work spaces, services and equipment in order to reduce individual costs. In most advanced cases, coworking organizations are turning into organizational settings in which truly novel work arrangements provide interesting new ideas and inspirations about how to bring about not only innovation in job design and work organization, but also a new way to construct individual and organizational identity. In this paper we will briefly describe how most advanced coworking organizations function, and we will reflect on some key elements that characterize them. We will also discuss about whether, and at what conditions, traditional companies and organizations can learn from such experiences.
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Badiali, E. (2014), Work Together – Right Now. Coworking, cooperazione e creatività, Rapporto di ricerca, Fondazione Ivano Barberini, Bologna.
Berdicchia, D., and Masino, G. (2018), “Leading by leaving: Exploring the relationship between supervisory control, job crafting, self-competence and performance”, Journal of Management and Organization, 1–19.
Bock, L. (2015), Work rules!, New York: Hachette Group.
Bouncken, R. B., and Reuschl, A.J. (2016), “Coworking-spaces: how a phenomenon of the sharing economy builds a novel trend for the workplace and for entrepreneurship”, Review of Managerial Science, 12 (1): 317–334.
Deci, E.L., Connell, J.P., and Ryan, R.M. (1989), “Self-determination in a work organization”, Journal of Applied Psychology, 74 (4): 580–590.
Deci, E.L., and Ryan, R.M. (2000), “The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior”, Psychological Inquiry, 11 (4): 227–268.
Elliot, A.J., and Harackiewicz, J.M. (1994), “Goal Setting, Achievement Orientation, and Intrinsic Motivation: A Mediational Analysis”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66 (5): 968–980.
Fuzi, A. (2015), “Co-working space for promoting entrepreneurship in sparse regions: the case of South Wales”, Regional Studies, Regional Science, 2 (1): 462–469.
Gandia E. (2012), “Freelance Industry Report”, [online], Scribd,
Gandini, A. (2015), “The rise of coworking spaces: A literature review”, Ephemera: theory & politics in organization, 15 (1): 193–205.
Grant, A.M., and Ashford, S.J. (2008), “The dynamics of proactivity at work”, Research in Organizational Behavior, 28: 3–34.
Hill L., Brandeau G., Truelove E., and Lineback K. (2014), Collective genius: the art and practice of leading innovation, Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.
Hobfoll, S.E. (1989), “Conservation of resources. A new attempt at conceptualizing stress”, American Psychologist, 44 (3): 513–524.
Hood, C. (2015), “Building communities: Lessons in co-working for the enterprise world”, Corporate Real Estate Journal, 4 (3).
Ismail, S. (2014), Exponential Organizations, New York: Diversion Books.
Kubatova, J. (2014), “The Cause and Impact of the Development of Coworking in the Current Knowledge Economy”, in Vivas, C. Sequeiro, P. The Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on Knowledge Management. London: Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited, 571–577.
Moriset, B. (2014), “Building new places of the creative economy. The rise of coworking spaces”, in Proceedings of the 2nd Geography of Innovation, International Conference 2014, Utrecht, The Netherlands: Utrecht University.
Oldham, G.R., and Hackman, R. (2010), “Not what it was and not what it will be: the future of job design research”, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 31 (2-3): 463–479.
Parrino, L. (2015), “Coworking: assessing the role of proximity in knowledge exchange”, Knowledge Management Research and Practice, 13 (3): 261–271.
Pine, B.J., and Gilmore, J.H. (1999), The Experience Economy. Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage, Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Pink, D. (2009), Drive: the surpising truth about what motivates us, Penguin, New York.
Pompa, L. (2017), “From the Unusual to the Useful: Digital Platforms and Co-Working Spaces as Instruments for Human Resource Management in Emerging Economic and Organizational Environments”, International Journal of Business and Management, 12 (8).
Ross, P., and Ressia, S. (2015), “Neither office nor home: coworking as an emerging workplace choice”, Employement Relations Record, 15 (1): 42–57.
Rudolph, C.W. Katz, I.M., Lavigne, K.N., and Zacher H. (2017), “Job crafting: A meta-analysis of relationships with individual differences, job characteristics, and work outcomes”, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 102: 112–138.
Ryan, R.M., and Deci, E.L. (2000), “Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions”, Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25: 54–67.
Sansone, C., and Harackiewicz, J.M. (2000), Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation: The Search for Optimal Motivation and Performance, London: Academic Press.
Spinuzzi, C. (2012), “Working alone together. Coworking as emergent collaborative activity”, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 26 (4): 399–441.
Spreitzer, G., Bacevice, P., and Garrett, L. (2015), “Why people thrive in coworking spaces”, Harvard Business Review, September issue, 28–30.
Waters-Lynch, J., and Potts, J. (2017), “The social economy of coworking spaces: a focal point model of coordination”, Review of Social Economy, 75 (4): 417–433.
Wrzesniewski, A., and Dutton, J. E. (2001), “Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work”, Academy of Management Review, 26 (2): 179–201.
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Published
2020-10-23
How to Cite
Berdicchia, D., & Fortezza, F. (2020). Is It Possible to Innovate Work Organization? Ideas and Inspirations from Coworking Experiences. PuntOorg International Journal, 5(1), 73–84. https://doi.org/10.19245/25.05.pij.5.1.6
