Working Together and Staying Focused: How Open-Plan Offices Shape Productivity and Job Satisfaction in Public Relations Agencies

Open-plan offices present a persistent organisational dilemma: physical proximity can facilitate coordination while exposing employees to distraction, reduced privacy and unwanted social demands. This dilemma is particularly relevant to public relations agencies, where practitioners alternate between collaborative activities and cognitively demanding individual work. Existing research documents office-related outcomes, but a more explicit account is needed of how spatial conditions interact with communication practices and changing task requirements in agency work. This conceptual paper develops a framework explaining employee productivity and job satisfaction through the joint operation of collaborative resources and environmental demands. It synthesises selected peer-reviewed workplace studies and integrates the job demands-resources perspective with person-environment fit and privacy regulation. The proposed framework distinguishes physical openness from functional accessibility and identifies two explanatory pathways. Useful coordination can support task completion, whereas attentional strain can impair concentration and increase the effort required to sustain performance. Task–space fit conditions both pathways, while perceived boundary control is proposed to weaken the relationship between environmental exposure and attentional strain. Supportive communication norms are expected to make spatial choices usable and to strengthen the translation of accessibility into coordination. Six propositions specify these relationships and establish a research agenda for public relations agencies, including those in Malaysia. The paper contributes a task-sensitive explanation of workplace effectiveness that treats access to colleagues and the ability to regulate interruptions as complementary organisational resources. Practical implications include equitable access to quiet, confidential spaces; agreed interruption protocols; and performance evaluations that consider quality and employee effort alongside speed. The framework remains conceptual and requires empirical testing; it offers a basis for examining when open-plan arrangements support sustainable professional work.

open-plan offices; public relations agencies; employee productivity; job satisfaction; boundary control

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