The Secret History of White-Collar Offices

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Business, Marketing, Teams, Business/entrepreneurship, Harvard, Management, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Hbr, Business/management, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Business/marketing, Innovation, Communication

4.3 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2014

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nikil Saval, editor at n+1, on how gender, politics, and unions have affected the American workplace since the Civil War.

Transcript

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0:00.0	When leadership advice feels like buzzwords and platitudes, it's time to get real.
0:05.9	HPR's podcast Coaching Real Leaders brings you behind closed doors as Muriel Wilkins coaches anonymous
0:11.9	leaders through raw honest career questions
0:14.6	that we all face.
0:15.9	Listen and follow coaching real leaders for free
0:18.3	wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBO Ideacast from Harvard Business Review.
0:33.3	I'm Sarah Green.
0:34.7	I'm talking today with Nikil Seval,
0:37.2	author of the new book, Cubed,
0:39.2	a secret history of the workplace.
0:41.3	Nikil, thanks so much for talking to us today.
0:43.3	Thank you for having me.
0:44.7	So I just have to ask why do you call this account a secret history of the workplace?
0:50.1	It's a good question.
0:51.8	There are sort of two aspects of the secrecy. One would be that it was the idea that there is a history to the office at all or to white color work. To me it seems like it's a secret that is just
1:04.8	daring us in the face. You know when I went to do research for it I there was nowhere
1:09.4	to look in a way there was no sort of central place. I had to find it in passing, in architecture books,
1:16.5	in segments of labor history or women's history
1:20.1	or novels and fiction.
1:23.0	So in that sense, it was sort of a hidden thing
1:25.0	that I felt like I was uncovering
1:26.6	or at least synthesizing.
	...

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