The Changing Quality of Office Work

Abstract A recurring theme in popular media accounts of office work has been the office of the future’, in which an unconventional decor and ‘fun’ working environment allegedly reflects and supports the creative and knowledge-based work of employees. In this chapter this vision, with its implication of a paradigm shift from the routine ‘9–5’ office work stereotype, is held up to scrutiny by first looking at the scale and variety of work done in offices and then examining key dimensions of job quality in office work and assessing the evidence from contemporary research. The chapter takes the historical trends in the nature of office work, observed for over a century, such as routinization of work, mechanization and the diffusion of office technology, intensification of work and enhanced managerial control and a lowering of status (the ‘proletarianization’ thesis) and examines, in the context of current economic pressures, the degree to which the contemporary ‘creative’ office offers a radical break from such trends or whether, for most office workers, the experience is a continuation and even an acceleration, of such processes.