Organization, atmosphere, and digital technologies: Designing sensory order

Abstract

We argue technology and organization are inherently spatial phenomenon. We conceptualize this conjunction as atmosphere: a gathering of mood, human practice, material and environmental conditions, and values that has sufficient coherence and distinction to constitute a distinct interior. Atmospheres, however, are not entirely stable and present: the interior is porous to outside influence, and the interior is never wholly ordered. We show this through the study of digitally mediated architectural design practice. We find the technological mediation of atmospheres is constituted in sensory and affective spatial arrangements, and not in rationally calculated configurations of assets and goals. An atmosphere is inherently aesthetic. This allows us to gesture toward a definition of organization as technologically mediated spatial struggle to reconcile interior coherence with outward exposure.

A sense of spacing: Toward a diffractive reading of organizational space

“…Yet, focusing on this is important to better understand those sensory possibilities that have not yet “actualized” or are being “disabled” by how space is being produced. Examining these differences is also crucial for problematizing the forces and processes that govern the possibilities of sensing in contemporary organizational spaces (De Molli et al, 2020; Jørgensen and Holt, 2019). With these aspects in mind, I now turn to diffractive methodologies.…”

“…Studies suggest that space works through bodily senses by evoking affective responses (Michels and Steyaert, 2017), feelings (Siebert et al, 2017), and understandings of organizational reality (Tyler and Cohen, 2010). The workings of space are shaped by a range of stimuli such as visual (de Vaujany and Vaast, 2016), auditory (Brown et al, 2020), and olfactory (Riach and Warren, 2015) cues that architecture and (sensory) design seek to modify to generate specific experiences and actions (Dale and Burrell, 2008; De Molli et al, 2020; Jørgensen and Holt, 2019). In examining the relationship between senses and space, recent studies have moved toward relational and performative onto-epistemologies (Ashcraft et al, 2009; Beyes and Holt, 2020; Beyes and Steyaert, 2012; Cnossen and Bencherki, 2019).…”

“…Examining the effects of these differences is important to further problematize the powerful, yet unpredictable forces that work to govern the possibilities of sensing in organizational spaces, including spatial design (e.g. Jørgensen and Holt, 2019; Michels and Steyaert, 2017). A diffractive approach can further generate an understanding of new and “strange” (Beyes and Steyaert, 2013) ways of sensing.…”

The Topographical Imagination: Space and organization theory

“…Such an expanse amounts to ‘a global topology in which almost any point can connect to any other, mobilizing resources on a planetary scale’ (Wark, 2015, n.p.). It seems to us that organization theory’s topographical imagination has yet to consider and come to terms with such topological forms of organizing – sets of points in scale and size and their situational connectedness (Ratner, 2019), their (electronic) neighbourhoods, vectors and software-based operations, and their atmospheric effects (Jørgensen & Holt, 2019; Reckwitz, 2017, pp. 123–5).…”

The Theatricality of Organizational Atmosphere

“…More fundamentally, the paper argues that staging atmospheres responds to a call for thinking organization aesthetically and processually. In recent decades an enhanced interest in the aesthetic and atmospheric has emerged in organization studies (see Borch, 2009;Julmi, 2017;Beyes, 2016;Michels, 2015;Michels and Steyaert, 2017;Strati, 2010;Warren, 2008;Jørgensen and Holt, 2019). In line with Böhme's aesthetics, the socalled aesthetic turn in organization studies addresses the 'felt meaning' experienced in the sensory encounter between humans and their surroundings, which has contributed to an expanded focus on organizational life by articulating the embodied knowledge of organizations (Strati, 2010;Warren, 2008;Beyes, 2016).…”