Co-working spaces: Where everyone knows your name

ANN ARBOR'We often envy the remote or freelance worker who saves time commuting and dressing up, but rarely do we consider how many might feel isolated and socially adrift. New research on co-working indicates that the need for such spaces grows as they make a sense of community and building relationships an integral part of paying the rent, said Gretchen Spreitzer, professor of management and organizations at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. "We became interested in co-working spaces after an early exploration of the context revealed that people were spending money to work in these spaces less for the workplace itself and more to be part of a community," Spreitzer said. Spreitzer and co-authors Peter Bacevice of HLW International, a New York-based global architecture and design firm, and Lyndon Garrett, a U-M doctoral student, analyzed how members of a co-working space build a sense of community through their daily practices. Co-working spaces are membership-based workspaces where freelancers, remote workers and other independent professionals work together in a shared, communal setting. "Co-working spaces create a stronger feeling of community than most traditional work environments, and we wondered how this happens," Spreitzer said. To do this, the researchers conducted a multipronged study to answer three important questions: how co-working spaces position themselves, if and how co-workers construct community and how co-working affects members' experience of work.