Zoom Relationships

Lots of speculation regarding the future of the office in the new world.  Partly  because, well, there's not a lot to write about as we settle in to our long voyage to the outer planets.  Who knows?  But there are those who are pushing back against the assumption that WFH will be a major factor.

Why?  Because "organizational life is founded on relationships," according to Beth Humberd and Scott Latham, of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.  And relationships, they insist, require trust and cooperation, which seems self-evident, and they also require physical proximity, which does not seem so self-evident.

The study they rely on to connect office relationships and physical proximity was published in October of 2018, long before COVID, WFH and the Zoom culture.  From the Abstract:

We contextualize workplace relationships in their physical environment and propose that spatial dimensions common to modern workspaces actively influence workplace relationships, focusing specifically on the spatial dimensions of proximity, workspace assignment, privacy, and crowding.  Our spatial model of work relationships proposes that these elements work through relationship-building mechanisms, such as communication content, face-to-face frequency, communication duration, and identity marking, as well as through relationship-straining mechanisms, such as territoriality and ego depletion, to differentially influence both positive and negative relational ties at work.

It looks to me that Humberd and Latham's "physical proximity" argument is based primarily on the study's inclusion of "face-to-face frequency" as a positive influence on relationships.  Fair enough.  But a Zoom call is essentially "face-to-face," and although there's a lot to be said about the differences between a Zoom call and a physically-in-the-same-place meeting, there's no evidence that the positive impact on relationships that a physically-proximate meeting has is significantly greater than that of a Zoom meeting.

There's also the interesting thought that some of the difficulties of the physical workplace indicated in the Abstract - "...proximity, workspace assignment, privacy and crowding," are largely addressed when you're working from home.  And even if it is shown conclusively that physical proximity improves workplace relationships, will corporations abandon WFH purely on that account, when WFH provides everyone with so many other benefits?

The more I think about this, the more interesting it becomes.  The Abstract notes "relationship-straining mechanisms, such as territoriality and ego depletion."  What impact would working from home have on these issues?  How about sexual harassment?  Bullying?  Certainly water-cooler conversations, touted as "critical to new ideal generation," can be done by text?  Or on Twitter, to engage a much wider audience?

Lots to think about in the dark void before herd immunity.