Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a sociological analysis of emergent sociospatial structures in a hot‐desking office environment, where space is used exchangeably. It considers hot‐desking as part of broader societal shifts in the ownership of space.Design/methodology/approach: This analysis is based on an ethnographically‐oriented investigation, in which data collection methods used were participant‐observation and interviewing. The analysis uses Lefebvre's conceptualisation of the social production of space and draws on the urban sociology literature.Findings: The analysis first indicates that, in hot‐desking environments, there may be an emergent social structure distinguishing employees who settle in one place, and others who have to move constantly. Second, the practice of movement itself generates additional work and a sense of marginalisation for hot‐deskers.Research limitations/implications: The paper does not provide a generalisable theory, but suggests that loss of everyday ownership of the workspace gives rise to particular practical and social tensions and shifts hot‐deskers' identification with the organisation.Practical implications: Official requirements for mobility may result in a new social structure distinguishing settlers and hot‐deskers, rather than mobility being spread evenly.Originality/value: The paper contributes to the literature on organisational spatiality by focusing on the spatial practices entailed in hot‐desking, and by contextualising hot‐desking within the wider spatial configuration of capitalism, in which space is used exchangeability in order to realise greater economic returns. Rather than using the popular “nomadic” metaphor to understand the experience of mobility at work, it uses a metaphor of vagrancy to highlight consequences of the loss of ownership of space.

Many organizations use spatial reconfiguration as an attempt to transform and modernize their work practices and external image. While most studies have focused on the way high status new offices are used to showcase putatively changed organizational practices, less attention has been paid to the peripheral sites which service them. Drawing on a longitudinal ethnographic study of an initiative to modernize a UK local authority via spatial redesign, we analyse the relationship between a new strategic centre office building and a paper storage unit situated in an ‘edgeland’. Edgelands are interfacial areas between town and country and are sites where essential but despised functions are located (Shoard, 1992). Based on an understanding of power as something that is created through relationships with nonhuman actors, we foreground the spatial and temporal agency of buildings, artefacts and places. We show how ‘modernization’ involves attempts to create a purified space constructed only from human and material actors deemed ‘modern’, and expel that which is designated as outdated. In our study, the edgeland site functioned to maintain the centre as a pristine environment in which fluid networking could flourish, and preserve the external image of the organization as transformed and modernized. Thus, we illustrate the dependence of high status workplaces on functions, objects and people which contradict projected desired images.

The flexibility of people in modern societies rests upon their capacity to divide themselves into separate modules of thought and action, and deploy them in ways that fit their purposes. The practice of ‘informatizing’ work by converting tasks into software-based processes entails the modular design of work, because software has a modular form. We use the concept of modularity to analyse the implications of informatization in the empirical context of a ‘shared service centre’ providing professional services. We make three contributions. First, informatization enlarges the scope for organizational flexibility, because the organization can be treated as a configuration of modules which can be reshuffled to suit changing circumstances. Second, employees must attempt to deploy enhanced modular capabilities, by executing any given set of processes, in a flexible, unemotional and time-efficient fashion. Third, given the ability to informatize complex service work, and the existence of organizational templates which accommodate it, the modular design and management of other services may become more common.

Purpose: This paper aims to help workplace ethnographers navigate and reflect on primary access negotiations by scrutinising two of the concepts mentioned in the call for papers on this special issue: workplace relations and tensions. We introduce the frames of reference (FoRs) concept as used in the field of employment relations to the ethnographic community. We propose that the implicit frames of gatekeeper and researcher influence what they deem interesting for research, thus influencing the content of access negotiations. Moreover, we propose that tensions typically emerge when gatekeepers and ethnographers do not share the same frame of the employment relationship (ER).Design/methodology/approach: We explore the ER through Fox’s (1966, 1974) framework, taking inspiration from Budd et al. (2022), who applied FoRs to employer–employee relations. We adapt the framework to the relationships between workplace ethnographers and gatekeepers by theorising the characteristics of ideal types of gatekeepers and workplace ethnographers and exploring possible implications for when they meet in access negotiations. We distil lessons learnt from previous research by drawing on illustrative examples from the literature to suggest strategies for interacting with gatekeepers when tensions emerge, providing a pragmatic application of our contribution.Findings: Assuming that their FoR of the ER contributes to what they find to be of practical relevance/academic interest, we suggest that a (mis)match of gatekeepers’ and workplace ethnographers’ FoRs can lead to tensions between workplace ethnographers and gatekeepers, either remaining latent or becoming salient. We propose three possible strategies as to how to navigate these tensions during primary access negotiations.Originality/value: Whilst previous research has mainly focused on the ethnographer as an individual who needs to give gatekeepers a reassuring and enticing impression, we discuss how an important structural factor, an organisation’s ER setup, may influence access. We thus bring an important yet hitherto neglected aspect of organisational life into the debate on the pragmatic realities of ethnography, contributing to the discussion of how to navigate the tension between the “practical” need to convince gatekeepers and the need to fulfil one’s own standards of rigorous research and ethics.