How to Work with Space: Spatial Knowledge in Organizations and Research Practice

This book is an exploration of the entangled spatial relationships with and within organizations and research practice. Situating our environment as an active participant in the outcomes of day-to-day living heightens the role space can have as a co-creator of experience, behaviour and emotion. Physical environments tend to fade into the background, becoming an unseen, untended, accompaniment in our journey. However, through active attunement and deep noticing, spatial details arise through our bodies, senses, conversations and physical encounters.

As the nature of work continues to evolve, understanding and shifting our relationship with the work environment broadens the scope of how space and work are engaged and performed. This thoughtful book will be of great interest to academics and students of organisational studies, as well as those involved in interdisciplinary research across geography, anthropology and the social sciences.

Karen Messer is a Senior Research Fellow for the Centre for Sensory Studies at Concordia University. Her research focus draws from an interdisciplinary background by taking an embodied and sensorial approach to the often unseen and intangible impact of the physical environment on our day-to-day interactions and relationships.