Industry settings have developed a haven for collaborative working environments. A once hierarchical structure with an abundance of silos, the collaborative workplace environment has grown to be endemically within the industry setting. This profound transformation is in part due to the leadership transformation from a job to a function of strategic direction. While its origins are on power on authority, the cultural realignment has led to see leadership as a skill within workers to engage people in coming to consensus about critical decisions (Marshall, 1995). This shift has led to cultural changes within workers leading to values and beliefs that mirrored those by the organization. It creates standards and expectations that are driven by a collective endeavor rather than individual success, while also rewarding individual creativity.
Marshall, in his seminal essay and later turned into a book, The Collaborative Workplace, spent hours interviewing workers at several organizations to understand the 21st century workplace, as he called it, and derive with important conclusions that are continued to be considered in the design of workplaces. The cultural framework is seen as the antithesis of hierarchical work environments where the goal is to create a uniform alignment of “ownership”. Workers spent considerable time in the workplace which is indicative of a considerable influence on behavior and culture. The ability to trust their colleagues knowing that candor, honesty, and integrity is reflective not only in the values of the organization but that of peers, creates a sense of ownership.
Moreover, it is also common that work needs to develop a sense of growth and a never ending learning experience. As new methods are introduced, workers are more likely to easily accept them due to the new cultural framework environment in place. This cultural framework is grounded in the collaborative workplace, a place that communicate expectations and establishes goals that are reflective to the goals of the individual workers and organization. As you can see in Table 1., each of the list items are what a collaborative workplace fosters. Similarly, it is the cultural framework that organizations design. More specific, it functions at five different levels of success that collaboration helps with derived from Marshall’s essay: