Julie Fabbri

The Role of Physical Space in Collaborative Workplaces Hosting Entrepreneurs: The Case of the ‘Beehive’ in Paris

In the knowledge economy there are more and more self-employed and nomadic workers due to increasing outsourcing and enhanced telecommunications. These workers enjoy flexibility in work locations because they need no more than a laptop and an internet connection to get their job done. They can work from home or any other place instead of commuting every day to an office. This work arrangement is exemplary of contemporary work-worlds and their new boundaries. Knowledge workers are less and less tied to a specific business location. This growing phenomenon entails a re-examination of the role and benefits of the workspace. The spatial dimension of organizations has long been an understudied dimension in strategic management and organization studies, both at a macrolevel (notions of economic area, territory) and at a microlevel (notions of space management and workspace) (Kornberger & Clegg, 2004; Orlikowski, 2007; Lauriol et al., 2008; Raulet-Croset, 2008). ‘Workspace’ is a research object that has been studied in various academic fields, such as geography, architecture, design, ergonomics, sociology, occupational psychology and semiotics, which is why it is so difficult to apprehend (Price, 2007).