Organisational Space and Beyond

6 Managing Tensions in an English Cathedral—An Embodied Spatial Perspective

Sarah Warnes

Introduction

It’s a Christian foundation which finds itself more and more involved in the commercial world, and having to think commercially to exist.

(Shop Manager, St Michael’s Cathedral)

In this chapter, I share with readers my experiences of spending time with the employees and volunteers at St Michael’s Cathedral (a pseudonym), a small cathedral in England. Ecclesiastical organizations such as cathedrals and churches are hitherto underexplored in the organization space literature and yet they provide a compelling site for exploration. Providing the conceptual framework underpinning the chapter is Henri Lefebvre’s (1974/1991: 196) notion of the ‘spatial ...