話し合いの結果、事務所と食堂は禁煙ということになった。

First, my translation:

"As a result of the discussion, office and dining hall became non-smoking
area"

I think that in this case, ことになった isn't used in the sense of 私は出張することになった。=>
It was decided that I make the business trip. Instead, I think that it is more
禁煙という **こと** +なった. "It became a non-smoking **thing** "

I might be wrong though, because I must admit that I still have quite a lot of
issues with という. It's not that it would hinder me from understanding a
sentence (at least in most cases), but it's still kind of a blackbox for me,
since I can't really detect much regularity in its use.
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2017-09-01T17:28:13.770
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2017-09-01T19:23:57.513
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question
grammar
How is the ことになる construction used here
In your sentence "It was decided that I make the business trip" the word
"decided" is just a possible interpretation which would be determined by
context. This seems to be one of the examples where Japanese prefers
description of things happening in the world rather than speaking of actions
of actors. The sentence literally is "as for me, things have become so that
(someone, possibly "I") will make a business trip" or "the thing of me making
a business trip has come to be (somehow)".

Same way with the ending part of the sentence in question ~ the thing you can
describe as a smoking restriction came to be. The whole sentence actually
supplies enough information, it was a result of a discussion so we can
conclude that it was decided.
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2017-09-01T19:17:34.733
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2017-09-01T19:23:57.513
2017-09-01T19:23:57.513
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answer