The next frontier: using space as management strategy - an exploratory study

Abstract

Purpose

More and more companies use physical space as a way to enhance creativity, create change and stimulate interaction. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how space affects this interrelationship and explores how space can support organizational strategy.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a qualitative approach, this study explores three cases from an educational, a cultural and an industrial setting to illustrate how space can be used to support an organization’s policy and help its strategic intentions.

Findings

The findings demonstrate how space can be used to enhance organizational strategy and demonstrate how closely the creation of space can be related to the development of that strategy. Specifically, the study finds that the “’space-organizational strategy’ link has three uses: “Space as an organizational meeting place” in the University campus, (2) “Space as a network organization” in the culture and production center and (3) “Space as a cell organization” in the private manufacturing company.

Originality/value

The study will show that the design and operationalization of spaces can influence management and organizational strategy because space influences relations between people and that organizations can use space to support their strategic intentions seems to have been overlooked in the literature.

Citation

Storvang, P. and Nguyen, B. (2020), "The next frontier: using space as management strategy - an exploratory study", The Bottom Line, Vol. 33 No. 3, pp. 217-229. https://doi.org/10.1108/BL-01-2020-0009