Social networks and spatial configuration—How office layouts drive social interaction

This paper analyzes the spatial dimensions of office layouts in diverse knowledge-intensive workplace environments based on the theoretical and methodological propositions of Space Syntax, and brings this together with the analysis of intra-organizational interaction networks. Physical distances between agents are modeled in different ways and used as explanatory variables in exponential random graph modeling. The paper shows that spatial configuration in offices can be considered an important but not sole rationale for tie formation. Furthermore, it is shown that spatial distance measures based on detailed configurational analysis outperform simple Euclidean distance metrics in predicting social ties.

► We analyze the spatial dimension of interaction networks within organizations.
► We use distances between agents in offices as explanatory variable for networks.
► Spatial layout in offices matters for tie formation.
► Detailed configurational measures of Space Syntax outperform Euclidean distance.