The Cornell University International Workplace Studies Program (IWSP) was launched in 1989 and under the direction of Franklin Becker and William Sims has focused on the ecology of new ways of working.

The IWSP has established itself as an international leader in the study of what has come to be called Integrated Workplace Strategies (IWS). Using the framework of organizational ecology, the IWSP examines workplace strategies as a complex ecosystem in which one simultaneously considers the cost/benefit implications of the interplay of work processes, employee demographics, physical design, information technology, and organizational culture as they converge in a workplace strategy.

Over the past thirteen years the IWSP has explored a number of issues (see 'Publications") at the cutting edge of workplace strategy, including:

• Alternative workplace strategies such as non-territorial, shared, team-oriented, and universal footprint offices.
• Remote collaborative work.
• The management of workplace change.
• New ways of constructing and procuring "zero-time" space to better manage uncertainty.
• Workplace strategies for dynamic organizations that balance communication, flexibility and cost.

In examining workplace strategies and their organizational impacts, the IWSP research program has been shaped by five factors that continue to transform organizations and their workplace strategies. These include the need to:

• Reduce the cost of doing business.
• Improve the quality of products and services and the speed with which these are brought to market.
• Attract and retain the best-qualified staff.
• Exploit information technologies that generate new opportunities for working remotely, flexibly, and virtually.
• Enhance flexibility and the ability to manage uncertainty and risk.

The IWSP enjoys the sponsorship of a consortium of private and public sector organizations in:

• United States
• Canada
• Europe
• Japan
• Germany

What's New

IWSP's current research theme ->	The Value of a Campus: Costs and Benefits of Collocation One of the most critical decisions large organizations face is whether, how, which and to what extent to collocate organizational units as the organization grows and evolves over time. All things being equal, most companies prefer having the whole company "under one roof." But things are not equal. There are cost, security, attraction and retention, business continuity, branding, market location, technology and other issues that need to be considered. When they are, the value of a campus, or collocation, may become less obvious, though perhaps for some firms no less compelling. Using the organizational ecology framework, the IWSP's current research examines the value of collocating business units, whether in a single high-rise tower, a multi-building urban "campus", or a suburban campus.
	Offices That Work Organizations face unprecedented pressures to respond quickly to unpredictable and rapid changes in virtually every aspect of their business: the economy, marketplace, technology and labor. Agility has become more a matter of survival than choice. At the same time, global competition has turbocharged both the pace of change and the need to contain costs. And as if matters were not complicated enough, labor demographics have generated a conflicting set of employee expectations about the nature of work that organizations must consider as they shape their firms to meet this often bewildering onslaught of external and internal demands.

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