Do as I Say Not as I Do

I came across an interesting tidbit in an abstract the other day. The excerpt if from a chapter entitled The Symbolics of Office Design: An Empirical Exploration by Mary Jo Hatch:

In many American business organizations a strong and lasting value for private offices appears to exist. Dean (1977), for instance, reports that two-thirds of his sample of employees at the American Institute of Architect’s (AIA) headquarters facility stated a preference for conventional office design four years after a move from conventional to open office facilities. This finding is particularly intriguing because the AIA represents the group primarily responsible for the corporate shift away from private offices – the architects who designed and promoted the open office concept.

In other words, even the folks who thought up the open office concept would rather have private offices at the end of the day.

This is not to say that office design is the only determinant of productivity. There is research to suggest that interaction and distraction are the two most important factors in positively and negatively impacting perceived productivity (Haynes, 2008). The open office has the potential to increase interaction, but also increase distraction.