In the private sector also, physical space has for a century been used to facilitate and enforce efficiency and specialization. Along with factory assembly lines, the architectural frames of white-collar work have evolved to maximize efficiency. In the nineteenth century, “countinghouses” where partners and clerks worked side by side at identical rolltop desks began to disappear, replaced by subdivided offices. As the volume of clerical and administrative work grew, white-collar professions began importing the reductionist ideal of specialization from the factory floor. Management historian
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