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In a process termed “organizational centrifugalism,” this chapter describes how avant-garde artists sought new, alternative organizational spaces for innovations in the visual arts from the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth century and how new alternative marketspaces co-evolved with these new organizational spaces. Organizational centrifugalism begins with the denouement of the state-run Salon and Academy in the mid-nineteenth century; the rise of the dealer-critic system and other, non-salon alternative exhibition spaces of French Impressionism in the latter half of the nineteenth century; and through many new organizational spaces associated with Modernism such as formal artists groups, museums, great exhibitions, schools of art, and Modernist art itself. The ultimate effect of organizational centrifugalism is drawing avant-garde art closer to the public and eventually the masses. Excessive organizational centrifugalism, however, can be dangerous to the avant-garde art.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how historical materialities might play a contemporary role in legitimation processes through the memorialization of history and its reproduction in the here-and-now of organizations and organizing.

The authors briefly review the existing management and organization studies (MOS) literature on legitimacy, space and history; engage with the work of Merleau-Ponty to explore how organizational legitimacy is managed in time and space; and use the case of two Parisian universities to illustrate the main arguments of the paper.

The paper develops a history-based phenomenological perspective on legitimation processes constitutive of four possibilities identified by means of chiasms: heterotopic spatial legacy, thin spatial legacy, institutionalized spatial legacy and organizational spatial legacy.

The authors discuss the implications of this research for the neo-institutional literature on organizational legitimacy, research on organizational space and the field of management history.

This paper takes inspiration from the work of Merleau-Ponty on chiasms to conceptualize how the temporal layers of space and place that organizations inhabit and inherit (which we call “spatial legacies”), in the process of legitimation, evoke a sensible tenor.

Through an intervention from a geographical perspective on organizational space, this article aims to offer a new horizon in understanding international business strategy.

Starts with two interrelated questions: does space exist in organizations and how does an organization manipulate and produce this organizational space in order to gain competitive advantage? By tackling these questions in the context of international business activities, this paper engages existing (international) management theories.

This article critically reviews the narrow focus of most international business theories on physical location and distance as a significant determinant of foreign direct investment and diverse activities of transnational corporations (TNCs). Quantitative empirical studies in this genre tend to emphasize physical space as a mere “container” of different locations of TNC activities and to measure the distance between these locations as an independent variable in statistical models. Drawing upon recent theoretical developments in economic geography, the paper develops a relational perspective on business organizations. In such an organization space, there are no fixed locations manifesting themselves in physically measurable forms. Instead, locations and distances in an organizational space are relational and thus discursively constructed through actor‐specific strategies and practice. The paper argues that one key strategic goal of business organizations is to continuously expand its organizational space (viz. physical space) and to economize on this spatial expansion.

Reveals the need for a critical reexamination of existing management and organization theories to take account of how space and boundaries may influence the strategy, structure, and performance of business organizations.

Examines the properties of organizational space and applies the proposed concept to the case of TNCs.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the use of, and challenges associated with, spatial change management strategies. This is done through a discussion on how spatial environments may be utilised to effect organisational change. The intention is to provoke new thinking on physical change initiatives and to challenge the often highly deterministic view on the effects of contemporary workspace concepts.

The paper is structured as a case study-based literature review, drawing on literature from the fields of environmental psychology, organisational branding, corporate real estate and facility management, as well as organisational change management.

The study indicates that space management strategies may fail because of the lack of understanding of how organisational events and other contextually specific aspects correlate with the physical change initiative. Succeeding with the spatial strategy requires a strong focus on socio-material relationships and the employee meaning-making process during the spatial change process.

Contrary to the traditional and rational focus on functional space management strategies, the paper takes a socio-material approach suggesting that there is a need for more empirically based research into the employee meaning-making process and the role of human and organisational practices in the development of new workplace concepts. Focusing on how organisational members understand and “make use of” spatial environments may substantially improve organisations and building consultants’ abilities to strategically manage the physical change initiative and achieve the intended ends.

The adaptation perspective dominates the issue of organizational change and assumes that organizational inertia increases organizational mortality. This assumption is inadequate to analyze organizational change in risky activities. The purpose of this paper is to underline the relevance of organizational inertia when organizations face risky environments.

A conceptual framework was built that combines the adaptation and selection perspectives from the evolutionary approach and the high‐reliability organizations literature and apply it to space activities.

First, it was found that to prevent catastrophic failures, space organizations reproduce routines validated in previous successful programs, which leads to situations of organizational inertia; and second, the opposing perspectives of selection and adaptation become complementary when the author focus on the level of risk faced by organizations.

This paper focuses on space organizations and not more general types of organizations. However, the findings could be generalized to organizations manufacturing complex products and systems.

The originality of the paper is based on the new empirical and theoretical frameworks provided to analyze organizational inertia. Organizational inertia may be a satisfying response to environments favoring organizations with high levels of reliability. This new way of viewing inertia would be of value to scholars studying organizations in which errors can have catastrophic consequences.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to report a study of architectural development and organizational meanings and uses of space in a Finnish university.

The paper draws from actor‐network theory and Lefebvre's spatial‐social approach to shed light on the organizational assumptions of the various building phases and how current employees use and make sense of the architectural space in the case organization. The methods used include participant observation, interviews of employees and architects, and interpretation of planning documents, architectural statements and administrative representations of the complex.

It took over 30 years to build the campus. The original plans for the university buildings were substantially revised as architectural and organizational paradigms changed over time. However, regardless of the more recently built state‐of‐the‐art facilities, the early architectural design ideas have persisted as material‐social forces that participate in the ongoing production and reproduction of organizational space.

Despite of the recent surge of writings on organizational space and architecture, there are relatively few empirical studies done on the topic. In particular, analyses investigating the travel of design ideas from architectural planning to actual physical constructions and further to the everyday organizing practices of employees have so far been rare in organizational literature. This paper partially fills this gap.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a visual perspective to the narrative management research by exploring the potential of drawings to construct organizational space. This study is explorative in nature and aims to open up a discussion on the importance of visuality within the narrative research. Visual narratives combined with written ones are constructed and analyzed in the paper.

The empirical illustrations of visual narratives outline students’ first-time encounters of the university campus. Their drawings and stories are used to describe and analyze their personal and subjective experiences of how they relate to the campus space. The students were asked to recall the moment they encountered the university campus for the first time and to draw their memories on a paper. Furthermore, they were asked to describe the drawings in a written narrative. Following that, the storyline was identified through a content analysis of both the drawings and the written narratives. This participatory research approach considers informants as co-researchers in producing data and emphasizes the inter-subjective nature of the study.

The study points out valuable aspects in visual narrative organization research. The drawings and written narratives were found to complement each other revealing different things of the experiences. The drawings were very rich and detailed. They captured and revealed emotions, symbolic meanings and interpretations that were not explicated in the written stories. Finally, categories of visual narratives on organizational space were developed.

This study contributes to the development of visual methodology in narrative management research. Moreover, this paper provides a methodological contribution to study organizational space. It sheds light on the potential of using visual narrative materials, especially self-produced drawings to construct organizational space. The study develops and illustrates a visual research method that combines written narratives with drawings. The study points out the importance to involve the informants as co-creators of a narrative study to capture the emotional richness of visual narratives. The authors envision that visual aspects of narratives will be a future direction in the narrative research, because visuality may capture hidden emotional aspects, symbols and artifacts that are not easily revealed in the told or written stories.

The purpose of this study is to explore the potential positive effects of the design of a physical organisational environment on the emergence of an organisational culture conducive to organisational creativity.

The study is based on an in-depth, longitudinal case study, the aim being to enhance understanding of how a change in physical space, including location, spatial organisation and architectonic details, supports cultural change.

It is suggested that physical space plays an implicit yet significant role in the emergence of a culture conducive to organisational creativity. It appears from the case analysis that there are three aspects of culture in particular, equality, openness and collectivity, that may be positively affected by the design of an organisation’s physical environment.

The careful choice, planning and design of an organisation’s physical location, layout and style can advance the appearance of an organisational culture conducive to creativity.

The paper describes a longitudinal study comparing a case organisation before and after a change in its physical environment. The longitudinal data illustrates how a change in the spatial environment contributes to the emergence of a culture conducive to organisational creativity.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the benefits and drawbacks that strategically imposed liminality inflicts upon inter-organizational digitalization efforts within the different phases of its utilization.

This study empirically examines digitalization in a large multinational manufacturing company, Sandvik Machining Solutions, using data that were collected through interviews and a qualitative research design.

This study shows that a liminal space separated from the structures in which one is supposed to inflict changes increases the risk of developing an incompatible system that will be rejected in the incorporation phase. An inter-organizational perspective on liminality thus contributes to our understanding of the benefits and drawbacks that liminal space can pose for the organizations involved.

The study suggests that, in the separation phase, driving change processes by creating liminal spaces could be a way to loosen up rigid resource structures and circumvent network over-embeddedness. Finding the right amount of freedom, ambiguity and community within the liminal space is, however, essential for the transition of information as well as the incorporation of the imposed changes.

Introducing an inter-organizational perspective on liminality contributes to our understanding of the stress that liminal space can place on individuals as well as the individual organization.