Hot-desking with the boss: Yea or nay?

IN a somewhat desperate attempt at levelling the playing field between bossing and bossed, several businesses have recently announced that they will strip their top ranks of private office accommodation and make them sit at hot desks like everyone else. Avoiding wasting expensive office space is an admirable target. Levelling down is not. We educate to level up. We develop robotics to remove repetitive drudge from workers. The resulting job loss is to be dealt with, not to be lauded.

Management and the decline of authority

There are two issues at loggerheads in where you make people sit and what, if any, privilege you afford to seniors. The first is management. To hear some advocates of modern business control, you might think that management is a thing of the past. Quite the contrary, management is a greater skill today. We have discovered, albeit slowly and painfully - and not yet completely - that fear is a powerful motivator but a totally unacceptable one.