The Spatial Construction of Organization
Author
An important challenge to organization theory is to search for constructs that explain how contexts for work emerge, evolve, persist and change. This book explores the concept of "space" as representing a wide variety of contexts. Organization as a process, as distinguished from organization as an entity, is seen as the construction of space, where space is the outcome of human action and interaction as well as providing a context for actions and interaction. The book shows how different forms of space lie at the base of a number of developments in organization theory. It then takes the step to show how contemporary developments in social science represented by works by writers such as Giddens, Luhmann, Latour and Bourdieu can be used to establish a dynamic understanding of organization as space. Insights from these discussions are used to establish a unique and coherent way of understanding complexities of modern organization.
[Advances in Organization Studies, 12] 2004. xx, 165 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
-
Acknowledgements | p. ix
-
Preface | pp. xi–xiii
-
Introduction: making maps — and mapping the structure of the book | pp. xv–xx
-
1. The subject is organization | pp. 1–17
-
2. Between form and action: The case for contexts | pp. 19–40
-
3. Organization as context | pp. 41–58
-
4. From context to space | pp. 59–75
-
5. Boundaries in fields of spaces | pp. 77–84
-
6. Physical space: Organization by regulation and binding | pp. 85–99
-
7. Mental space: Organization by thought | pp. 101–114
-
8. Social space: Organization by bonding | pp. 115–124
-
9. Spatial dynamics | pp. 125–139
-
10. Putting space into perspective | pp. 141–148
-
-
Name index | pp. 159–162
-
Subject index | pp. 163–164
“In this fascinating and well-written book, Hernes suggests using space to replace context as a concept for understanding the emergent, unbounded and recursive nature of social interaction that we call organization. Hernes shows us how understanding the physical, mental and social space in which organization takes place enables us to include in our theories of organization phenomena that have been difficult to comprehend with more static concepts. At one point Hernes states that "...spatialization may be essential for human existence, but it is also consequential in that once it has occurred, life will not be the same as it was before" (p 66). It is not an exaggeration to paraphrase that spatialization is essential for understanding organization and once it has occurred organization will not be the same as it was before.”
Martha S. Feldman, Johnson Chair for Civic Governance and Public Management, University of California, Irvine
Cited by
Cited by 77 other publications
Ainsworth, Susan, David Grant & Rick Iedema
2009. `Keeping things moving': space and the construction of middle management identity in a post-NPM organization. Discourse & Communication 3:1 ► pp. 5 ff. 
Auernhammer, Jan & Hazel Hall
2014. Organizational culture in knowledge creation, creativity and innovation: Towards the Freiraum model. Journal of Information Science 40:2 ► pp. 154 ff.
Battard, Nicolas, Paul F. Donnelly & Vincent Mangematin
2017. Organizational Responses to Institutional Pressures: Reconfiguration of Spaces in Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies. Organization Studies 38:11 ► pp. 1529 ff.
Beyes, Timon & Christoph Michels
2011. The production of educational space: Heterotopia and the business university. Management Learning 42:5 ► pp. 521 ff.
Beyes, Timon & Chris Steyaert
2012. Spacing organization: non-representational theory and performing organizational space. Organization 19:1 ► pp. 45 ff.
Boon, Bronwyn
2007. Working within the front-of-house/back-of-house boundary: Room attendants in the hotel guest room space. Journal of Management & Organization 13:2 ► pp. 160 ff.
2007. Working within the front-of-house/back-of-house boundary: Room attendants in the hotel guest room space. Journal of Management & Organization 13:2 ► pp. 160 ff.
Bruscaglioni, Livia
2016. No Entry. In Promoting Patient Engagement and Participation for Effective Healthcare Reform [Advances in Medical Diagnosis, Treatment, and Care, ], ► pp. 171 ff.
2017. No Entry. In Healthcare Ethics and Training, ► pp. 695 ff.
Callahan, Jamie L.
2013. ‘Space, the final frontier’? Social movements as organizing spaces for applying HRD. Human Resource Development International 16:3 ► pp. 298 ff.
Daskalaki, Maria, Alexandra Stara & Miguel Imas
2008. The ‘Parkour Organisation’: inhabitation of corporate spaces. Culture and Organization 14:1 ► pp. 49 ff.
Dodd, Sarah Louise Drakopoulou
2014. Roots radical – place, power and practice in punk entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development 26:1-2 ► pp. 165 ff.
Fiorentino, Vera, Marjo Romakkaniemi, Timo Harrikari, Sanna Saraniemi & Laura Tiitinen
2022. Towards digitally mediated social work – the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on encountering clients in social work. Qualitative Social Work ► pp. 147332502210756 ff.
Marja Flory and Eduard Bonet, Höykinpuro, Ritva & Arja Ropo
2014. Visual narratives on organizational space. Journal of Organizational Change Management 27:5 ► pp. 780 ff.
Gaim, Medhanie, Nils Wåhlin & Mattias Jacobsson
2019. The role of space for a paradoxical way of thinking and doing: A study of idea work in architectural firms. Creativity and Innovation Management 28:2 ► pp. 265 ff.
Garcia-Lorenzo, Lucia
2010. Framing uncertainty: narratives, change and digital technologies. Social Science Information 49:3 ► pp. 329 ff.
Griffis, Matthew R.
2014. Bricks, mortar, and control: A multicase examination of the public library as organization space. In Advances in Library Administration and Organization [Advances in Library Administration and Organization, 32], ► pp. 1 ff.
Gustavs, Julie & Stewart R. Clegg
2010. DNA and the politics of truth in socially organized life. European Journal of Cultural Studies 13:4 ► pp. 439 ff.
Guthey, Greig Tor, Gail Whiteman & Michael Elmes
2014. Place and Sense of Place. Journal of Management Inquiry 23:3 ► pp. 254 ff.
Hagberg, Johan & Alexander Styhre
2013. The production of social space: shopping malls as relational and transductive spaces. Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology 11:3 ► pp. 354 ff.
Harkin, Ben, Alan Yates, Martin Riach, Alice Clowes, Sophie Cole & Claudia Cummings
2022. “I Want to See People’s Reactions to the Selfies”: A Lefebvrian Analysis of the Impact of Social Networking Sites on Physical, Mental, and Emotional Functioning. Social Science Computer Review 40:3 ► pp. 788 ff.
Heiskanen, Tuula
2007. Pursuing Theory and Practice When ‘Everything is Moving’. Journal of Adult and Continuing Education 13:2 ► pp. 175 ff.
Heiskanen, Tuula & Hannu Heiskanen
2011. Spaces of innovation: experiences from two small high‐tech firms. Journal of Workplace Learning 23:2 ► pp. 97 ff.
Henn, Rebecca L.
2014. Book Review: Francois-Xavier de Vaujany and Nathalie Mitev (Eds.) Materiality and Space: Organizations, Artefacts and Practices. Organization Studies 35:9 ► pp. 1393 ff.
Hjorth, Daniel, Antonio Strati, Sarah Drakopoulou Dodd & Elke Weik
2018. Organizational Creativity, Play and Entrepreneurship: Introduction and Framing. Organization Studies 39:2-3 ► pp. 155 ff.
Hollow, Matthew
2022. Rethinking the role of planning and materiality in the Americanization of management education: The case of London Business School. Business History ► pp. 1 ff.
Husted, Emil & Ursula Plesner
2017. Spaces of open-source politics: Physical and digital conditions for political organization. Organization 24:5 ► pp. 648 ff.
Hydle, Katja Maria
2015. Temporal and Spatial Dimensions of Strategizing. Organization Studies 36:5 ► pp. 643 ff.
Häkkinen, Lotta & Nina Kivinen
2013. Writing Spaces — Performativity in Media Work. In Materiality and Space, ► pp. 135 ff.
Heather Höpfl & Peltonen, Tuomo
2011. Multiple architectures and the production of organizational space in a Finnish university. Journal of Organizational Change Management 24:6 ► pp. 806 ff.
James, Chris & Izhar Oplatka
2015. An exploration of the notion of the ‘good enough school’. Management in Education 29:2 ► pp. 77 ff.
Jang, Jin Won, Yong Gi Park, Seong Il Hur & Yong Joon Ahn
2021. 2021 21st ACIS International Winter Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing (SNPD-Winter), ► pp. 272 ff.
Jang, Jin Won, Yong Gi Park, Seong Il Hur & Yong Jun An
2021. Study on the Impact of Activity-Based Flexible Office Characteristics on the Employees’ Innovative Behavioral Intention. In Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing [Studies in Computational Intelligence, 951], ► pp. 87 ff.
Johansson, Kristina
2016. Making gender–work practicable: situating men's reconstruction of ‘women's job’ in a Swedish supermarket's micro-politics. Gender, Place & Culture 23:4 ► pp. 451 ff.
Johansson, Kristina & Anna Sofia Lundgren
2015. Gendering boundary work: exploring excluded spaces in supermarket job rotation. Gender, Place & Culture 22:2 ► pp. 188 ff.
Jones, David R.
2018. Could Slow Be Beautiful? Academic Counter-Spacing Within and Beyond “The Slow Swimming Club”. Journal of Management Inquiry 27:4 ► pp. 420 ff.
Jäppinen, Aini-Kristiina
2012. Transitions in Individual Vocational Education Pathways: Challenges and Collaborative Solutions. In Transitions and Transformations in Learning and Education, ► pp. 103 ff.
Kastberg, Gustaf
2013. Separation and reconnection episodic organizational arenas in the strategic process. Journal of Strategy and Management 6:3 ► pp. 212 ff.
Mihaela Kelemen & Peltonen, Tuomo
2012. Exploring organizational architecture and space: a case for heterodox research. International Journal of Organizational Analysis 20:1 ► pp. 68 ff.
Koskinen, Kaj U.
2013. Macro and Micro Processes. In Knowledge Production in Organizations, ► pp. 105 ff.
2013. Business organizations' knowledge‐production processes: an autopoietic approach. International Journal of Organizational Analysis 21:2 ► pp. 137 ff.
Küpers, Wendelin
2010. ‘Inter~Place’—Phenomenology of Embodied Space and Place as Basis for a Relational Understanding of Leader- and Followship in Organisations. Environment, Space, Place 2:1 ► pp. 81 ff.
Lawrence, Thomas B. & Graham Dover
2015. Place and Institutional Work. Administrative Science Quarterly 60:3 ► pp. 371 ff.
LEARMONTH, MARK & NANCY HARDING
2006. EVIDENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT: THE VERY IDEA. Public Administration 84:2 ► pp. 245 ff.
Lekanne Deprez, Frank & René Tissen
2008. Towards a Spatial Theory of Organizations: Creating New Organizational Forms to Improve Business Performance. SSRN Electronic Journal
2011. Developing Spatial Organizations: A Design Based Research Approach (Part I). SSRN Electronic Journal
Lever, John & Paul Milbourne
2014. Migrant workers and migrant entrepreneurs: changing established/outsider relations across society and space?. Space and Polity 18:3 ► pp. 255 ff.
Lindberg, Kajsa & Lars Walter
2013. Objects-in-Use and Organizing in Action Nets. Journal of Management Inquiry 22:2 ► pp. 212 ff.
Liu, Yihan & Christopher Grey
2018. History, gendered space and organizational identity: An archival study of a university building. Human Relations 71:5 ► pp. 640 ff.
Mautner, Gerlinde
2017. Chapter 21. Identity and space. In Identity Struggles [Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 69], ► pp. 387 ff.
Meyer, Heather A.
2021. Boundaries and the Exclusion of the ‘Local’. In The Global Imaginary of International School Communities, ► pp. 75 ff.
2021. Moving Forward: Reconstructing the Global Imaginary. In The Global Imaginary of International School Communities, ► pp. 217 ff.
Munro, Iain & Silvia Jordan
2013. ‘Living Space’ at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Spatial tactics and the politics of smooth space. Human Relations 66:11 ► pp. 1497 ff.
Nair, Sujith, Medhanie Gaim & Dimo Dimov
2022. Toward the Emergence of Entrepreneurial Opportunities: Organizing Early-Phase New Venture Creation Support Systems. Academy of Management Review 47:1 ► pp. 162 ff.
Nocker, Manuela
2006. The contested object: on projects as emergent space. In Making Projects Critical, ► pp. 132 ff.
O'Leary, Killian, Maurice Patterson & Lisa O'Malley
2019. Road bowling in Ireland: social space and the context of context. Consumption Markets & Culture 22:5-6 ► pp. 598 ff.
Panayiotou, Alexia & Krini Kafiris
2011. Viewing the Language of Space: Organizational Spaces, Power, and Resistance in Popular Films. Journal of Management Inquiry 20:3 ► pp. 264 ff.
Petani, Fabio James & Jeanne Mengis
2016. In search of lost space: The process of space planning through remembering and history. Organization 23:1 ► pp. 71 ff.
Popova-Nowak, Irina V. & Maria Cseh
2015. The Meaning of Organizational Learning. Human Resource Development Review 14:3 ► pp. 299 ff.
Preethi, Kesavan
2016. Innovation in a Geographically Distributed Environment: Interrelationship of Organisational Learning and Knowledge Management. In Smart Technologies for Smart Nations [Managing the Asian Century, ], ► pp. 135 ff.
Reinius, Hanna, Tiina Korhonen & Kai Hakkarainen
2021. The design of learning spaces matters: perceived impact of the deskless school on learning and teaching . Learning Environments Research 24:3 ► pp. 339 ff.
Ropo, Arja & Perttu Salovaara
2019. Spacing leadership as an embodied and performative process. Leadership 15:4 ► pp. 461 ff.
Rowe, Andrew
2015. Exploring a spatial–temporal understanding of organizational learning. Management Learning 46:1 ► pp. 105 ff.
Sauerborn, Elgen
2019. Digitale Arbeits- und Organisationsräume. Arbeit 28:3 ► pp. 241 ff.
Schiemer, Benjamin, Elke Schüßler & Tobias Theel
2022. Regulating Nimbus and Focus: Organizing Copresence for Creative Collaboration. Organization Studies ► pp. 017084062210942 ff.
Scotto, Caroline
2014. The Principles of Campus Conception: A Spatial and Organizational Genealogy. What Knowledge Can We Use from a Historical Study in Order to Analyse the Design Processes of a New Campus?. In Materiality and Time, ► pp. 204 ff.
Sliwa, Martyna
2009. “This is not the same city”: narratives of postsocialist spatial change. Journal of Organizational Change Management 22:6 ► pp. 650 ff.
Spicer, André
2006. Beyond the Convergence–Divergence Debate: The Role of Spatial Scales in Transforming Organizational Logic. Organization Studies 27:10 ► pp. 1467 ff.
Taylor, Scott & André Spicer
2007. Time for space: A narrative review of research on organizational spaces. International Journal of Management Reviews 9:4 ► pp. 325 ff.
van Marrewijk, Alfons & Maaike Broos
2012. Retail stores as brands: performances, theatre and space. Consumption Markets & Culture 15:4 ► pp. 374 ff.
Vickery, Jonathan
2018. Aesthetics, Management, and the Organization of Space. In Handbook of Philosophy of Management [Handbooks in Philosophy, ], ► pp. 1 ff.
2022. Aesthetics, Management, and the Organization of Space. In Handbook of Philosophy of Management [Handbooks in Philosophy, ], ► pp. 389 ff.
Vásquez, Consuelo
2016. A spatial grammar of organising: studying the communicative constitution of organisational spaces. Communication Research and Practice 2:3 ► pp. 351 ff.
Våland, Marianne Stang & Susse Georg
2015. Designing a Counter: the Constitutive Entanglement of the Social and the Material in Architectural Desi. In Architecture, Materiality and Society, ► pp. 24 ff.
Yanow, Dvora
2006. Talking about Practices: On Julian Orr’s Talking About Machines. Organization Studies 27:12 ► pp. 1743 ff.
Zhang, Zhongyuan & André Spicer
2014. ‘Leader, you first’: The everyday production of hierarchical space in a Chinese bureaucracy. Human Relations 67:6 ► pp. 739 ff.
Zhongyuan Zhang, André Spicer & Philip Hancock
2008. Hyper-Organizational Space in the Work of J. G. Ballard. Organization 15:6 ► pp. 889 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 march 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects & Metadata
Miscellaneous
BIC Subject: JMJ – Occupational & industrial psychology
BISAC Subject: PSY021000 – PSYCHOLOGY / Industrial & Organizational Psychology