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Office

Room where administrative work is performed

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West side of Manhattan viewed from the top of Hudson Commons
Rhododendrites · CC BY-SA 4.0

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Lab · Class 8–12Akbar's Mughal Administration

In classical antiquity, offices were often part of a palace complex or a large temple. In the High Middle Ages (1000–1300), the medieval chancery acted as a sort of office, serving as the space where records and laws were stored and copied. With the growth of large, complex organizations in the 18th century, the first purpose-built office spaces were constructed. As the Industrial Revolution intensified in the 18th and 19th centuries, the industries of banking, rail, insurance, retail, petroleum, and telegraphy grew dramatically, requiring many clerks. As a result, more office space was assigned to house their activities. The time-and-motion study, pioneered in manufacturing by F. W. Taylor (1856–1915), led to the "Modern Efficiency Desk" of 1915. Its flat top, with drawers below, was designed to allow managers an easy view of their workers. By the middle of the 20th century, it became apparent that an efficient office required additional control over privacy, and gradually the cubicle system evolved.

History

The word "office" stems from the Latin "officium" and its equivalents in various Romance languages. An officium was not necessarily a place, but often referred instead to human staff members of an organization, or even the abstract notion of a formal position like a magistrate. The elaborate Roman bureaucracy would not be equaled for centuries in the West after the fall of Rome, with areas partially reverting to illiteracy. Further east, the Byzantine Empire and varying Islamic caliphates preserved a more sophisticated administrative culture.

Offices in classical antiquity were often part of a palace complex or a large temple. There was often a room where scrolls were kept and scribes did their work. Ancient texts mentioning the work of scribes allude to the existence of such "offices". These rooms are sometimes called "libraries" by some archaeologists because of scrolls' association with literature. They were, however, closer to modern offices because the scrolls were meant for record-keeping and other management functions, not for poetry or works of fiction.

Middle Ages

The High Middle Ages (1000–1300) saw the rise of the medieval chancery, which was the place where most government letters were written and laws were copied within a kingdom. The rooms of the chancery often had walls full of pigeonholes, constructed to hold rolled-up pieces of parchment for safekeeping or ready reference. This kind of structure was a precursor to the modern bookshelf. The introduction of the printing press during the Renaissance did not impact the setup and function of these government offices significantly.

Medieval paintings and tapestries often show people in their private offices handling record-keeping books or writing on scrolls of parchment. Before the invention of the printing press and its wider distribution, there was often no clear cultural distinction between a private office and a private library; books were both read and written at the same desk or table, as were personal and professional accounts and letters.

During the 13th century, the English word "office" first began to appear when referring to a position involving specific professional duties (for example, "the office of the....") Geoffrey Chaucer appears to have first used the word in 1395 to mean a place where business is transacted in The Canterbury Tales.

As mercantilism became the dominant economic theory of the Renaissance, merchants tended to conduct their business in buildings that also sometimes housed people doing retail sales, warehousing, and clerical work. During the 15th century, the population density in many cities reached a point where merchants began to use stand-alone buildings to conduct their businesses. A distinction began to develop between religious, administrative/military, and commercial uses for buildings.

The emergence of the modern office

The first purpose-built office spaces were constructed in the 18th century to suit the needs of large and growing organizations such as the Royal Navy and the East India Company. The Old Admiralty (Ripley Building) was built in 1726 and was the first purpose-built office building in Great Britain. As well as offices, the building housed a board room and apartments for the Lords of the Admiralty. In the 1770s, many scattered offices for the Royal Navy were gathered into Somerset House, the first block purpose-built for office work.

The East India House was built in 1729 on Leadenhall Street as the headquarters from which the East India Company administered its Indian colonial possessions. The Company developed a very complex bureaucracy for the task, necessitating thousands of office employees to process the required paperwork. The Company recognized the benefits of centralized administration and required that all workers sign in and out at the central office each day.

As the Industrial Revolution intensified in the 18th and 19th centuries, the industries of banking, rail, insurance, retail, petroleum, and telegraphy dramatically grew in size and complexity. Increasingly large number of clerks were needed to handle order processing, accounting, and document filing, and these clerks needed to be housed in increasingly specialized spaces. Most of the desks of the era were top-heavy and had a cubicle-like appearance, with paper storage bins extending above the desk-work area, offering workers some degree of privacy.

The relatively high price of land in the central core of cities led to the first multi-story buildings, which were limited to about 10 stories until the use of iron and steel allowed for higher structures. The first purpose-built office block was the Brunswick Building, built in Liverpool in 1841. The invention of the safety elevator in 1852 by Elisha Otis enabled the rapid upward escalation of buildings. By the end of the 19th century, larger office buildings frequently contained large glass atriums to allow light into the complex and improve air circulation.

20th century

By 1906, Sears, Roebuck, and Co. had opened their headquarters operation in a 3,000,000-square-foot (280,000 m2) building in Chicago, at the time the largest building in the world. The time and motion study, pioneered in manufacturing by F. W. Taylor and later applied to the office environment by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, led to the idea that managers needed to play an active role in directing the work of subordinates to increase the efficiency of the workplace. F.W. Taylor advocated the use of large, open floor plans and desks that faced supervisors. As a result, in 1915, the Equitable Life Insurance Company in New York City introduced the "Modern Efficiency Desk" with a flat top and drawers below, designed to allow managers an easy view of the workers. This led to a demand for large square footage per floor in buildings, and a return to the open spaces that were seen in pre–industrial revolution buildings.

However, by the midpoint of the 20th century, it became apparent that an efficient office required more privacy in order to combat tedium, increase productivity, and encourage creativity. In 1964, the Herman Miller (office equipment) company contracted Robert Propst, a prolific industrial designer. Propst came up with the concept of the Action Office, which later evolved into the cubicle office furniture system.

Offices in Japan have developed unique characteristics partly as a result of the country's unique business culture. Japanese offices tend to follow open plan layouts in an 'island-style' arrangement, which promotes teamwork and top-down management. They also use uchi-awase (informal meetings) and ringi-sho (consensus systems) to encourage input on policies from as many groups throughout the office as possible.

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