Organizational Walking. The New Normal of Bodily Movements In and Around Organizational Life

A central characteristic of the workday of the millions of people working from home during the pandemic was the monumental lack of movement. Not physical exercise as such, but sheer movement like walking from one office to another, walking to the watercooler or to the cantina, or walking from one meeting room to another. In this conceptual paper I focus on one type of movement: walking, and I first define and distinguish four types of organizational walking: transition-related walking, recovery-related walking, visibility-related walking, and relational-related walking. Second, I elaborate on why organizational walking – beyond increasing employees’ well-being – has important outcomes. In bringing back the body and bodily movements to the corporate office, and to working-from-home arrangements, the concept of organizational walking helps explain how and why walking has important consequences for everyday organizational life, and why we in a new normal also needs to facilitate and foster organizational walking.