This article connects to and extends the attempts to bring space back into critical organizational theory, which, we argue, has mainly been based on the socio-spatial perspective as pioneered by Henri Lefebvre. Taking issue with the various ways in which Lefebvre’s work can be interpreted, we develop an alternative route. Adopting a mode of non-representational theorizing as outlined in human geography, we propose the concept of ‘spacing’, which orients the understanding of organizational space towards its material, embodied, affective and minor configurations. In discussing the consequences of such a performative approach to space for the practice and craft of organizational scholarship, we argue that our conceptual opening entails a move from representational strategies of extracting representations of the (organizational) world from the world to embodied apprehensions of the everyday performing of organizational space. What can be termed the enactment of organizational geographies in slow motion is inspired and illustrated by the video ‘The Raft’ conceived by the artist Bill Viola.

This article responds to recent calls for rethinking management education and fostering a spatial understanding of educational practices. We propose to introduce Foucault’s notion of heterotopic space and the spatial thought of Lefebvre into the debate about the current and future state of business schools. In particular, we conceptually and empirically discuss the potential for understanding space in a way that addresses its productive force, its multiplicity and its inherent contradictions. Using the example of an experimental teaching project dedicated to the conception and physical design of a city of the future, we reflect upon the possibility of the emergence of ‘other’, heterotopic spaces within an institution of management learning. Our findings suggest that spatial interventions facilitate critically affirmative engagement with the business school by offering an imaginative approach to management education.

This paper focuses on the aesthetics of the uncanny to inquire into and perform affective sites of organizing that are imbued with feelings of uncertainty and uneasiness. We argue that the uncanny forms an ‘unconcept’ that allows us to think and apprehend ‘white spaces’ of organization not as new or other spaces but through a process of relating intensively with the conventional places, streets and squares that form the backdrop to everyday life. We also make use of the notion of ‘unsiting’ to show how organizational research is able to enhance our appreciation of the aesthetic dimension of organization in ways that expose and undermine that which has become familiar and taken-for-granted. Based on an artistic intervention by the theatre collective Rimini Protokoll, we encounter and analyse such processes of unsiting through the affective and spatial doublings at work in the organization of urban space. Theorizing the organizational uncanny opens up new sites/sights in organization by forging an interconnection of the recent affective, spatial and aesthetic ‘turns’ in organizational theory. To do this demands what we call scholarly performances that involve the witnessing and enacting of everyday sites of organizing.

We live in a time of space, also in the study of organization. This review essay reflects on the state and the potential of organization theory’s spatial turn by embedding it in a wider movement of thought in the humanities and social sciences. Reading exemplary studies of organizational spatialities alongside the broader history and renaissance of spatial thinking allows us to identify and discuss four twists to the spatial turn in organization theory. First, organization is understood as something placed or sited. Second, it is a site of spatial contestation, which is constitutive for (and not merely reflective of) organizational life. Third, such contestation is itself an outcome of a spatial multiplicity that encompasses affects, technologies, voids and absences. Fourth, such an excess of space is beyond (or rather before) representation and thus summons a spatial poetics. In following these twists, increasingly complex and speculative topographies of organization take shape.

This article presents the main results of a longitudinal case study of a strategic change process in a cooperative bank. Pursuing both a ''social'' mission and an explicitly economic rationale, this particular nonprofit organization provides an exemplary research setting for inquiring into the delicate and contradictory interplay of mission focus and commercial imperatives. Departing from the practice perspective as a micro-view on everyday strategizing-an approach that seems to have not found its way into NPO-research yet-allows us to take an in-depth look at how people go about the process of making strategy despite the tensions between mission and profit. Our data yields three patterns of strategizing practices that aim at fostering economic growth without damaging the social mission, namely supporting diverse positions, protecting stabilized relationships, and relating to organizational experiences. Building upon our empirical results, we tentatively conceptualize ''balancing practices'' as potentially important acts of strategizing in NPOs.Résumé Cet article présente les principaux résultats d'une étude de cas longitudinale sur le processus de changement stratégique d'une banque coopérative. En poursuivant tant une mission «sociale» que des raisons explicitement économiques, cette organisation à but non-lucratif particulière fournit un cadre de recherche exemplaire pour examiner les interactions délicates et contradictoires entre l'attention portée à la mission et les impératifs commerciaux. S'écartant de la pratique comme une vision partielle sur la fabrique de la stratégie au quotidien, la méthode qui semble ne pas avoir encore trouvé sa voie dans la recherche sur les organisations à but non-lucratif, permet un regard en profondeur sur la façon dont les personnes entreprennent des décisions en termes de stratégie, malgré les tensions existant entre la mission et les profits. Nos données ont produit trois caractéristiques des pratiques de stratégie dont le but est d'encourager la croissance économique sans porter atteinte à la mission sociale, à savoir le soutien a`des prises de de´cision diverses, la protection des relations stabilise´es et le partage d'expe´riences d'organisation. Partant de résultats empiriques, nous modélisons approximativement les «pratiques d'équilibrage» en tant qu'actions potentiellement importantes pour les stratégies des organisations à but non-lucratif.Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel legt die Hauptergebnisse einer Langzeitstudie über den Prozess des Strategiewechsels in einer Genossenschaftsbank dar. Eine ''soziale'' Mission und eine ausdrücklich ökonomische Rationale verfolgend ist diese Nonprofit-Organization ein ideales Feld, um das delikate und widersprüchli-che Zusammenspiel von Missionsschwerpunkt und kommerziellen Geboten zu erforschen. Abweichend von der Praxis-Perspektive als Mikrosicht auf tagtägliche Strategieentwicklung-ein Ansatz, der noch nicht seinen Weg in die NPO-Forschung gefunden zu haben scheint-können wir einen tiefen Einblick nehmen, wie Leute trotz Spannungs...