The constitutive entanglement between open office spacing and grouping: The production of sociomaterial control

Abstract

This article explores the emergence of sociomaterial practices and control dynamics of open office spacing by emphasising the constitutive entanglement between open office spacing and grouping. With a Baradian approach to and agential realist ontology of sociomateriality, the article aims to gain a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of working together by rethinking the conventional notions of and relations between groups and space. An ethnographic field study uncovers how sociomaterial grouping practices emerge and intraact through the constitutive entanglement between open office spacing and grouping. Insights from this study show how these grouping practices are reconfigured in three different yet intraactive ways: as cultural, hierarchising and belonging practices. Further, the observations reveal how grouping practices produce control in new ways in the form of sociomaterial control through the visibility, transparency and materiality of open spacing, which carry implications for the design and collaborative organising of open offices, including privacy, embodied experiences, informal hierarchy, power relations and feelings of belonging, particularly for newcomers.