Are Coworkers in the Italian Peripheral Areas Performing Better? A Counterfactual Analysis

Coworking spaces are “serendipity accelerators” designed to host creative people and entrepreneurs. While recent literature has started exploring the indirect effects of coworking spaces on the local context, little is still known on how coworking spaces may directly affect the coworkers’ economic performance and wellbeing. Using a novel dataset based on a survey of 326 CWs working in the Italian coworking spaces in 2018, this paper explores the potential economic impact for coworkers, depending on whether a coworking space is localized in a peripheral or an urban area. Through a propensity-score matching approach, we found that being located in a peripheral area for coworkers may represent an opportunity to earn more than working in an urban center. The same holds for the organization coworkers belong to.

Interior of coworking center as a unique art space of the XXI century

The purpose of the article is to identify trends and patterns of organization of the artistic space of the modern interior of the coworking center, as well as the creation of scientifically sound methods that argue appropriate ways to solve design problems in the field of aesthetics of the XXI century. Research methodology. The theoretical, structural, philosophical, and aesthetic method is applied; method of artistic and stylistic analysis to identify features of the interior design of Kyiv coworking centers; structural-semiotic method, which determines the artistic and figurative content in the interior design of modern coworking space. Scientific novelty. The main theoretical concepts that became the basis for defining the interior of the coworking center as a unique type of artistic space are considered; -an analysis of the basic spatial concepts developed by famous philosophers who understand it as an artistic space; identified and analyzed the features of artistic solutions in the process of designing working interiors of domestic coworking centers; the factors of influence on the artistic and figurative decision of the interior of the coworking space are determined. Conclusions. Based on the analysis of existing spatial concepts, it is determined that the space of a modern coworking center can be considered one of the types of artistic space and identify certain semantic categories (according to Gabrichevsky, Spengler, Heidegger, etc.). Characteristic techniques and means of artistic expression of modern interiors of coworking centers, which are related to the understanding of space as an artistic concept, reflect the idea of ​​its polyphony and determine the artistic and aesthetic principles of domestic interior coworking center in the first decades of the XXI century. The study found that in the interiors of modern Kyiv coworking spaces ("Magazine", "Platform" (Leonardo Business Center and Art Factory), "New Work Labs", "Kooperativ", "Hub 4.0", "Creative Quarter", "LIFT99 Kyiv Hub", "Anthill Space", "Lofti Space", "Creative States", "Toloka", "Garden - Smartwork") implemented Eurasian and European types of organization of artistic space. Keywords: coworking center, interior design, artistic space, subject-spatial environment.

Ausgestaltungs- und Anwendungspotenziale von Virtual und Augmented Reality Technologien im Kontext von Coworking Spaces

ZusammenfassungCoworking Spaces (CSPs) sind geteilte Arbeitsplätze für Selbstständige, Freelancer*innen, Mikrounternehmen und Startups, die Isolation entgegenwirken und zum interdisziplinären Wissensaustausch anregen können. Jedoch existieren auch Barrieren, die Nutzer*innen davon abhalten, zu anderen Coworker*innen Kontakt aufzunehmen, da oft unklar ist, wann und ob jemand zum kreativen Austausch oder zum Anbieten von Hilfe bereit ist. Durch die Covid-19 Pandemie wurde die Unsicherheit bei der gegenseitigen Kontaktaufnahme noch weiter erschwert und viele CSPs mussten zeitweise schließen. Um Barrieren bei der Kontaktaufnahme zu reduzieren und die interdisziplinäre Zusammenarbeit zu fördern, können Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien eingesetzt werden. Virtual Reality (VR) und Augmented Reality (AR) sind Technologien, die sich durch einen besonders hohen Grad an Immersion und sozialer Präsenz auszeichnen. Deshalb zeigen wir in diesem Beitrag, wie VR- und AR-Technologien gezielt eingesetzt werden können, um den interdisziplinären Wissensaustausch und Zusammenarbeit sowohl in CSPs als auch ortsunabhängig zu fördern. Dazu präsentieren wir positive Effekte, die durch den Einsatz einer der beiden Technologien im Zusammenhang mit CSPs erzielt werden können und leiten konkrete Gestaltungsempfehlungen für Anwendungsentwickler*innen, Unternehmen sowie Betreiber*innen von CSPs ab. Diese Gestaltungsempfehlungen basieren sowohl auf den neuesten Erkenntnissen aus der Fachliteratur als auch auf Interviews mit Expert*innen aus Forschung und Praxis mit Erfahrung im Bereich CSPs, VR und AR. Unsere Anwendungsszenarien können Entwickler*innen, Unternehmen und Betreiber*innen von CSPs als Grundlage dienen, vom Einsatz beider Technologien zu profitieren.

COLLABORATIVE LEARNING AND INDIVIDUAL WORK PERFORMANCE IN COWORKING SPACES

Coworking spaces are becoming increasingly popular. Throughout literature, coworking spaces are commonly known as collaborative environments. Yet, there is a lack of research on the mechanisms of the collaborative practices within coworking spaces. This research identifies collaborative learning as a major collaborative practice within coworking spaces, and develops a conceptual framework including two other variables: individual motivation to learn and individual work performance. Exploratory factor analysis to establish the reliability and validity of this framework. Next, a survey study was conducted of 169 coworking space members and PLS-SEM was used to do a factor analysis and evaluate the structural model created. It is found that individual motivation to learn positively impacts collaborative learning, collaborative learning positively impacts individual work performance, and that collaborative learning acts as a full mediator between individual motivation to learn and individual work performance. These findings demonstrate how collaborative learning can be key in improving individual work performance in coworking spaces. Furthermore, these findings position collaborative learning as a theory that deserves further attention in coworking space research. These findings also suggest that coworking space operators may want to further encourage collaboration and incentivize learning in their space.

Urban Commons and Collective Action to Address Climate Change

Climate change and the coupled loss of ecosystem services pose major collective action problems in that all individuals would benefit from better cooperation to address these problems but conflicting interests and/or incomplete knowledge discourage joint action. Adopting an inductive and multi‐layered approach, drawing upon the authors’ previous research on urban commons, we here summarize key insights on environmentally oriented urban commons and elaborate on what role they have in instigating climate‐proofing activities in urban areas. We deal with three types of urban commons, i.e., “urban green commons,” “coworking spaces,” and “community climate commons.” We describe how allotment gardens, community gardens, and other types of urban green commons contribute to environmental learning that may boost understanding of environmental issues and which constitute important learning arenas for climate‐change mitigation and adaptation. We also deal with the newly emerging phenomenon of coworking spaces that share many essential institutional attributes of urban commons and which can work for climate‐change mitigation through the benefits provided by a sharing economy and through reduction of domestic transportation and commuting distance. Community climate commons represent commons where local communities can mobilize together to create shared low‐carbon assets and which hold the potential to empower certain segments and civil society groups so that they can have greater influence and ownership of the transformation of reaching net‐zero carbon goals. We conclude this article by identifying some critical determinants for the up‐scaling of environmentally oriented urban commons.

Is ‘co’ in coworking a short for contradictions?

PurposeBuilding on the existing literature and on a series of interviews conducted in very diverse coworking spaces, this article attempts at analyzing coworking by focusing on the historical evolution and heterogeneity of its interpretations, as well as the plurality of its realization in practice and prospective developments.Design/methodology/approachThe theoretical framework adopted is Cultural Historical Activity Theory – a dialectical approach which allows the study of human activities as historically evolving and complex systems which change under the impulse of their inner contradictions. The analysis presented here starts with an overview of the history of the theoretical elaborations and discussions of coworking. The authors then focus on the experiences and interpretations of this phenomenon as conveyed by coworkers and coworking managers in the north of Italy – one of the most active coworking areas in Europe.FindingsCoworking first emerged as a way of promoting forms of work and organization that require simultaneous, multidirectional, and reciprocal work, as understood in contrast to forms that incorporate an established division of labor, demarcated communities, and formal and informal sets of rules. However, with time, coworking has evolved toward novel directions, giving rise to heterogeneous interpretations of it. Inquiry constitutes a deeper investigation of the heterogeneity of coworking. The take-away message here is that the prefix co- in coworking can be interpreted, through a play of words, to evoke multiple positions and views conveying internal contradictions.Originality/valueThe historical overview of coworking shows a strong differentiation and multisided interpretation of this phenomenon along two dimensions of historical development, namely, social and business, and outward and inward. The qualitative analysis of the interviews traces the different lived interpretations and conceptions of coworking. The analysis confirms, on the one hand, the complexity and heterogeneity described in the literature, and on the other hand, it enriches the literature by depicting the contradictory nature of the phenomenon, including how the historical and inner tensions of coworking are dynamically evolving in the concrete experiences reported by the managers and users in the coworking spaces.