The Spatial Turn in Social Materiality: Organizational Space in Critical Management Studies

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the spatial turnSpatial turn based on the concept of ‘social’ materiality which is different from sociomateriality, and to obtain the prospect of empirical research based on spatial managementSpatial management in Japan. The concept of social materialitySocial materiality proposed by researchers of critical management studies (CMS), was proposed to overcome such epistemological challenges stemming from the fact that the rationale on which the researcher rests in attempting to critique existing dominant power is already embedded in the dominant structure. The meta theory which the recent CMS theorists sought the clue was human geography. In human geographyHuman geography, there was the critical viewpoint for historical materialism view of Marx which was the root of the CMS. In this criticism of Marx, the clue to solve the epistemological problem which the critical management research has held for many years was sought. Regarding the spaciousness which the concept of social materialitySocial materiality has noticed, in the management studies, the viewpoint which can be called a spatial managementSpatial management has been consistently latent from the classical research. On the other hand, although the approach to systematization is not so old, those studies also focus on methodological implications as a critical study of social materialitySocial materiality. In addition, as an empirical study of social materialitySocial materiality, we introduce the case analysis about recent workplace designWorkplace design which tries to expose the work style reform in Japan.