Office

Midtown Manhattan in New York City is the largest central business district in the world, comprising over 350 million square feet of office space.

An office is a space where the employees of an organization perform administrative work in order to support and realize the various goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific duties attached to it (see officer or official); the latter is an earlier usage, as "office" originally referred to the location of one's duty. In its adjective form, the term "office" may refer to business-related tasks. In law, a company or organization has offices in any place where it has an official presence, even if that presence consists of a storage silo, for example, instead of a more traditional establishment with a desk and chair. An office is also an architectural and design phenomenon, including small offices, such as a bench in the corner of a small business or a room in someone's home (see small office/home office), entire floors of buildings, and massive buildings dedicated entirely to one company. In modern terms, an office is usually the location where white-collar workers carry out their functions.

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.[1] 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.

A typical modern office, in Israel
  1. ^ Moran, Joe (2007). "3: A lifetime behind a desk". Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life From Breakfast to Bedtime. London: Profile Books (published 2010). p. 36. ISBN 9781847650658. Retrieved 2018-09-08. [...] the Modern Efficiency Desk, first made in 1915 by Steelcase Inc. for the New York offices of Equitable Assurance. This desk, consisting of a simple, rectangular table with small drawers, replaced the cabinet-like desks, with their high backs made up of little drawers and cubby holes, which dominated office life before the First World War. At their new efficiency desks, office workers could be watched, monitored and subjected to time-and-motion studies.

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