Individuals and Environment

This is the updated and revised translation of the French original "Psychologie des espaces de travail", published in 1989. The goal of this book is to study the workplace from a psychosocial perspective. Workspace is a unique type of social environment. It is often situated on the outskirts of urban areas and relegated to property of little real estate value. It rarely gets the attention that the importance of its function in the social structure would merit. It does after all, represent a territory with its own style of occupation and its own organizational, material, and symbolic characteristics. This work is organized around the major concepts of space psychology and puts forward analysis models furnished by research on workspace. The book will familiarize the general public, students as well as professionals with a new way of comprehending professional organization and experiences. It does not only presents American and European research, but is also based on field studies by the author. 'Fischer's timely book brings out, by argument and by case-history, the importance of the subtle processes of using space and of appropriating it. Neither the designer not the manager can now claim ignorance of the high stakes involved; the world of business has to recognize that communications about the workplace can be two-directional, and that the employees' spatial experience and competence can contribute to creating successful working conditions, in both the short and the long terms'.