Worcester Polytechnic Institute DigitalCommons@WPI Aesthesis Archive Organizational Aesthetics 1-1-2007 Avant-Garde Organization: Understanding Radical Art Practice as Management and Organizational Investigation Jonathan Vickery Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/aesthesis Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons, and the Business Commons To access supplemental content and other articles, click here. Volume 1, Issue 2 Pages 112-127 Recommended Citation Vickery, Jonathan, (2007). "Avant-Garde Organization: Understanding Radical Art Practice as Management and Organizational Investigation". Aesthesis: International Journal of Art and Aesthetics in Management and Organizational Life, Volume 1, Issue 2, p. 112-127. http://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/aesthesis/8 This Volume 1, Issue 2 is brought to you for free and open access by the Organizational Aesthetics at DigitalCommons@WPI. It has been accepted for inclusion in Aesthesis Archive by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WPI. MANAGER AS ARTIST Dégot ‘APHRODISIAN BLISS’ Chytry POEM‘E’: MANAGING ‘ENGAGEMENT’ Guimarães-Costa & Pina e Cunha PERIPHERAL AWARENESS Chia & Holt FUNKY proJECts Garcia and Pérez AesthetiCS OF Emptiness Biehl POETRY PLAY Darmer, Grisoni, James & Rossi Bouchrara WORKPLACE proJECts James DVD DRAMA Taylor AVANT GARDE ORGANIZATION Vickery Aesthesis//Create International journal of art and aesthetics in management and organizational life and organizational International journal of art and aesthetics in management Volume 1//TWO: 2007 AESTHESIS: International Journal of Art and Aesthetics in Management and Organizational Life EditorS Ian W. King, Essex Management Centre, University of Essex, Colchester, UK Jonathan Vickery, Centre for Cultural Policy Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK Ceri Watkins, Essex Management Centre, University of Essex, Colchester, UK Editorial coordiNator Jane Malabar [email protected] Editorial AdviSORY Board Dawn Ades, University of Essex, UK Daved Barry, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugual Jo Caust, University of South Australia, Editor, Asia Pacific Journal of Arts and Cultural Management Pierre Guillet de Monthoux, University of Stockholm, Sweden Laurie Heizler, Wright Hassallthe LLP, Leamington Spa, UK Stephen Linstead, University of York, UK Nick Nissley, The Banff Centre, Canada Antonio Strati, University of Trento and University of Siena, Italy Steve Taylor, Worcester PolytechnicAes Institute, USA thesis This journal is published by THE AESTHESIS ProjEct: The Aesthesis Project was founded in January 2007 and is a research project investigatingproject art and aesthetics in management and organizational contexts. The project has its roots in the first Art of Management and Organization Conference in London in 2002, with successive conferences held in Paris and Krakow. From those events emerged an international network of academics, writers, artists, consultants and managers, all involved in exploring and experimenting with art in the context of management and organizational research. The Aesthesis Project will be developing extensive research and artistic projects internationally, with academic research fellows and associate creative practitioners, publications and consultancy. DESIGN & ART DIRECTION Jonathan Vickery Digital Artwork Integra Communications, Oxford, UK PRINTER Warwick Print, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK http://www.essex.ac.uk/aesthesis/ The views and assertions articulated in this publication do not necessarily represent the views or judgements of the editors or of The Aesthesis Project. ISSN 1751-9853 Aesthesis © 2007: The Aesthesis Project coNTENTS Editorial // 4 PORTRAIT OF THE MANAGER AS AN ARTIST Dégot// 6 ‘APHRODISIAN BLISS’ FOR THE ARTFUL FIRM Josef Chytry // 43 POEM‘E’: PESSOA ON EFFECTIVELY MANAGING ‘ENGAGEMENT’ Nuno Guimarães-Costa & Miguel Pina e Cunha //54 PERIPHERAL AWARENESS IN StrategiC THINKING Robert Chia & Robin Holt // 61 FUNKY proJECts the Ixiar Garcia talks to Asier Pérez //74 AesthetiCS OF Emptiness Aesthesis Brigitte Biehl //80 PLENARY POETRY project Per Darmer, Louise Grisoni, Jane James & Beatrice Rossi Bouchrara //86 blasphemY & DOUbt: DVD Steve Taylor //92 WORKPLACE proJECts Trevor James //94 THE FoUrth Art OF Management AND Organization ConFERENCE //100 aesthesis//Create //110 AVANT GARDE ORGANIZATION Jonathan Vickery //112 SUBMISSIONS // 128 Avant-GARDE ORGANIUNDERZstanDationING RADical ART PRactice as management AND Jonathan Vickery ORGANIZational investigation What concerns have driven management With specific regard to academic research, we now find established cross-disciplinary and organization studies to art? Art, research centres, from the international European Centre of Art and Management (ECAM) to artists, design and the creative process Denmark’s Learning Lab, the European Research Institute for Comparative Cultural Policy have become useful subjects of analysis and the Arts, as well as many institution-specific research projects. Journals Tamara: Journal and a means for re-thinking the value of Critical Postmodern Organization Science, Culture and Organization and Organization of culture and cultural knowledge in Studies regularly feature research on the uses of art or on aesthetics; the International organizational contexts, the nature of Journal of Arts Management and Journal of Cultural Economics also broach this field from management and leadership, new methods their own disciplinary standpoints. Surveying the breadth of current academic research we of communication, the very concept of find that art emerges as process (as cognitive activity; as communicative action; as creative ‘organizational structure’, how organizations signification; as emotional engagement); as object (syntheses of diverse sensory stimuli; maintain a capacity for innovation (combat composition as innovative organizational logic; object-viewer relation as metaphor of object- ‘institutionalization‘ and creative sclerosis), consumer relation; creator of new social dynamics); and as economy (as a business; as a and how they negotiate the border between commodity/market product; as business network (art world); as marketing). Art and inside and outside (the synergy, or lack of, aesthetics have informed the study of marketing communications, such as branding and between the organization and consumer advertising, for decades now, and with growing sophistication (see Schroeder, 2007, 2006). culture). The emerging discipline of ‘design management’ has also put art and aesthetics to work in In the last decade a plethora of publications an industrial as well as commercial retail context (Bruce and Bessant, 2002; Best, 2006). on art, aesthetics, management and The critical objectives of this present article emerged from reading two chapters in Linstead organization has emerged, many of which and Höpfl’s volume The Aesthetics of Organization (2000). The first was Antonio Strati’s ‘The have been read widely in industry and Aesthetic Approach in Organization Studies’; the second was Pierre Guillet de Monthoux’s become part of mainstream business ‘The Art Management of Aesthetic Organizing’. The first (more fully explored in his book literature. Aside from the countless articles Organization and Aesthetics of 1999) cast art as a cognitive enterprise – and aesthetics as and magazine features we could cite, a mode of thinking and knowing that has the capacity to reconstruct dominant conceptions influential books include Pine and Gilmore’s of human rationality, subvert dominant organizational models of human productivity, and The Experience Economy (1998), which extend our philosophical understanding of the aesthetic ground of human experience. The uses theatre and the work of the actor as second, by Guillet de Monthoux, directly engages with specific artworks, artists and art an heuristic by which to examine unexplored movements, generating an innovative mode of philosophical critique and interpretation realms of ‘experience’ in business relevant to specific management and organization issues (developed in his major book The development, observing a paradigm shift Art Firm: Aesthetic Management and Metaphysical Marketing of 2004). Strati is conceptually from the ‘service economy’ to ‘experience abstract, analytical, and concerned with the speculative dimension of problems in economy’; John Dobson’s The Art of organizational aesthetics and the philosophy of management; Guillet de Monthoux is more Management and the Aesthetic Manager discursive and experimental – he uses modes of analysis one finds in art criticism, art theory (1999) offers a critique of existing models and art history, also incorporating random observations, philosophical assertions and vivid of management leadership and identifies ideas, many of which cannot be assimilated into a master argument or single-line trajectory a new paradigm grounded in models of thinking. of thinking, action and communication These two essays – speculative analysis of organizational aesthetics and an empirically- characteristic of the work of the artist; based engagement with actual art and art projects – suggest a substantive emergent Austin and Devin’s Artful Making (2003) research field. Carr and Hancock’s Art and Aesthetics at Work (2003) is an example of extended the concept of the artist’s research since Linstead and Höpfl’s volume that has begun to charter this research field, as improvisation, innovation and leadership have many individual research projects, like the Stockholm-based Fields of Flow project,