Organizational Aesthetics

A helping handover. Opening Editorial.

Juliet Scott — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 02:34:15 -0800

In taking up my role as Editor in Chief of Organizational Aesthetics (OA) I am reminded of some notions that shape who I am professionally and contribute to my interpretation of the role and the work ahead. They focus on ritual, evaluation, spirals, the object and metaphor of the chair.

Make music not war

Ralph Bathurst — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 02:39:30 -0800

In October 2022 Netflix re-released the 1957 movie The Bridge on the River Kwai, a fictional account of the infamous Death Railway built by Allied prisoners of war in World War II. The bridge of the story was an important link that would connect Burma with Thailand, thus enabling and securing Japanese supply lines. I remember watching this as a youngster and being impressed by the heroism of the incarcerated prisoners, and their ability to withstand abusive captors and their torture.

How artists can help us perceive organisational dysfunction and broken-ness differently

Andy Wear — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 03:54:06 -0800

This paper considers what organizations might learn from the artist and the aesthetic devices they employ in the production of art that deals with dysfunction and broken-ness. By introducing these conditions as central to the redrawing of art’s remit following the existential crises and traumas of the 20th and 21st Centuries, it positions them as central to the critical contestation of what defines ‘functionality’ at an organisational level. From problematising the binarism of (and, consequently, the drawing of the boundary between) dysfunctional|functional and broken|fixed, I offer an organizational alternative as presented by artists. The work of German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) and Venezuelan artist Alejandra Ghersi (1989-) has been carefully selected for the insights they offer to support this task. This paper explores their re-constitution of aesthetic registers (such as harmony, beauty, rhythm, and tone) as an organizational act, and positions the resulting ‘transformative dissonance’ as metaphor for a condition of post-binary organization. By focusing on each artist’s determined non-binarism and the associated aesthetic construct of their respective work, this paper presents approaches to dysfunction and broken-ness that accept dissonance as a natural organizational phenomenon, that then, from this (dis)position of acceptance, avail themselves to the pursuit of organizational transformation.