Tuncer-Licoppe2018

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Tuncer-Licoppe2018
BibType ARTICLE
Key Tuncer-Licoppe2018
Author(s) Sylvaine Tuncer, Christian Licoppe
Title Open door environments as interactional resources to initiate unscheduled encounters in office organizations
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Face-to-face interactions, negotiation of availability and entitlement, office organizations, open door environments, opening of unscheduled encounters
Publisher
Year 2018
Language English
City
Month
Journal Culture and Organization
Volume 24
Number 1
Pages 11–30
URL Link
DOI 10.1080/14759551.2017.1376326
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

In this article, we show how a common type of material environment in office organizations, namely offices with doors left open, enables and sustains the initiation of unscheduled, informal encounters. Using video recordings of naturally occurring interactions, we identify and describe a recurrent practice whereby visitors, mainly through their embodied conduct as they approach the doorway, are recognized by their recipients as initiating an encounter. We unpack the systematic practices and resources involved and analyze a series of variations through which co-workers deal with three interactional problems: obtaining the office occupant's attention, negotiating availability, and negotiating entitlement. The article (1) demarcates a set of practices typical of unscheduled encounters in office organizations; (2) sheds new lights on how shared and fractured visual spaces can be used as resources to produce complex organizational meanings; and (3) proposes an approach of organizational activity and knowledge as inherently interactional, embodied and material.

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