When Urban Space Becomes Organizational Space: A Space-Based Coordination to Deal with Volatile and Recurring Problems of Urban Incivility

Abstract

The issue of coordination has often been studied in organization theory (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009). However, whereas geographic space seems in certain cases to play an important role in coordinating practice, scholars dealing with coordination seldom mention its influence. Recently, the study of the relationships between organizations and space has developed in the field of management (Kornberger & Clegg, 2004; Dale Burrell, 2008; Marrewijk & Yanow, 2010), and subsequent research has focused particularly on the various ways in which space influences organizations. Here, researchers often reference the work of Henri Lefebvre, a pioneer in the conceptualization of space, whose political analysis and thoughts have been employed in the field of organizational studies (Dale & Burrell, 2008). Lefebvre demonstrates that space is ‘produced’ in the sense that it is shaped to support a range of economic and social relations. These relationships are based on the characteristics of spaces, and are related to their physical properties as well as to the properties that people attribute to them (Lefebvre, 1974/1991). Many authors have recognized a ‘spatial turn’ (Dale & Burrell, 2008; Warf & Arias, 2009), and in the field of organization studies have emphasized the embeddedness of organizational practices in space. In particular, questions have increasingly focused on the types of space, as well as on the different spatial principles that facilitate the management of complex organizational situations (Horgen et al., 1999; Kornberger & Clegg, 2004; Iedema et al., 2010).