Collaboration in Co-Working Space in Johannesburg

EasyChair Preprint 10225

Abstract

Co-working, as an activity, is a way of working with small-scale entrepreneurs, freelancers and organisation members, and other types of independent workers with different jobs that allow for informal communication and knowledge-sharing in a shared physical workspace (Yang, Bisson, and Sanborn, 2019). The move from traditional closed-off office space to open plan and more informal, co-working space has been inspired by numerous factors such as the new ways of working that have opened because of the introduction and global use of information and communication technology (ICT) (Kojo and Nenonen, 2017). Modern shared workspaces, also known as co-working spaces, were designed to encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing among independent workers who are usually a part of the growing knowledge economy (Orel and Almeida, 2019). As such, co-working spaces are usually seen as centres of innovation (Ross and Ressia, 2015), creativity (Farina et al., 2018), and area of concentrated human talent (Kubatova, 2016). The limited amount of significant research on how adequate co-working space encourages collaboration among independent workers in South Africa has hindered co-working space from being explored as a viable alternative to traditional office space. This paper makes use of in-depth semi-structured interviews with built environment professionals in Johannesburg. Preliminary findings show that co-working space encourages collaboration between coworkers, which leads to the establishment of professional relationships. The findings also revealed how idea-sharing and productivity increased because of effective collaboration in co-working spaces.

Keyphrases: Co-working space, Innovation, Productivity, collaboration, communication, knowledge sharing

@booklet{EasyChair:10225,
  author    = {Thabelo Ramantswana and Tshireletso Maruping and Halatedzi Mudau and Ulemo Tholo},
  title     = {Collaboration in Co-Working Space in Johannesburg},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 10225},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2023}}