First impressions of organizations and the qualities connoted by wood in interior design
2002
Ridoutt, B.G. | Ball, R.D. | Killerby, S.K.
Interior office environments embody symbolic meaning about organizations that is capable of influencing the attitudes, behavior, and decision making of people who come into contact with them. This project represents an initial investigation into the symbolic meanings communicated by wood when it is used in corporate interior design. Color photo-questionnaires were used that contained 10 images of modern corporate interiors; 5 that significantly featured visible wood products and 5 that were without wood. Respondents, who were New Zealand university students, reported biographical information such as gender and ethnicity and completed a rapid personality test before selecting the organization they thought they would most like to work for and least like to work for. First impressions of these organizations were expressed using a 24-item adjective checklist. We found an overwhelming preference (0.79, 95% ci 0.68, 0.87) to work for organizations that had significant utilization of wood products in their interiors and this was marginally stronger for women, Europeans, and persons of introverted personality types, compared to men, Asians, and extroverted individuals. Organizations without wood were also least preferred as places of potential employment. An apparent contradiction was that one particular organization with wood was especially disliked. In the main, the same adjectives were selected to describe the organizations irrespective of whether they had wood. Exceptions were the use of the adjective "personal" to describe the most preferred organizations when they had wood, and the adjective "lethargic" to describe the least preferred organizations when they had wood.
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