International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Review

Organizations have implicitly long understood the significance of location, but lack a comprehensive theoretical system to describe and analyze its importance. This short theoretical paper seeks to locate the significance of space within organizational theory and employs the ideas of complex adaptive systems to show the nested systems in which location can be considered. Through acknowledging the historically derived functions of space, the influence of location within the organizational system becomes clearer. Therefore, the concept of function- based spatiality provides an analytical framework with which the significance of location is factored into system organization. The spatial aspects of organizational theories, specifically focusing on how the functions of entities within their local, regional, national, and global contexts interact with elements such as the labor, types of industry, goods produced and markets to which goods are sold must be better understood. Many models of organizational theory fail to take into account the historical synergies of the spaces in which the organizations exist. In an attempt to understand the organizational networks within institutions and systems I utilize complex adaptive system theory to view each as a set of organizations acting within multiple spheres. Within each sphere the organizations serve specific functions, and it is through complimentary interactions with these functions that businesses are able to see the greatest success. Conversely, an entity that unknowingly seeks to either change the functions or fails to positively interact with these functions will struggle. In developing my approach I owe much to scholarship on institutional and organizational theory. W. Richard Scott provides an overview of institutional theory from which to begin. In Scott’s overview the Historical School is discussed as an early approach. The institutional economists, Thorstein Veblen, John Commons, and Westley Mitchell all embraced the idea that historical precedents and change over time as economic principles.