Development of coworking offices in the world and in Poland with a particular emphasis on Cracow

Abstract

Despite being sometimes compared to neighbors and satellite offices, coworking is a brand new system of office work, falling between conventional employment and working at home. In this system, individual entrepreneurs—freelancers—work at their own businesses, sharing office space at the same time. Its history is relatively short, just slightly over 10 years. However, since the first coworking office was founded in 2006, the movement has become largely popular; moreover, it is forecast that there should be at least 1.2 million active users of coworking spaces by the end of 2017. The purpose of the article is to describe Polish coworking spaces with a particular emphasis on Cracow being the second largest city in Poland and the biggest regional office work markets in the country. In order to present coworking phenomenon properly, still unfamiliar to a broad group of consumers, the analysis of the Cracow market has been preceded by a comprehensive introduction devoted to the discussion of the global tendencies, principles of offices organization including their types and history of origin supported with examples of interesting centres in Western Europe and the United States. Against this background, the results of coworking spaces in Cracow research are presented, together with examples, conducted during the period from January to March 2017. The statistical data concerning Cracow shared work spaces are confronted with the values characteristic for the Warsaw market being indisputably the largest and the most dynamic centre in the country, which is aimed at determination of the overall situation of coworking in Poland and provides the basis for determination of development tendencies of this form of work organization.