Because of the economic pressures of recession and globalization and technological developments such as bandwidth (the proliferation of electronic networks to convey voice and data communications on a global basis), the workplace has undergone profound change in the last decade. While technology is given credit for the productivity gains that have swept the U.S. economy in this period, interior designers who specialize in the workplace have had a major role in helping U.S. companies integrate new technologies and work processes. Alone among design professionals, they understood that these settings are the “connective tissue” that could make this happen.
Interior design professionals understand that design fuels organizational change, regardless of the scale of its application. Think about where we work today. Behind the modern city, whether London, Tokyo, or New York, are nineteenth-century assumptions about work—that it occurs at specific times and in specific places, for example. Now people work “anywhere, anytime,” and there are compelling reasons, such as the problems of commuting, to distribute work geographically.
Not only the locus of work has changed in our culture; the mode of work has changed as well. In the last century the workforce moved from Frederick Taylor’s “scientific management” to ways of working that are increasingly open-ended, democratic, and individual/team-tailored. Along the way, the workplace changed, too. Taylorism was about efficiency (and uniformity). What followed shifted the focus to effectiveness (and diversity). What’s the difference? As Peter Drucker explains, “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right thing.”
