Anthony Alderson, director of the Pleasance theatre company in London is the first to admit his desk is a mess: "We can't all be neat, and my desk is a pigsty" he says. "Some people need to be organised but I'm not one of them . . . Really it's about need - and I don't need to find these things. If I have to get in contact with someone, I'll find them.'

Since about the time of Frederick Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911, and his championing of the idea that every minute should count, there has been an assumption in most organisations that an orderly workstation is better. But is this really the case?

Eric Abrahamson, Professor of Management at Columbia Business School and author of a new book A Perfect Mess, says: "There is a sweet spot between complete order and complete disorder. What you have to remember is that there is a cost to order. If you stop to tidy up every time something becomes disordered you'll continually interrupt yourself and never get any work done. But on the other hand, if you're a complete mess you'll never find anything."

Ian Smalley, creative director of corporate digital communications agency CTN, is a believer in just that sort of messy medium.

The perimeter of his desk is delineated by towers of paper: "I have a relatively big desk so as long as there is elbow room, things tend to pile up, even if some of them do date back to 2004."

But his main reason for untidiness is lack of time to tidy: "It is a busy environment and at the end of the day, while all confidential documents are shredded and recycled, I want to leave and see my son, not file bits of paper."

He adds: "I can get a professional-looking desk by doing a 'five-minute tidy' where I straighten all the piles of paper up if I need to."

Prof Abrahamson says messy desks can be good: "People with a moderate amount of mess usually have everything to hand." Leaving a mess on your desk can often work creatively too: "Mess puts items in context and the unexpected juxtapositions of unrelated items can cause you to make connections that you'd never make if the things were in two separate filing cabinets."

There are even economies of scale: "One trip to clean 10 coffee cups is much more efficient that 10 trips to clean one."

Messy desks have some celebrated advocates. Barack Obama recently allowed that he might have a messy desk; Nobel prize winner Robert Fogel dealt with the issue by buying a second desk; and Einstein famously asked: "If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, then what is an empty desk?"

Yet many people still believe untidy desks belong to slobs, whose disorganisation will make them unsatisfactory as colleagues and employees. Prof Abrahamson cites one chief executive who has two offices - one with a pristine desk where he receives visitors and one with the chaotic desk at which he works.

The messy desk has a vitual version. Not only is there the messy desktop, but PCs' powerful search abilities enable us to have clutter on a hard drive. If a computer can search thousands of documents and e-mails within minutes or even seconds, why bother organising the information properly? Arguably, onedownside of the virtual mess is that, by being less visible, it increases the likelihood of being careless, say, with laptops containing personal data.

Many companies take a stand against workstation disorder, but they say it is for pragmatic reasons. Richard Jordan, head of employer brand at Ernst & Young, the accountancy firm, says: "We have a flexible desk policy as a lot of people work out at clients. For them having a permanent desk is a waste of space," and therefore they share a desk where personal clutter is kept to a minimum. Others insist on absence of clutter for compliance reasons.

Even those who have messy desks have sporadic clear-ups. "My desk gets a guaranteed deep tidy at key points of year such as when I go on holiday or we have a recycling drive,' says Mr Smalley. "When you're going off for two weeks, tidying your desk gives you a nice sense of closure."

The point where chaos is unacceptable may be when the desk becomes a health hazard. With more people snatching lunch at their desks, the workstation can be a haven for germs. Mr Smalley says that while he doesn't mind mess, he is not so keen on grime: "I do clean my keyboard - if you eat at your desk, they can get pretty horrible."

Meanwhile, at Mr Alderson's workstation: "The one thing that stops my desk from being disgusting is that I actually like cold coffee."

Perhaps the most compelling defence of the moderately messy desk, says Prof Abrahamson, is that working amid a modest disorder tends to make you more flexible, open to new experiences and better equipped to deal with the unexpected.

Mr Alderson puts it slightly differently: "I don't need any of this stuff. If the office burnt down tomorrow, it wouldn't matter that much. I carry the company around in my head."

伦敦Pleasance剧院公司的经理安东尼•奥尔德森(Anthony Alderson)第一个承认自己的办公桌凌乱不堪："不可能所有的人都整洁，我的桌子就是一个猪圈，"他说道。"有些人需要组织有序，但我不是这样的人......实际上，这跟需要有关--而我不需要找这些东西。如果我不得不与某人联系的话，我会找到他们。"

弗雷德里克•泰勒(Frederick Taylor)的《科学管理原理》(Principles of Scientific Management)于1911年出版，他支持每分钟都应该计算的观点。大约是自那时以来，多数组织机构都认定，整齐有序的办公场所更好。但确实如此吗？

哥伦比亚商学院(Columbia Business School)管理学教授埃里克•亚伯拉罕森(Eric Abrahamson)表示："在完全有序与完全无序之间存在一个最佳平衡点。你必须要记住的是，有序需要成本。如果每次有东西乱了，你都要停下来整理，那你就会接连不断地被打断，什么工作也完不成。但另一方面，如果你是彻底的凌乱不堪，又会什么东西都找不到。" 亚伯拉罕森教授是新书《完美的混乱》(A Perfect Mess)的作者。

企业数字通讯代理机构CTN的创意总监伊恩•斯莫利(Ian Smalley)就是这种混乱中间论的信奉者。

他办公桌四周的文件堆得像小山似的。"我的办公桌相对比较大，因此只要有点空间，东西就会堆起来，尽管有一些甚至可以追溯到2004年。"

但他不整洁的主要原因是没有时间整理。"这是一个繁忙的环境。在一天结束时，当所有机密文件都被切碎回收了的时候，我只想离开，回去见儿子，而不是整理那些纸。"

他补充道："如果需要的话，通过'五分钟的整理'，把所有的文件弄整齐，我就可以有一个看起来很职业的办公桌。"

亚伯拉罕森表示，凌乱的桌子也可以不错："适度凌乱的人通常把所有东西都放在手边。"桌上一片凌乱通常还可以带来灵感："凌乱把东西置于背景之中，一些不相关的东西意外排在一起，可以让你产生联想--如果东西分别放在两个文件柜里，你绝对不会产生这样的联想。"

甚至还有规模经济："一次清理10个咖啡杯，比一次清理一个、去10次要有效率得多。"

"杂乱桌面"的提倡者不乏一些名人。巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)最近承认，自己的办公桌也许有些凌乱；诺贝尔奖(Nobel Prize)得主罗伯特•福格尔(Robert Fogel)的解决办法，是再添一张桌子；爱因斯坦(Einstein)曾经问过一句有名的话："如果凌乱的桌子代表思想凌乱，那么空桌子呢？"

不过，许多人仍然相信，不整洁的桌子属于懒汉。他们的杂乱无章，会让自己成为无法令人满意的同事和雇员。亚伯拉罕森举了一位企业高管的例子：他有两间办公室，桌面整洁的那间是待客的地方，桌面凌乱的那间则是他办公的地方。

还有一种虚拟版的"杂乱桌面"。这不仅是指乱糟糟的电脑桌面，而且也指我们由于电脑具备的强大搜索功能而不去整理的凌乱硬盘。如果一部电脑可以在几分钟、甚至数秒之内搜索完上千份文件和电子邮件，那又何必费力将各类信息归置整齐呢？言之成理的是，虚拟世界里的杂乱会带来一样坏处：由于直观性较差，它会增加疏忽大意的可能性。比如说，在使用存有个人资料的笔记本电脑，就容易发生这种事。

许多公司采取的立场，是反对工作间里的零乱无序。不过它们都表示这是出于实际的原因。会计师事务所安永(Ernst & Young)的雇员品牌负责人理查德•乔丹(Richard Jordan)表示："我们的办公桌政策较为灵活，因为许多人是在客户那边工作。对他们来说，安排一张固定的办公桌，纯属浪费空间。"因此，安永雇员的办公桌是合用的，个人造成的凌乱降到了最低的限度。其他一些公司则以守规矩为理由而坚称要杜绝办公室里的凌乱现象。

即使是那些桌面杂乱的人，也会时不时进行一番清理。斯莫利表示："每年的一些关键时刻，我的桌子都保证会得到一番彻底的清理。比如说，我度假的时候，或是我们做回收活动的时候。如果你准备离开两周，清理一下办公桌，会给你一种收工打烊的美好感觉。"

不能容忍杂乱无章的关键，或许是办公桌有可能产生卫生隐患。如果有更多人在桌前吃午饭，办公场所就会成为细菌的乐园。斯莫利表示，尽管他不在意凌乱，但他也并不那么喜欢尘垢："我确实会清洁一下自己的键盘--如果你在办公桌前吃东西，它们真的会被弄得很恐怖。"

与此同时，奥尔德森说起自己的工作间时表示："我的桌子没有变得那么恶心的原因，是因为我实际上喜欢喝凉咖啡。"

亚伯拉罕森表示，如果要替略显凌乱的办公桌做一番辩解的话，一条最有力的理由就是：在适度无序的空间里工作，容易让你变得更灵活，更能接受新生事物，能更好地应对意外事件。

奥尔德森的说法则略有不同："我不需要这些东西。就算明天办公室被烧掉了，那也没多大关系。我的公司全装在我的脑子里。"
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