Unplugged - Relating place to organization: A situated tribute to Doreen Massey

  • Bertrand Sergot RITM, Université Paris-Sud, France
  • Anne-Laure Saives Université du Québec à Montréal Canada
Keywords: Massey, organization, place, processual and relational approaches, space

Abstract

British geographer Doreen Massey died on March 11, 2016. Her death spurred numerous tributes in the field of human geography acknowledging the depth of her intellectual influence. However, Massey’s thinking and works largely transcend conventional disciplinary boundaries. In this article, we argue that, in the wake of the spatial turn undertaken in the last few years, Massey’s relational approach to space and place represents a potentially significant legacy for organization studies (OS). In the first part of the paper, we present the main conceptual elements of this relational approach as exposed by Massey herself, especially in her 2005 book, For Space. In the second part, we endeavor to show how this relational approach allows scholars to think about the interrelations between space, place, and organization in a different and subtler way. To this end, we first rely on the handful of publications in OS that have begun to exploit the analytical potential of Massey’s vision, most notably combining it with the communication-as-constitutive perspective on organization. So far, this has been done only in terms of space. We thereby underline how Massey’s relational approach to place might allow OS researchers to venture beyond the container metaphor—i.e., the tendency to represent the organization as one or several clearly delineated and stabilized workplaces—which continues to dominate vast swathes of the OS literature. Finally, we identify three main avenues for research, aiming to exploit Massey’s relational approach to place in full.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.
Published
2016-12-01
How to Cite
Sergot B., & Saives A.-L. (2016). Unplugged - Relating place to organization: A situated tribute to Doreen Massey. M@n@gement, 19(4), 335-352. Retrieved from https://management-aims.com/index.php/mgmt/article/view/3885
Section
Unplugged