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Coworking spaces and workplaces of the future: Critical perspectives on community, context and change

May 2024
European Management Review

DOI:10.1111/emre.12654

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Authors:

Jennifer Johns

University of Bristol

Greig Charnock

The University of Manchester

Frederick Harry Pitts

University of Exeter

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The last decade has witnessed increased demand by employers and workers for greater flexibility, especially regarding remote and hybrid work. There has therefore been a substantial increase in academic interest in coworking, including within business and management studies. We conduct a systematic literature review of research on coworking and coworking spaces (CWS) to argue this field is now sufficiently developed to merit recognition as an important element of discussion surrounding workplaces of the future. We outline the core themes in coworking research and identify three key research weaknesses relating to common understandings of community, context and change. The article then advances a future research agenda based on two avenues of enquiry. First, greater attention needs to be paid to the value propositions of CWS as businesses. Second, the concept of embeddedness should be used to better understand CWS in their local and national contexts, and we argue for a broader, place‐based analytical focus on CWS. We present two possible future scenarios for CWS, based on opposing forces of homogenisation and differentiation, and we outline their relevance for further debate surrounding workplaces of the future.

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SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Coworking spaces and workplaces of the future: Critical

perspectives on community, context and change

Jennifer Johns

| Edward Yates

| Greig Charnock

| Frederick Harry Pitts

Ödül Bozkurt

| Didem Derya Ozdemir Kaya

University of Bristol Business School, Bristol,

University of Sheffield University of Sussex

Business School, Sheffield, UK

Department of Politics, University of

Manchester, Manchester, UK

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences

Cornwall, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

University of Sussex Business School, Falmer,

Correspondence

Jennifer Johns, University of Bristol Business

School, Bristol, UK.

Email: jennifer.johns@bristol.ac.uk

Funding information

This study was funded by the ESRC DIGIT

Innovation Fund.

Abstract

The last decade has witnessed increased demand by employers and workers for

greater flexibility, especially regarding remote and hybrid work. There has there-

fore been a substantial increase in academic interest in coworking, including

within business and management studies. We conduct a systematic literature

review of research on coworking and coworking spaces (CWS) to argue this field

is now sufficiently developed to merit recognition as an important element of dis-

cussion surrounding workplaces of the future. We outline the core themes in cow-

orking research and identify three key research weaknesses relating to common

understandings of community, context and change. The article then advances a

future research agenda based on two avenues of enquiry. First, greater attention

needs to be paid to the value propositions of CWS as businesses. Second, the con-

cept of embeddedness should be used to better understand CWS in their local and

national contexts, and we argue for a broader, place-based analytical focus on

CWS. We present two possible future scenarios for CWS, based on opposing

forces of homogenisation and differentiation, and we outline their relevance for

further debate surrounding workplaces of the future.

KEYWORDS

coworking, coworking spaces, embeddedness, flexibility, workplaces of the future

INTRODUCTION

When coworking first emerged in the mid-2000s, it was

viewed as a novel way of working, with the potential

to transform futures of work (Neuberg, 2022). Increas-

ing numbers of people now work in places other

than their main workplace (Donnelly & Johns, 2020;

Felstead, 2022)—a trend accelerated by the COVID-19

pandemic. This generates debate around whether this

represents a permanent change in working practices

(Hern, 2020). Coworking has not yet found a place

among intense discussions surrounding flexibility and

hybrid working as the ‘new normal’of work. This is

despite emergent research examining how, between the

office and the home, there exists a growing ‘third space’

of flexible working arrangements—at the centre of which

are coworking spaces (CWS) (e.g Bouncken et al., 2020;

Resch & Steyaert, 2020; Vidaillet & Bousalham, 2020;

Yacoub & Haefliger, 2022).

We define CWS as nonhome, nonconventional office

sites where individuals, teams, or even entire organisa-

tions engage in work, with the aim of benefitting from

synergistic encounters with a community of other

coworkers. The CWS themselves are often designed to

facilitate these encounters. As such, CWS can be concep-

tualised as ‘a sharing economy in two dimensions

providing the access to shared physical assets (office,

infrastructure, cafeteria etc.) and the sharing of intangible

assets (information, knowledge etc.)’(Bouncken &

Reuschl, 2018, p. 322; see also Bouncken et al., 2020;

Bouncken et al., 2021; Bouncken et al., 2023). There cur-

rently exist over 34,600 CWS worldwide (Statista, 2023),

with the highest concentrations of spaces in the

United States, United Kingdom and India. The first

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12654

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European Management Review. 2024;1–19. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/emre 1

CWS opened in San Francisco in 2005 and many con-

temporary CWS retain the core model of a shared office

used by independent tenants renting desks (Blagoev

et al., 2019; Gandini, 2015). Many of the earliest CWS

were set up by ‘small, self-organized groups of indepen-

dent workers’to ‘pool economic resources to reduce the

cost of rent and to counter isolation’(de Peuter

et al., 2017, p. 700). Either side of the COVID-19

pandemic, new CWS have been founded at an increasing

rate, with a five-fold increase in the number of CWS

globally in the period 2015–2024 (Isac, 2019;

Statista, 2023). In this context, large multinational CWS

providers have come to dominate the public perception

of the CWS market, developing a business model

whereby they act as ‘market intermediaries, enabling

workers to connect with others and [to] develop profes-

sional relationships in an office-like environment’

(Gandini & Cossu, 2021, p. 4). CWS are also increasingly

being used by global corporations whose workforces take

advantage of opportunities to hot-desk and to work

remotely (Aroles et al., 2019, p. 289).

CWS present an interesting case study for critical

engagement with a range of core managerial and organi-

sational questions. As Leclercq-Vandelannoitte &

Isaac (2016, p. 3) note, ‘coworking challenges classic

organisational approaches and raises human, social,

managerial and organisational issues that are particularly

salient to management sciences, as well as to society as a

whole’. For example, rather than merely being sites

where self-employed ‘digital nomads’connect across ato-

mised forms of work, CWS also often service teams of

employees from other firms and organisations. Teams

of entrepreneurs will often begin business endeavours in

CWS as a precursor to renting their own office space

(Avdikos & Merkel, 2020); globally recognised compa-

nies such as Uber and Spotify, for example, were origi-

nally conceived by start-ups based in CWS, illustrating

the potential for CWS to act as sites for the development

of disruptive innovations which revolutionise product

and technology markets. CWS remain physical, concrete

spaces that are owned and managed, and are shaped by

processes of urban real estate development and specula-

tion, raising interesting but under-researched questions of

CWS business strategies (Yates et al., 2024) and how

competing CWS offer different value propositions to

their users. CWS cannot simply offer space, they must

also act as spaces where communities can develop and

where innovation can occur, while at the same time

remaining viable as businesses.

We identify three core conceptual and empirical

weaknesses in the extant literature around community,

context and change. In relation to community, the exist-

ing literature tends to view CWS as sites of spontaneous

or serendipitous collaborative activity. This can overlook

the processes through which the curation and facilitation

of relationships between CWS users happens and the

ways in which this can both include and exclude users. In

particular, we note that the conceptualisation of CWS

users as independent and entrepreneurial actors can

obscure the precarity, flexibility and ‘platformisation’

(Richardson, 2021) of much of the work taking place

within CWS. With regard to context, the extant literature

has not fully registered the boom in CWS-linked real

estate. Specifically, it has insufficiently considered the

precise connection between this boom and broader eco-

nomic dynamics, as well as in terms of the different strat-

egies CWS adopt as profit-oriented businesses. Finally,

we observe that change dynamics are not fully considered

by the literature. CWS are too often viewed as static enti-

ties, along with the markets in which they operate and

compete. Our contribution presents a conceptual framing

to begin to address the oversights found in the extant

literature.

We contend that the different ways in which CWS

seek to offer a value proposition to their users and the

extent to which CWS are embedded or not in localities

have major implications for the future of these work-

places, as well as for employers and workers. This article

is shaped by the following research question: how are

changing dynamics in the CWS market shaping work-

places of the future? We answer this question by means

of a systematic, comprehensive review of literature on

coworking and CWS. The article first details the method-

ology we adopted to conduct our systematic literature

review, before presenting a review and critique of the

extant themes identified in the coworking literature. We

then present a new research agenda, before engaging in

discussion of the future of CWS and their potential

impact on workplaces of the future and HRM more

widely.

METHODOLOGY

This section details the steps taken to conduct a system-

atic literature review of due coworking and CWS.

Williams et al.’s(

2021) four core principles for system-

atic literature reviews were followed, namely, the adop-

tion of a demarcated focus; the execution of a detailed

and transparent plan to find all relevant literature;

assessment of articles using predefined criteria; and

a synthesis of the knowledge with identification of

research gaps. Denyer & Tranfield’s(

2009) multistep

review approach was also adopted to assemble and

review the extant literature on coworking (outlined in

Figure 1). In June 2021, a Systematic Review Research

Team (SRRT) was formed based on a research grant

collaboration with members from five different UK

Higher Education institutions.

As the term ‘coworking’first emerged in 2005

(Gandini, 2015) our review has assessed the growth of

academic work on this topic from 2006 onwards. We

decided to keep the inclusion criteria broad due to the

emerging nature of the coworking topic. Reviewed

2JOHNS ET AL.

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material included books, journal articles, forms of grey

literature, industry reports (from organisations like

WeWork and Regus, for example) and materials from

the Coworking Library (an independent and open access

repository of publications on coworking). Research was

not excluded on the basis of journal rankings (these are

often unreliable measures of quality), and the literature

search comprised all social science disciplines. Given the

interdisciplinary nature of the coworking topic, and in

response to calls for interdisciplinary research in manage-

ment studies (Jones & Gatrell, 2014), we chose to use a

wide range of databases to ensure coverage of social

science disciplines; specifically: EBSCOhost, selecting

Business Source Complete, eBook Collection, Econ Lit

and Green FILE, Elsevier Science Direct,SAGE Journals

and Wiley Online Library.

FIGURE 1 Summary of the systematic review methodology, following Denyer & Tranfield (2009).

COWORKING SPACES AND WORKPLACES OF THE FUTURE: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON COMMUNITY, CONTEXT AND CHANGE 3

Study selection and evaluation

Significant time was spent constructing search strings

to improve the efficiency of the search (Denyer &

Tranfield, 2009). In the case of this relatively new and

bounded term, we began by searching for ‘coworking’

and ‘co-working’, both of which are used in equal

amounts in the literature (coworking generated 63 results,

co-working 64 in our final dataset). Initial searches gener-

ated 669 studies (the study population) from which dupli-

cates were removed. Typically, systematic reviews would

conduct a process of screening the population (Zahoor

et al., 2020). However, as explained above, quality judg-

ments were not made and peer- and nonpeer reviewed

publications from any publishing outlet were included.

(Denyer & Tranfield, 2009, p. 685). This approach pro-

duced a population of 225 studies (stage 2).

The third screening stage involved reading the

abstract, introduction and conclusion of each publication

to determine relevance. The screening criteria here was

twofold. First, studies were excluded in which coworking

referred to an entirely different phenomenon unrelated to

work, organisations and workspaces; for example, in aca-

demic fields such as speech therapy, engineering and

communication studies. Second, we differentiated studies

based on whether coworking was a key theoretical or

empirical focus, or whether it was a tangential part of the

study (therefore not adding to our knowledge of CWS).

The search process also involved a secondary data collec-

tion exercise in which the databases were searched again

for ‘coworking’and a range of relevant topics. This was

to inform the analysis and synthesis stage, outlined

below.

Analysis and synthesis

The aim of this stage was to break down individual stud-

ies into constituent parts and to describe how articles

relate to one another, and to make associations between

the parts identified in individual studies (Denyer &

Tranfield, 2009). A narrative process was used, as this is

considered an effective way to identify the story under-

pinning a disparate and fragmented body of evidence

(Bailey et al., 2015). The database of 127 core articles

was then transferred to an Excel spreadsheet, in which

they were categorised by theme based on the second

round of searches. We recorded details of each study

(authors, title, journal, date), type of study, aims of the

study, empirical and/or theoretical framing, key findings,

relevance to our research question, reliability and utility.

This enabled us to begin analysing the articles in each

theme and to synthesise a thematic narrative.

The articles covered multiple social science disci-

plines, with 49 articles published in business and manage-

ment journals (if property, facilities and communications

management journals are excluded, the total is 40). Some

articles included several of the themes. Each coauthor

was allocated one or more themes and read all the articles

connected to that theme before producing a long synthe-

sis highlighting the main areas of focus and core contri-

butions. Many articles were included in multiple themes

meaning that multiple team members were reading the

same papers, but each from a different perspective, add-

ing to the rigour of the systematic literature review pro-

cess. We then created a priority list of core contributions

for each theme. The articles in this list were then read by

all coauthors. This narrative analysis ensured that all

coauthors were familiar with all the core contributions

and had expertise in one or more of the themes. We then

progressed from focusing on individual studies towards

the generation of concepts and relationships; identifying

patterns, themes and big-picture answers relating to the

research question (Williams et al., 2021) as well as weak-

nesses in the extant research.

Our review process has some limitations. First, the

wide range of perspectives on CWS means that searches

generated a high volume of results. This required a high

degree of human intervention in filtering relevant articles.

Our inclusion and exclusion criteria were developed to

formalise this process, but this was still some scope for

human error and/or subjective interpretation. Second,

given this diversity it is difficult to precisely bound the

field of work on CWS. There are areas of overlap, for

example with work on makerspaces or innovation stud-

ies, that required us to make decisions about what we

needed to exclude in order to have a manageable focus

on the topic. Third, the review does not consider papers

in progress, or studies that are not in the databases noted

above. We have included reference to recent papers of

potential significance from outside the search dates in the

introduction and discussion sections of this article to keep

it as timely as possible. Fourth, although our search

terms were determined following careful consideration,

the choice of these terms could be a limitation of the

study. There may be relevant articles covering coworking

using different terminologies, although in the context of

CWS this seems unlikely given the specificity of the term.

Finally, we are highly conscious that our study includes

only English language contributions. This is the primary

limitation of the review as there are growing bodies of

literature published in other languages, particularly by

Francophone researchers.

CENTRAL THEMES AND WEAKNESSES

IN THE EXTANT COWORKING

RESEARCH

Our systematic literature review reveals a significant

increase in academic interest in CWS. From 2006 until

2014 fewer than 10 papers were published each year,

rising to 10 in 2015 and then, possibly fuelled by the

COVID-19 pandemic, reaching 61 in 2021. The numerical

4JOHNS ET AL.

distribution of papers is highly uneven across the analyti-

cal categories we used in our analysis with publications

categorised as dealing primarily with ‘coworking spaces’

amounting to 92 out of 127 articles, with ‘innovation/incu-

bation’56/127, with ‘urban/cities’43/127, with ‘commu-

nity/collaboration’34/127, with ‘real estate/property’

19/127, with ‘labour/work’17/127, with ‘makerspaces/

fablabs’12/127, with ‘ecosystems’10/127 and with ‘rural

coworking’9/127.

We thus observe greater attention

being paid by the extant literature to CWS as sites of

activities, with a focus on interactions between users

within CWS rather than on ‘coworking’as a broader

phenomenon.

Our literature review identified four key cross-cutting

themes in the coworking literature that related to

CWS as workplaces, namely, their ‘differentiation’, their

‘usage’, the ‘broader ecosystems’in which they operate,

and ‘commercial real estate dynamics’. Within each of

these four themes in the literature we identified the differ-

ent conceptual approaches that are used; for example,

research in the ‘differentiation’theme is characterised by

a focus on organisational forms of CWS, spaces of inno-

vation and processes of sociality and relationality.

Table 1summarises the key conceptual approaches, the

existing literature and key debates within each of the four

cross-cutting themes.

Our systematic literature review is novel in that it

highlights three core conceptual and empirical weak-

nesses in the existing literature, summarised under the

headings of community, context and change.

Community

First, we foreground the common understanding of com-

munity as being an important area of weakness because

some of the early literature on CWS, and a surprising

amount of continuing commentary, somewhat superfi-

cially sees these spaces as sites of spontaneous or seren-

dipitous collaborative activity whereby the right people

put in a room together will inevitably find their way to

shared innovation or cooperation. Only a smaller, more

critical, strand of literature registers the important role of

practices of curation and facilitation in cohering these

relationships and affinities between CWS users, as well as

the spatial and organisational structures that bring them

into being. There is therefore a need for further research

about both the labour process through which this provi-

sion of curation and facilitation is performed, and the

managerial character of this labour process. Through

the presence of such a conductor or facilitator of the

assembled coworkers, the CWS may well come to repre-

sent not a free or ‘third’space of autonomous creativity

and activity but rather a managed workplace like any

other, in which, we could argue, value is not shared but

appropriated and captured from the commons of collec-

tive productivity. Due to the profile of those invited into

ecosystems of entrepreneurship and innovation, there is

some evidence that CWS reproduce rather than subvert

existing forms of exclusion and inequality (Spinuzzi

et al., 2019; Waters-Lynch & Duff, 2021), thereby repre-

senting spaces of closure rather than openness or of cap-

ture rather than creation.

The attachment of CWS to positive notions of ‘com-

munity’tends to reflect the assumption that coworking

represents a more progressive or egalitarian counterpoint

to hard-nosed entrepreneurial capitalism or to the daily

grind of office work. However, by way of criticism of the

extant literature, we would argue that first, the ‘commu-

nity’served and addressed by CWS is not necessarily that

which is drawn from the (often diverse) local population

but is more likely to be a community defined by some

kind of professional or exclusive identity (creative, digi-

tal, entrepreneurial). Indeed, the literature tends to show

that the most successful CWS in terms of user experience

are those subject to careful curation of a community

whose exclusivity renders it more likely to foster collabo-

ration. This exclusivity is very likely to compound exist-

ing forms of under-representation that typify the classed,

racialised and gendered professional strata that use CWS

(Jimérez & Zheng, 2021). This problem is underdiscussed

in the extant literature, largely on account of a vast

majority of writing about CWS being written from an

uncritical mainstream perspective tied to disciplines that

tend not to deploy socio-economic concepts, such as

class, as key tools for the critical understanding of the

contemporary society within which CWS are embedded

(as we discuss later). This calls for more research to

understand these processes of exclusion in the contexts in

which they occur (see below).

Our second contention as regards ‘community’is that

the extant literature tends to uncritically adopt an

understanding of CWS users as being ‘independent’or

‘entrepreneurial’, and of CWS as an empowering institu-

tionalisation of collective capacity and support for open

innovation. This understanding lacks sufficient consider-

ation of the status of many CWS users as precarious,

flexibilised workers and of CWS as an infrastructure for

the stabilisation and continuation of the conditions that,

for some of these subjects at least, reproduces a constant

struggle to subsist. In this way, CWS also emerge as a

means for the reproduction of flexibilised labour markets

that drive down wages, conditions and security in other

parts of the economy, as companies compete through

distributing work to freelancers and other precarious

employees on a contract-by-contract, project-by-project

basis. Future conceptualisations of CWS, and their users,

The total of these papers is greater than 127 as some papers contribute to more

than one category.

It was at this point in the research that we made the considered decision not to

include makerspaces and fablabs in our analysis, due to the low number of

appearances in the literature, and because these are distinctly differently

organisation forms which operate by providing tools and equipment to aid

production of physical goods, for example, access to 3D printers or machine

cutting tools.

COWORKING SPACES AND WORKPLACES OF THE FUTURE: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON COMMUNITY, CONTEXT AND CHANGE 5

TABLE 1 Thematisation of existing literature and debates on coworking.

Themes Conceptual

approaches

Key contributions

(1) Differentiation of types of

CWS

Organisational

forms of CWS

•Differing typologies of CWS exist based on categories including profit/nonprofit,

users, location (Kojo & Nenonen, 2016; Ross & Ressia, 2015).

•Research on hackerspaces and makerspaces (Capdevila, 2019; van Holm, 2017) and

CWS role in sharing/circular economy (Bouncken, 2020; Richardson, 2017;

Cappellaro et al., 2019)

•Research on incubators and accelerators that can include structured coworking

programmes (Madaleno et al. 2021)

•Incubators and accelerators are viewed as distinct from CWS as they do not usually

bring together founders with investors, though some overlap exists as both

emphasise importance of opportunities for face-to-face interaction (Grazian, 2020).

Spaces of

innovation

•Literature focusing on spatiality of CWS; influenced by the spatial turn in

innovation studies (Amin & Cohendet, 2004).

•Proximity and chance encounters are vital (Bouncken, Aslam, & Reuschl, 2018)

and important to promote innovation and knowledge exchange (Boschma, 2005;

Torre & Rallet, 2005).

•Studies explore the physical and spatial dimensions of coworking communities

(Capdevila, 2015; Johns & Gratton, 2013).

•CWS as propellants of territorial development (Lange, 2011) or as curators of

places (Merkel, 2015).

•CWS and territorial relations (Assenza, 2015; Lorne, 2020).

Sociality and

relationality

•Research observes how material infrastructures constrain and enable social aspects

of work and how two are ‘mutually entangled’—organisation shapes space and

materiality (Bouncken et al., 2021, p. 122); space-CWS nexus is therefore viewed

from perspective of sociality and relationality (Merkel, 2019).

•Assenza (2015) notes new social relations demand new spaces.

•Fabbri (2016, p. 353) adopts Massey’s(2005)‘relational approach’to argue CWS

show ‘workspace and workplace are socially produced and at the same time

produce social relations’.

•Larson (2020) argues coworkers have agency to change what the organisation is.

(2) How and why workers use

CWS

Community

dynamics

•Literature focuses on underpinning community dynamics that foster and support

innovation and entrepreneurship within CWS (Avdikos & Merkel, 2020; Cabral &

van Winden, 2016; Clifton et al., 2019; Parrino, 2015).

•CWS differ from other forms of managed office space as they consciously host and

foster a community of workers - beyond this recognition there is debate about what

‘community’signifies, exacerbated by the variety of CWS (Jiménez & Zheng,

2021).

•Some research argues ‘community’is simply those workers who seek to benefit

from using a CWS (Cappellaro et al., 2019; Garrett et al., 2017). See also Blagoev

et al. (2019), Schmidt & Brinks (2017), Spinuzzi (2012).

•Research on how CWS can reducing historic community tensions. (Brown &

Cole, 2016;ˇ

Sebestov

a et al., 2017).

Collaborative

working

•Early theme of ability of CWS to promote serendipity and collaborative working

(Isac, 2019; Merkel, 2015).

•Waters-Lynch & Potts (2017) conceptualise CWS as ‘Schelling points’which act as

network hubs in urban areas to bring workers together, built on the cultivation of

trust within the community.

•Examination of knowledge sharing and learning, overlapping with literatures on

entrepreneurship. See Bedn

aˇ

r et al. (2021), Houghton et al., 2018), Butcher (2018),

Rese et al. (2020).

Community

curation

•Role of CWS in curating coworking communities and activities emphasised in

literature (Yacoub & Haefliger, 2022). Spinuzzi (2012) finds much of coworking’s

value-added for users rests on who else is coworking in the same space.

•Curation can be conducted by designated community managers (Parrino, 2015).

Though some scholars question its significance; Weijs-Perrée et al. (2019) argue

little is known about the preferences of users, their research suggesting users often

prefer a CWS without a host.

Worker motivations •CWS as supportive spaces for entrepreneurs, freelancers, remote workers and self-

employed users (Capdevila, 2019; Gandini, 2015; Howell, 2022).

•Benefits of CWS for various groups of workers, for example, public sector workers

(Houghton et al., 2018), groups who do not have regular contact with other

workers, for example, the self-employed (Rodríguez-Modroño, 2021), women

6JOHNS ET AL.

TABLE 1 (Continued)

Themes Conceptual

approaches

Key contributions

working part-time (Rodríguez-Modroño, 2021) and other marginalised groups

(Madaleno et al., 2021).

•Research focuses on the subjective understandings, behaviour and sense of well-

being and work-life-balance of individual CWS users (Orel & Alonso

Almeida, 2019).

•Bouncken, Laudien, et al. (2018) examine worker satisfaction and highlight some

of the ‘darker’aspects of entrepreneurialism such as (self)-exploitation and distrust.

Cultures of

entrepreneurship

•A critical strand of literature problematises the culture of entrepreneurialism as well

as the effective and affective impact of CWS communities on community members

(e.g., Pollio, 2020).

•Jakonen et al. (2017) conceptualise CWS as ‘affectual assemblages’that promote

‘added value through social interaction’, which can nevertheless flounder if

individuals feel their sense of achievement is inhibited by being embedded within

the community.

•Waters-Lynch and Duff (2021:396) argue many communities are characterised by a

sense of ambivalence as users struggle to reconcile the ‘common atmosphere’of

CWS with its ‘enclosure and commodification …by way of a distinctive business

model’. See also Bouncken, Aslam, and Reuschl (2018) and Clayton et al. (2018)

for discussion of entrepreneurial intermediaries.

Corporatisation •CWS are increasingly attracting companies in addition to self-employed workers,

as companies are seeking to colocate their workers away from company

headquarters.

•Companies also renting desk space for employees to use at existing CWS.

Employees of incumbent firms represent an increasing proportion of CWS users

(Bouncken et al., 2020). See also Knapp et al. (2021) and Bouncken et al. (2021).

•de Peuter et al. (2017, p. 691) state companies can view CWS as ‘an innovation

stimulant, a recruitment venue and a low over-head location for temporary project

teams’.

•Recent articles have begun registering the shift towards corporate CWS and

corporate tenants moving into existing CWS (e.g., Leclercq-Vandelannoitte &

Isaac, 2016; Zukin, 2021).

•Mayerhoffer (2020, p. 209) describes the rise of ‘corpoworking’—clients

frequenting CWS and renting out private offices.

•Bouncken et al., 2021, observing companies such as Microsoft, Google and

Amazon that are investing in internal CWS, notes their aim is to enhance

coordination projects as well as expand their innovation pipeline (Bouncken et al.,

2021, p. 121).

•CWS also called ‘smart work centres’in corporate contexts (Errichiello &

Pianese, 2019).

(3) Broader ecosystems of

entrepreneurship and innovation

CWS and

entrepreneurial ends

•Agreed sense of the rationality of CWS communities for instrumental

entrepreneurial ends (Bouncken et al., 2020; Jamal, 2018) in spite of debates

around the status of CWS as communities and the types of communities they

generate.

•Literature examining CWS in context of start-up ecosystems and innovative

entrepreneurialism (Bueno et al., 2018; Fraiberg, 2017; Gauger et al., 2021) finding

positive influence of social interactions and coworking on productivity.

•Studies associate CWS with Silicon Valley and with other initiatives around the

world to replicate innovative start-up hubs (Lavˇ

c

ak et al., 2019; Pollio, 2020).

•Capdevila (2015) conceptualises CWS as crucial components of the ‘middle-

ground’of local ecosystems, linking together macro systems of innovation with

clusters or networks of firms and individuals (see also Renaud et al., 2019;

Sebestov

a et al., 2017; Spinuzzi et al., 2019).

Ecologies and

ecosystems

•Concepts of ‘ecologies’or ‘ecosystems’informs some work noting external political

and economic context in which CWS operate. Bouncken et al. (2020) consider

internal and external factors that account for the growth of CWS as centres of

innovation and entrepreneurship, noting different ownership models as key points

of divergence. See also Clifton et al. (2019).

•Assenza (2015) highlight the importance of ‘anchor tenants’—local organisations

with prominent economic impact in the local context - as part of ‘start-up

communities’. See also Fiorentino (2019).

(Continues)

COWORKING SPACES AND WORKPLACES OF THE FUTURE: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON COMMUNITY, CONTEXT AND CHANGE 7

need to look beyond the positive CWS vison of the birth

of a new world of work and instead pay greater attention

to the enforced mobility, flexibility and ‘platformisation’

(Richardson, 2021) of much of the work taking place

within CWS.

Context

Second, we emphasise the need for greater attention to

context in order to better understand CWS. For instance,

the extant literature has not yet fully registered the

substantial boom in CWS-linked real estate in the period

during and since the COVID-19 pandemic. This

period has seen a further development of what was previ-

ously largely obscured in the appearance of the CWS

market, which is that the creation of such spaces is often

an artefact of dynamics of urban real estate rather than

anything to do with the conspicuous offering of contacts,

connections and collaborative workspace by CWS to

freelancers and other users. Aside from a recent contribu-

tion (Yates et al., 2024), the literature has insufficiently

considered the precise connection between CWS, real

estate, and broader economic dynamics, and how these

impact upon the different strategies CWS adopt to make

a profit. Moreover, there is a need for further research

that critically comprehends the substantial challenge the

development of these underpinning tendencies poses to

the future capacity of a diverse array of CWS to offer the

kinds of service and experience that freelancers and other

users supposedly seek out.

The sparse but significant literature on CWS from

scholars researching real estate dynamics subverts many

commonhold assumptions about the origins and continu-

ation of CWS by foregrounding the role that rental reve-

nue from office space plays as the main driver of whether

a space becomes dedicated to coworking (e.g., Saiz, 2020;

Zhou, 2018). This literature also discusses coworking as a

stopgap, temporary measure for landlords seeking to

secure revenue from otherwise empty commercial spaces.

The very recent collapse of WeWork, which aggressively

expanded based on overestimations of revenues for cow-

orking spaces, is further testimony to the volatility of

CWS business models and hence to their future develop-

ment. Whilst there have been several useful engagements

with the financial and practical details of how different

CWS business models function, and the role of landlords

within this sector, most of the literature provides an

incomplete picture of how this connects to the broader

economy through which the revenue-raising strategies of

different economic actors are shaped in line with under-

pinning profit imperatives (Yates et al., 2024). In short,

TABLE 1 (Continued)

Themes Conceptual

approaches

Key contributions

Benefits of

colocation

•Literature on innovation sees CWS as fora for assembling community from the

‘weak ties’that characterise online innovation ecosystems - weak ties being taken

as necessary for innovation (Aguiton & Cardon, 2007).

•Assumption that colocation confers economic benefits to participants, though

research notes there been no proper measurement of the relationship between

‘spatial configuration’,‘social and cognitive functioning, knowledge spillovers and

‘ultimate economic outcomes’, including at the local or regional level

(Assenza, 2015, p. 37; Clifton et al., 2019).

•Management of spaces is seen as central to the capacity to innovate, through actors

such as ‘coworking anchors’who administrate or oversee space rental (Aguiton &

Cardon, 2007). See also Bouncken & Aslam (2019), Coll-Martínez & Méndez-

Ortega (2023).

(4) Commercial real estate

dynamics

Financialisation of

urban spaces

•Research examining specific cites, for example, Capdevila (2015) shows CWS

growth in Barcelona partly driven by desire to get a return from real estate.

•Zhou (2018) observes a distinction between different gradations of CWS in terms of

prestige and rental yields, noting the possibility of a fall in demand for office space

and thus rental income creating difficulties for CWS (for example WeWork). (See

also Williams, 2020; Wright, 2018; Yang et al., 2019).

•Renaud et al. (2019) explores link between local government strategy to develop

creative cluster comprising CWS and profitable real estate models.

Characterising

models for landlords

•Saiz (2020) identifies four models for landlords: (i) putting under-utilised space ‘to

work’as shared offices (ii) providing ‘flexible space-term’services with simple

short-term leases that are high cost but low commitment for users (iii) a lease

arbitrage approach, involving multiple sub-leasing of properties and (iv) a boutique

model that is highly customised to individual users.

•Pajevi

2021, p. 1) notes how coworking is ‘a lucrative business model and office

real estate strategy’, in which flexwork has become a feature of today’s deregulated

and financialized real estate market (see also Green, 2016; Kämpf-Dern &

Konkol, 2017).

8JOHNS ET AL.

there is insufficient understanding of precisely why and to

what ends commercial real estate markets should develop

in such a way as to result in the creation and operation of

different and changing forms of CWS, to which we

now turn.

Change

Third, we identify the question of change within CWS

markets as another research weakness. The existing liter-

ature is split between earlier approaches that foreground

the demand for CWS among precarious freelancers and

independent workers in creative or nascent digital indus-

tries seeking to retain autonomy whilst recreating a soli-

daristic collective experience of work for contemporary

times; and later approaches that emphasise the demand

for CWS among more professionalised ‘entrepreneurial’

strata operating in higher-value higher-innovation tech

industries and services, who are motivated by the search

for resources, investment, networks and collaboration

opportunities. In both versions, CWS are assumed to be

essentially static entities, as are the markets in which they

operate and compete. CWS are often treated as the con-

sequence of demand from individuals and industries,

rather than as a consequence of supply; the latter suggest-

ing that there is greater potential for the transformation

of CWS over time and in context. CWS are a business

model based on circumscribing certain forms of poten-

tially autonomous or common activity within frame-

works through which their value can be measured,

managed, captured and appropriated. The inflow of users

into spaces is not simply because of their desire to collab-

orate or be catered for in various ways. It is also driven

by the institutionalisation of the CWS as a forum

through which forms of production and work are made

meaningful, sustainable and, crucially, profitable. As

such, more dynamic conceptualisations of CWS are

needed that can consider changes in both CWS users and

CWS business models, given the coconstitutive relation-

ship between the two.

We thus observe from our systematic review that

existing research on CWS prioritises empirical studies of

social belonging and the networking opportunities CWS

offer to independent workers, often therefore ignoring

the ‘organizational dimension’that goes beyond sponta-

neous community but which much existing research

leaves ‘undertheorized’(Blagoev et al., 2019, pp. 895–

897). Attempts to capture this dimension remain

focused on immaterial or discursive processes when they

occur in the business and management literature (Waters-

Lynch & Duff, 2021), neglecting the broader socio-

economic-spatial context of wider changes in the real

estate sector and labour market within which increasingly

commercialised and diversified CWS business models are

developed and differentiated (Clifton et al., 2019). This

oversight is important, not only for the study of CWS,

but also for broader concerns within management studies

for understanding the future of work, the potential

demise of the single workplace and the growth of remote

working, and the HRM implications of these changes. A

key reason for advocating sharper analytical focus on

such structural factors is because of the role macro-level

processes play in determining outcomes for businesses,

and for those who work within, or for, CWS.

CWS AND WORKPLACES OF THE

FUTURE: A RESEARCH AGENDA

The preceding section provided an overview and critique

of the key salient research themes in the scholarship on

coworking from a range of disciplines. We emphasise the

significant and growing contribution of business and

management studies to this growing body of research

(Aroles et al., 2019; Blagoev et al., 2019; Bouncken et al.,

2020, Bouncken et al., 2021; Capdevila, 2019; Gauger

et al., 2021; Jakonen et al., 2017; Leclercq-Vandelannoitte &

Isaac, 2016, Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, 2021; Spinuzzi, 2012;

Vidaillet & Bousalham, 2020; Waters-Lynch & Duff, 2021;

Wright et al., 2022). This section engages the literature we

have systematically reviewed with the central concern of

this article and special issue—the workplaces of the

future. We take two, interlinked approaches. First, we

propose to advance beyond existing understandings of

CWS by interrogating the value-added of CWS, focusing

not merely upon their generative function in terms of

innovation, community and revenue (or rents), but on the

substantial contradictions that cut across these themes.

Second, we draw on the concept of embeddedness

(Granovetter, 1985) as a means of better understanding

CWS in their local (and national) contexts. This approach

results in a relational understanding of CWS and the ten-

sion between forces of their homogenisation and differen-

tiation that can inform debates around the future of

workplaces and work more broadly.

Coworking communities and the ‘generative’

future workplace

We propose further research into the tension between

CWS as sites of community and of conspicuous

openness—of positive, ‘affectual assemblages’(Jakonen

et al., 2017)—on the one hand, and their potentially

exclusionary character on the other. This tension con-

nects with broader questions, for example, surrounding

urban gentrification and inequality. A feature of some

CWS business models is to take advantage of the avail-

ability of cheap unused office stock, a proportion of

which may be left dormant by the rise of remote working.

In some cases, CWS have been set up in derelict former

industrial premises which could potentially be put to

other uses of more benefit to local communities, such as

COWORKING SPACES AND WORKPLACES OF THE FUTURE: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON COMMUNITY, CONTEXT AND CHANGE 9

housing and community spaces (Grazian, 2020, p. 6). As

a form of privatised and exclusive urban space, such

CWS are ‘reinforced by a series of mundane technolo-

gies, security doors and online registration, mediated by

the concierge and member hosts’(Lorne, 2020, pp. 754–

755), which have an exclusionary effect on those who

cannot gain access due to resource constraints. At the

same time, the ‘openness’of CWS acts as cover for

the propagation of dynamics that themselves create

inequality and hardship, strengthening an entrepreneurial

rationality that intertwines risk-taking with social values

(Lorne, 2020, pp. 752–757), undermining the benefits of

reduced social isolation which CWS allegedly provide

(King, 2017). Bouncken, Aslam, and Reuschl (2018)

note, for instance, that while CWS can act as positive

sites for entrepreneurship by fostering innovation and

knowledge-exchange (2018, p. 137) they also present

challenges to entrepreneurs such as social isolation,

exploitation and conflict/distrust (2018, pp. 138–144).

Bouncken et al. suggest these problems can be resolved

through strategies such as provision of mentoring and

training, promotion of pro-social CWS community

norms and a start-up culture, and a conflict resolution

mechanism (2018, pp. 141–144). But clearly, more

research needs to be done in this area.

Strategies such as these have closely bound some

CWS to the communities they are associated with

(whether around work or locality), even as they partici-

pate in contested cycles of gentrification that infringe

upon those communities (Merkel, 2015, pp. 127, 134), in

addition to processes of exclusion that, whilst necessary

to the cultivation of a bounded community, discourage

others from participation. CWS are taken to rest on the

curation of ‘chance encounters’with potential collabora-

tors that are themselves commodified, based on an

apparent openness concealing ‘material and social

exclusions’established to protect and add value to the

information, projects, connections, skills and reputation

that CWS offer to project-based workers (de Peuter

et al., 2017, pp. 691, 698; Lorne, 2020, p. 760). Even in

the most socially oriented spaces, the curation of CWS

users by hosts and managers can exclude those whose

‘social and environmental mission’is not considered suit-

able (Lorne, 2020, pp. 754–755). Moreover, the curation

of a collaborative community often pursues diversity of

professions and skills rather than class, gender and race

(de Peuter et al., 2017, p. 697).

With such considerations in mind, we argue that any

future research agenda on CWS should also focus not

simply upon the role CWS play in the generation of com-

munity, but also the different business models of CWS

and the effects these have on different forms of their use.

For example, some CWS attempt to address the contin-

gencies of the working lifestyles of their members by

introducing varying levels of fees for their members flexi-

bly tiered according to the ‘fluid schedules’of, for

instance, self-employed users, from offering drop-in rates

to monthly subscriptions (de Peuter et al., 2017, pp. 690–

691). But at the same time, as pointed out above, this

exclusivity exists in a dynamic tension with the rhetorical

and organisational openness deemed to be crucial to the

CWS market, often resulting in the enforcement of ‘social

hierarchies and material exclusions’(Lorne, 2020,

p. 749). We therefore call for research that highlights the

tensions that exist in the ways in which CWS spaces

include or exclude particular users, and we highlight the

need for critical approaches to CWS that repoliticise their

formation, business models and impacts on individuals

and work organisations.

Contextualising CWS

As reviewed above, all too often CWS are studied as iso-

lated, hermetically sealed containers of work-related

activities. While research in this vein can increase our

knowledge of the internal dynamics of CWS, it ignores the

context in which CWS operate and, in particular, their

operation as businesses seeking to generate revenue. The

ways in which CWS develop different business strategies

attest to the fact that CWS are embedded in the local mar-

kets in which they compete. Of additional significance are

changes in labour market compositions at different geo-

graphical scales and the fragmentation of the location of

work (home, office and ‘third’spaces)thatdirectlyshape

demand for CWS (from individuals and employers).

We argue that future research on CWS, and indeed

any research on workplaces of the future, should seek to

locate them in their local, national and international

socio- and political-economic contexts, thereby bringing

greater granularity and specificity to the understanding of

how a range of different types of spaces attract different

types of employees, freelancers, small businesses and

community groups. Avdikos & Merkel (2020, pp. 348–

350) propose that such finer distinctions can provide

‘robust frameworks’capable of supporting targeted pub-

lic policies aimed at growth and local development, which

are currently ‘scarce, based on weak evidence’, and which

treat CWS in an undifferentiated, homogeneous way

(2019, pp. 353–354). A more heavily contextualised, and

less taxonomised, approach to CWS is especially impor-

tant if we are to understand their embeddedness. This

demands exploration of the ‘emerging connections

between collaborative and sharing platforms, the design-

ing of new civic urban infrastructures, and local and

municipal government policy supporting experiments in

open innovation ecosystems’(Lorne, 2020, p. 761), argu-

ably shifting the focus of research from a managerialist

preoccupation with the variegated forms and internal

dynamics of different CWS towards questions of how

CWS are shaped by, and play a role within, broader

socio- and political-economic contexts.

By shifting the analytical focus of research on CWS,

greater space will be created for more holistic approaches

10 JOHNS ET AL.

to understanding the connections within and between

actors and stakeholders in the creation, growth and trans-

formations of CWS and beyond. In this spirit, Assenza

(2015) pushes us to consider space differently: not only as

physical space, but also as social context and as a concep-

tual space within which production occurs and which can

contribute to new venture creation. Valuable contribu-

tions have been made, including Merkel’s(

2019; 2021),

which highlight of the role of CWS as curators of places

of which they are only a constitutive element and which

are conducive to more generative collaborative and social

relationships; that is, of CWS as part of a broader critical

urban practice, explicitly revealing the network relation-

ships between CWS and their ecologies/economies.

Similarly, Zukin (2021) views CWS as social spaces

embedded in the social capital of institutional networks

and communities. The work of Richardson (2017,2021)

has much to offer management research on the changing

nature of work and technology, observed within and

through CWS as spaces of coordination in which the digi-

tal reorganisation of work produces flexible arrange-

ments of space and time. However, there is not as of yet

any sustained attention by business and management of

the extensive interconnections of CWS (specifically those

reaching beyond the four walls of the space) nor of the

broader implications for the organisation of work within

particular multiscalar contexts. In Figure 2, we present

our conceptualisation of the embeddedness of CWS,

viewing these spaces as ‘nested’within different spatial

scales in which stakeholders and other actors interact.

Our approach encourages both greater engagement

across the social sciences to develop interdisciplinary

approaches to CWS, and for more nuanced consider-

ations of our methodological (and conceptual) tools to

understand CWS less as individual sites of working but

more as spaces within and through which working prac-

tices are changing. It provides a framework to contextua-

lise CWS in order to explore the changing dynamics of

work within the diverse CWS sector in the next section.

Changing forms of CWS and their

embeddedness: implications for the future of

workplaces

Institutional, financial and geographical tensions are sel-

dom picked up within the bulk of research on CWS,

which is a limitation of the literature. Yet it is these

FIGURE 2 Nested relations of CWS.

COWORKING SPACES AND WORKPLACES OF THE FUTURE: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON COMMUNITY, CONTEXT AND CHANGE 11

tensions that are likely to drive both coworking and the

future of work, and which therefore demand further

research. Gandini & Cossu (2021) have characterised the

consolidation and expansion of CWS as being in a ‘main-

stream neo-corporate’phase which initially accelerated

in the aftermath of the 2007–2008 Global Financial

Crisis, and which, more recently published research sug-

gests, has continued beyond the COVID-19 pandemic

(Yates et al., 2024). Opportunities for the further trans-

formation of CWS markets are evidenced in the early

signs of an emerging trend of hotel, hospitality and retail

spaces adapting their facilities to host CWS and other

forms of workspace in the wake of the pandemic

(Grazian, 2020, pp. 22–23). There are signs that the CWS

market could continue to expand and change as

remote working becomes more feasible, acceptable, and

even preferable for both employers and employees

(Donnelly & Johns, 2020), and as ‘larger organizations

and enterprises look to decentralize their workforces

into smaller branch offices and remote teams into private

flexible offices’(CoworkingResources, 2020). Such

change will cause new challenges for managers who are

already having to coordinate increasingly diffuse work-

forces. HR managers, in particular, face specific chal-

lenges of managing performance, of seeking to maintain

morale, and of maintaining a sense of attachment to an

employer as physical distance from headquarters increases

(Donnelly & Johns, 2020).

Future research on CWS therefore needs to do two

further things to generate new insights and to inform

debates on the future of workplaces, and of work more

generally. First, it must pay attention to the lessons of the

COVID-19 pandemic around the sustainability and

resilience of CWS business models. Second, it must

engage with related academic work on the changing

nature of workplaces and work, the spatial reorganisa-

tion of businesses, land use changes, and real estate

dynamics. This has implications for management

scholars insofar as it highlights the analytical need to

place organisations in their context and within wider sets

of social relations, whilst simultaneously exploring the

tensions and contradictions this creates in local commu-

nities, societies and economies. In this respect, the study

of CWS could connect with increasing interest within

leading management journals in the broader political-

economic context within which organisations exist and

their management unfolds (e.g., Vincent et al., 2020); as

well as theorisations of paradox and of dialectic reason-

ing as a means to explore the contradictory relationships

among organisations, and between organisations and

other socio-economic units within their networks

(Hargrave & Van de Ven, 2017). With this kind of rela-

tional approach in mind, we suggest that two competing

tendencies could potentially shape the future develop-

ment of CWS markets—those of greater embeddedness

and disembeddedness of CWS (see Figure 3).

The tendency towards the homogenisation and

disembeddedness of CWS

The emergence of larger CWS operators with multiple

sites is increasing the prevalence of a homogenised form

of CWS, and, as the market matures, further homogeni-

sation towards a single business model may predominate.

In light of the challenges of developing sustainable CWS

FIGURE 3 Change dynamics and embeddedness in coworking.

12 JOHNS ET AL.

business models, a standardised CWS scenario would be

predicated on attracting enterprise clients as the main

source of revenue, thereby relegating individual users of

CWS to secondary importance. This scenario echoes

research on ‘corpoworking’(Mayerhoffer, 2020), and

research on CWS business models which highlights how

corporate CWS can out-compete other forms of CWS

due to their economies of scale and scope (Yates

et al., 2024). The original ethos of coworking, that of

bringing individuals together to facilitate serendipitous

encounters in a nonstandard office space, would be

further undermined as enterprise clients increasingly

demand more private and secure spaces for their workers.

This scenario could be fuelled by demand from

employers seeking temporary and flexible space for their

employees, with larger companies potentially seeking to

make national agreements with coworking spaces in mul-

tiple locations.

This homogenisation of CWS would lead to a situa-

tion wherein CWS are disembedded from wider urban

ecosystems, given that the dominance of a particular

business model involves high levels of homogenisation

among coworking providers. This would limit opportu-

nities for CWS to draw from, and to be influenced by,

their locality, potentially undermining the development

of deeper ties with local actors and communities. A

driving factor for this disembeddedness will be that

CWS would not need to interact with local actors, due

to the success of the prevailing business model, which

would also likely reduce competition and therefore inno-

vation in the CWS sector. If the tendency towards

homogenisation intensifies, there would be a larger num-

ber of CWS, as the model is easy to expand into subur-

ban and also rural areas (note also a likelihood to

expand nationally and internationally). In short, this dis-

embeddedness is driven by the same processes which

have reproduced the homogenisation evident in most

urban areas characterised by the proliferation of identi-

cal chain stores and branded outlets (Hughes &

Jackson, 2015). Competitive pressures will have led to

the dominance of a particular business model, which

supersedes all competition.

For users, homogenisation would likely result in an

increased number of coworking spaces, but a decrease

in the diversity of types of spaces. Highly localised,

community-led (or even cooperatively owned) spaces

would retreat in the face of highly professionalised

CWS with ‘superior’(more predictable) business

models and lower operating costs. Workers would

likely experience less flexibility in membership terms

and conditions. This would matter more to self-

employed and freelance individuals than remote/hybrid

workers employed by companies. CWS would become

an accepted and normalised ‘workplace of the future’,

still used by individual freelancers, but increasingly

occupied by enterprise clients such as remotely located

teams, and even entire firms. This would have varied

implications for HR, both academically and practically.

It is likely that HR departments will normalise the

management of remotely based employees in CWS,

and that new HRM policies will be developed that sup-

port and encourage working away from ‘main’offices

in CWS, often in ways that are designed to promote

flexible working, collaboration with other CWS users,

increased wellbeing, and to potentially act as sites for

recruitment of new staff. This homogenisation would

likely see the increase of remote working in CWS as a

commonplace feature of urban life.

The tendency towards the differentiation and

embeddedness of CWS

This scenario envisages the CWS sector fragmenting

into a plethora of differing business models and organi-

sational forms, from large corporate CWS to small

independent CWS, and with no one single type predo-

minating. This would result from high levels of compe-

tition between spaces and be predicated on a stable

(or rising) number of workers seeking out CWS. It is

thus dependent upon broader labour market dynamics

that favour remote and hybrid work for users. There

would be a high level of local embeddedness as the

forms assumed by different CWS become heavily

shaped by the needs, requirements and competitive

pressures of their localities. It would be characterised

by high levels of competition and therefore also innova-

tion, as CWS are forced to interact closely with their

localities in order to grow. The lack of any one preva-

lent business type may strengthen the power of the local

state to act to shape the CWS sector, as it is less likely

the powerful CWS will have come to dominate. How-

ever, differentiation within the sector may also make it

challenging for the local state to know how to support

CWS, should it wish to, due to the complexities and

heterogeneity which prevails. In this instance there

would be multiple competing voices seeking to represent

the sector, who may have wildly differing aims and

interests. The high levels of differentiation which exist

in this scenario could also lead to claims that it is

indeed unhelpful to speak of there being a single CWS

sector at all, as high levels of competition generate wide

divergences in business models, and, ultimately, differ-

ing visions as to what CWS should be.

The pressures on HR departments in this scenario

would be high, due to the increased levels of complexity

and the wide variety of different business models (and

therefore financial, operational and spatial systems)

which exist in the sector. These may limit HR’s willing-

ness to allow workers to use CWS, undermining opportu-

nities for employers and workers to benefit from CWS.

This could be a barrier to growth, leading to spaces being

less stable and sustainable, therein limiting opportunities

for remote working in third spaces.

COWORKING SPACES AND WORKPLACES OF THE FUTURE: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON COMMUNITY, CONTEXT AND CHANGE 13

Tensions between embeddedness and

disembeddedness

Tensions between tendencies towards the embeddedness

and disembeddedness of CWS will not necessarily be

geographically even. Outcomes may vary in different

places in the short-term. The contemporary status of

the CWS market is already one in which different busi-

ness models are competing (Yates et al., 2024). As this

review highlights, there are many different types of

CWS with varying—and sometimes opposing—aims

and business models. At present, the corporate CWS

business model has grown, but is not yet predominant,

meaning that alternative business models and substan-

tial variations can, and do, exist. Smaller, independent

CWS whose business models are very different to that

of large, corporate CWS do compete in the market and

are partially embedded in their localities. The small,

independent CWS operate by attracting a particular

group of individual users, for example freelancers work-

ing in a particular sector or occupation, and they strive

to maintain at least some of the sense of community

that was one of the hallmarks of early CWS. They do

operate in competitive markets, however, and so may

have to accept enterprise and remote working teams to

supplement their income.

Within this context of a relatively open and differenti-

ated CWS market, the existence of competitive pressures

will compel CWS to continue to innovate, and in doing

so this will facilitate greater interaction with localities,

whether it be with other firms, or social and community

organisations more generally. The lack of any one preva-

lent business model will mean CWS will need to continue

to seek new users, tailoring what they offer to the spe-

cifics of the locality. This would not occur in a market

wherein one type of CWS has come to dominate. The

tendency towards greater homogenisation and disem-

beddedness is least likely to occur in those places where

there is diversity of demand for workplaces to suit differ-

ent needs. In addition, the role of the local state and regu-

lation will influence the degrees to which CWS are

embedded in their localities. Some local state managers

may be more willing to work with and support locally

owned CWS than they would support large, impersonal

corporate CWS. However, the degree of support depends

on the composition of local politics.

To the degree that there is uneven geographical varia-

tion in degrees of homogenisation/disembededness, on

the one hand, or differentiation/embeddedness on the

other, HRM departments will be unable to develop a

‘one-size fits all’approach for their remote staff who are

working in CWS. This will present challenges, but can

also generate opportunities, particularly if HR seek to

use the presence of their staff in CWS as an opportunity

to find new potential recruits. It will be harder for HR

managers to develop expertise around more differentiated

CWS markets, but this can offer different avenues for

innovation in spaces, particularly where focused on

building competitive strengths and indeed communities

around strategic sectors.

DISCUSSION

Our findings have allowed us to consider how the growth

of the coworking sector may shape workplaces of the

future. We argue for a deeper understanding and concep-

tualisation of the key processes shaping the CWS market.

Macroeconomic conditions, urban property dynamics,

business strategies, users and customers, technology, and

broader socio- and political-economic contexts are lead-

ing to the development of multiple CWS business models,

ranging from large corporate to small independent. Our

systematic literature review has revealed that the compo-

sition of CWS markets varies according to local condi-

tions, although the compulsion of CWS to remain

economically competitive and viable is leading to more

CWS adopting an enterprise-client-friendly model. We

propose an approach that allows us to conceptualise and

observe the increasing homogenisation and disembedded-

ness of the sector in many places.

When considering the implications for the workplaces

of the future, we again find that economic realities are a

key factor driving how coworking spaces will shape the

future of work. We anticipate ongoing tensions between

processes of homogenisation and differentiation that will

directly influence the CWS sector; the diversity, sustain-

ability and embeddedness of CWS; the experiences for

workers; and the role of HRM. More organisations and

independent freelancers may choose to use CWS, but

only if it is economically beneficial for them to do so, and

if they can access CWS on an inclusive basis. In the after-

math of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing infla-

tionary crisis across advanced economies it remains

unclear to what extent organisations and individuals will

want to rent out often expensive coworking space, partic-

ularly when cheaper options may be available elsewhere.

It may transpire that the dream of coworking is rudely

awoken by the cold light of economic fact.

Thus far, discussion around hybrid working has been

centred around the impacts of hybrid work on (labour)

productivity. Yet we highlight the understudied character

of commercial real estate markets as drivers of workspace

provision. The ‘slicing off’of the costs of workspace (and

infrastructure) is something that the research on cowork-

ing enables us to observe from a wide angle. These issues

are likely to demand more attention both in the employ-

ment contract and in academic research as the tensions

between the ‘costs’of provision of working infrastructure

by employers versus the needs and desires of workers

become more widely recognized. Against this backdrop

we observe an intensification in interest in the future of

work and have endeavoured here to highlight the critical

role of coworking and CWS in understanding the variety

14 JOHNS ET AL.

of different outcomes that are emerging from the increase

in spatial and temporal flexibility in some types of work.

We urge that more attention be paid to ‘third spaces’

of work in charting this fast-paced transformation of

spaces where contemporary, digitally connected work is

performed, and argue that these spaces will only become

more critical to our understanding of the future of work

as these processes develop. Nonstandard work and plat-

form work have prompted much discussion of the gover-

nance of the employment contract, but the materiality of

workplaces has not really been considered beyond issues

of health and safety. The coworking sector, meanwhile,

alerts us to, for instance, the land-rent-value dynamics

that will increasingly exert an impact on both workplace

organisation and architecture and specific arrangements

of hybrid working.

CONCLUSION

Our paper advanced its arguments by presenting findings

from a systematic literature review of 127 papers pub-

lished between 2006 and 2023. We have situated cowork-

ing and CWS within broader debates concerning

precisely when, where and how work will be conducted in

the future, and how the growth of coworking will shape

workplaces of the future (with associated implications for

HR). We have identified four cross-cutting themes in

coworking research (their differentiation, their usage, the

ecosystems in which they operate, and commercial real

estate dynamics) and three areas of research weakness

(community, context and change). We then advanced a

future research agenda which made two arguments. First,

greater attention needs to be paid to the value proposi-

tions of CWS. Second, the concept of embeddedness

should be used to better understand CWS in their local

(and national contexts), arguing for a broader, place-

based analytical focus on CWS. In making these argu-

ments we imagined two possible scenarios for the future

of coworking and CWS which relate to this Special Issue

theme of ‘workplaces of the future’, namely, the homoge-

nisation and differentiation of CWS. These are ends of a

continuum which provide predictive capacity as to how

the CWS sector will develop, while also raising questions

as to the efficacy of describing the CWS market as a

cohesive one due to the range of different spaces and

business models.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

All authors, excluding Derya, are founding members of

CORECOL, a collective researching coworking and the

future of work. Derya acted as a research assistant on

the funded project and provided intellectual contribution

through the analysis of the data. All other contributors

were coinvestigators on the project. Jennifer led the sys-

tematic literature review and is the lead contributor.

Edward, Greig, Harry and Ödül contributed to the

analysis, framework development and all provided writ-

ten contributions throughout the writing and revision

process. The order of names listed reflects the overall

contribution to the paper.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

None.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Available on request. There is no primary data, instead a

spreadsheet supporting the systematic literature review.

ETHICS STATEMENT

None required. The paper used only secondary data.

ORCID

Jennifer Johns https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4216-4858

Edward Yates https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9886-455X

Greig Charnock https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0625-264X

Frederick Harry Pitts https://orcid.org/0000-0002-

3749-6340

Ödül Bozkurt https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4258-9883

Didem Derya Ozdemir Kaya https://orcid.org/0000-

0002-0442-1289

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

Prof Jennifer Johns is a professor of management at

the University of Bristol Business School. Her interest

in work and organisation focuses on the spatial

dynamics of the organisation of work. She has pub-

lished across the social sciences on atypical forms of

work, including remote and hybrid work and tempo-

rary staffing.

Dr Edward Yates is a lecturer in employment relations

at the University of Sheffield Management School.

He is a member of the Centre for Decent Work, and

his research explores the relationship between pro-

cesses of political economy, state regulation, employ-

ment relations and labour market outcomes.