Space for collaboration from non-western perspectives: Communication in a organization

The ontological and epistemological distinction made between the ‘Orient’ and the ‘Occident’ has been largely accepted as the starting point for elaborate accounts concerning the Orient, its people, culture, and mind. Particularly, such distinction has led to a fundamentally different philosophy of space and time in East and West.
In most of the Eurocentric organization studies, space has been commodified and rationalized as absolute for the pursuit of governance and control which stands a sharp contrast to the East relativism perspective of space. As a result of intellectual imperialism, placing East in the West paradigm through borrowed material and the eyes of others is impractical. The lack of resonance of non-Western paradigm in communication study is an apparent gap to be filled. Therefore, this research aimed to examine affordance of organization space for collaboration from non-Western perspectives. A six-month ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in an ICT company. Data were collected through participant observation, semi-structured and
unstructured interview with 42 Chinese research analysts, documentary sources and material artefacts. Findings identified five underlying key values in non-Western communicative behaviour pertinent to Chinese cardinal value of harmony which emphasized on interrelationship, interdependence and mutuality. Results also
demonstrated a cyclical view of space and the notion of spatial affordance afforded sense of community and sociality which making space a ‘destination’ for togetherness and cohesiveness. Lastly, the research contributed insights to study
spatial production from a non-Western cyclical view rather than the long (mis) representation of linear way.