Organization and the arts: Critical conversations on expanding meanings and understandings of who matters

Abstract

In this article, I celebrate and discuss Organization’s contributions to the conversation between organization studies and works of art, such as literary fiction, poetry, film, etc. I take this critical conversation forward by highlighting several ways in which such works of art expand meanings for our research, and I then build on this to call for expanding understandings of “who matters” in our engagement with the arts and in our scholarship. In particular, I argue for the case of works of art from/of/about the Global South as an opportunity to take our critical project forward, tracing the promising but complex contours that one is likely to encounter in traversing this relatively unchartered terrain. I conclude by building on this discussion to suggest doing art and being ourselves through art as a part of our conversation with the arts in the role of academic activists and as a means of resistance to current oppressive systems.