��

Chapter IVContested Terrain:

Place, Work, and Organizational Identities

John Willy Bakke Telenor Research and Innovation, Norway

Tom Erik JulsrudTelenor Research and Innovation, Norway

Copyright © 2009, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

abstRact

Workplaces are key loci for expressing and studying organizational identity, even in distributed work. In organization studies, there is a growing recognition of the importance of spatial processes, and work-place design has become an instrument for organizational change. This chapter explores organizational identity through a change process where the office layout was redesigned to strengthen organizational identity and increase productivity. The study shows that identity processes get shaped by the material environment and by technologies enabling distributed and mobile work. It also shows that previous events frame the interpretation of current processes. The chapter is based on a qualitative and quantitative study of the national branch of an international oil company.

intRoduction

[T]he physical setting is not a naked container for organizational action […], but a context that selectively solicits – and hence, so to speak, ‘cul-tivates’ – all our senses

- Gagliardi (1996, p. 565)

The goal of this chapter is to strengthen the understanding of workplaces as key loci for ex-pressing and studying organizational processes, even in distributed and “location-independent” work. A starting point for this chapter is the observation that there has been a change of focus in organization studies, where place has strengthened its explanatory role in discourses of

��

Contested Terrain

organizational processes during the past decade. The interest in organizational space and place is expressed in the growing interest in workplace design as a source for understanding and shaping organizational processes, and the incorporation of spatiality and corporeality in social science studies (cf. Benko & Strohmayer, 1997; Bourdieu, 2000). The argument is substantiated through a qualitative and quantitative study of the national branch of an international oil company. This case study explored identity processes where workplace design and technologies entered the discourses on organizational identity and other organizational processes.

The interest in space planning and place-making is a practical concern in enterprises, of which the growing number of handbooks and consultancy offers is an indication (cf. Duffy, 1997). The case company informing this chapter was about to go through a process of workplace restructuring when the authors were contacted in order to make a study. Through the case study, it turned out that in addition to the current changes, a previous restructuring made more than 10 years ago was still seen as an important event in the corporate history, and an issue for discussions about organizational identity.

This interest in place, space, and spatiality may be seen as a puzzle, since it emerged in the aftermath of the “digital revolution,” where in-formation and communication technologies (ICT) were seen to supersede a number of traditional social categories, promising an annihilation of the role of locality and distance, whereby a friction-free society will be achieved. This perspective is expressed in a series of titles in popular writing, such as The death of distance, The weightless economy, and The digital nomad (Cairncross, 1997; Coyle, 1998; Makimoto & Manners, 1997), and is also found in the emergent literature on the networked society (cf. Castells, 1996).

In the area of workplace studies, one can find similar expressions: In a pioneering study of teleworking, it was argued that: “The office

– the site where information is generated, pro-cessed and exchanged – has ceased to have any fixed geographical boundaries. It exists only as a network – the ‘elusive office’ has arrived” (Huws, Korte, & Robinson, 1990: 220). Nevertheless, companies are still interested in architecture and space solutions, and workplace policies seem to uphold the importance of “coming to work” in a literal sense, although workplace practices have become more complex than the choice between the main office and the home-based workplace, as depicted in the early telework studies. This development makes it even more important to address the role of place for mobile, flexible, and “location-independent” work.

space and oRganizational pRocesses

The growing interest in space and spatiality has been termed a “spatial turn” in the social sciences (cf. Benko & Strohmayer, 1997). This spatial turn represents a reaction to a dominant orienta-tion in the social sciences, where “the social” is interpreted in immaterial terms:

[M]ost of the research and analysis published in the arena of organizational theories and manage-ment studies describe the following, somewhat bizarre phenomenon: as soon as the human person crosses virtual or physical threshold of an organi-zation, s/he is purged of corporeality, so only his or her mind remains (Strati, 1999, p. 3).

organizations as spatial and Material systems

Space and spatiality, as well as the closely re-lated concepts materiality and corporeality, do not have a well-established position in sociology and organization studies. Instead, these concepts have been relegated to neighbouring fields, in the ever more-fragmented social sciences. In sociol-

��

Contested Terrain

ogy and organization studies, there has been a methodological abstraction from spatiality and materiality that have been seen as accidental qualities of social systems.

In the field of organization studies, the process of abstraction, or “de-materialization,” has been part of an elaborate strategy of establishing or-ganization studies as a distinctive and influential field (cf. Bakke, 2005; Røvik, 1998). This is seen explicitly in the works of Chester Barnard, an influential author in the establishment of orga-nization studies. He developed the very concept of “organization” through an abstraction from the physical: The term “organization” is reserved for “that part of the cooperative system from which physical environment has been abstracted” (Barnard, 1968: 67). Barnard also argued for a “de-personalization” of organization studies: “[I]f persons are to be included within the concept of ‘organization’, its general significance will be quite limited” (Barnard, 1968: 72).

The emergent field of organization studies chose to describe organizations in terms of status, power, and (formal) communications channels (also known as organizational charts); or of re-cruitment, rewards, and promotions. The recent advent of postmodern studies may be seen to continue this dematerialized approach to organi-zation studies through the weight on narratives, interpretations, and sensemaking; all approaches where the material and spatial are neglected or (at best) tacitly implied.

Spatiality and materiality have a central posi-tion within human geography and urban studies, where it is argued that place is a “meaningful location” (Cresswell, 2004: 7), and where there is a core interest in the spatial ordering of social processes: “The ordering of space in buildings is really about the ordering of relations between people” (Hillier & Hanson, 1984: 2). Insights from geography, architecture, and urban studies have (re-)entered the field of organization studies, and of social theory in general, where location, distance, and spatial configurations enter the vocabulary.

Similarly, insights are drawn from studies of the corporeality of organization members, acknowledging the importance of the “human embodiment as a multidimensional medium for the constitution of society” (Shilling, 2005: 24, italics in original). Corporeality can be seen as a main approach encompassing quite diverse themes, such as the gendering of organizational processes, disciplinary processes, emotion work, and studies of face work, and the presentation of self in organizations (cf. Alvesson & Billing, 1997; Goffman, 1971).

A spatial understanding of organizations is also able to give a richer understanding of organiza-tional processes, processes that, to a large extent, deploy spatial metaphors, such as organizational boundaries, front stage and back stage, globalisa-tion, positioning, and “moving up the corporate ladder” to get a “corner office.” For instance, the discussion of organizational boundaries can draw insights from urban studies, where the notion of “place” has been given a meaning beyond just a designated set of square kilometres; place has been described through the activities of members, acting, and enacting over larger territories in “networks of social relations and understandings, […] where a large proportion of those relations, experiences and understandings are constructed on a far larger scale than what we happen to de-fine for that moment as the place itself” (Massey, 1997: 322), a perspective that is equally fruitful for understanding organizations.

There is a growing number of contributions trying to address the spatiality and materiality of organizations, acknowledging that organizational activities are located in space and place, and including the impact of architecture, technolo-gies, and other artefacts. Gagliardi argues that artefacts “make materially possible, help, hinder, or even prescribe organizational action,” and they “influence our perception of reality, to the point of subtly shaping beliefs, norms, and cultural values” (1996, p. 568, italics in original).

��

Contested Terrain

Technology studies have also been influential, although in an ambiguous way, for reassessing the role of spatiality and materiality in organizations. As indicated in the beginning of the chapter, there is a widespread assumption that communication technologies will make distance and location irrelevant, whereas detailed studies of work processes clearly demonstrate that technology, as an integral part of the organizational func-tioning, is situated in an organizational context, is structuring interaction, and is giving selective access to services (Graham & Marvin, 2001; Luff & Heath, 2000).

An influential, synthetic perspective on the role of the “physical structures in the organiza-tion” is developed by Mary Jo Hatch (1997), who has developed a conceptual framework identify-ing geography, layout, and design as three main dimensions of physical structures, where these dimensions are seen to influence key aspects of organizational functioning, such as communica-tion, interaction, and status (cf. Figure 1). This conceptual framework is a fruitful starting point for an elaboration of how the concepts shall be defined, for studies exploring the mechanisms connecting the concepts, and for an identification of areas not well elaborated by the model.

The framework developed by Hatch is chal-lenged by the phenomena of distributed and

technology-augmented work, modes of work that contest any logical, clear-cut distinction between location, layout, and design. Hence, there is a need to incorporate technologies into this framework, and the ability of technologies for interconnect-ing places.

One analytical approach for elaborating the mechanisms whereby the “physical structures in the organization” are relevant for organization processes is through the concept of affordances, a concept introduced by the psychologist J. J. Gibson in a study of visual perception, where he argued that “[t]he affordances of the environment are what it offers to an animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill” (1979, p. 127, italics in original). The concept has been brought to popularity in studies of design, human-com-puter interaction (HCI), and organization stud-ies (cf. Gaver, 1991; Norman, 1989; Sellen & Harper, 2001). Gaver deploys the term as a way of “focussing on the strengths and weaknesses of technologies with respect to the possibilities they offer the people that might use them” (1991: 79). According to Gaver, “[a]n affordance of an object […] refers to attributes of both the object and the actor. This makes the concept a powerful one for thinking about technologies because it focuses on the interaction between technologies and the people who will use them” (1991: 79-80), thereby

Figure 1. Physical structures in the organization (Adapted from Hatch, 1997)

��

Contested Terrain

representing a way of avoiding technological and architectural determinism. Similarly, Gibson’s “ecological” focus on the “complementarity of the animal and the environment” (ibid.) serves as a criticism of the ideas of technology as neutral instruments, and architecture as neutral contain-ers for activities.

The concept of affordances introduces a uni-fying perspective on how characteristics of tech-nologies and the physical environment together can provide an environment for working. This has motivated the establishment of a framework, encompassing technologies as well as architecture and other artefacts, describing workplaces as hybrid infrastructures for work (Bakke & Yttri, 2003), drawing on studies identifying an infra-structure as being a common base for diverse activities, without determining them (quite similar to the discussion of affordances); being embedded into other structures; and being transparent and taken-for-granted; while becoming visible upon breakdown (cf. Star & Ruhleder 2001). The notion of infrastructures for work represents a selective focus on the work-related characteristics of the material environment.

In spite of the increased interest in the materi-ality, spatiality, and corporeality of organizations in the last decade (cf Gagliardi, 1996; Hassard, Holliday, & Willmott, 2000; Strati, 1999), Pfeffer’s comment that “[t]he effects of physical design on social behavior remain relatively unexplored in the organizations literature and in related social sci-ences”, still seems valid (Pfeffer, 1997, p. 198).

Workplaces and organizational identities

Organizational identity has emerged as an impor-tant theme in recent studies of work. Together with related concepts, such as trust, social capital, and organisational culture, organizational identity is assumed to play an important role for the devel-opment of knowledge in modern organisations, thereby establishing ties to the fields of knowledge management, and workplace loyalty.

One reason for the interest in organizational identities is the increasing flexibility and mobil-ity in working life, and the quest for something stable in all the changes, although flexibility and change have also been seen as arguments against an essentialist understanding of identity:

The meaning of identity (...) refers to both persons and things. Both have lost their solidity in modern society, their definiteness and continuity. The world constructed of durable objects has been replaced with disposable products designed for immediate obsolescence. In such a world identities can be adopted and discarded like a costume (Bauman, 1997, p. 88).

Instead of seeing organizational identity as part of the unchangeable in organizations, orga-nizational identity can be seen as a self-reflective process going on in organizations that are “… formed by a process of ordered inter-organiza-tional comparison and reflections upon them over time” (Albert & Whetten, 2004, p. 98). This position refers to what has been called a relational view on identity (with references to Mead, 1934 and Goffman, 1971), seeing identity as a product of ongoing social and symbolic interaction.

The physical environment of the workplace is, to a large extent, involved in the ongoing process of identity construction. This is seen through corporate expressions of architecture and design, (internal) workplace design, and artefacts, as well as the employees’ actions, such as territorial behaviour and workplace personalization (see Gagliardi, 1990; Jones, 1996).

a case study of place, WoRk, and oRganizational identities

Place and organizational identities were explored through a case study in one branch office of an international company in the petroleum sector. The background for the case study was that

��

Contested Terrain

the authors were invited to follow a process of workplace reorganization, primarily to explore job satisfaction with the new environment, where the issue of workplace identities soon became the focal centre of the study.

The case study organization is the Norwegian sales and marketing department of a large Eu-ropean (actually international) company in the petroleum sector. Our study of the branch office was conducted in 2003-2004, and was initiated since the company had planned to change the physical working environment, and wanted an outsider’s view on the change process.

the case study Methodology

The methodological approach chosen was to conduct semistructured group interviews with managers and employees respectively. The group interviews were conducted in two instances: before and after the changes of the workplace, covering a time span of 9-10 months. In total, six managers and eight employees were inter-viewed, although not all of them were present in both group interviews. We also conducted a survey of employees and managers within the department, providing information about daily use, and general satisfaction with the new office solution. In addition to the interviews and the survey, we conducted observations within one zone within the branch office, being the primary workplace for ca 25 people; we had a number of informal conversations; we also had the pleasure of participating in a marketing event.

Through the combination of approaches, we performed a methodological triangulation in the study of the department, with an ethnomethod-ological perspective (cf. Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2000) as the primary approach. Throughout the study, we tried to capture and understand how people talked about the new workplace, but also what the workplace meant to them, and how it was included in their everyday actions and behaviour.

Workplace changes

We were invited to study one set of workplace changes to take place in the end of 2003. The changes involved the sales and marketing depart-ment, one out of several collocated departments. The entire unit of the case company rented two floors in a shared office building, with the sales and marketing department located on one floor (ca. 55 persons), with other organizational units on both floors.

During the interviews, it proved difficult to get even a simple description of their current workplace without invoking numerous references to a previous change process, more than a decade ago, when the entire unit had moved to the current site. Narrations of this first move were still present in the office discourses; hence, there is a need to give a brief description of events from the early 1990s. At that time, the several hundred employ-ees moved from a downtown landmark building with a clear corporate profile, into an anonymous, shared office building in a less central part of the city. This move also involved the change from individual offices into open-plan offices for the majority of the employees. This first move and accompanying changes were motivated by the need for cost reduction, as the company suffered from the then low oil prices.

The current change involved a series of physi-cal changes, although the overall design of large, open-plan offices remained unchanged. The most visible change was the establishment of an informal meeting place with a coffee machine, newspapers, and resting chairs for informal meet-ings, socializing, and informal communication. Further, a large meeting room was established. All the employees had a locker and shelves for their belongings. There had been attempts to establish a clear-desk policy for nonterritorial working, but eventually most of the employees had individual desks that were personalized with professional and personal artefacts. The menu of workplaces also included “booths” for phone conversations,

��

Contested Terrain

and a number of smaller rooms for meetings and project work.

The employees had developed a set of “house rules,” emphasizing peace and quiet in the work zones, and low ring tones on the mobile phone, among other issues. At our first visit, when they were planning the change process, the house rules had a prominent place at the entrance of the zone; at the second visit, we found the house rules tucked away under a staircase.

An implication of the establishment of the new, informal meeting place was that the work areas had to be condensed. Another part of the new design was the reshuffling of employees’ primary location, in order to get tight “neighbour-hoods” with close colleagues, and proximity to printer rooms and other facilities. For some of the employees, this represented a major change of office environment, since they were relocated from smaller, sometimes personal offices, into larger open-plan solutions.

Some of the sales people were in a somewhat special situation, since they were expected to be out of the office most of the working day. Hence, it was assumed they did not need a fixed workplace. In the plans for the new workplace, there had been a pool of places for the salespeople, but these places had instead been allocated to those present. As it turned out, the salespeople developed the habit of using their home as their primary work base (aided by technology prepared for home-based work and mobile working), although they could reserve a project room or “borrow a workplace” from colleagues not present (as they expressed it), while at the department.

A children’s “workplace” was created, al-lowing parents to bring their children to work if, for instance, school was closed. A final physical instalment was an internal staircase between the two storeys of the unit, to facilitate access between the different departments within the unit. An “environmental gardener” was also appointed, with the responsibility of keeping the workplace neat and tidy, and to provide fruit, flowers, and newspapers to their colleagues.

The employees were clustered in two major groups; one group that used most of their time on customer-related work on the telephone, handling incoming calls from business customers; the other working as a mobile customer support-team, vis-iting customers at their sites. Thus, a particular segment of the employees were spending much of their time outside the building as “mobile workers.” The department managers also spent time outside the building, mostly in meetings at other locations, or at customers’ sites. A survey of the managers’ and employees’ work practices showed that they spent most of their time doing individual work tasks, supplemented with infor-mal and formal meetings (see Figure 2).

The majority proved to be satisfied with the new workplace. About 75% of the managers and employees said the new office functioned well for them in their daily work, whereas a minority was not satisfied; 15 % said that they were somewhat dissatisfied, and 6% were highly dissatisfied with how the new workplace affected their work. The main reasons for the negative judgments were noise and visual distractions.

Motivations for the change process

The transformation process was initiated and managed by the human resources team, and the managers at the marketing department with a degree of employee participation. The inter-views showed a multitude of motivations for the transformation process, relating to the expected new ways of working, to expected impacts on workplace culture and symbolism, and to facili-ties management issues, such as number of square meters per employee.

Globalization and Flexibility

During the interviews, the strategic reasons be-hind the transformations and, in particular, the problem of being integrated in larger organiza-tional units, were emphasized. One main driving

��

Contested Terrain

force for the workplace changes was a change in the organizational form of the entire company: Until now, each country had been a separate, and fairly self-administered unit, whereas after the change, there were instead cross-national units. This implied that executives and employees in the different functional units would be distributed, and dispersed all over Europe: The “command lines” would criss-cross the continent, instead of following national borders, as they were used to. This led to the wish to establish measures to maintain organizational identity in this process of globalization. As one manager said: “We used to be one department. Now everyone reports to different European managers. […] The workplace change was a reaction to these developments. We want to act as a [unified] team even though we report to different managers”.

From the management’s point of view, there was an expressed wish of enacting a dynamic organization, in terms of flexibility, as well as ability and willingness to change: “We need to have an organization that is used to change, and that accepts that the world is not static”. Another manager commented on the on-going process of re-organizations: “Instead of having people complaining about the re-organizations, we have

had an positive change process related to this [the workplace redesign]”, and the less courteous comment: “People are now so used to changes, they no longer complain.”

Interaction … and Control

A main instrument for achieving the global, flex-ible organization was the change of the physical layout of the workplace. The open-plan solution was seen to facilitate interaction and in-group learning, and to promote a sense of identity and belonging to the workplace and to the company. The reshuffling of the employees’ workstations, to achieve closer proximity with the employees with whom one was working most closely, was seen as a major step towards this goal.

The employees reported that the rearrange-ment had made it even easier to contact others, and that the workplace was a very social one. One manager said: “Even if the noise stresses others, there is a natural learning process. You hear what’s going on and that’s an advantage”. This is corroborated by our observations, where we frequently could see and hear interactions related to professional and personal issues. We also observed the ease of inviting colleagues to

Figure 2. Mean use of time for department managers, employees, and temporary employees

��

Contested Terrain

a spot outside the informal meeting place for a cigarette, a cup of coffee, and a chat. There could, however, be too much interaction, both among colleagues, of which some said it was “too social here,” and between employees and managers, as expressed by one employee: “I could sometimes wish that the managers had offices.”

The meeting place itself was not that much deployed, even some nine months after the change was completed. The coffee machine was frequently used, and newspapers were browsed, but few used the meeting place for informal con-versations and meetings.

Culture and Symbolism

Any office encompasses an abundance of cultural expressions and symbolism. Although the building of the case study company was an anonymous, shared office building (where it could be difficult to find the right entrance); once inside, the company’s imprint was found almost everywhere: we found a large number of corporate symbolic artefacts, from oil barrels to ballpoint pens, with the com-pany logo imprinted, posters from advertisement campaigns, and copies of corporate publications. These expressions were, to a certain extent, aimed at visitors, in particular, those in the entrance area. One manager commented that the changes had made the workplace more presentable: “There has been a transformation from a production facility into a proper office.” The majority of changes were, however, primarily in the employees’ zones. These changes were accompanied by instances of decoration and personalization of the work-place. There was also an active arts and culture programme, with invitations to go to theatres and to art exhibits.

Also in terms of workplace symbolism, the move, more than 10 years ago from a highly pro-filed building downtown, was still an active frame of interpretation for the current changes. This was perpetuated by the fact that one competing company happened to be located in a signature

building vis-à-vis. This made the anonymity of the company within a shared office building even harder to accept.

The two most visible innovations in the work-place change project ,the informal meeting place and the stairs connecting employees in the two levels in the building, may of course be seen in functional terms, but the low usage rates, and the high level of associated or ascribed mean-ings, make the symbolism of these artefacts very powerful. For the day-to-day activities, the sales personnel in need of a temporary place read the territorial practice of personalizing the desks by leaving personal and professional items, and even having nametags on what might have been nonterritorial offices, as signs of exclusion.

We were also told about a number of ad hoc events, some of a social character some aimed at the public as well as present and future customers. As one example of the latter, we were invited to a promotion campaign, where the company sought public visibility through a boat race, promoting the company’s petroleum products, as well as showing presence and coolness.

the transformation process

The current transformation process invoked a series of physical changes of the workplace, and that was the reason we were invited. The motivation for these changes was on the organi-zational side, due to the stronger integration into the international working of the company, where the Norwegian unit in the entire company was replaced by Norwegian nodes in an international organizational network, and the acknowledged need for the company to be more responsive to market fluctuations.

There was a degree of employee participation in the change processes, as changes were introduced through a series of workshops where different issues were discussed, such as the distribution of desks, the size of the different office areas, types of furniture, and so forth. During the interviews,

�0

Contested Terrain

it was interesting to learn that the managers’ and employees’ perspectives differed to a large extent, related both to the process, and to the resulting solution. One manager said: “There has been a broad involvement of the employees in the process where we decided what this workplace should look like. There has been no dictate”, whereas one employee said: “I have heard that those who disagreed strongly […] were squeezed out of the groups […]. Those who work in the service center have not been heard, and [they] are the ones who have to take the tough consequences.” In a harsh comment, another employee added: “The whole process has been a solo-play by the managers. The groups [for participation] have only been a spectacle or a cover-up”.

Although the majority of answers were well between these extremes, and both employers and employees clearly saw positive and negative aspects of the process and the resulting solution, there were also several tensions between their perspectives and understanding of what had hap-pened. Clearly, the meaning of the new workplace was, to a large degree, open for discussions and (re)negotiations.

discussion and iMplications

The case study clearly demonstrates that the corporate building, interior design, and organiza-tional artefacts were central loci for organizational processes, even for this node in a multinational, networked organization, with a certain degree of mobile and location-independent work. To a large degree, processes shaping and changing organizational identification and organizational storytelling centred on the physical workplace. Materiality and physical structure did, however, get new implications when challenged by new dis-tributed, mobile, and location-independent forms of work. Technologies for distributed work did by no means annihilate the meanings of space and distance; instead, both technologies for distrib-uted work and the range of available workplaces

(with a centrality of the open-plan workplaces, in both literal and symbolic senses) did bring the multitude of choices on the agenda. The change process, being embedded in both a company-in-ternal context, and a national context involving experiences from other companies, did demon-strate that choices were possible, making “office design” and “office work” even less a neutral, taken-for-granted fact, but a result of priorities, norms, and choices. Thereby, workplace design became one additional arena for office politics, and for renewed discussions and interpretations of what a “workplace” means and implies in both functional and symbolic terms.

It is interesting to observe the relational character of the perception and interpretation of the material organization. Comparisons with “relevant others,” in particular, the neighbour-ing competitor, as well as previous history (both organizational and individual) proved influential. In particular, the process of moving from a large, centrally located “flagship building” (with cellu-lar offices) to the current, more discreet location with open-plan offices, was still an active frame of reference for both managers and employees, more than 10 years later. This episode also dem-onstrates that not only the immediate presence, and associated qualities of material artefacts, are of importance; also, the remembrance and per-ceived absence of artefacts, such as the previous building and its cellular offices.

The current transformation was interpreted through the previous change process: Where the previous process, to a large extent, was centred on the physical workplace, the current one focussed on the organizational side. The apparently more modest physical reorganization of the workplace, materialized through the office redesign and the recognition of mobile work within and outside the organization, did have the implication of be-ing part of an organizational change; hence, the physical transformation was not purely physical, it had connotations to the organizational changes as well.

��

Contested Terrain

The case study demonstrates how organiza-tional processes, in casu the workplace changes, are grounded in storytelling, rhetoric, and sym-bolic aspects, where the somewhat different perspectives of the managers and the employees emphasized different aspects of the process.

There is a need to incorporate technologies into the discourses on organizational identity, since technologies change the range of possibilities for action, interaction, and cooperation, thereby chal-lenging the immediate conception of space and place, as seen through the most mobile employees and their troublesome allocation to a workplace (or rather, workplaces). It is also seen in the changed integration into the European organization. Here technologies help enact tensions between the lo-cal and the global/European. These tensions fit, by the way, well with the perspective from urban geography introduced previously, where place is seen as a relational term where “a large proportion of those relations, experiences and understandings are constructed on a far larger scale than what we happen to define for that moment as the place itself” (Massey, 1997: 322). – There is more than one answer to what is “within” and “outside” an organization.

Based on the case studies, it seem reasonable to say that dematerialization and location inde-pendence for corporations, vis-à-vis customers, does not imply location independence for corpora-tions vis-à-vis their employees, neither is there an insurmountable tension between materiality and narrativity, since narrativity and sensemaking are anchored in material environments. According to Gieryn, buildings stabilize social life, although imperfectly: “Buildings don’t just sit there im-posing themselves. They are forever objects of (re)interpretation, narration and representation – and meanings or stories are sometimes more pliable than the walls and floors they depict. We deconstruct buildings materially and semiotically, all the time” (Gieryn, 2002: 35).

At the beginning of the chapter, a puzzle was presented by asking about the motivation for the

interest in place, space, and spatiality in a time when information and communication technolo-gies (ICT) were seen to supersede a number of traditional social categories, promising an anni-hilation of the role of locality and distance. One counterargument against the alleged dematerial-ization of society is that there is still a need for accommodating employees, wherever they are, and that collocation of activities may be efficient for certain activities and operations. It is tempting to argue that with the facilitation by information and communication technologies to perform almost every activity from any chosen location, the activities that are not so easily de-located, the activities that, to a large extent, are supported by collocation may become the scarce resource for which physical planning must accommodate.

acknoWledgMent

The research was supported in part by the Research Council of Norway as a part of the I-TEMA proj-ect, and by the Nordic Innovation Center as part of the DEKAR-project. We are grateful for the employees and managers in our case study that generously shared their experiences with us.

RefeRences

Albert, S., & Whetten, D. A. (2004). Organiza-tional identity. In M. J. Hatch & M. Schultz (Eds.), Organizational identity: A reader (pp. 89-118). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Alvesson, M., & Billing, Y. D. (1997). Understand-ing gender and organizations. London: Sage.

Alvesson, M., & Sköldberg, K. (2000). Reflexive methodology. London: Sage.

Bakke, J. W. (2005). The materiality of sensemak-ing. Paper presented at the 21st EGOS Colloquium, Berlin, June 30 – July 2, 2005.

��

Contested Terrain

Bakke, J. W., & Yttri, B. (2003). Hybrid infra-structures for knowledge work. In Proceedings from the 4th International Space Syntax Sympo-sium, London.

Barnard, C. (1968). The function of the executive. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Bauman, Z. (1997). Postmodernity and its dis-contents. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Benko, G., & Strohmayer, U. (1997). Space and social theory: Interpreting modernity and post-modernity. London: Blackwell.

Bourdieu, P. (2000). Pascalian meditations. Stan-ford: Stanford University Press.

Cairncross, F. (1997). The death of distance: How the communications revolution will change our lives. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Castells, M. (1996). The rise of the network society. Oxford: Blackwell.

Coyle, D. (1998). The weightless world. Cam-bridge: MIT Press.

Cresswell, T. (2004). Place. Oxford: Blackwell.

Duffy, F. (1997). The new office. London: Conran Octopus.

Gagliardi, P. (Ed.) (1990). Symbols and artifacts: Views of the corporate landscape. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Gagliardi, P. (1996). Exploring the aesthetic side of organizational life. In S. R. Clegg, C. Hardy, & W. R. Nord (Eds.): Handbook of organization studies (pp. 565-580). London: Sage.

Gaver, W. W. (1991). Technology affordances. In Proceedings of CHI’91 (pp. 79-84). New York: ACM.

Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Gieryn, T. F. (2002). What buildings do. Theory and Society, 31(1), 35-74.

Goffman, E. (1971). The presentation of self in everyday life. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Graham, S., & Marvin, S. (2001). Splintering urbanism. London: Routledge.

Hassard, J., Holliday, R., & Willmott, H. (Eds.)(2000). Body and organization. London: Sage.

Hatch, M. J. (1997). Organization theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hillier, B., & Hanson, J. (1984). The social logic of space. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Huws, U., Korte, W. B., & Robinson, S. (1990). The elusive office. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

Jones, M. O. (1996). Studying organizational symbolism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Keith, M., & Pile, S. (Eds) (1993). Place and the politics of identity. London: Routledge.

Luff, P., & Heath, C. (2000). Workplace studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Makimoto, T., & Manners, D. (1997). Digital nomad. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons Ltd.

Massey, D. (1997). A global sense of place. In T. Barnes & D. Gregory (Eds.), Reading Human Geography (pp. 315-323). London: Arnold.

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society. Chi-cago: University of Chicago Press.

Norman, D. (1989). The design of everyday things. New York: Doubleday.

Pfeffer, J. (1997). New directions for organization theory. New York: Oxford University Press.

Røvik, K. A. (1998). Moderne organisasjoner. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget.

Sellen, A. J., & Harper, R. H. R. (2001). The myth of the paperless office. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

��

Contested Terrain

Shilling, C. (2005). The body in culture, technol-ogy & society. London: Sage.

Star, S. L., & Ruhleder, K. (2001). Steps toward an ecology of infrastructure: Design and access for large information spaces. In J. Yates & J. van Maanen (Eds.), Information technology and organizational transformation (pp. 305-345). Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Strati, A. (1999). Organisation and aesthetics. London: Sage.