`Space - The Final Frontier'

Abstract

For too long the built working environment has been excluded from the analysis of work organisations. Buildings, like other cultural artefacts, encapsulate social and economic priorities and values, and represent prevailing power structures. Work buildings, such as offices and factories, both make possible the organisation of the labour process and also serve as structures of non-verbal communication, providing cues on hierarchy, status and appropriate behaviour. Control over the working environment can be seen as a constituent part of the control of the labour process, displaying similar cyclical movements. Human resource management and information technology are currently combining to encourage a reappraisal of the working environment, but one that is not without its own contradictions.

Rapid change or slow evolution? Changing places of work and their consequences in the UK

“…A cube of space in the workplace (desk, bench or machine) became synonymous with a unit of labor on the payroll. Tayloristic management practices were applied in, indeed constituted by, Taylorized buildings (Baldry, 1999;Baldry et al, 1998). The term 'office', which had once meant a position or function, increasingly referred to a place.…”

Problematising public and private work spaces: Midwives' work in hospitals and in homes

“…The first is the idea that rearranging spaces and using them in unconventional ways is itself a form of resistance (Baldry, 1999;Halford and Leonard, 2006). For example, Baldry (1999) recounts an example of workers who did not feel they had the right to adjust the lighting in their office even though the light switch was easily within their reach. Halford and Leonard (2006) remind us that 'spaces are often physical representations of discursive constructions' (p. 663).…”

“…Space is comprised of the built environment, but it is also a social construction -a manifestation of power relations -and therefore is frequently contested. It carries symbolic importance as a site of meaning-making and identity construction (Baldry, 1999;Taylor and Spicer, 2007). Lewis (2008) has argued that space exists primarily as a site of performance; that is it is created by the ways in which it is used by the people within it (see also Gregson and Rose, 2000).…”

“…We know, for example, that men and women inhabit built environments differently. Men in office settings for example are frequently granted more physical space than women regardless of position (Baldry, 1999). Gendered differences in usage of work spaces can also overlap with differences motivated by professional status and other factors.…”

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).…”