Office Design, Neoliberal Governmentality and Professional Service Firms
研究专业服务公司如何通过开放式办公室布局等空间技术，将新自由主义治理理念内化为员工行为，推动员工成为追求效率与客户满意的自我企业家。
This paper examines how neoliberal governmentality is conveyed and promoted through office design technologies within professional service firms (PSFs). Our data, constituted through interviews with firm representatives and site visits, points to the pursuit by PSF management of a core principle of marketization, which is promoted through a range of spatial technologies inscribed in the office space to sustain the development of subjectivities reflective of Homo economicus. Specifically, we found that fluid open-plan layouts and adaptable workplaces constitute technologies of government with great ambitions, aiming to cultivate a paradoxical climate of cooperative competitiveness within the firm, a constant endeavor toward efficiency, and a transformation of firm members into neoliberal self-entrepreneurs. One of the chief ideas that motivates office designers is to provide PSF members with the freedom to work how, where, and when they want in order to meet their firm’s imperatives of effectiveness and client satisfaction. Ultimately, our study shows that office design initiatives within PSFs constitute tools of neoliberal governmentality that aim to govern subtly the emancipation of firm members as accomplished self-entrepreneurs.