Architectural Design's Impact on Health, Job Satisfaction & Well-being Tack -thanks List of Articles

Svensk titel: KONTORSARBETE—en explorativ studie om sambandet mellan det arkitektoniska rummet och arbetstillfredsställelse, hälsa och välbefinnande. IV IV Tillägnad mamma & pappa—tack för ALLT Dedicated to mum & dad—thanks for EVERYTHING V V SUMMARY This doctoral thesis examines the office environment's influence on employees' perception of their workplaces, their organizations and their job satisfaction, as well as their health and well-being. It is based on an empirical study of 491 office employees from twenty-six companies and divisions in large companies. Seven office types, defined by their architectural and functional features, are represented in the study group: cell-office, shared-room office, small open plan office, medium-sized open plan office, large open plan office, flex-office and combi-office. The research has its basis in architecture, although an interdisciplinary approach using organizational and management theory, environmental psychology, and social and stress medicine has been employed. Qualitative (Articles I & V) and quantitative methods (Articles II & IV) were used. The thesis also contains an explorative, review article. Thus it comprises all in all five articles. Article I is an analysis of the importance of architectural quality for employees´perception and experience of the office using Lynch's method (1960) developed to measure inhabitants' perception of architectural quality in cities. The study shows that in the office the experience to a high degree is independent of both the scale of the office and office type; instead it is determined by the quality of the plan layout combined with the quality of other design features. It also shows Lynch's method to be useful in foreseeing where the elements that reinforce 'imageability' will most likely appear in an office environment. Article II investigates employees' environmental satisfaction focusing on: 1) ambient factors; 2) noise and privacy; and 3) design-related factors. The results, based on regression models with age, gender, job rank and line of business as additional covariates, show office type as a factor with a statistically significant impact on satisfaction with the office environment. Employees in cell-offices are prominently most satisfied, followed by those in flex-offices, cell-offices rate low only on social aspects of design-related factors. A major finding is the internal differences between office types where employees share workspace and facilities with lowest satisfaction in medium-sized and large open plan offices. Article III is a review article that analyzes the employees' office experiences in two ways: 1) by framing the physical work environment's influence on employees into the model …