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Abstract
The built environment and the way in which it is understood critically affect many business enterprises. Despite its importance, few studies have explicitly investigated the process through which changes to the built environment are introduced into ongoing businesses. To this end the methodological principles of the sociology of translation (ANT) were employed to generate a historical account of one such change process. Specifically, the account describes how a major Swedish food wholesaler introduced one‐storey warehouses into their operations. This introduction was linked to a transformation of the warehouse as such: in the 1940s the wholesaler viewed its warehouses as symbols (‘outward signs of inner strength’) while ideas from the US suggested another identity—that of a tool for wholesale operations. The efforts of the wholesaler to realize this new identity included investments in metrologies, organization schemes, and concrete, suggesting that theoretical perspectives on objects are not generally applicable but require perspective‐specific investments in ‘words and their worlds’. Viewing the realization of an object‐perspective as a performation struggle (Callon, 2007) it is suggested that this process of adjustment unfolds through interplay between presenting and re‐presenting the world.
Notes
1. See also Schutz’ (Citation1962) discussion about because and in order to accounts.
2. The cited references on ANT are foundational texts for the method employed in the empirical study. More recent writings in this tradition (e.g. Law and Hassard, Citation1999; Latour, Citation2005) address other issues but add little to the methodological principles adhered to here.
3. Hakonbolaget (1941, trans.).
4. Annual Reports 1938–1945.
5. The new warehouses were built in Karlstad (1959), Skövde (1960) and Gävle (1962) (Annual Reports 1959–1963).
6. The Annual Reports reported that new pieces of land had been acquired on at least 15 occasions during the war (Annual Reports 1940–1945).
7. Statements to this effect can be found in all Annual Reports 1945–1951.
8. Minutes of the directors’ conference, AB Hakon Swenson, 27–29 January 1947.
9. Minutes of the directors’ conference, AB Hakon Swenson, 5–6 May 1947.
10. Ibid.
11. Minutes of the directors’ conference, AB Hakon Swenson, 19 September 1947.
12. Available figures suggest that the growth in wage costs was much higher, partly due to a growing number of employees. In 1946 total wage costs ran to MSEK 5.4, in 1947, MSEK 6.4 (+18.5%) and in 1948, MSEK 7.1 (+10.9%). The average wage per employee was: 1946, SEK 4126; 1947, SEK 4688 (+13.6%); 1948, SEK 5212 (+11.1%) (Minutes of the directors’ conference, AB Hakon Swenson, 19 September 1947; Annual Reports 1945–1948).
13. Minutes of the managers’ conference, AB Hakon Swenson, 5–6 May 1947.
14. Annual Report 1946, p. 20
15. Annual Report 1946, p. 22.
16. Wirsäll (Citation1947c, p. 939, emphasis added).
17. Ibid., p. 940.
18. AB Industribyrån assisted with studies in Örebro, Sundsvall, Eskilstuna, Ludvika and Uppsala. According to Tesch and Weman (Citation1946, p. 9) it was one of the very few Swedish organizations that could offer qualified assistance in this type of investigation. The letter from Industribyrån is undated, but was entered in the binder as ‘Results from investigations carried out 1946–1949’. The September 1948 issue of Knäckta Nötter also contains a summary of the figures, which are said to concern the situation in 1947.
19. Undated (1947?) letter from AB Industribyrån to Nils‐Erik Wirsäll.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Annual Report 1948, p. 21, and Knäckta Nötter, No. 1, August 1948.
23. Knäckta Nötter, No. 2, September 1948, p. 2.
24. What were fine and heavy goods? ‘The whole cartons, which do not need any particular attention such as packaging etc. we usually call heavy goods. All articles which are sold in split up cartons and therefore must be packaged, we have called fine goods’. (Ibid., p. 2)
25. Knäckta Nötter, No. 2, September 1949, p. 4.
26. Knäckta Nötter, No. 3, November 1948, pp. 15–6.
27. Knäckta Nötter, No. 6, April 1950, pp. 10–1, and No. 7 June 1950, p. 12.
28. Knäckta Nötter, No. 5, August 1949, p. 10.
29. Knäckta Nötter, No. 2, September 1948, p. 11.
30. E.g. Minutes of the local directors’ conference, AB Hakon Swenson, 13 March 1950; Minutes of the managers’ conference, AB Hakon Swenson, 1–2 June 1950.
31. Minutes of the local directors’ conference, AB Hakon Swenson, 6–7 December 1951.
32. Annual Reports 1945–1952.
33. Others made similar claims based on American figures (e.g. Pusch, Citation1946; Weman, Citation1946).
34. Wirsäll (Citation1954, 1958).
35. Minutes from the directors’ conference, AB Hakon Swenson, 13–14 January 1956, p. 10; and Annual Report 1955.
36. Annual Report 1954, p. 15.
37. This can be seen in the Minutes of the directors’ conferences, AB Hakon Swenson, 1946–1954. These discussions have been reported at length elsewhere (author ref.).
38. When viewed in isolation this type of interference could lend itself to a path‐dependency analysis (David, Citation1985). However, the case as a whole suggests that the unfolding process had a two‐way influence (on the warehouses and on how they were understood) that fits less well with such an analogy.
39. Elsewhere, I have shown that Wirsäll’s evaluation was sensitive to the dimensions chosen, the assumptions made, and how the findings were phrased (Kjellberg, Citation2001). Moreover, as Wirsäll himself indicated, it was hard to compare single‐ and multi‐storey buildings since there were no multi‐storey buildings designed with the work organization in mind. Since no new multi‐storey buildings were constructed, there is no way of knowing how an ideal multi‐storey solution suggested by American warehouse experts would have performed.