Management is all about communication. Management closes floor-plans. Is it not surprising floor-plans are designed to reflect that?
It's a hard problem to solve because few people ever think "what am I giving up?" There is a special breed of experienced manager (usually one or two levels from the workers) who does, but she is rare. Most are either too inexperienced to have been bitten, not taken seriously by other management for these decisions, or can't answer the question anyway.
Ideally, understanding the use of the space and how to best accomplish that would be part of the architect's job, but the guy with the money always wins.
Except that managers do not choose open plans for themselves, the communicators, which shows that floor plans are more about supervision, social status, and budget, than about productivity or teamwork.
It's a hard problem to solve because few people ever think "what am I giving up?" There is a special breed of experienced manager (usually one or two levels from the workers) who does, but she is rare. Most are either too inexperienced to have been bitten, not taken seriously by other management for these decisions, or can't answer the question anyway.
Ideally, understanding the use of the space and how to best accomplish that would be part of the architect's job, but the guy with the money always wins.