Open or closed?

I'm always fascinated when it comes to work spaces. Is it more productive to be in an open work space or in a tall wall cubicle environment (closed)?

When I was first married, I worked in an environment in which we each had our own large connected cubicles, but with short walls. There were six of us working closely together in this environment. I really liked it because we kept each other on our toes and focused on getting the work done. When we had a moment to be funny, or de-stress - we would, but then we would get right back into the work. It was a comfortable environment where we all had our own space yet it was open enough to shine a light on anyone not pulling their share of the jobs to be produced. This also cut down on everyone's personal tastes at the office. We basically had our desktops to decorate with a picture and desk accessories and that was pretty much it. This was an environment of who could do the best job in the fastest amount of time. I loved it.

I also have had the pleasure of working in a smaller, family-owned office environment in which we weren't given cubicles to work in - more like all of us working in one big room on long tables against the wall with pretty uncomfortable chairs and a 30 minute lunch break. TOTALLY different in that there wasn't much competitiveness in production of work, but very similar in hardly any personal calls and when at work - very focused on work. The manager of our team made that job really good for me. I learned at lot from working there.

Moving back into corporate world - I was entranced by one of the director's offices. It was neat and orderly, but had a real sense of style (my first introduction to style at work). We were all in tall cubicles, but we were also all on one long row - so everyone knew who was working and who was a flake. My current office space has tall cubicles, but no longer in one long row - more of an open large space for everyone to roll their chairs into when we meet.

Watching Kell On Earth (yes - addicted), made me wonder if that one long table with everyone working in such an open environment was productive and if the employees like that work environment. It does look cool. Makes me wonder about the phone calls that are always going on and if anyone can hear the other end of their call while the person next to them is dealing with a fashion crisis. I'm sure it is less expensive to set up an office this way (cubicles are so expensive!) and maybe the background noise during phone calls make the business seem more impressive or busy.

No matter how the office is set up, I know that not everyone will be happy with their work space and yet the best employees who are passionate about their work won't really care. They will do their best, regardless.