【简答题】

    When offices are planned, the attention paid to the correct use of space, and individual and company needs, is often totally inadequate. 61) Bad planning can frustrate the manager and employee and reduce their level of performance. This is why so much research has been undertaken since the war into effective office planning.
    There is a growing realization that investment in people means that their needs should be thoroughly analyzed and provided for. It has encouraged a number of office planning approaches. 62) The best of these approaches take into account not just the physical aspects of a building but the complex individual and group relationships which need to be understood before a plan is implemented.
    A man's personal preference is always for his own separate office. Where this can be achieved it provides privacy and special advantages for him. However, it is quite uneconomic for most organizations to provide such facilities on anything but a limited scale. 63) Moreover, the corporate needs for good communications, smooth exchange of ideas and paper work, and flexibility demand a different form of planning. Preoccupation with rental costs has led in the past to open plan offices which in the worst circumstances are laid out in such a regimented fashion that the atmosphere is totally impersonal.
    Nevertheless, costs must be faced realistically. Perhaps the best balance between the needs ofmost of the employees and the needs of the company are to be found in landscaped offices.
    Developed in Germany in the late 1950s, landscaping, or Burolandschaft as it is sometimes called, seeks to achieve good communications and information flow by the correct juxtaposition of departments. 64) Its aim is to provide a pleasing working environment for all, coupled with economic use of space and the ability on management's part to alter office layout to cope with changes in working methods.
    Ideally a floor area of not less than 6000 sq. ft. is required, generally in the form of a square or rectangle the sides of which have a ratio of less than two  to one. Employees are grouped together in clusters, in accordance with a plan that takes into account work flow and desirable relationships across traditional organizational barriers. Such groups are identified and separated by movable screens. 65) An acceptable general noise level is achieved by careful acoustic control to provide aural privacy and mask intrusive noise.