A spatial grammar of organising: studying the communicative constitution of organisational spaces

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to the growing body of literature on organisational spaces by taking a communication-centred approach to organising that stresses a performative view of communication as constitutive of organisation. Based on this constitutive premise, I propose to study the ‘spatial grammar of organising’, which implies (a) describing the spatial imaginary of an organisation: the spatial images that are voiced and embodied, and their effects on the production of organisational spaces; and (b) attending to the processes through which these organisational spaces are performed and to their implications. Applying these analytical steps in the study of an outreach organisation’s development strategy, the article shows that the constitution of organisational spaces is a communicative process of boundary setting in which actors of various ontologies are related. Hence, the spatial imaginary of an organisation is not abstract and neutral: it has concrete organisational and political effects in defining the organisation’s space of action.

KEYWORDS:

• Communicative constitution of organisation
• organisational spaces
• relational ontology
• spatial imaginary

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Karen L. Ashcraft for her comments on previous versions of the article and her support, as well as Colleen Mills and François Cooren, editors of this special issue, for their guidance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I have used a pseudonym for the organisation and the participants of the study in order to preserve anonymity and confidentiality.

2. In general, shadowing is defined as a research technique that involves following a person as his or her shadow, walking in his or her footsteps, and taking field notes. Similar to participant observation, shadowing is used over a relatively long period of time, and the researcher’s objective is to follow the person throughout his or her different activities over the course of a day (McDonald, 2005). Without engaging in the debate over the status of shadowing in organisation studies (see Meunier & Vásquez, 2008), I adopt a pragmatic approach (as suggested by Czarniawska, 2007) that defines shadowing as a (non-)participatory technique of direct observation (the other technique being stationary observation) mainly characterised by its mobility.

3. I have translated all the excerpts from Spanish to English and transcribed them following the conventions for conversation analysis. The passages in bold are considered key to the analysis.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).