How Social‐Symbolic Work Changes Places

Abstract We advance the social‐symbolic work perspective by developing an understanding of places as objects characterized by location, materiality, function, and symbolic meaning and which can be changed through social‐symbolic work. Drawing from a longitudinal study of the ‘Empty Homes’ Programme in England, our analysis identifies an unfolding process of social‐symbolic work through which organizational actors change three distinct places – a historic chapel hall, a village public tavern, and derelict terraced houses – into social housing. Our findings develop a theoretical model of how social‐symbolic work changes place objects through a process involving dislodging functionality of how a place is actually used, inscribing liminality , and consolidating coherence across new function, new symbolic meaning and reconstructed materiality at a fixed geographic location. This process creates a new place as a social‐symbolic object that is both stable and dynamic. Our findings and model contribute to the social‐symbolic work perspective and have broad relevance within the management studies literature to research on place and organizational and institutional change processes.