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The purpose of this paper is to explore the interdependency of corporate architecture and organisation cultural change. Corporate headquarters have become symbols of corporate change ambitions to endure cultural value sets. The paper seeks to contribute to the growing interest in the re‐materialization of organisational change.

The study of spatial setting give rise to new methodological questions. There is a hermeneutic relationship between elements of spatial design and the meaning‐making of their designers and users. The reading of built space and other physical arrangements requires interpretative methods. Methods such as interviewing, observation and participant observation have been used to study three headquarter buildings of a Dutch telecom operator in a longitudinal study (1995‐2007).

It is argued in the paper that the organisation's spatial position in relation to the Dutch Government buildings is a reflection of the privatisation process. During this change process three symbolic and aesthetic different headquarters have been designed. Each of the headquarters is an embodiment of the change ambitions in the different phases. The building is a physical embodiment of the organisational change history.

The paper stresses the symbolic richness of physical arrangements, artefacts and aesthetic dimensions and the embodiment of cultural change processes. Given the large interest of organisations in architectural design to support organisational change the interdependency, change managers should be included in the architectural design process at an early stage.

Although many scholars ask for a spatial turn in organisation studies, not many empirical studies have been done. This paper tries to fill in this gap.

Professor Slawomir Magala is a full professor of Cross-Management at the Department of Organization and Personnel Management in Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), Erasmus University (RSM, 2015). His education stems from Poland, Germany and the USA, and has taught and conducted research in China, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Croatia, Estonia, the United Kingdom and Namibia. He is a former Chair for Cross-Cultural Management at RSM and has achieved many things, from being editor-in-chief of the Journal of Organizational Change Management (JOCM), to receiving the Erasmus Research Institute in Management (ERIM) Book Award (2010), for The Management of Meaning in Organizations (Routledge, 2009). It has received honors for being the best book in one of the domains of management research. It was selected by an academic committee, consisting of the Scientific Directors of CentER (Tilburg University), METEOR (University of Maastricht) and SOM (University of Groningen). All these research schools are accredited by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This is a review of Professor Slawomir Magala’s contributions as editor of Journal of Organizational Change Management.

Slawomir (Slawek) Magala will be known for many contributions to social, organizational, managerial research, and it will be remembered that he has created a great legacy in the field of cross-cultural competence and communication on processes of sense making in professional bureaucracies. He has authored and co-authored many publications including articles, books, professional publications, book contributions and other outputs, and is an established professor of cross-cultural management at the Department of Organization and Personnel Management in RSM, Erasmus University. He will be known for his work as editor of Qualitative Sociology Review, and one of the founding members of the Association for Cross-Cultural Competence in Management, not to mention the Journal of Organizational Change Management. Many of his articles have appeared regularly in leading refereed journals, such as the European Journal of International Management, Public Policy, Critical Perspectives on International Business and Human Resources Development International. His greatest legacy is in the field of cross-cultural management, but branches out to many other management studies.

The research is limited to his work in capacity of editor of Journal of Organizational Change Management.

This review provides a guide for positive role model of an excellent editorship of a journal.

Magala’s legacy acknowledges this research and its power to create numerous papers and attract a lot of attention (Flory and Magala, 2014). Because of these conferences, these empirical findings have led to disseminating the conference findings with JOCM (Flory and Magala, 2014). According to them, narrative research has become a respectable research method, but they also feel that it is still burdened with a lot of controversies on with difficulties linked to applying it across different disciplines (Flory and Magala, 2014).

The review covers the creative accomplishment of Professor Magala as editor.

Societies depend on interconnected infrastructures that are becoming more complex over the years. Multi-disciplinary knowledge and skills are essential to develop modern infrastructures, requiring close collaboration of various infrastructure owners. To effectively manage and improve inter-organizational collaboration (IOC) in infrastructure construction projects, collaboration status should be assessed continually. This study identifies the assessment criteria, forming the foundation of a tool for assessing the status of IOC in interconnected infrastructure projects.

A systematic literature study and in-depth semi-structured interviews with practitioners in interconnected infrastructure construction projects in the Netherlands are performed to identify the criteria for assessing the status of IOC in infrastructure construction projects, based on which an assessment tool is developed.

The identified assessment criteria through the literature and the practitioner’s perspectives results in the designing and development of a collaboration assessment tool. The assessment tool consists of 12 criteria and 36 sub-criteria from three different categories of collaborative capacity: individual, relational, and organizational.

The assessment tool enables practitioners to monitor the status of IOC between infrastructure owners and assists them in making informed decisions to enhance collaboration. The assessment tool provides the opportunity to assess and analyze the status of collaboration based on three categories (i.e., individual, relational, and organizational).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between the spatial intervention of open-plan offices in a university, the consequential change in work practices of faculty members and how these practices appropriate the designed space.

The authors executed a two-year longitudinal ethnographic study following the case of the science faculty, which moved from a traditional office setting to open-plan offices. The authors studied the space and interviewed staff before, during and after the introduction of open-plan offices.

Findings show that the new spatial setting triggered staff members to attribute certain meanings and practices of adaptation which were, partly, unintended by the design of the open-plan offices.

This paper contributes empirically grounded insights into the (un)intended consequences of a spatial intervention in terms of how staff members, far from being passive, attribute meaning and alter their work practices leading to unprecedented organizational changes.

For change consultants, facility managers and university managers the outcomes of this paper are highly relevant.

Large budgets are spent on new office concepts at universities but the authors do know little about the relation between spatial (re)design and organizational change.

The introduction of new office concepts, spatial redesign and co-location is for many academics highly emotional.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how project partners respond to contractually agreed collaboration in an infrastructural megaproject. Problematic performances of megaprojects have shifted away attention from the instrumental towards the interpretative, focusing on daily work life, practices, power, ambiguity and sense making in project organizations. Such an interpretative perspective helps to better understand practices of collaboration in complex mega projects, which the authors studied in the Panama Canal Expansion Program (PCEP).

Given the focus on daily work life, the authors chose an in‐depth single case study. Practices of collaboration have been studied during a one‐year ethnographic fieldwork period in Panama, in which the daily work life of project participants was intensely observed.

First, it was found that practices of collaboration in complex projects change in periods of conflict. In these periods actors are forced to reflect upon their practices and to negotiate about new practices. Second, the authors identified collaborative practices in which a consultancy firm teaches their client and supervises its appropriate behavior. The authors have labeled these as chaperoning.

This study illustrates that when innovation in contracts requires an innovative relationship between project partners, specific attention to this innovation and the related practices of collaboration enhances the collaborative relationship among partners, which can prevent cost overruns and delays.

Ethnographic fieldwork has not been used frequently to study project management practices. The paper builds upon a one‐year ethnographic fieldwork period to study practices in the daily work life of the project participants from “within”.

The telecom sector has changed dramatically during the last decade. In order to meet new regulations, fierce competition and a growing demand for cheap and high quality telecom services by multinationals, European public telecom operators have created pan‐European strategic alliances. This paper focuses on the question of how Unisource, an alliance of Swedish Telia, Dutch KPN Telecom, Swiss Telecom and Spanish Telefónica has coped with the control vs commitment dilemma. The four telecom providers wanted to merge their activities with Unisource. To create commitment and trust the parents used a synergy strategy to deal with cultural diversity. Unisource was started in 1992, but finally collapsed in 1999 due to lack of commitment. The crisis in Unisource shows the dilemma of control vs commitment in a dynamic transition process of organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the role of intervention‐oriented scientists in the process of organisation development. The paper seeks to contribute to the growing interest in design studies for organisation development and argues that a focus on reflexivity is missing in current debate. The aim of the paper to develop critical reflexiveness for organization design studies by introducing the ethnoventionist approach.

The paper discusses the ideal forms of clinical inquiry, participative action research, ethnography, and the ethnoventionist approach. The ethnoventionist approach is described by its central aspects: a focus on reflexivity, a management (but not managerialist) orientation, commitment to obtaining a deep understanding, connecting the multi‐layered context, and studying in pre‐arranged longitudinal intervals.

The ethnoventionist approach uses organisational ethnographies to facilitate intervention strategies intended to improve organisations. An example of such an approach in the design of new collaborative practices in the Dutch construction sector is drawn on.

The essence of the ethnoventionist approach is to obtain a deeper understanding of organisational change. The ethnoventionist approach helps to overcome a lack of attention to management in current ethnographic bodies of knowledge and to deepen existing management approaches to change dynamics. Ethnoventionist approaches can be very useful for intervention‐oriented studies of change processes which require high levels of engagement and which produce high‐quality ethnographic data.

This paper explores a new research approach that has not been discussed previously.

The purpose of this paper is to apply the theory of sociomateriality to exhibit how the social and material are entangled and (re)configured over time and in practice in a particular organization of study.

The authors conduct an ethnographic case study of the North-South metro line project in Amsterdam and use the methods of participant-observation, in-depth interviewing and a desk study.

The authors showcase the process of sociomaterial entanglement by focussing on the history and context of the project, the agency and performativity of the material and sociomaterial (re)configuration via ritual performance. The authors found the notion of performativity not only concern the enactment of boundaries between the social and material, but also the blurring of such boundaries.

Sociomateriality theory remains difficult to grasp. The implication is the need to provide new lenses to engage this theory empirically.

The authors provide a multi-layered lens for organization researchers to engage sociomateriality theory at a contextual, organizational and practice level.

Insights from a historical and contextual perspective can help practitioners to become aware of the diverse and dynamic ways in which social and material entities are entangled and (re)configured over time and in practice.

The authors provide a unique empirical account to exhibit the entanglement and (re)configuration between the social and material in a particular organization of study. This paper studies a tangible organizational setting whereas prior research in sociomateriality mainly focussed on routines in IT and IS. Finally, the authors suggest the ethnographic method to study sociomaterial entanglement from a historical and contextual perspective.