The definition of 'office' is rich and includes a place of business, clerical or professional activity, the personnel working in such a place, a position of authority or trust and (mainly historically) the support functions of a major household. We are mainly interested in the office as a place of business, clerical or professional activity.
The office can be contrasted with the factory which is a place of collective activity aimed at adding value through the manipulation of raw materials (or more advanced inputs) in the creation of outputs often in the form of physical product. The basic activity of the office can be seen (again in a place of collective action) as the creation of added value through the manipulation of information or data from which the outputs are decisions, policies and actions. Interestingly the model for early offices was the factory as developed at the beginning of the twentieth century - advanced division of labour, maximum repetition of routine tasks, etc. The physical organisation of these offices was very similar in concept to physical organisation of the factory. From these origins the spatial organisation of the office is quite persistent (notably in call centres, dealing rooms and banking organisations generally) as is the concept of the workplace comprising specifically office furniture and its associated technology.
The office as place is potentially subject to radical change. It has been suggested that historically there have been three 'bonding agents' that created need for the collective, physical office:
- Face-to-face contact with co-workers and clients
- Proximity to expensive information-processing equipment
- Access to information held only at a central location (William Mitchell 'City of Bits')
Following the development of cost effective mobile computing and communications technology and of global communications networks, it is argued that the function of the office is subject only to the first of these bonding agents. There are alternative (and often better) locations to carry out routing or other activities not requiring collaboration and so there is the potential to fundamentally change the nature of the office - to primarily that of a facilitator of formal and informal communication and a reinforcer of brand values. Elements of these changes are to be seen to some degree in all organisations.
