Donatella De Paoli

Creating business value with open space flexible offices

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine what organisational and management practices used in connection with open space flexible offices create business value. It seeks to identify what consequences this may have for successful real estate practices. Design/methodology/approach – This paper utilises an inductive case study approach. The international telecom company Telenor has implemented open space flexible offices from top to bottom amongst their 35,000 employees. The case description and analysis is based on secondary data, user evaluations and 20 interviews with middle- and top-level managers across levels and functional departments. Findings – The case of Telenor reveals that leadership and organizing issues are important, together with work modes and communication technology, for a productive use of work place design. The paper highlights specifically how the open, transparent, flexible office solution creates business value when used with centralised and standardised organisational manag...

Leadership in Spaces and Places

A wise person once said, ‘Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.’ The editors of Leadership in Spaces and Places have choreographed a masterpiece. They have assembled a superb collection of scholarship that sheds light on the relationship between humans and their environments, specifically in regard to the socio-materiality between leadership and space. The contributors to this twelve-chapter volume include scholars who are on the cutting edge of thinking about the embodiment of leadership, specifically as it applies to the constructed environment. The book was developed as part of a four-year research project funded by the Academy of Finland, ‘aimed to develop a new understanding of leadership, emphasizing space, embodiment, and ascetics’ (Ropo et al. 2015, p. 2). The authors employ various approaches to understand the intersection between space and leadership. Experts in sociology, organizational studies, cross-cultural management, and architecture are just a few of those represented in this volume that lend their voices to the field of leadership studies. Another notable quality of the book is the painstakingly thorough research employed by the book’s editors and contributors. The bibliographies alone are superb resources for anyone interested in this area of scholarship. The idea that the space in which we interact affects leadership is not entirely new, as the editors point out in their introductory chapter. There is a long history of the study of space as emblems of a leader’s power and status (for example, see Remland 1981). Likewise, scientific management theorists such as Frederick Taylor with his ‘Taylorism,’ and Human Relations theorists such as Elton Mayo and the Hawthorne Studies, explicitly or implicitly studied space and its relationship to leadership. Certainly, newer approaches to space and leadership such as open-plan offices, unique organizational cultures, corporate branding, and virtual environments also provide the impetus for the study of space and leadership. The use of space in these contexts is well represented in Leadership in Spaces and Places, specifically in the early sections of the book – part I, ‘Workspaces in change,’ part II, ‘Open office spaces,’ and part III, ‘Virtual workspaces.’ However, the later sections of the book make a greater attempt to challenge readers’ thinking about the relationship between leadership and space. In these sections, the contributors

Open plan offices – the response to leadership challenges of virtual project work?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore hybrid work spaces, combining open-plan, team-based offices with virtual work and leadership, in relation to the main leadership and team challenges virtual project environments encounter. Design/methodology/approach – In a review of virtual team literature, virtuality is defined and its main challenges to project leadership are identified. Based on the literature, several semi-structured interviews with project team managers within telecom and IT-consultancy were conducted. Using an exploratory approach, the authors introduce some new leadership concepts and functional benefits of open-plan offices important for virtual project environments. Findings – The findings suggest that project managers encounter several new kinds of challenges while leading virtual projects. Co-location of the project team during certain stages in open-plan, team-based offices may meet some of these challenges. The authors claim that spatial arrangements and their embodied subjec...

Creative workspaces – a fad or making real impact?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the current trend of designing workspaces to foster creativity. The paper brings forth themes that seem to be connected with the so-called ‘creative workspaces’. The paper discusses how the findings relate to recent theory and research. Finally, the paper develops propositions to further elaborate the issue. Design/methodology/approach The paper adopts an inductive and social constructionist approach. In all, 40 internet pictures of workspaces claimed to be creative among a broad range of industries and companies which were analyzed through an aesthetic lens and compared to what theory and research about organizational creativity and space inform us. Findings The designs of ‘creative workspaces’ follow a rather standardized and deterministic assumption of what kind of spaces are considered to produce creativity: open offices, happy, playful communities of close-knit teams and spatial arrangements that resemble home, symbols and memories, sports, technology and nature. This view of creativity and workspaces remains a management fad unless a more balanced approach to the issue is assumed. Research limitations/implications The sample is not to be representative and the findings generalizable as such, but to bring forth the phenomenon. This exploratory and inductive approach calls for a systematic study to prove the propositions in a more controlled research setting and with a bigger sample. Practical implications The paper makes a few suggestions of what companies should pay attention to when building workspaces to improve organizational creativity – and to overcome the fad. Social implications The proposed end-user perspective may ultimately save costs, if people can voice their needs on the space arrangements from the beginning and throughout the building process, not only after the spaces are fully complete, as is typically the case. Originality/value The paper provides a critical view on the trend of building work spaces to purposefully enhance organizational creativity. It brings forth themes that are connected to creativity and workspace designs and suggests that more nuances are involved in the issue.

Disappearing Bodies in Virtual Leadership

Abstract This chapter is about physicality in virtual space, where one generally does not expect to find any physicality according to research and literature. Here, working in virtual space includes interactions and cooperation through the mail, internet, Skype and video-conferencing. The authors use their own experience of collaborating and leading in a virtual project team. Their own personal accounts, impressions and insights reveal a story of organizational cooperation where physicality matters for developing relations and leadership in virtual space. The piece reveals how an aesthetic consciousness of self and others intensifies in virtual communication, especially in relation to the senses of seeing and listening. For instance, the authors describe perception of the self is possible on SKYPE in a way that is not possible in face-to-face meetings (allowing one to realize if one is not dressed ‘properly’). They argue it is important to identify the physical ‘digital self’ and realize the challenges of being fit to operate across time zones, having personal and public boundaries blurred, as well as the heightened sensitivity to imagine what is left out in a virtual relationship. The examples illustrate what kind of sensuous cues become central in virtual communication. The chapter brings forth the need to sensitize to the physicality and to develop skills to perceive and act on it.

Aesthetic leadership in the arts

This chapter addresses creative leadership in a creative domain, the arts and art organizations. In fact, one might even expect that leading creative work would call for creative ways of leading. We use an aesthetic approach to leadership to discuss the theme. By aesthetic we refer to sense-based perceptions, embodied ways of relating to each other, intuition, and emotions. We provide empirical examples of leadership aspects that are especially important in artistic contexts. The illustrations are from the performing arts, especially from the fields of music and theatre. Reflexive awareness, dwelling in senses, interrogating senses, and being tuned to the rhythm of the artistic process were found to be important. Listening, gazing, and embodied gestures are examples of aesthetic leadership practices.

Virtual organizations: a call for new leadership

This chapter is about a relatively new kind of workspace: the virtual space. Coming from an organizational aesthetics and leadership perspective, I give an extensive review of general research about virtual leadership, questioning whether current researchers and practitioners are too pessimistic about leadership in virtual space. Inspired by an interview with a young entrepreneur, running a company with several employees from long distance, it is argued that there is a call for a new leadership. I develop a map of a new leadership landscape and approach, based on the nature of technological networks favouring a more distributed, transparent, flexible, involving and democratic leadership approach. Several new leadership theories are described such as relational leadership, plural leadership, aesthetic and embodied leadership, making a claim that the traditional leader-centric and centralized approach is no longer so relevant for leadership in virtual space. Finally, it is argued that physical places and spaces are also important for virtual leadership, but in other ways than previously.