Corporate management has long loomed large in academic exploration of the workplace. It is corporate management which commissions architects and designers in their work, and which provides final approval on designs. Management facilitates or allows scholars access to workspaces and employees, and occasionally subsidizes workplace research. Such managerial involvement has become both ubiquitous and unnoticed – a standard operating procedure in the field.

Grounded in the insights of Marxian labour process theory (Braverman 1974) this paper problematizes the researcher/management and architect/manager relationship.  It suggests that managerial involvement in office research and design has impacted how office research is conducted, as well as how such spaces are broadly constituted and understood. Potential impacts of management-exclusive or management-dominated research partnerships are discussed along two lines: structural impacts upon study and workspace design, and conceptual impacts on how workplaces and work are understood. Turning again to labour process theory, the paper suggests potential counterbalances and solutions to the status quo including increasing research partnerships with organized labour/unions, interdisciplinary research methods, and explicit identification of managerial relationships as a research method.