Reflections on space, structure and their impact on organisations

Abstract

Commitment to rationality stands equally at the core of modernity and its defining institution, modem organisations. In this paper we consider the relation between rationality and space, focusing on 'strategy' , We connect these relations to a Cartesian heritage, one that we see as a recurrent theme of Western management thought. However, just as importantly, there have been attempts to think outside this Cartesian heritage, the most significant of which. for our project. we take to be Kafka. From Kafka we derive support for the idea that management, as an ordering device, is a congenitally failing operation. In the construction of order, strategy docs not simply form structure, as Chandler argues, but the structure of the strategy-making process enables and limits strategy as its product. Management does not determine organisation but the organisation of managerial tasks as precondition frames the space in which questions - such as who defines strengths and weaknesses, where one seeks opportunities and threats, who defines possible futures and future possibilities - first occur, shifting between mind and matter, management and organisation, strategy and structure, and function and form. Instead of privileging one term over the other as Cartesian rationality does, they become equally important, depending equally on each other. To further this interdependence we suggest that management and organisation theory should engage in a dialogue with architecture, an orientation to which we elaborate in the paper.