Process Studies of Organizational Space
Top Cited Papers
- 1 July 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Academy of Management in Academy of Management Annals
- Vol. 14 (2), 797-827
- https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2018.0146
Abstract
The past decade has experienced an increase in the number of studies on organizational space or where work occurs. A number of these studies challenge traditional views of organizational space as a fixed, physical workspace because researchers fail to account for the spatial dynamics that they observe. New technologies, shifting employee-employer relations, and burgeoning expectations of the contemporary workforce blur boundaries between home and work, connect people and things that historically could not be linked, and extend workspaces to nearly everywhere, not just office buildings. Research on these transformations calls for incorporating movement into the physicality of work. Thus, organizational scholars have turned to process studies as ways to examine the dynamic features that create and alter spatial arrangements. However, the rapidly growing work in this area lacks integration and theoretical development. To address these concerns, we review and classify the organizational literature that casts space as a process, that is, dynamically as movements, performances, flows, and changing routines. This review yields five orientations of organizational space scholarship that we label as: developing, transitioning, imbricating, becoming, and constituting. We discuss these orientations, examine how they relate to key constructs of organizational space, and show how this work offers opportunities to theorizing about organizations. Keywords: organizational space, process studies, spacing, organizing, performing, becoming, constitutingKeywords
This publication has 201 references indexed in Scilit:
- Reordering Spatial and Social Relations: A Case Study of Professional and Managerial FlexworkersBritish Journal of Management, 2013
- Process Studies of Change in Organization and Management: Unveiling Temporality, Activity, and FlowThe Academy of Management Journal, 2013
- The open-plan academy: space, control and the undermining of professional identityWork, Employment & Society, 2012
- Exploring organizational architecture and space: a case for heterodox researchInternational Journal of Organizational Analysis, 2012
- Institutional Work in the Transformation of an Organizational Field: The Interplay of Boundary Work and Practice WorkAdministrative Science Quarterly, 2010
- Zooming In and Out: Studying Practices by Switching Theoretical Lenses and Trailing ConnectionsOrganization Studies, 2009
- To infinity and beyond?: workspace and the multi‐location workerNew Technology, Work and Employment, 2009
- Perceived Proximity in Virtual Work: Explaining the Paradox of Far-but-CloseOrganization Studies, 2008
- Metaphorical mediation of organizational change across space and timeJournal of Organizational Change Management, 2006
- Between Space and Time: Reflections on the Geographical Imagination1Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 1990