5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Organisational research, like many other disciplines, has developed an increased interest in space and place beyond the mere arrangement of physical territory. During the last decades, scholars have addressed the location and locatedness of organisations in many different ways. The ongoing digital transformation, wars, sovereignty disputes and migration, as well as the covid pandemic and the measures taken to fight against it add further reasons to look into this topic. Taylor and Spicer (2007) distinguish between three different notions of space discussed in literature, i.e. (1) space as distance, (2) space as power relations, and (3) as experience. All of them need attention in research, investigating how space affects organizations, how it is designed, narrated or otherwise constructed in practice.

Moreover, it has become abundantly clear that space cannot only be studied within, but also in-between organizations, and that such “third spaces” are key to the understanding of contemporary societies, reflecting paradox and heterotopia in human relations and attributions of meaning. For organizations embedded in today’s business ecosystems, what happens in-between organizations determines how operations in different social systems can aligned, how novelty emerges and how value is created. At the same time, spaces in-between also raise new questions regarding motivations of collaboration, modes of interaction, and notions of private and public that urgently need further attention.

The session aims to address these issues from multiple perspectives, including conceptual work as well as empirical work. Approaches from different points of view – inside and outside organizational studies – are welcome.