I, We and Them in the Office How do different workspace arrangements affect communication and team identity?

Communication issues are found to be one of the major chal-lenges for software engineering teams. We studied the effect of different workspace arrangements on a team’s communi-cation and social identification. Communication is the main process through which people reduce uncertainty related to their team, familiarize themselves with members of their team, as well as develop cognitive salience to other members of their team. Through social categorization, people cre-ate an image of members of their team with which to relate themselves, and categorize others as members of one’s team, i.e. ”We”. However, if they lack communication, even mem-bers of people’s own team can be labeled as non-members, i.e. ”Them”. We conducted a case study with one software project team, using interviews and observation, and found that, depending on the workspace used, social categoriza-tion can negatively or positively affect the communication behavior of the team. Additionally, this change in commu-nication behavior can either impede or facilitate the team members ’ identification with their team. 1