Institutional policing work in a constellation of labels and spaces of place: video game development management insights

Purpose: The paper explores (a) the dynamics of place and space in an institutional setting, and (b) institutional work done in different spaces of the same place.

Methodology: Traditional ethnographic methods (participant-observation, interviews, and artefacts) were used over the course of 12 months of fieldwork in a multi-organizational video game development space.

Findings: The paper presents two main findings. First, we show how the place was a dynamic rainbow constellation and manifested as different spaces over time and for different actors. We describe the spaces based on existing literature (accelerator, experimental, incubator, or coworking space) or inductively (atrium, hybrid). Second, we show how institutional work changed depending on the spatial conceptions of the institutional place. In particular, we show a dynamic rainbow constellation of fluid spaces raises different forms of institutional policing work (self, backroom, spectacle, tangential, preventative) and the conditions under which institutional policing work is subtly fluid and takes form, but also changes.

Originality: Significant contributions are made to understanding how actors work at forming a rainbow constellation ring of fluid labels and spaces of a place. Explicates and amplifies the forms of institutional policing work, providing a novel case example of that social interaction.