US Academy of Management 2024 - Symposium

Time:      Tuesday, August 13th, 2024 15:00 – 16:30 CT (GMT-5)
Venue:   Gold Room at Fairmont Chicago Hotel

Organizational spaces have historically played a pivotal role in business and organization research, serving as a shared environment for the workforce and a unifying fabric for work. They bedrock and contextualise key concepts and mechanisms in the realm of work, including identity (Elsbach, 2003), leadership (Crevani, 2018), innovative practices (Furnari, 2014), social interactions (Fayard & Weeks, 2007) and work relationships (Khazanchi et al., 2018). However, the recent mass transition to work from home (WFH) during the COVID-19 pandemic has shaken this historical function of organizational spaces, urging their adaptation to accommodate new working arrangements (Waizenegger et al, 2020). While organizations see opportunities in this shift to reduce costs by downsizing their real estate, decentralization also brings concerns that include maintaining a cohesive company culture, ensuring effective communication and employee engagement, and addressing potential cybersecurity risks. The image of a traditional office also becomes increasingly blurry, raising the question of what it will look like in the future, and why would people want to go there? This symposium seeks to dissect and understand the emerging paradigms in future organizational spaces that continued to evolve post-pandemic. Themes to be explored in the symposium include but not limited to: Workplace adaptations and Activity-Based Workplaces; Accommodating hybrid working; Physical separation and sense of togetherness; Emerging workplace technologies; Interdisciplinary collaboration and new theoretical perspectives.