When the Gallic Village Strikes Back: The Politics Behind ‘New Ways of Working’ Projects^*

* The authors confirm that the paper has not previously been published, nor is it currently under consideration for publication elsewhere.

The authors confirm that the paper does not use the same data set as another article.

ABSTRACT

In the last decade, the interest of managers and professionals for New Ways of Working (NWoW) has grown rapidly, as evidenced by multiple firms claiming to implement ‘NWoW workspaces’ in Belgium and in the Netherlands. NWoW is often used as a convenient umbrella term to designate a set of organizational adjustments that include open and ‘flexible’ workspaces, new IT tools, as well as cultural and managerial transformations believed to be ‘innovative’. While the academic literature has investigated several cases of NWoW workspaces through post-occupancy studies, there is at the present time no research available on the change process leading to these transformations. The ambition of the paper is to conceptualize NWoW as projects of organizational change subject to politics and power games. Through an empirical study of a multi-site media company implementing a NWoW project, the paper illustrates three implications of a political conception of NWoW. First, the ability of local actors to bargain and to twist the strategic intentions of the deciding authorities is highlighted. Second, the study underlines the crucial role of key intermediaries in designing NWoW projects. Third, participative approaches of change are critically discussed. The paper also provides recommendations for future research on NWoW.

KEYWORDS:

• New Ways of Working
• organizational politics
• organizational change
• case study
• NWoW
• participative management

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Grégory Jemine is a postdoctoral researcher in social and political sciences at the University of Liège. Grégory is currently investigating managerial fashions related to ‘New Ways of Working’ from different theoretical perspectives – institutional, political, spatial, and processual. Although his main focus is on organizational change, he also conducted research on managerial implications of projects of modernization as well as on the technological dimensions of such projects.

Christophe Dubois, PhD in sociology, is a lecturer at the University of Liège (Faculty of Social Sciences). He has mainly been publishing on prison policy and organization. He is currently studying the ‘modernization’ of Justice and the digitalization of judicial services, as well as their institutional and professional implications.

François Pichault, Phd in sociology, chairs, at the University of Liège, an action-research centre (LENTIC) focused on organizational change and innovation. He wrote, as a main author or a co-author, numerous publications in organization theory and human resource management. He is currently studying the evolutions and roles of the HR function, new organizational forms and their impacts on social dialogue, new forms of transitions on the labour market, change processes in public and private organizations.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

* The authors confirm that the paper has not previously been published, nor is it currently under consideration for publication elsewhere.

The authors confirm that the paper does not use the same data set as another article.