Over time and due in large part to tradition, we have come to connect privacy with having a private office, which nearly always means having four floor-to-ceiling walls and a door. One study found that people in offices perceive a direct correlation between the quality of the enclosure and the relative amount of privacy provided. Enclosure seems to further relate to enhanced job performance, ease of communication, and comfort. In reality, the relationships are more complex.

Private offices seem preferable because they point to those people at the top of the organization. Therefore, they become a status symbol within the organizational structure. This idea of the enclosed office as a symbol is not likely to change. It offers a tangible expression of our desire for status and the expression of territoriality. However, many workers are demanding that enclosed offices begin to support the ways individuals within them actually work.

What people really need is not one office, but several that offer different gradations, or sequences, of privacy and that allow for customization of a mobile, independent and rapidly changing work force.

"The real issue seems to be not enclosure, but control over accessibility."

Certainly, a lavish enclosed office constitutes the appropriate image some high-level employees require to better facilitate their duties, such as meeting with persons of similar or higher rank from other organizations. Most individuals within an organization actually approve of enclosed offices as status markers, as long as status relationships are consistent.