Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Vol. 1, No. 3, 2015, pp. 163-172 http://www.aiscience.org/journal/jssh * Corresponding author E-mail address: sanaz.ahmadpoor@gmail.com The Impact of Personal Control over Office Workspace on Environmental Satisfaction and Performance Sanaz Ahmadpoor Samani * Faculty of Management and Human Resource Development, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Johor, Malaysia Abstract The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the background information regarding to personal control over the physical aspects of the workspace and the impact of that on individual satisfaction with work environment and performance. Today’s work environment considerably vastly different to what it was several centuries ago; man-made objects dominate the physical surroundings. In today’s workplace development the tendency to move from private offices to open layout is increasing which is affect the ability of control ambient conditions in workspace such as lighting, room temperature, privacy and so on. This situation may affect employees’ reaction, behaviour and outcome. In fact while individuals are working in open layout workspaces the distractions from uncontrollable ambient conditions happen again and again which reduce their satisfaction with work environment and overall work outcome. It is therefore important to emphasize the significance of personal control over the environmental features and the effect of that on individual’s environmental satisfaction and performance based on the conflict results in the literature. Consequently, the outcome of reviewing literatures will contribute to understand that part of existing knowledge of ergonomics and designing workplaces could be applied to promote individuals outcomes by focusing more on their office design and they ability to control their workspace and environmental satisfaction. Keywords Control, Physical Aspects, Open-plan Office, Workspace, Satisfaction with Work Environment, Performance Received: March 30, 2015 / Accepted: April 22, 2015 / Published online: May 27, 2015 @ 2015 The Authors. Published by American Institute of Science. This Open Access article is under the CC BY-NC license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ 1. Introduction Work plays an impressive role in people’s lives. People have to work in physical environments which influence their ability and their propensity to work every day. The majority of them spend at least a third or 50% of their time within an indoor physical environment that affects their thoughts, emotions and actions. Thus, a poor workplace arrangement or design has the potential to influence and impairment an individual’s health, comfort and well-being. Studies in social and environmental psychology have established that the quality of the physical environment have a critical effect and consequence on people’s attitude and performance (Heerwagen, 1998; Lee and Brand, 2005; MacMillan, 2012). In designing workspaces open layouts are one of the most popular office designs in today’s industries. According to Hedge (1982) there are two basic reasons behind the popularity and leaning to the usage or development of open- plan offices; one is financial reason and the other one is to add open-plan solution. In the case of financial open-plan offices provide more flexibility to organizations in structure and engage less space for each occupant; consequently they reduce the cost of real estate. Many employees can place and work in a giant space, so the place can be used more effectively. The notion of adding open-plan solutions refers to promote knowledge sharing, support teamwork and creativity (Brennan et al., 2002; Hua, 2007).