Distributed Academic Workplace and Community - towards a coherent campus within a city

Background and aim – The European third generation universities are distributed in multiple places within a city. This paper focuses on a case of a recent university organisation merger that combines three campuses within one city, each with their own organisational cultures and spatial structures. The challenge for the campus development is to enhance and support community creation within this diversity. This paper examines the distributed academic community through its mobile knowledge workers: the quality and needs for mobile workplace.
Methods – The workplace experiences of the mobile knowledge workers were collected in two phases in early summer 2020 executing first a survey followed by semi-structured interviews (N=23). The qualitative content analysis was conducted.
Results – The findings indicated mostly intra-organisational mobility due to 1. interaction within the academic community, 2. (missing) provision of the workspaces, and 3. issues concerning control over time and environment. Three interaction patterns were identified: between, 1. the team, 2. the university organisation units 3. university organisation and external actors. Each level consists of direct (planned) and indirect (co-presence) interaction. These set diverse requirements for campus development.
Originality – Extensive amount of research exists on multi-locational mobile knowledge workers in e.g., global context and corporations. However, less literature seems to be on mobility within a city or in academic work context.
Practical implications – The results benefit briefing and designing of campus environments for interaction and collaboration at different levels.
Type of paper – a research paper