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Palgrave Macmillan

How to Work with Space

Spatial Knowledge in Organizations and Research Practice

  • Book
  • © 2024

Overview

Authors:
  1. Karen Messer

    1. Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

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  • Explores a spatial approach to organizational evolution and research in the workplace
  • Builds understanding of how change can trigger aesthetic experience to create opportunities for new ways of thinking
  • Includes applied examples to compliment current socio-material theory in organisational studies

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Business, Arts and Humanities (PSBAH)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xviii
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  2. Introduction

    • Karen Messer
    Pages 1-14

  3. Entangled Office Space

    • Karen Messer
    Pages 15-39

  4. Writing the Invisible

    • Karen Messer
    Pages 41-64

  5. Spatial Attunement

    • Karen Messer
    Pages 65-101

  6. Emplaced Research

    • Karen Messer
    Pages 103-123

  7. Case Study: More than a Relocation

    • Karen Messer
    Pages 125-220

  8. Conclusion

    • Karen Messer
    Pages 221-232

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 233-237
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Keywords

About this book

This book is an exploration of the entangled spatial relationships with and within organizations and research practice. Situating our environment as an active participant in the outcomes of day-to-day living heightens the role space can have as a co-creator of experience, behaviour and emotion. Physical environments tend to fade into the background, becoming an unseen, untended, accompaniment in our journey. However, through active attunement and deep noticing, spatial details arise through our bodies, senses, conversations and physical encounters.

As the nature of work continues to evolve, understanding and shifting our relationship with the work environment broadens the scope of how space and work are engaged and performed. This thoughtful book will be of great interest to academics and students of organisational studies, as well as those involved in interdisciplinary research across geography, anthropology and the social sciences.

Reviews

Quote from Harriet Shortt:

"This book is a unique exploration of workspace. It draws from a wide variety of philosophies, theories, and concepts to provide a thoughtful, nuanced, and fresh perspective on contemporary workspace and working practices. Throughout the book, Karen Messer asks all the right questions and encourages us to tune in and notice how our material environments can impact our sensory, emotional, and subjective experiences. This book will be a fascinating read for those working in interdisciplinary academic fields, designers of space, and anyone interested in the relationship between human behaviour and space.” Harriet Shortt, Associate Professor in Organisation Studies at UWE Bristol 


Quote from Kathleen Stewart: 


"This book transports us into a world attuned to the ephemeral rhythms, textures, lighting, and atmospheres entangled in ordinary spaces. It makes present a generative world resonating with experience meeting matter, bodies and practices permeated by powerful forms and forces ordinarily ignored.”  Kathleen Stewart, Professor Emeritus at The University of Texas at Austin, author of Ordinary Affects

 


Authors and Affiliations

  • Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

    Karen Messer

About the author



Karen Messer is a Senior Research Fellow for the Centre for Sensory Studies at Concordia University. Her research focus draws from an interdisciplinary background by taking an embodied and sensorial approach to the often unseen and intangible impact of the physical environment on our day-to-day interactions and relationships.


 


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