Who needs the office of the future?

The office seems to be the last outpost of resistance to automation, if one can judge by the small amount of money companies are now spending on it. Yet more than a trillion dollars will go for salaries and support of white-collar workers in 1982. Booz, Allen & Hamilton Inc., the management and technology consulting firm, studied so-called knowledge workers to determine how they spend their work day and whether the enhancements of the office of the future could make them more productive. Harvey Poppel discusses the results and points out that many of the frustrating, unproductive activities that the study revealed could be reduced by the appropriate mix of new office systems.