Unpacking “Sense of Place” and “Place-making” in Organization Studies: A Toolkit for Place-sensitive Research

Abstract

There is increasing interest in organizational scholarship in the role of place. To support these developments, we offer a framework for place-sensitive research in organizational analysis. The notion of place refers to a unique location, endowed with a material from and a socially constructed set of meanings. In line with the phenomenology of place, our framework first distinguishes between two ontologies of place: place as experience—through which people develop a sense of place—and place as practice—through which people engage collectively to make places. Second, our framework distinguishes between three temporal orientations in relation to place: past, present, and future. We then draw from research in geography to reflect on two under-explored methodological toolkits to collect data on and analyze place as experience and place as practice in organization studies: walking interviews, and geographical videography.