Yes, because it is serious and because there are many useful ways to quantify knowledge worker productivity. I can’t tell if you laughed because you’ve never l

Yes, because it is serious and because there are many useful ways to quantify knowledge worker productivity. I can’t tell if you laughed because you’ve never looked into this field of managerial study before and have inadvertently assumed there aren’t useful, heavily relied-upon ways of measuring productivity; or if you laughed because of the dark humor that results when you realize companies are fully aware of how much lost productivity, increased communicable disease based time off, engendering of shallow / superficial face-to-face interactions, increased stress and lowered morale all cost them from open floor plans, and are sadly willing to pay those costs as a premium to get the status & optics effects they want from the look of the office layout.