Vol. 4 No. 1 (2015)

This special topic calls for new ways of seeing that are necessary to understand the actual ‘realities’ of the world we live in, and not to mistake that for seeing things as are they are labelled. Arts informed methods have been recognised for exploring, examining and eliciting the less obvious, the unaccountable, the so-called non-rational elements of organizational experience, countering the more traditional business and management tools of logic and rationality. In this way they can make a significant contribution to disrupting what we already know about organisations and organisational life. Papers in this special edition suggest that arts based methods enable us to access and develop different ways of sensuous knowing which contribute to our engagement with organisational life. They show how working with the arts accesses the range of human emotion and makes a more holistic contribution to our understandings; giving voice to those unheard via traditional mechanisms; enabling access to tacit knowledge, creating contexts in which we are faced with ambiguity and uncertainty; and offering transformative, imaginative ways of approaching, analysing and reflecting on old problems in disruptive and interruptive ways.

Steven S. Taylor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Donna Ladkin (Theory), Plymouth University

Martin Wood (Practice), RMIT University

Ralph Bathurst (Art), Massey University

Brigitte Biehl-MIssal (Reviews), BSP Business School Berlin

Louise Grisoni, Oxford Brookes University

Margaret Page, University of the West of England