Art and Aesthetics At Work

233 Pages·2003·0.76 MB·English

by  Adrian Carr

Art and Aesthetics at Work
Edited by
Adrian Carr and Philip Hancock
Art and Aesthetics at Work
This page intentionally left blank
Art and Aesthetics at Work
Edited by
Adrian Carr
University of Western Sydney
and
Philip Hancock
University of Warwick
Editorial matter,selection and Chapters 1,5 and 9 © Adrian Carr
and Philip Hancock 2003
Other chapters (in order) © Adrian Carr;George Cairns and Tamar Jeffers;
Mary-Ellen Boyle;Catrina Alferoff and David Knights;Nick Nissley,
Steven S.Taylor and Orville Butler;Nancy Harding;Astrid Kersten and
Ronald Gilardi;Karen Dale and Gibson Burrell;Philip Hancock 2003
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Art and aesthetics at work / edited by Adrian Carr & Philip Hancock.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–333–96863–8
1.Organization—Philosophy.2.Work—Philosophy.3.Aesthetics.
4.Art and industry.I.Carr,Adrian,1951– II.Hancock,Philip,1965–
HM786 .A78 2002
302.395901—dc21 2002075803
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
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Contents
List of Plates vii
Preface viii
Acknowledgements xii
Notes on the Contributors xiii
Part I Art and Aesthetics as a Way of
Knowing Organization
1 Art and Aesthetics as a Way of Knowing Organization:
Introduction 3
Adrian Carr and Philip Hancock
2 Art as a Form of Knowledge: The Implications for
Critical Management 7
Adrian Carr
3 Looking into/out of* Organizations through
theRear Window: Voyeurism and Exhibitionism
in Organization Studies (*delete as appropriate) 38
George Cairns and Tamar Jeffers
4 Reconciling Aesthetics and Justice in Organization Studies 51
Mary-Ellen Boyle
Part II Work as an Aesthetically Ordered Activity
5 Work as an Aesthetically Ordered Activity: Introduction 67
Philip Hancock and Adrian Carr
6 We’re All Partying Here: Target and Games,
or Targets as Games in Call Centre Management 70
Catrina Alferoff and David Knights
7 The Power of Organizational Song: An Organizational
Discourse and Aesthetic Expression of Organizational Culture 93
Nick Nissley, Steven S. Taylor and Orville Butler
v
vi Contents
8 On the Manager’s Body as an Aesthetics of Control 115
Nancy Harding
Part III Critical Engagements with Aesthetics at Work
9 Critical Engagements with Aesthetics at Work: Introduction 135
Philip Hancock and Adrian Carr
10 The Barren Landscape: Reading US Corporate Architecture 138
Astrid Kersten and Ronald Gilardi
11 An-Aesthetics and Architecture 155
Karen Dale and Gibson Burrell
12 Aestheticizing the World of Organization – Creating
Beautiful Untrue Things 174
Philip Hancock
References 195
Index 210
List of Plates
1 Hands
2 Bakers
3 Soft and Hard Targets
4 Ceiling Mobile on Four Part Call
5 Left of Tower
6 Right of Tower
These can be found between pages 112 and 113
vii
Preface
Over recent years the field of organization studies has exhibited an
increasing interest in the aesthetic dimension of work and its organiza-
tion. Whilst this interest may have been awakened, more generally, by
the publication of such philosophically oriented works as Eagleton’s The
Ideology of the Aesthetic(1990) and Welsch’s Undoing Aesthetics(1997), it
must also be understood in relation to a series of developments within
the field itself over the last three decades or so. The shift from an almost
exclusively objectivist approach to the analysis of organizational prac-
tice exemplified in Weick’s The Social Psychology of Organizing(1969) and
Silverman’s The Theory of Organizations (1970), for example, signified a
significant step along the path towards an acceptance of the relevance
of sensuality to understanding the rich tapestry that is organizational
life. Of equal, and perhaps greater contemporary importance, has been
the groundbreaking work focusing on manifestations of organizational
culture and symbolism (Turner, 1990; Alvesson and Berg, 1992) with the
Third International Conference on Organizational Symbolism(1987) whose
theme was ‘The symbolics of corporate artifacts’, particularly notewor-
thy, resulting as it did in the publication of a selection of papers (see
Gagliardi, 1990a) that helped to inform and focus the field of organiza-
tion studies on the presence of an aesthetic sensibility.
Subsequently, a range of published contributions to the field have
been forthcoming, including individual journal articles (Carr, 1997;
Guillén, 1997; Rustead, 1999; Carr and Zanetti, 2000) thematic editions
of journals (Organization, 1996; Human Relations, 2001), chapters in
edited collections (Hancock and Tyler, 2000; Thompson, Warhurst and
Callaghan, 2000), edited books (Linstead and Höpfl, 2000a) and mono-
graphs (Strati, 1999), many of which have been characterized by the
work and ideas of scholars who draw significantly on a range of radical
traditions within the social sciences, including critical theory, post-
structuralism and postmodernism. Furthermore, in addition to such
academic and critically oriented offerings, more populist management
writers are also starting to contribute significantly to the diffusion of
aesthetic concepts throughout the business world. For example, build-
ing on the work of writers on corporate identity and design such as
Olins (1989), the likes of Dickinson and Svensen (2000) have sought in
their millennium manifesto, Beautiful Corporations: Corporate Style in
viii
Preface ix
Action, to argue the case for an organizational aesthetic that expresses
beauty and style through everything from physical design to corporate
ethics and environmental responsibility.
It is to this embryonic, if albeit increasingly flourishing body of
research and literature within management and business studies that
this edited volume seeks to both contribute and help take beyond its
current stage of development.
Rationale
Art and Aesthetics at Work, while an ambiguous title is not one that was
deliberately contrived to be so. Initially, it was conceived of simply as a
description of the subject matter of the volume. That is, what the vari-
ous contributors consider to be the role and opportunities that art and
aesthetics are increasingly coming to play in the study and practice of
work organizations. However, it quickly became clear that an alternative
meaning, implicit within the title’s semantic construction, also had
great relevance for the volume. For, what many of the chapters con-
tained within this collection are at pains to consider is not only the
presence of art and aesthetics within the everyday life of the workplace,
but equally, how these are increasingly put to work in the service of a
range of organizational aspirations and goals, or, alternatively, how they
can provide a range of novel and informative insights into the structur-
ing and maintenance of organizational activities, particularly those
which rely upon the continued existence of asymmetrical relations of
power and control. Aesthetic experience is thus differentially conceptu-
alized at various stages throughout this volume, not only as an outcome
of divergent terms of reference or theoretical agendas, but also as a con-
sequence of the positioning and functioning that is ascribed to it within
the organizational domain of work.
The existence of ambiguity should not, of course, provide any great
surprise for those familiar with the equally ambiguous history of the
aesthetic itself. While the origins of the concept can be traced back to
antiquity, its contemporary usage remains highly contested. Originally
conceived of in the work of Baumgarten (1753/1954), as the systematic
study of sensual and affective dimension of human experience the
everyday meaning and usage of the term has shifted and changed con-
siderably over the subsequent centuries. Yet today, while it is still more
likely to be understood in relation to the categorization and judgment
of art, much of Baumgraten’s original conception of its nature remains
in evidence, particularly in work inspired by the critical interrogation of