Organizational Aesthetics

Organizational Aesthetics attempts to reconstruct artful representations of the organizational world and businesspeople. It looks at organizations and management through the eyes of artists, painters, and photographers and decodes meanings contained in artistic messages, grasping the aesthetic perceptions of the world of management and organization. Paintings and photos are analysed using qualitative methods from the social sciences as well as from the art analysis tradition. The novelty of the presented approach rests in the original method of parallel dialogues, taking place both in the institutional sphere and between co-authors. The institutional aspect covers a practical, business perspective and extends the narrow framework of a single discipline. It complements academic rigour with elements of digression and free conversation, revealing a variety of nuances for which conventional research paradigms do not always allow. Readers will receive a proposal on how to integrate diff erent approaches to organizational analysis stemming from artistic, managerial, and academic experiences.

Barbara Fryzel, PhD, dr habil. is an economist and an associate professor at Jagiellonian University in Krakow. She has multiple years of managerial experience in international corporations. She is a laureate of the Foundation for Polish Science and was a visiting post-doc scholar at University College London. Her interests include organizational culture, corporate social responsibility, and behavioural ethics. Aleksander MarcinkowskiPh.D., is Senior Lecturer at the Jagiellonian University. His research interests include sociology of organization, organizational culture, and entrepreneurship. He has participated in international research projects on attitudes towards entrepreneurship (in cooperation with Michigan University), on the role of traditional industrial branches in the contemporary European economy (V Framework Program of EU) and on Institutional Development Programs in state and self-government administration (multilateral research done in cooperation with University of Economics, Kraków, Canadian Urban Institute and Polish Ministry of Home Aff airs). He was a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University - Bologna Center.

Introduction. Watching from the riverbank 1. Knowledge hidden in sight 2. Constructing research programmes. Facing methodological requirements 3. Methodology of visual experiences in management research and dialogue on the arts 4. Palaces and cathedrals of finance, temples of trade Paintings and photographs Conclusion. Looking at ourselves in the pupil