Here is your sample essay on Office

Office activities have undergone a vast change in the last four or five decades. The old dingy, cluttered, stuffy office rooms have vanished and in their place we have well ventilated, well-lighted, air conditioned offices with up to date furnishings in alluring designs. Gone are the days when the head of the concern personally supervised the work of clerks.

Today, modern offices are organized on scientific principles and their management and administration are in the hands of specialized office manager. Managers do not share the same room with clerks but sit in separate rooms. The clerks are supervised and controlled with the help of supervisors and through standard office systems, routines, office manuals etc.

The vast changes have led to an expansion in the scale of production and business activities. As the size of business enterprises grows, there is corresponding increase in the volume of office work. The office activities of today are not performed by general clerks but by specialized clerks Receptionist, Cashier, Typist, Telephone Operators etc.

There is also a greater division of labor. Departmentalization of office has been effected. The office managers of today welcome greater use of machines and minimal use of human beings in the office work.

Machines typewriter, telephones, computers, calculators, duplicating machines, Dictaphones, accounting machines, intercom, cellular phones, interne’ system etc. help to save time and labor.

Computers are the latest additions to the long list of office machines. They are capable of performing most clerical operations at high speed without errors. Thus modern offices are becoming more and more high-tech.

Office is an important section of a business. The term business implies office work. The dictionary meaning of office is “a place for the transaction of business, the room or department, where the clerical work is done,” or we can say “a place where business is carried on”, or it is “a place where all sorts of activities of organization are dealt with.”

Office is the centre of an organization. Commercial Office acts as a central directing and co­ordinating agency of the various activities of any business.

An office is understood to be a place where clerical work is performed and where all kinds of paper work (letters, correspondence, files, records etc.) is maintained and dealt with. It is a central place where all sorts of clerical work is done to co-ordinate and control the affairs of the whole organization.

“Office is a unit where relevant records for the purpose of control, planning and efficient management of the organization are prepared, handled and preserved. Office provides facilities for internal and external communication and co-ordinates activities of different departments of the organization.”

In modern age, the ‘office’ is used in a broader sense. Prof. Dixie states, “An office is to a business what the mainspring is to a watch”. An organization cannot be carried on without an office, as a watch without the mainspring is useless. In the present times, the modern office organization has so much importance as the brain in a human body.

Thus a commercial office can be called “a clearing house of all essential business information.” The office has to receive or collect all information of the business, process the collected information (analyze, arrange and classify) and put them into understandable form on the one hand. On the other hand, the processed information has to be presented or communicated to the management of the business, as and when required.

According to the Random House Dictionary, “An office is a place where business is transacted or professional services are available.” An office is the place where the control mechanisms for an enterprise are located, where records are initiated for communication, control and efficient operation of the enterprise.

According to Mills and Standing Ford, “The office is the administrative centre of a business. The purpose of an office has been defined as the providing of a service of communication and record.”

“An office is the place where work in connection with the preparing and furnishing of information is done.”

It is generally seen, in commercial offices, there are some persons to receive information, process them (made understandable in form) and supply the processed information to the management. Doing so, can be called clerical job. Clerical job includes correspondence (to collect information or clarify the information received) serving (filing), typing, book-keeping, handling of money etc.

So it is confirmed that an efficient management of the organization helps the managers or executives to formulate planning, organizing, controlling and supervising the activities of a business concern. Prompt and accurate decision depends upon timely information.

An office is a place to record the information for the purposes of control through collection (of information) handled and serviced and where the control mechanism for a business is located-Paper work is to attain an aimed result. One must give importance to the office function rather than to the place.

An office is a place of paper processing and memory centre for all its departments. In office, policies and ideas are formulated through collection and analysis of obtained information. An office maintains all these records. And this readymade, scrutinized and processed information are made available to the management to attain the best result.

On the other hand, if the office supplies incomplete, wrong, misleading or delayed information, decisions taken on these defective information’s, are bound to be wrong. In small firms, the proprietor himself does all the jobs, but in large and complex firms, the proprietor or the Board of Directors alone cannot run the concern. Therefore, the office is there to assist the management in their day-to-day business. The office is the servant of the management.

Most of the definitions underline “paper work has done” at a particular place as the main and perhaps the only function of an office. However, today the word “office’ is used in a broader sense. The modern approach to the study of an office is to view it as a function instead of a certain place. When it is taken as a function, the office can plan, organize, direct,

“Any place where procedure concerned with the receipt, transmittal, production, reproduction, processing, storage and retrieval of information are carried out.

The cab of a lorry where the driver completes his log, the corner of a factory workshop where the foreman completes the production returns, the massive headquarters of an international organization employing thousands of people who service field operations-each of these is an office.” control and coordinate the office work wherever it is done and whosoever does it.

But if it is restricted to a certain place only, it will not cover the work which by its nature is office work, but is done outside the boundaries of that place. Therefore, the term’ office’ should be used broadly to represent the functions which it performs rather than the place where they are performed.

A few definitions of office are given below:

“The essential feature of the office is the work itself, not who does it or where it is done. If it is office or clerical work in one place, it is office or clerical work everywhere regardless of where the work is done or who does it.”

“The office is not in one place; no matter how much we centralize its services, there will still be office work at the point of use. Some enterprises are almost all office. The activities of the office do not, strictly speaking, constitute a function; they are parts of all functions.”

“If it is office work in one place, it is office work everywhere, regardless of office work as such, wherever it is done and whoever performs it, is often the first step towards improving the performance of that work. That is, the principles applicable to the performance of office work in one place are usually applicable to the performance of the same work elsewhere.”

“Office is a unit where relevant records for the purpose of control, planning and efficient management of the organization are prepared, handled and preserved. Office provides facilities for internal and external communication and co-ordinates activities of different departments of the organization.”

In a business organization, the chief executive and his management team cannot deal personally with all the communications and cannot remember all the facts connected with it. There, the office comes to their rescue by providing with relevant facts and figures on the basis of which the management exercises its managerial functions of planning, co-ordination and control.

According to Leffingwell and Robinson, “A well organized office makes it possible for the management to plan its operations intelligently, to put its plans into effect surely, to follow their progress currently, to determine their effectiveness promptly, to apprise the results without delay and to co-ordinate all the activities of the business.”