Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to provide a sociological analysis of emergent sociospatial structures in a hot-desking office environment, where space is used exchangeably. It considers hot-desking as part of broader societal shifts in the ownership of space. Design/methodology/approach -This analysis is based on an ethnographically-oriented investigation, in which data collection methods used were participant-observation and interviewing. The analysis uses Lefebvre's conceptualisation of the social production of space and draws on the urban sociology literature. Findings -The analysis first indicates that, in hot-desking environments, there may be an emergent social structure distinguishing employees who settle in one place, and others who have to move constantly. Second, the practice of movement itself generates additional work and a sense of marginalisation for hot-deskers.Research limitations/implications -The paper does not provide a generalisable theory, but suggests that loss of everyday ownership of the workspace gives rise to particular practical and social tensions and shifts hot-deskers' identification with the organisation. Practical implications -Official requirements for mobility may result in a new social structure distinguishing settlers and hot-deskers, rather than mobility being spread evenly. Originality/value -The paper contributes to the literature on organisational spatiality by focusing on the spatial practices entailed in hot-desking, and by contextualising hot-desking within the wider spatial configuration of capitalism, in which space is used exchangeability in order to realise greater economic returns. Rather than using the popular "nomadic" metaphor to understand the experience of mobility at work, it uses a metaphor of vagrancy to highlight consequences of the loss of ownership of space.

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This paper investigates how gender is performed in the context of an office setting designed to promote intensive, fluid networking. We draw on an ethnographically oriented study of the move of staff into a new office building constructed primarily from glass, and incorporating open plan offices, diverse collective areas and walking routes. Although the designers aimed to invoke changes in the behaviour of all staff, they conceptualized these changes in masculine terms. We therefore analyse the gender norms materialized by the workspaces of the ‘new office’ and how women responded to these. We suggest that the new office encourages an image of the ideal worker which brings together ways of acting and interacting that have been characterized as both masculine and feminine — active movement and spontaneous encounters, but also intensive face‐to‐face interaction and deep relationship‐building. Women are driven into this mode of working in an uncompromising, almost aggressive way, but a straightforward gender‐based dynamic does not emerge in their responses, with conventional gender characteristics being reshuffled and recombined.

This paper investigates how the dynamics of conflicting accountabilities are managed within the context of the third sector; specifically in organizations providing services for people with learning difficulties. Multiple accountability relationships create organizational settings that are subject to multiple constraints and risks but also offer resources for agency. We analyse how managers take up agency to enable them to enact, resist or reconcile multiple accountabilities. Our study's contribution lies in our elucidation of the far-reaching hybridity of the third sector and the complex forms of actorhood it cultivates, in which managers are able to handle resources with great dexterity, in pursuit of settlements which may only be contingent and temporary.

The flexibility of people in modern societies rests upon their capacity to divide themselves into separate modules of thought and action, and deploy them in ways that fit their purposes. The practice of ‘informatizing’ work by converting tasks into software-based processes entails the modular design of work, because software has a modular form. We use the concept of modularity to analyse the implications of informatization in the empirical context of a ‘shared service centre’ providing professional services. We make three contributions. First, informatization enlarges the scope for organizational flexibility, because the organization can be treated as a configuration of modules which can be reshuffled to suit changing circumstances. Second, employees must attempt to deploy enhanced modular capabilities, by executing any given set of processes, in a flexible, unemotional and time-efficient fashion. Third, given the ability to informatize complex service work, and the existence of organizational templates which accommodate it, the modular design and management of other services may become more common.