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Tracking serendipitous interactions: how individual cultures shape the office

Brown, Chloë, Efstratiou, Christos, Leontiadis, Ilias, Quercia, Daniele, Mascolo, Cecilia (2014) Tracking serendipitous interactions: how individual cultures shape the office. In: CSCW '14. Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing. CSCW Computer Supported Cooperative Work . pp. 1072-1081. ACM, New York, USA ISBN 978-1-4503-2540-0. (doi:10.1145/2531602.2531641) (KAR id:38833)

Abstract

In many work environments, serendipitous interactions between members of different groups may lead to enhanced productivity, collaboration and knowledge dissemination. Two factors that may have an influence on such interactions are cultural differences between individuals in highly multicultural workplaces, and the layout and physical spaces of the workplace itself. In this work, we investigate how these two factors may facilitate or hinder inter-group interactions in the workplace. We analyze traces collected using wearable electronic badges to capture face-to-face interactions and mobility patterns of employees in a research laboratory in the UK. We observe that those who interact with people of different roles tend to come from collectivist cultures that value relationships and where people tend to be comfortable with social hierarchies, and that some locations in particular are more likely to host serendipitous interactions, knowledge that could be used by organizations to enhance communication and productivity.

Item Type: Conference or workshop item (Paper)
DOI/Identification number: 10.1145/2531602.2531641
Uncontrolled keywords: inter-group interactions, workplace culture, productivity, collaborative working
Subjects: T Technology
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences > School of Engineering and Digital Arts
Depositing User: Tina Thompson
Date Deposited: 19 Mar 2014 16:50 UTC
Last Modified: 08 Dec 2022 21:14 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/38833 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Efstratiou, Christos.

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6288-9579
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