Not Just for Show: How Aesthetics Underpins Work Within and Around Organizations

Abstract

Organizational aesthetics is a way of understanding organizational life based on sensory reactions to its material components, such as objects and settings (Baldessarelli, Stigliani, & Elsbach, 2022; Strati, 1992). Following the recent material and spatial turn in organization studies (Boxenbaum et al., 2018; Jones et al., 2017; van Marrewijk & Yanow, 2010), scholars have begun to acknowledge and document the role of aesthetics in organizations and institutions. However, the topic remains relatively unexplored, and substantial opportunities exist in management research for further analysis and theorization. This symposium brings together scholars who empirically study aesthetics in relation to key organizational topics (i.e., coordination, creative collaboration, institutionalization, stigmatization) to provide novel insights into how aesthetics contributes to organizational and institutional processes. In particular, the symposium extends management scholarship by emphasizing how aesthetics influences the construction and disruption of meanings across a variety of research settings. The four empirical papers highlight how material and visual artifacts and the subsequent experiences emerging from their use and manipulation support organizational and institutional work by forming or challenging collective understandings. In doing so, the studies point to novel research directions concerning (1) the role of interactions with artifacts that trigger sensory reactions leading to collective achievements, and (2) the use and manipulation of artifacts to strengthen cognitive and symbolic processes that challenge dominant meanings. Inducing Artifactual and Aesthetic Experience to Enable Coordination Presenter: Mercedes McBride; Case Western Reserve U. Presenter: John Paul Stephens; Case Western Reserve U. Clients as Feedback Providers: A Study of Creative Projects Presenter: Giada Baldessarelli; Imperial College Business School Presenter: Ileana Stigliani; Imperial College Business School The Role of Multimodality in the Anti-Vaccination Rhetoric Presenter: Elena Bruni; Luiss Guido Carli U. Presenter: Dennis Clemens Jancsary; WU Vienna Presenter: Renate Elisabeth Meyer; WU Vienna & Copenhagen Business School The Symbolic Manipulability of Market Offerings: Strategies for Mitigating Consumer Resistance Presenter: Anders Dahl Krabbe; King's Business School