August 2010, Volume 9, No.8 (Serial No.86) China-USA Business Review, ISSN 1537-1514, USA 26 Workplace isolation and job performance: A study on carpet weaving women Rıfat Kamaşak (Faculty of Commerce, Yeditepe University, Istanbul 34755, Turkey) Abstract: Workplace isolation has been recognized as a critical issue in organizational theory. Studies have found that employees who felt isolated might also show low performance in their organizations. However, there is very little empirical research about the relationship between perceived isolation and job performance, and most of the studies were conducted on salespeople working in the virtual offices. In this study, it is aimed to investigate the relationship between workplace isolation and job performance in terms of productivity and emotional outcomes of carpet weaver women. In order to do this, job performance of a sample of 238 employees who were exposed to a radical workplace change was analyzed. The means of the performance variables before and after five years of the workplace change were statistically compared via paired sample t-tests and the results indicated significant differences between pre and post means of the performance variables. A qualitative research was also carried out through a number of in-depth interviews with the carpet weavers to enrich the breadth and depth of the findings. Findings of the qualitative study replicated the results of the quantitative study that monotonous and unsocial working conditions lowered the job performance of the employees. Key words: workplace isolation; workplace change; job performance; carpet weavers; in-depth interviews 1. Introduction It has always been important for organizations to learn more about the links between job performance, the person and the work environment to better understand effectiveness on jobs (Olson & Borman, 1989). The common belief on the issue is that the work environment has an impact on employee behavior and performance (Peters & O’Connor, 1980; Blumberg & Pringle, 1982; Peters, et al., 1985; Olson & Borman, 1989; Robertson & Huang, 2006; Ryan & Hurley, 2007), nonetheless, there is still a need for a deeper investigation. Numerous researchers have studied the relationship between job performance and different dimensions of work environment such as physical working conditions (Hedge, 1982; Marans & Yan, 1989; Sundstrom & Altman, 1989; Verbeek, 1991; Brisson, Montreuil & Punnett, 1999; Robertson & Huang, 2006), organizational culture and climate (Glueck & Thorp, 1971; Pettigrew, 1979; Denison; 1984; Brown, 1995; Keller, Julian & Kedia, 1996; Cunningham, et al., 2002; Ryan & Hurley, 2007), employee perceptions (Iffaldano & Muchinsky, 1985; Noe, 1986; Olson & Borman, 1989; Huselid, 1995; Ripley, 2003), leadership styles (Baumgartel, 1956; Thamhain, Wilemon & Hurley, 1997; Chawla & Singh, 1998), supervision (Steel & Mento, 1986; Hurley, 1997; Mouly & Sankaran, 1998) and workplace isolation (Brown & Peterson, 1993; Marshall, Michaels & Mulki, 2007; Mulki, et al., 2008). Among these work environment dimensions, especially workplace isolation which is a critical problem Rıfat Kamaşak, assistant professor, Faculty of Commerce, Yeditepe University; research fields: strategic management, organization theory, knowledge and innovation.