What Is a Sustainable Coworking Space?
Glorious Sun School of Business and Management, Donghua University, Shanghai 201620, China
*
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2020, 12(24), 10547; https://doi.org/10.3390/su122410547
Received: 23 November 2020 / Revised: 11 December 2020 / Accepted: 13 December 2020 / Published: 16 December 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ambidextrous Open Innovation for Sustainability)
Coworking is a trend that is becoming increasingly popular and is often associated with sustainability. However, a lack of consensus exists on what a sustainable coworking space is. This study addresses this by investigating what is currently understood by a sustainable coworking space. Q-methodology is used to analyze 27 participants’ subjective ideas about what a sustainable coworking space is, resulting in four distinct perspectives. The four perspectives are identified as follows: 1. “New Work”, 2. “Resourceful Society”, 3. “Incubator, and 4. “Environmental”. These perspectives have distinct opinions on what important sustainability aspects in the context of coworking spaces are. Whilst some prioritize environmental and community factors, others have a mixed focus. Additionally, the four perspectives share some common beliefs. All of them believe in the importance of sustainable mobility, as well as in the moderate importance of encouraging their members to be socially responsible. These findings offer insight into the different understandings of coworking space sustainability. This is important because currently this field is under-researched, and a more systematic approach to sustainability in this field is needed. This research lays the foundation to do so and helps work toward a better understanding of coworking in a sustainability and innovative context.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
coworking space; sustainability; sharing economy; Q-methodology; open innovation
▼
Show Figures
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Oswald, K.; Zhao, X. What Is a Sustainable Coworking Space? Sustainability 2020, 12, 10547. https://doi.org/10.3390/su122410547
AMA Style
Oswald K, Zhao X. What Is a Sustainable Coworking Space? Sustainability. 2020; 12(24):10547. https://doi.org/10.3390/su122410547
Chicago/Turabian StyleOswald, Kolja; Zhao, Xiaokang. 2020. "What Is a Sustainable Coworking Space?" Sustainability 12, no. 24: 10547. https://doi.org/10.3390/su122410547
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
Search more from Scilit