Officially, they're called workstations or systems furniture. Most of us call them cubicles — cubes, for short — or "a persistent, economical, tyrannical, fluorescent-lit personal purgatory in which forty million American employees have come to toil." (Source: IMT)

As the corporate use of systems furniture grew from the 1970s through the 1990s, the responsibility for office space design and maintenance was typically on the corporate facilities manager, who was generally rewarded based on how many people could be put into the least amount of space.

Yet while cubicles may make economical sense as far as facilities management is concerned, they may not be in the best interest of the company as a whole — at least, not in terms of collaboration and innovation.

In 2006, an online survey conducted by San Francisco design firm Gensler revealed that workplace design has a very real impact on companies' bottom lines. According to the survey, nine in 10 workers believe that better office design leads to better overall employee performance, and also makes a company more competitive. Of more than 2,000 workers surveyed in the United States, two-thirds said they are more efficient when they work closely with their colleagues.

Yet 30 percent said their workplace doesn't promote spontaneous interaction and collaboration.

In fact, the California Management Review recently reported that "less than 5 percent of U.S. corporations tie the workplace to corporate strategy or see it as a tool for improving organizational performance."

Today, these sentiments are leading many companies to rethink the office environment.

One of the more common complaints of cube-lined offices is that the layout doesn't permit social, innovation-triggering interaction.

"Every organization wants to improve communication, break down silos and help people work together better. It's just good business," says global furniture maker Steelcase Inc. "It's also a great way to foster innovation."

"The myth of the larger-than-life individual working alone to create amazing new inventions is romantic and compelling, but nevertheless a myth," Steelcase notes in another issue of its 360 e-zine:

In a global knowledge society, people working together is the real source of innovation. From impromptu "What do think about this?" conversations in the hallway to planned dyadic workspaces, collaboration is how people need to work today. Organizations [that plan] workspaces to support collaborative work processes and work styles will be the most likely to produce larger-than-life innovations.

Another common complaint is that traditional-style cubicles tend to block visibility without blocking much noise from other cubes.

"It gives you this incredibly false sense of privacy," Carl Bass, chief executive of software maker Autodesk Inc., said of cubicles in The Wall Street Journal last October. At the time, Bass was pushing for more open layouts at his own company.

Rick Brenner, of Chaco Canyon Consulting, has also raised an interesting point in a discussion of the economics of cubicles:

Compared with walled spaces, cubicles provide little acoustic isolation. People who do brain work experience interruption rates much higher than they would in environments that provide greater acoustic (and visual) isolation. High interruption rates increase the time required to accomplish complex thought tasks, and might even increase error rates, which raises the costs of rework.

In recent years, workplace designers have mostly limited themselves to trying to offset the cubicle's most glaring defects. Now they are turning their attention to new, open approaches that advance the bullpen several steps.

The basic concept is that team members require a variety of workplace environments, from which they can select depending on the task at hand. Environments may include lounge-type settings with easy chairs, café-style arrangements with stools and even armchairs where workers can settle in and work on their laptops.

High-tech companies including Intel Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. are among those who have been testing new workspaces that spurn cubicles for more flexible environments.

Last fall, the WSJ reported on Intel's plans to test some innovative, more open environments that more closely fit how people work and, as a result, foster improved collaboration. Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard have conducted similar pilot programs.

All in all, though, office-design companies are struggling to remedy the problem. Others are trying to justify them; in 2006, FORTUNE Magazine ran an article entitled Cubicles: The Great Mistake, complete with a public apology from one of the first cubicle designers.

The original reasons they succeeded remain: their relatively low cost, their space-efficiency and their relative flexibility in terms of space planning.

"It's shrinking and changing, no question," says Steelcase. "But most people agree that the workplace 'cube' is not going away anytime soon."

Perhaps someday cubicle-dwellers will see the death of the cubicle. Until then, for those of us without our own office, our employer's frugal choice for us is between a cubicle and a bullpen — or, as one Digger put it, between Folsom and Sing Sing.

Consider this checklist to decide whether a cubicle or open-space environment best fits your needs.

Source: Tech Republic

Earlier: The Soulless Reign of the Cubicle

Resources

Checklist Graph: Tech Republic

Why Silicon Valley Is Rethinking the Cubicle Office
by Don Clark
The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 14, 2007

Cubitopia: The Utopian Ideal of the Cubicle
by David Franz
Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, Fall 2007

The State of the Cubicle: What's Now & What's Next
Steelcase 360 e-zine, January 2006

Collaborative Workspaces - How Collaborative Workspaces Nurture Innovation
Steelcase 360 DeepDive

The True Costs of Cubicles
by Rick Brenner
Chaco Canyon Consulting

Death to the Cubicle!
by Linda Tischler
Fast Company, June 2005

Additional

Special Report: Office Design
BusinessWeek, October 2007