“Coworking Is About Community”: But What Is “Community” in Coworking?

Spinuzzi, Clay; Bodrožić, Zlatko; Scaratti, Giuseppe; Ivaldi, Silvia

doi:10.1177/1050651918816357

Cited by 149 publications

(133 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…The second challenge emerges since over time, the FabLab managers have established and sustained dialogical and collaborative ways of working with multi-professional teams involving multiple internal and external stakeholders [43]. This finding is consistent with O'Higgins' definition of "stakeholders' engagement towards sustainability", namely the opportunity for "building vigorous, long-term, resilient relationships ( .…”

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confidence: 59%

Translating Sustainability into Action: A Management Challenge in FabLabs

et al. 2019

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In recent years, the number of new organizations aiming to accomplish principles of sustainability has rapidly grown, leading analysts and scholars to announce almost a new industrial revolution. An example of this is the proliferation of the so-called fabrication laboratories (FabLabs) that nowadays are perceived as being forerunners in innovative and sustainable high-tech production through peer-to-peer collaborative practices and sharing. However, the challenges managers face in translating these promotional aims into organizational action is vastly understudied. To address this research gap, we have studied the management of two FabLabs, in Italy and Finland. In this study, we draw from a psycho-sociological framework applying cultural-historical activity theory, and especially from the concepts of activity system and contradiction. According to this perspective, a sustainable organization is based on promotion, enrichment, regeneration, and flexible change efforts, and it is related to the managerial and ability to bring internal and external stakeholders together to recognize and solve tensions and contradictions collectively. Through our case studies, we have provided new research knowledge on how managers make an effort to translate sustainability into action in the complex context of FabLabs, involving multiple, often competing stakeholders and activity systems. Our analysis reveals multiple tensions in the collective activity, stemming from system level contradictions, which represent a challenge for the daily work of the FabLab managers. In the paper we also suggest how an engaged management orientation towards sustainably can be promoted, and we discuss future research topics.

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confidence: 59%

Translating Sustainability into Action: A Management Challenge in FabLabs

et al. 2019

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“…Despite the fact that many businesses in service industry can be conducted online, numerous entrepreneurs and start-ups choose to settle in co-working spaces that are located in two or three floors and show as mini-clusters. The open-area physical design of shared workspaces attracts co-workers for the convenient face-to-face interactions (Parrino, 2015;Spinuzzi, Bodrožić, Scaratti, & Ivaldi, 2019). Entrepreneurs within a co-working space have more chances to observe the situations of other companies and assess better knowledge of each other, shortening mutual psychological distance of trust-building and business partner selections (Wang & Loo, 2017;Weijs-Perrée, Koevering, Appel-Meulenbroek, & Arentze, 2019).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Industrial Clusters Still Matter to Trust-Building in the Internet Era? A Network Embeddedness Perspective

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Rayman‐Bacchus

et al. 2019

SAGE Open

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Despite the considerable amount of research regarding trust as one of the most important characters and competitive advantages for an industrial cluster, few empirical studies have examined whether geographic proximity still leads to higher levels of trust in the current Internet era. This article explores this issue of trust from a network embeddedness perspective. Based on the data from Zhongshan gas appliance cluster, we employ structural equation modeling to examine the extent to which relational embeddedness, structural embeddedness, and positional embeddedness have any impact on trust-building in the cluster. Our findings reveal that high clique trust and low aggregate trust coexist in the cluster, showing that the effect of geographical proximity on trust has been weakened and is no longer a sufficient condition for trust-building. This study also gives some suggestions on how to improve the trust within a cluster through network governance.Lez Rayman-Bacchus is a research follow in the Business School, University of Winchester, United Kingdom. He also founded the Centre for Corporate Responsibility at London Metropolitan University, and the international symposium on Corporate Responsibility and Sustainable Development. His research interests include the practice of strategy and international management, currently focused on Chinese SME attitudes and behavior in industrial network clusters, and that of Middle Eastern businesses. He has a background in both industry and academia. He spent more than 15 years with high technology multinational companies working in business development and marketing, before moving into research and teaching on strategy, corporate responsibility and sustainability, corporate ethics, and corporate governance. He has published more than about 30 papers as well as one academic book.GuangMing Xiang is pursuing master's degree in finance at the School of Management and Economics in UESTC.

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“…On the contrary, some coworking spaces have also been observed to do away with the values that once defined these spaces. Instead of upholding the values of "community, collaboration, openness, diversity, and sustainability" (Merkel, 2015:124), the coworking spaces explored by Spinuzzi et al (2019) in the US, Italy, and Serbia were predominantly driven by the logic of the market -demonstrating little regard to foster collaboration among their workers.…”

Section: The Myth Of Serendipity Production and Collaborative Communimentioning

confidence: 99%

Coworking Spaces in the Global South: Local Articulations and Imaginaries

Tintiangko¹,

Soriano²

2020

Journal of Urban Technology

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Building on scholarly explorations on the nuances of labor conditions in emerging knowledge economies in the Global South and the glocalization of the digital labor market, this paper examines how coworking spaces in Philippines are designed and organized. In particular, we explore the role that these alternative workspaces take in addressing the unique needs of local digital platform workers or online freelancers. The Philippines ranks third, after the US and India, among the countries with the greatest number of online freelancers. Drawing from a multisited ethnography of coworking spaces in Metro Manila including interviews with coworking space managers as well as Filipino online freelancers, the paper explores how the latter perceive the role and experience the value of coworking spaces. Echoing Oreglia and Ling's notion of "digital imagination," we find that digital workers sustain a unique sense of "aspirational belonging" to coworking spaces which we describe as a state of willingness to maintain a positive perception of these spaces without any certainty of realizing its promised benefits. We also argue that the very same qualities that render coworking spaces aspirational for online Filipino freelancer function to regulate a degree of in/exclusivity of urban spaces.

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“Coworking Is About Community”: But What Is “Community” in Coworking?

Cited by 149 publications

References 52 publications

Translating Sustainability into Action: A Management Challenge in FabLabs

Translating Sustainability into Action: A Management Challenge in FabLabs

Do Industrial Clusters Still Matter to Trust-Building in the Internet Era? A Network Embeddedness Perspective

Coworking Spaces in the Global South: Local Articulations and Imaginaries

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