Arts and Organizations

Conceptual Overview

Conceptual understanding of OA as something other than aestheticizing, embellishment, illustration, or decoration gets its main inspiration from aesthetic philosophy. Historically, Enlightenment-era German philosopher Immanuel Kant admired nature as an organization of divine art. Similarly, classical organizational scholar and neo-Kantian sociologist George Simmel admired social organization as human works of art. Finally, from a rational decision making and customary tradition, Max Weber acknowledged the organizational artistry of charisma in successful leaders. Thus, aesthetic philosophy, via Kant, Weber, and Simmel, was transformed into aesthetic sociology that explicitly made the link between organization and art. This theoretical orientation of OA has made the concepts of play, control, aesthetic leadership, and action central to the study of organizing and organization.

Philosophical aesthetics, as raised from Immanuel Kant´s third critique onward in the Western philosophy of art, informs how art helps infuse life in society by generating free play between the poles of formal reason—such as organizing according to rules and standards—and of material factuality—which legitimizes a view of organizing as quasi-natural and law-bound phenomena. According to Kant, although both form and matter are necessary for organizing, they are insufficient for making organizations dynamic and attractive, for it takes play situated in-between to add life and energy. The function of OA is thus to prevent squeezing out of play when only serious form and matter are considered important for organizing.

OA is a highly systematized activity engaging not only artists and their audience but also critics and, to an increasing extent, the technicians that provide the tools and programs to build and stage contemporary artwork. Although art is highly intuitive and creative, it needs managerial control, but of a different type than that usually thought of in non–art organizations of business or industry. Artistically incorporating the concept of control in order to open up to creative play-fulness is central to OA.

OA operates in the real world in organizations and markets, but it does not work for organizations and markets. In a study widely read by both organizational scholars and organizational artists, French sociologists Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello foresaw that art might be best suited to understand, oppose, and influence the new spirit of global capitalism at the end of the 20th century. The contributions of other, primarily European, organizational scholars provide clear evidence that aesthetics has entered the field of organizational studies as a critical force. Though some scholars are hesitant to combine the study of contemporary [Page 73]art with aesthetics, others embrace the idea of letting art inform their investigation of the phenomena of organizing.

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