The Future of Working Spaces: Learning, Collaboration and Worker (in-) Visibilization

Dear Colleagues,

The rise of remote work, virtual collaboration tools, and digital communication platforms has led to a shift in the traditional understanding of workplace visibility (Hafermalz, 2021; Leonardi & Treem, 2021). New technologies are altering not only the place of work but also the schedules, forms of control, experience, and worker agency (Klaus & Flecker, 2022). Physical presence in the office is no longer the sole indicator of productivity and contribution. Instead, the focus has shifted towards the outcomes and deliverables of work, often making the process of work itself less visible (Ajzen, 2021). 

Furthermore, the increasing use of information and communication technologies, artificial intelligence, and data analytics in the workplace has the potential to make certain tasks and processes invisible (see Kellog et al., 2020; Charlwood & Guenoble, 2022). It raises questions about these technologies’ impact on job roles and the need for upskilling and reskilling to remain visible and relevant in a digitally transformed working space. 

Early research into this area has found that some digital work remains invisible due to sociocultural processes of responsibilisation, personalization, and work extension (Whiting & Symon, 2020). Timonen and Vuori (2018) found that digitalization increased the visibility of work in relation to co-workers while decreasing it in relation to customers. Ajzen and Taskin (2021) found that invisibilized ‘flexwork’ employees working from diverse premises (e.g., home, office, etc.) initiated alternative ways of staying united and close. Data analytics and tracking tools have also brought visibility to previously invisible aspects of work, such as customer behavior and operational processes, as well as employee performance. 

These recent transformations challenge the way working spaces integrate spatiotemporal, technological, and socio-cultural dimensions of organizing (Aroles et al., 2021). More specifically, they raise questions about continuous learning and collaboration across different locations and from different interaction settings (e.g. asynchronous, face-to-face, ICT-mediated—see Taskin & Bridoux, 2010; Wajcman & Rose, 2011; Schiemer et al., 2022). This becomes of particular interest since the future of working spaces is expected to cater to a diverse workforce that includes not only remote workers but also freelancers and independent contractors (Malhotra, 2021). 

Therefore, there is a need to go beyond documenting the stretching and breaching of work boundaries (Hassard & Morris, 2022) and analysing digital working spaces through spatio-temporal theories (Sewell & Taskin, 2015). Similarly to Justesen and Plesner’s (2024) effort to develop a “theoretical alternative to imageries of digital spaces that lead to an overemphasis on the affordances of new digital technologies (…) and establishing an alternative ground for interrogating work at margins, which is essential to the constitution of digitalized organizations”, we propose to focus on the notion of (in)visibilization. 

The present Call for Papers encourages submissions (conceptual, empirical, reviews) that help to build a more robust understanding of the relationships among (in)visibility, digital work, and working spaces. The following questions are of great interest, among others:

• What are the actual ‘future working spaces’? Studies addressing this question could introduce experiments in implementing such projects, highlighting their specificities and evaluation, including the potential resistance against them.
• Working spaces are conceived materially, as one component of new ways of working (i.e. “bricks”), but working spaces may be virtual, immaterial, social, or a combination. How do we consider working spaces in an extended vision of spaces, how are key characteristics of spaces reshaped and enacted in other configurations that may be material (home office, a laptop) or less material, and what are the implications of such dematerialized (pieces of) working spaces?
• How do working spaces foster collaborative work? It has been argued digital work and the less frequent physical contiguity can affect collaboration. Studies reporting effects of hybrid work and/or office designs on collaboration and the way management and organizations addressed them are welcome.
• How do organizations and management ensure organizational learning? In the same vein, and beyond individual and inter-individual collaboration, organizational learning has been presented as a key process for organizational longevity. How do organizations learn from distant bodies and work practices? What role can be played by office redesign? What roles exist for line managers? 
• Finally, visibilization and invisibilization are key phenomena in the more critical study of telework, hybrid work, and new ways of working. How do workers develop mechanisms to remain visible through collaboration and learning in these working spaces? How do they experiment with invisibilization and visibilization, and what is the nature of these (in)visibilization processes?  

We suggest that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200-500 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send this proposal to the Assistant Editor Ms. Zoya Zhang ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. 

References 

Ajzen, M., & Taskin, L. (2021). The re-regulation of working communities and relationships in the context of flexwork: A spacing identity approach. Information and Organization, 31(4), 100364.

Ajzen, M. (2021). From de-materialization to re-materialization: A social dynamics approach to new ways of working. In: Mitev, N., Aroles, J., Stephenson K.A., Malaurent, J. (Eds.). New Ways of Working. Organizations and Organizing in the Digital Age (Technology, Work and Globalization), Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, p. 205-233.

Aroles, J., Cecez-Kecmanovic, D., Dale, K., Kingma, S. F., & Mitev, N. (2021). New ways of working (NWW): Workplace transformation in the digital age. Information and Organization, 31(4), 100378.

Charlwood, A., & Guenole, N. (2022). Can HR adapt to the paradoxes of artificial intelligence? Human Resource Management Journal, 32(4), 729 742.

Hafermalz, E. (2021). Out of the Panopticon and into Exile: Visibility and control in distributed new culture organizations. Organization Studies, 42(5): 697-717.

Hassard, J., & Morris, J. (2022). The extensification of managerial work in the digital age: Middle managers, spatio-temporal boundaries and control. Human Relations, 75(9), 1647-1678.

Justesen, L., & Plesner, U. (2024). Invisible digi-work: Compensating, connecting, and cleaning in digitalized organizations. Organization Theory, 5(1), 26317877241235938.

Kellogg, K. C., Valentine, M. A., & Christin, A. (2020). Algorithms at Work: The New Contested Terrain of Control. Academy of Management Annals, 14(1).

Klaus, D., & Flecker, J. (2022). Virtual spaces, intermediate places: Doing identity in ICT-enabled work. In Will-Zocholl, M. & C. Roth-Ebner (Eds.), Topologies of Digital Work: How Digitalisation and Virtualisation Shape Working Spaces and Places (pp. 197-223). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Leonardi, P. & Treem, J. (2020). Behavioral Visibility: A new paradigm for organization studies in the age of digitization, digitalization, and datafication. Organization Studies, 41(12): 1601–1625.

Malhotra, A. (2021). The Postpandemic Future of Work. Journal of Management, 47(5), 1091-1102.

Timonen, H., & Vuori, J. (2018). Visibility of work: how digitalization changes the workplace. In Proceedings of the 51st Hawai’i International Conference on System Sciences, Hilton Waikoloa Willage, Big Island, January 2–6, 2018. Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences.

Sewell, G., & Taskin, L. (2015). Out of Sight, Out of Mind in a New World of Work? Autonomy, Control, and Spatiotemporal Scaling in Telework. Organization Studies, 36(11), 1507-1529.

Schiemer, B., Schüßler, E. & Theel, T. (2022) Regulating Nimbus and focus: organizing copresence for creative collaboration. Organization Studies, 44(4), 545–568.

Taskin, L., & Bridoux, F. (2010). Telework: Despatialisation as a challenge to knowledge creation and transfer. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 21(3), 2503-2520.

Wajcman, J. and Rose, E. (2011). Constant Connectivity: Rethinking Interruptions at Work. Organization Studies, 32(7), 941–961.

Whiting, R., & Symon, G. (2020). Digi-housekeeping: the invisible work of flexibility. Work, Employment and Society, 34(6), 1079-1096.

Dr. Laurent Taskin
Dr. Michel Ajzen
Dr. Nathalie N. Mitev
Guest Editors

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• telework
• hybrid work
• invisibilisation
• future of work
• learning
• collaboration
• socio-materiality
• space