The spatial and temporal mediation of social change

Abstract

Purpose The objective of this paper is to provide insight beyond the internal dynamic of organizational change and explore how organizations contribute, at the symbolic and aesthetic level, to the experiential stabilization of spatio‐temporal change within society more generally. As such, the paper seeks to contribute to critical debates surrounding the relationships between organization and society, particularly in terms of understanding change as an outcome of organizational activity within the broader socio‐cultural environment. Design/methodology/approach Concerned as it is with the critical interpretation of visual image and composition, the paper adopts a broadly structural‐hermeneutic framework directed at the semiotic analysis of a sample of organizational artifacts; in this instance, a sample of company documents chosen by virtue of their communicative intent and rich symbolic and aesthetic content. Findings It is argued in the paper that several recurring or generic constellations of meaning can be identified across the documents; vitality, ephemerality, subordination and authenticity, each of which represents an attempt to mediate the experiential tensions that emerge both from the dynamic and spatio‐temporal instabilities generated by the socio‐economic relations of modernity and the mode of organization which predominates within it. Research limitations/implications Generated from an intensive sample, employing a subjectivist mode of analysis the paper does not seek to offer an exhaustive or unduly generaliseable overview of the content of organizational documentation. Rather, it aims to present a plausible account, given the broader socio‐cultural context within which they are generated, of a range of recurring themes or genres which indicate a significant relationship between organizational visual culture and the wider stabilisation of socio‐psychological relations within modernity. Originality/value This paper provides an interesting insight into the internal dynamic of organizational change.

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