Revisiting Social Space: Relational Thinking about Organizational Change

So What Do You Do? Experimenting with Space for Social Creativity

“…Some work has been done in this direction (Baldry, 1999;Edenius & Yakhlef, 2007;Ford & Harding, 2004;Friedman, 2011;Kornberger & Clegg, 2004;Meusburger, 2009;Taylor & Spicer, 2007;Woodward & Ellison, 2010). A review of the growing literature on space in organization studies found the field fragmented but identified three principal streams, each with interesting contributions and shortcomings (Taylor & Spicer, 2007).…”

“…Cassirer, Lewin, and Bourdieu adopted the view that there is no empty space, only spaces that are formed by and between objects, and they applied this concept to the creation of social reality rather than to the physical world. At the heart of social space is a relational logic of social reality, which focuses neither on the individual nor the group as the unit of analysis but rather on the processes through which individuals, in interaction with others, construct their social spaces and identities (Friedman, 2011). These interactions are causal loops that link the ways people bring their thinking and feeling into the world through action, to other people's responses generated by those actions, and back again to the ways those responses are interpreted and to the ways they shape what people think, feel, and do.…”

“…Each configuration of social space can be characterized by its constituents, the positions they hold relative to each other, the "rules of the game" that govern interaction, and the shared meanings that hold the space together and facilitate sustained interaction (Friedman, 2011). Hence, social space is a creation of the mind, a construct that can be used to think relationally about the physical or the social world and thereby provide a means for making order out of any given set of elements.…”

Social Space and Field as Constructs for Evaluating Social Inclusion

“…Social space and field theory were central to the work of the social psychologist Kurt Lewin () and the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (; Bourdieu & Wacquant, ). Both men built their innovative social science on the philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (see Friedman, ), who made a distinction between a substantialist and a relational logic of reality (Cassirer, ). Substantialism holds that reality is composed of concrete, independent things that can be observed through our senses.…”

"This one is stronger". Spotlights on the lifelong learning professional-in-action

“…Space coupled with interaction, not only with people in similar circumstances, but also with people who respectfully challenge the dominant views, allows for collective learning and the production of shared meaning, which strengthens the perception and action of the professionals and learners involved (Friedman, 2011;Zeelen, 2015). The fifth key factor concerns professional space, which should not be an isolated space fenced off from the outside world, but open to other views and perspectives of reality in order to enable learning.…”