The Aesthetic Turn in Management

Stella Minahan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780815397403
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351147941
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Organization students and scholars are able to trace the rise of aesthetics in management studies through the papers presented in this volume. The papers are arranged for individual review or thematic explorations of aesthetic thinking; including review papers and articles that focus on fashion, narrative, theatre, music and craft. This volume is a major contribution for those seeking alternatives to rational and positivist perspectives on management and who are willing to explore those alternatives beyond the usual disciplinary bases.

Part I
The Aesthetic Turn: Arts and Appreciation in Organization and Management

[1]
Aesthetic Understanding of Organizational Life

ANTONIO STRATI

Trento University

The weak point of study of aesthetics in organizational life has been theorists’ definition of the object of analysis, even before their use of methodology and techniques. This article takes a holistic approach to organizations in order to promote aesthetic awareness as a legitimate form of understanding organizational life. It is in contrast to previous approaches that treat the aesthetic dimension as one organizational theme among many. The article illustrates the elusiveness of the aesthetic dimension as an object of knowledge, and it also demonstrates the close link between the organizational aesthetic and the complex process of its deconstruction, comprehension, and communication.

The feeling of beauty is one of the factors that structure organizational life; it is an organizational fact (Strati, 1990: 217). The “beautiful” lies at the core of the analytical framework presented here, even if there are several aesthetic categories, ranging from 6 to 64 in the aesthetic literature: the ugly, the sublime, the graceful, the sacred, the comic, the picturesque.

The category of beauty is found in many areas of study, from aesthetics to ethics, and it subsumes a variety of notions which still hide a mystery (Milani, 1991: 40). The history of beauty dates back to Plato, who considered the beautiful to be one of the three prime archetypes, together with the true and the good. The aesthetics of the ancient Greeks, however, only referred to poetry, music, dance, and mime. Such was the prehistory of aesthetics, first as a specific field of inquiry in philosophy, and then as a part of other sciences. The discipline of aesthetics, in fact, was only founded two centuries ago, as part of the rationalist paradigm that facilitated the institutionalization of art, and eventually made possible the discipline’s autonomous development. I consider the category of beauty to be useful in interpretation of organizational life because, thanks to its long history and to its mystery, it can be applied to a wide range of diverse situations. At the same time, and partly in contradiction, I agree with Langer’s reflections on art. Regard ing music, Langer noted that people sing, make rhythms, and listen to music during their work, and she observed that these actions cannot be considered as art because pure self-expression does not require an artistic form (1963/1942: 216). However, today it is generally acknowledged that analysis of beauty may be extended from art to social practices (Vattimo, 1977: 46), but under what circumstances is the beautiful apparent? There is, in fact, a continuous shifting between aesthetics as a form of knowledge and aesthetics as an organizational dimension, aspect, or object. Such movement is unavoidable and appropriate to the aesthetic understanding of organizational life because it brings to light the playfulness of the aesthetic experience. Gadamer (1975), for example, described the ebbing and flow ing of waves and of light and asserted that repeated nonfinite movement is fundamental to the notion of play (which also lies at the anthropological basis of the experience of art, together with the concepts of symbol and feast). Finally, the aesthetic approach to the study of organizational life has some aesthetic similarities to Duchamp’s notion that objects in everyday life (such as chairs and bicycles) could be combined and slightly modified to produce a work of art. This conception of art is at odds with the conventional paradigm; nevertheless, more relevant to the approach that I propose here is that Duchamp’s “ready-mades” were beautiful in his eyes and they gave him pleasure (Russell, 1985: 170).

The aesthetic understanding of organizational life is an epistemological metaphor, a form of knowledge diverse from those based on analytical methods. My intention is to argue for an approach that does not compart mentalize the aesthetic into organizational products or into the various boxes in which organizational life is conducted and studied. I shall seek to show the reader the complexity, ambiguity, subtlety, and pervasiveness of the aesthetic in organizational routine and the richness and plausibility of the knowledge generated by examination of the aesthetic experience. I should also point out that the researcher has direct access to the aesthetic in organizational life, to its features and to its diversities, to its abstractness and to its visibility. Nevertheless, except for a few organizational scholars (Ben ghozi, 1987; Gagliardi, 1990), he or she ignores the aesthetic dimension and, it seems to me, does it either because he or she does not know how to handle it or because it has scant legitimacy. This decision not only concerns the researcher (i.e., his or her self-awareness as a subject of the process of disciplinary knowledge), it also blurs communication of his or her approach to the organizational actor and the reader.

Aesthetics as Organizational Understanding

In this section I will illustrate the aesthetic dimension within an organization using a nontraditional approach. First, I will address the theme of corporate and individual aesthetics, and second, I will explain how aesthetics can loosen organizational boundaries.

Regarding the first topic, I will examine the motives that lead to the acquisition and production of aesthetics in an organization and the various small adjustments made to it by each of the organization’s members: These adjustments may be fortuitous or they may be part of organizational and individual rationalities. Regarding the second topic, I will discuss how aesthetics opens significant “windows in the walls of the organization,” that is, windows that both interface with the organization’s aesthetic materials and constitute a mirror of organizational facts. I will also describe how assigned organizational space may be occupied according to aesthetic criteria that bring to the fore the subjects’ visibility strategies and the organizational symbols that express the organization’s choice of environment. What is most important, however, is to provide a description of a complex, multiform, and unique organizational setting, one that is rich with insights for reflection and, above all, in some way familiar. I will attempt to do so by referring only to a certain number of physical objects that give the aesthetic appearance to two offices in an Italian firm. This choice is motivated by my assumption that this may be the commonest situation in which researchers of organizations find themselves. My intention is to give an idea and the “flavour” of the aesthetic reading of the organizational life. As a result, certain analytical details and conceptual observations will, unfortunately, be either touched upon very briefly or excluded from the following description.

The Chairman’s Office

During my research I paid a visit to the chairman’s office of the organization I was studying. His office was on the second floor; that is, it was not on the top floor of the building, but it occupied a position that in many ways was intermediate and central. Hanging on the walls of the chairman’s room were (a) his own painting, (b) pictures that had been there before him and were the property of the organization, (c) pictures that were more organizational in nature and served to illustrate and embellish the company. To complete the description of its appearance and aesthetic, the room contained two beautiful plants; a small table apparently haphazardly scattered with publications displaying the organization’s products and premises to gether with publicity material from other organizations; a low cupboard of light-colored wood, which was, in fact, a filing cabinet; a small bookcase containing some objects; a computer, a telephone, a tape recorder, and the organization’s logo, all arranged on the desk top; and finally a sofa and two small armchairs. The walls were painted off-white.

The chairman often left his door half open when he was alone. A person could immediately see whether the chairman could be disturbed or if he was on the telephone. Passers-by could exchange rapid nods with him and sense what sort of mood he was in. Above all, they could make sure they were seen.

The chairman’s desk stood immediately opposite the door to one side and on the left of the room. That is, the eyes of those entering the door were drawn to the chairman’s desk, which was on one side of the room between his armchair and armchairs for his guests. The desk, which held the objects previously described, was usually strewn with file folders, publications, and memoranda. When seated, the chairman was directly in front of his visitor(s). To their right, between two French windows that opened onto a small balcony, hung a painting of an elderly woman; she had a proud, soft but determined expression on her face and she was painted sitting in aristocratic surroundings. The painting dated back a number of years, but was not as old as one might have thought from the woman’s clothing, the posture of the sitter, and the painter’s style. It was a portrait of the current chairman’s maternal grandmother.

I have described the physical aspect of the room—furniture embellishment, status symbols, work technologies, and the organizational communication of them, avoiding the customary procedure of separating them according to their functions or hierarchies. I have done this because it is fundamentally important in the aesthetic reading of organizational life to avoid any distinction between what is a piece of artwork and what is an object of routine practice, and between what are art events and the events of everyday life. The description of the appearance of the office leads to analysis of a specific strategy of the chairman’s organizational visibility. The location of the office in an intermediate position within the building, the placement of the door (half-open), and the position of the chairman’s desk (opposite the door) showed that he was both available and at work; they did not emphasize his hierarchical position. Great care had been taken with his work place—it was both pleasurable and significant. Taken together, the objects in the office signaled the organization’s work philosophy, and the general feeling was homogeneous and consistent. The setting was not the outcome of a single person’s design: The image of organizational life in the office was made up of a plurality of different, particular images that opened “new windows” onto the organization’s past and present life. This is illustrated by the three kinds of pictures that were found in his office. They were for display; that is, they belonged to the expressive sphere of the organization—they were not part of its operational structure, nor were they its raison d’être or its product. They provide an insight into the history of the organization and an idea of the complex processes that construct organizational aesthetics.

If a person looked around the room, his or her eye would be drawn first toward the chairman’s desk and his original painting. The unknown kinship of the portrayed woman and the signature of an obscure artist, the style that dated the picture to a relatively remote past, might have led the person to believe that the subject of the portrait, given the context, was a founding member of the organization.

Opposite the chairman, above the sofa and the low table with the magazines, hung a large picture belonging to the organization. This very large abstract painting, which was executed with considerable style, covered the entire wall. The previous chairman had placed it on the wall where it now hung. Of all the suggestions made by the artistic consultant hired by the organization to advise the previous chairman in his choice, this painting was the most valuable. It was an extremely expensive picture: The money spent on it could have been used to decorate several other offices. In this company, there was no general desire that people should benefit from works of art so that their offices could be made beautiful for colleagues and visitors, but the expense of this purchase certainly resulted in many offices being decorated only with posters. In general, however, the painting gave pleasure to those who looked at it. The former chairman had been right; The members of the organization liked the picture there, exactly where it had been hung.

Next, against the wall by the door were the bookcase and (above it) a large photograph of the organization’s bottling and bottle-boxing production line. This photograph documented one of the company’s historical facts: the first assembly line to be invented, designed, and built by the organization (the first real line, not a prototype). A section of this line could be seen in the photograph: two rollerways, one for bottling, the other, moving in the opposite direction, for boxing. One could also imagine the area where the bottles were aligned before being lifted onto the line and boxed into cartons. The photograph showed this area only partially, leaving the observer to imagine a suspension between the first track and the second. Striking poses around this section of the production line—photographed half-length and with their eyes fixed on the camera—were the previous chairman, the two owners, and an engineer, all wearing jackets and ties, and the technician and three workers in overalls. The same picture was reproduced in the organization’s brochures and could also be seen—as a photograph—hanging in the corridor leading to the conference room. The original photograph in the chairman’s office was slightly yellowed and faded. It had been taken by a professional photographer, as was evident from the embossed stamp in the lower left-hand corner.

A large plant and a small picture completed the decorations for this wall. The small picture was a figurative-abstract graphic work by a well-known artist, purchased previously as an investment by one of the owners on the suggestion of a friend who ran an art gallery. The picture had pleased the owner, but aroused the curiosity and admiration of the chairman and others, who were uncertain about its meaning and unsure that they would have hung it in that place. The picture was worth a great deal of money. Why it was so valuable nobody knew, but taking care of it was a fact that provoked argument and worry. What if somebody stole it? The picture did not belong to the organization; it belonged to the owner who had purchased it for the organization, and although the owner was not physically present, it constantly kept his image fresh in the organization members’ thoughts. The presence of the picture was not unsettling, but it generated a sense of uncertainty: No one was sure of its artistic or economic value, nor of its position in the organization.

Finally, on the wall behind the chairman’s desk, but slightly to one side of it, were pictures that he found useful for his day-to-day work: large sheets of paper with messages (in blue, red, green, and black) written in capital letters. They were apparently randomly placed. These sheets ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I THE AESTHETIC TURN: ARTS AND APPRECIATION IN ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT
• PART II FOLLOWING AND FRAMING MANAGEMENT FASHION
• PART III FROM FASHION TO FICTION: NARRATIVE AND STORYTELLING APPROACHES
• PART IV THE THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE OF MANAGEMENT
• PART V MANAGEMENT IMPROVISATION: JAZZ AND BEYOND
• PART VI CRAFTING MANAGEMENT AND MANAGEMENT STUDIES
• Name Index