A critical exploration of organisational space as gendered and cultural lived experience

Organisational space plays an important role in shaping how employees experience everyday organisational life. While existing research has increasingly recognised space as a relational and socially produced phenomenon, limited attention has been given to how organisational space is experienced as a gendered and cultural lived experience, particularly within non-Western contexts.

This doctoral research explores how employees experience and negotiate organisational space within newly established Saudi public-sector organisations. Adopting an interpretive qualitative approach, the study examines how spatial arrangements shape experiences of visibility, belonging, and exclusion, and how these experiences are influenced by gendered organisational relations and broader socio-cultural dynamics.

The research aims to contribute to organisation studies by advancing understanding of organisational space as a lived, gendered, and culturally situated socio-material phenomenon within the context of organisational transformation in Saudi Arabia.