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Although the literature on customer experience within retail environments spontaneously invokes the sensuous, affective and emotional aspects of experience, the body – which is the locus of these – is conspicuous by its absence. In these terms, researchers have relied on a theory of mind. This article seeks to suggest an embodied, spatial approach to customer experience, arguing that it is thanks to the body that we sense the environment, and that likewise, it is thanks to the environment that we can sense and experience our body. The reciprocity between body and world implies an inter-corporeality that extends or retracts the spatiality of the body as a result of its motility. This article emphasizes the bodily, spatial character of customer experience, concluding with implications and suggestions for future studies.

Accounts of virtual organization have been couched in terms of concepts and metaphors that do not inherit from the features of a coherent theory of virtuality. Arguing that virtuality is inherent in modernity, this article focuses on three major drivers behind the current wave of virtualization of organizational work practices to explore the interplay of the virtual and the concrete. Using three vignettes as an illustration, the article discusses how organizations, through writing, make the presence of humans contingent; through technology, displace human action into artifacts, machines, or electronic devices; and through institutions, virtualize (conflicting and sometimes collaborative) human relations and proximal encounters. However, the process of virtualization does not only deterritorialize existing skills and relations, but it also generates new skills, which in their turn impose a reterritorialization process.

By and large, branding literature provides a view of global brands as primarily signifying, semiotic devices. This semiotization of brands is due to a cultural bias that favors the discursive world of signs over lived practices and experiences. Taking Best Western global brand and using Lefèbvre's tripartite conceptualization—spatial practice, representation of space, and spaces of representation—it is argued that global brands can be seen as generic spaces. However, whereas generic spaces are most commonly regarded as disembodied spaces, in this article, it is argued that they actually are lived, embodied, and specific experiences.

Williamson (1975) treats `markets' and `hierarchies' as two distinct governance structures constituting two discrete categories. For him the prevalence of the one or the other is dependent upon a trade-off between, on the one hand, `transaction' cost and dependence on the market, and the risk of loss of control, on the other. Within this framework, `organization', `markets', `costs', `control', etc. are taken as essences, as objective `facts'. The paper draws on six information technology outsourcing cases to suggest a process-based approach where what things are is determined by their becoming. This becoming-realist perspective directs our attention to the study of the organizing practices involved in constituting organizational aspects. For instance, whereas according to Williamson (1975) `cost' is an objective reflection of a certain value, in the present paper we will see that it is the outcome of a set of reality-constituting practices and principles, of certain ways of seeing and knowing the world, of such mundane practices as categorizing, labelling, measuring, etc.

Research into knowledge sharing has mainly treated knowledge from an instrumental, market‐driven perspective. On this view, research has focused on the psychological (e.g. motivation), cognitive (e.g. absorptive capacity) and social features (e.g. weak/strong ties) of the knowledge entities, the structural (formal or informal) characteristics of the organizational context and the nature of knowledge to be transferred (such as its stickiness and causal complexity). The present study seeks to suggest passion as a contingency that impacts the knowledge transfer process positively. Passion for knowledge may constitute a social bond that holds a community together. Passionate members are inclined to share their object of passion—knowledge—more readily. Our argument is based on information elicited from a number of scientific experts within the petrol industry. In their daily work, experts regard the transfer of knowledge as sine qua non of becoming expert, as interactions with others are (i) learning opportunities for themselves and (ii) as social occasions to relate to their peers and on to talk about and share stories about the object to their passion (knowledge). The contribution of the paper is thus to suggest emotional aspects (passion, attachment and interest) related to knowledge as a factor that impacts the transfer of knowledge. Finally, conclusions and implications are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Heideggerian strand of organization studies has highlighted important aspects of organizational practices. Because of the emphasis of the practice-oriented approach on routine practice, researchers have taken a special interest in how innovative, improvised action arises. One of the dominant views is that innovative action is the outcome of different variations in everyday practices. Insightful though these studies are, they do not recognize the role of the body in their conceptualization. This article seeks to redress this imbalance by drawing on Merleau-Ponty's (1962) phenomenology, suggesting that the body, as a carrier of practices, is the locus of innovative action. The article proposes that innovative action emerges in our bodily expressive-responsive skilful coping mode. In illustrating this argument, we make use of case study material focusing on practices involving elderly care service provision. We show how the care workers under consideration cope with the demands of their unpredictable work by adapting their bodily expressive-responsive abilities innovatively to emerging situational calls. Practice innovation emerges as the outcome of a tension between what it makes sense for the care workers to do based on the practical intelligibility underlying their own practices, on the one hand, and bureaucratic rules and requirements inscribed in terms of economic rationality and cost-efficiency, on the other. Because bureaucratic rules are perceived as alienating and unethical, innovation would inevitably be a form of resistance. The article specifies this form of practical resistance, concluding with some implications of this approach for organization studies.

Several researchers have sought to establish the drivers behind and effects of outsourcing on organizations (nations and economies at large). Less research, however, has concerned itself with the changing role that firms go through—from a producer of information technology services to a purchaser of those services—and the form of knowledge that this new role requires. The present paper describes this process of going from consumer to purchaser of information technology services, focusing on the form of knowledge that emerges in this process. As an illustration, the paper draws on case study material gleaned from four firms that have outsourced parts or all of their information technology activities. Becoming a purchaser, it is found, presupposes the development of "interactional knowledge". Interactional knowledge or expertise involves a new language related to standardized monitoring performance and quality measurements, detailed contracts in the form of service level agreements—all of which facilitate communication, enable exchange, reduce transaction costs, and give birth to a new market. Several questions concerning the effects of outsourcing on firms can be revisited, and new research directions are suggested. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Discursive accounts of time tend to focus on a deconstruction of taken-for-granted notions of clock time, restricted to linear measurable units. By contrast the present article examines some of the discourses and practices deployed by managers in their attempts to control time; in the final instance, it shows how time can be a mystery that escapes such managerial pursuits and preoccupations. More specifically, we draw on Levinas's ideas on time and the 'Other', and use two managerial discourses to illustrate how reification (through the use of technological and institutional artefacts) as attempts to control time tend to result in a proliferation of participation but, equally, an insistence on participation may invoke an intensification of control through reification. Reified relationships invariably result in a perpetual return to the Other, or what we have called participation. However, to varying degrees, our participatory mode is not possible without reification. Yet 'relationships' cannot be completely delegated to rationally calculating devices, formal institutions, or markets. Cooperation has its source not in reified forms of rationality (nor of irrationality), but in the human encounter with the Other. The organizational, social order is based on personal relations and personal responsibilities.

Purpose
Previous studies on innovation tend to view innovation as consisting of a creative phase of novel and useful ideas, and a non-creative, or at least a less creative phase, as this considered to be the mere implementation and validation of the initially created ideas. In contrast, this paper aims to stress on the significance of the process of validating a new idea as being a creative, learning, exploratory process that shapes the degree of novelty of the innovation as a whole.


Design/methodology/approach
In driving this argument, this study deductively builds on a theoretical pre-understanding derived from extant literature related to management innovation and organizational legitimacy, and inductively draws on information gleaned from three in-depth case studies.


Findings
The study shows that the validation phase in the innovation process is a creative process, rather than just being a set of activities that relate to the mere execution of the created ideas. Viewing the validation process as an exploratory search for new knowledge, this study establishes a relationship between the form of knowledge mobilized, vertically within an organization or horizontally from outside, and the form of legitimation required. Validation based on internally generated knowledge is effective in terms of achieving pragmatic (efficiency-driven) objectives. Inter-organizational knowledge inflows are associated with cognitive legitimacy – a form of legitimacy that leads to changes in the stakeholders' beliefs about a the product. In contradistinction, horizontal, socio–cultural inflows of knowledge are likely to improve on the product itself, thereby generating more traction for validation.


Research limitations/implications
This research is based on data collected from three firms only.


Practical implications
The idea developed here can provide business organizations a better understanding of the validation process of management innovations. This study suggests that successful innovation often requires managers to be prepared to seek knowledge beyond the confines of their own organizations.


Originality/value
This study contributes in three ways: it submits that there is a dynamic interplay between the moments of creation and validation, which is largely shaped by the novelty of the mobilized knowledge, depending on whether it is internal top–down or external horizontal; relatedly, the effectiveness of validation is shaped by the novelty of the knowledge garnered to justify the initial ideas; and the present paper has extended Suchman's (1995) framework by linking the effectiveness of the various forms of legitimacy to the source of knowledge mobilized in the validation process.