You are right Michael. You provide a way to see the beauty in even the most posivitistic styles of research. I find it easier to do this with leadership practice for some reason (love?), seeing in it the ideas that artists have sensitized me to. I need to do this with research as well, which I guess I have begun already by looking into painting methods as a means to grasp the differences between research methodologies. But in this I still hold onto the divisions, as you rightly point out. In future I shall see what happens if I give that up and hope for a more peaceful or at least graceful/grateful state. Thanks for the pointer!
________________________________
From: Aesthetics, Creativity, and Organisations Research Network on behalf of Elmes, Michael B.
Sent: Sun 4/8/2007 12:58 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Art's place in organization studies
Thinking about Daved, Mary Jo and Steve's thoughtful comments over the past
two days...I wonder to what degree the lines we draw to distinguish between
what "we" do (as ACORNers) and what "they" do as scholars who operate from a
more scientific perspective are illusive and serve other purposes. I am
thinking here about poet, Gary Snyder's comments about nature and where to
find it (he said, look to the plants sprouting up in the cracks of the
sidewalk rather than the magnificent forests of the national parks). Maybe
there is more art in the way "mainstream" MOS research is conducted that
anybody cares to admit - sure there are constraints and epistemological
differences as well. But there is a lot of art I believe in a rigorous double
bind study (and considerable rigor in the kind of artistic experimentation
that Daved described). Which then raises the question of why we see, believe
in, and act on these lines as if they were real...I would argue that in the
mutually constitutive world of resistance and identity, that we need
mainstream MOS research to define who we are and what we are about in the
academy. That is a good thing I believe and ultimately a good thing for the
academy. Expelled from the AOM meeting, perhaps it inspires us to have these
conversations with ourselves and those mainstreamers on the other
side...indeed, in the spirit of Easter, perhaps it enables us to rise up like
seeds scattering in the wind.
Hope everyone has had is or having a lovely Easter.....
Michael Elmes
-----Original Message-----
From: Aesthetics, Creativity, and Organisations Research Network on behalf of
Daved Barry
Sent: Sun 4/8/2007 6:51 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Art's place in organization studies
I didn't mean that aacorn is being scientized. Actually, I meant the
opposite, that we're beginning to find arts-based standards for making and
judging work that are just as rigorous, important, contributive, etc., as
the hard science standards that have been used in MOS (mgmt. and org
studies) for the last century. Things like what you're mentioning here
(creative use of constraints) and like what Steve Carroll mentioned last
time (e.g., noticing the unnoticed). It's kind of like what happened when
Yvonna Lincoln and Egon Guba wrote "Naturalistic Inquiry"--where they
developed a set of counter standards for social research.
An example is experimental research. As you know, MOS has borrowed heavily
from both the physical and life sciences--numerous threats to validity,
double blind experiments, replicability, reliability--all those concepts and
terminology that came from other science labs. Business school laboratories
tend to physically emulate their science lab counterparts. Ignored is the
fact that art has always had experimentation too--involving very different
processes (sketches, being 'completely contaminated', play) that are just as
strong and useful, but not codified the way scientific experimentation has
been and not based on the same ways of knowing the world. Watching Peter
Hanke and Paul Robertson carry out 'conducting experiments' with their
audiences is a great case in point. Because they're after meaningfulness
rather than truth, they employ an experimental methodology which is almost
the opposite of science-based methods (experimenter bias is valued,
aesthetic/emotional response is privileged, accidents are encouraged, etc.);
yet it's just as robust and efficient as the science-based lab studies I've
been part of. Probably more so. In this, they represent a very good
standard, one that's certainly on par with the other standards we've been
using in MOS.
The main problem has been time, and as Eirik Irgens/Ernst Cassirer would
say, "habitual blindness": MOS has used science standards so long that it
institutionally forgot that other equally valuable standards exist. But
that's changed now, and is continuing to change very rapidly. Culture
studies, poststructuralism, SCOS, org. aesthetics, and now aacorn are all
developing standards that were completely unimaginable when I was in school.
I mean, when I was studying we didn't know of the term qualitative--it
simply wasn't in any of our dictionaries. I only stumbled across it after
graduating and finding it used at a school of 'special education'. That was
20 years ago, and just look at how different things have become. This would
be even more the case for Steve Carroll, who was one or two generations
before me, and who was for many years a real aesthetic rarity--the only MOS
guy any of us knew who regularly and rigorously took in the world's art. If
we needed him for advice, we could usually find him at any of the art
theater screenings. I remembered him saying that he tended to split the two,
having a kind of separate day and night life (Steve, correct me if I've
mispoken). Dennis Gioia is another one like that; at one point he told me he
could never conceive of crossing his professional photography work with his
life as an business academic, that it would be professional suicide. Jo,
maybe you were another, at least when you start in MOS. But all that's gone
now. Sure, I get grumpy about the AoM Academy of Arts thing, but as you and
others have pointed out, these new standards/paradigms are shooting up
anyway, right in the midst of the science-based mainstreams. The ground has
been well tilled and fertilized by the previous humanities movements, so
things are springing up quickly. Ten years from now I suspect we'll have a
flourishing artistic MOS as a viable alternative to scientific MOS, replete
with majors and minors in artistic research methods. Maybe it will resemble
Ernst Cassirer's concept of 'two-eyed' viewing (art eye + science eye =
binocular vision), which Eirik Irgens is working so hard on. Something like
this:
fine art--> arts-based craft--> MOS <--science-based craft <--sciences
I like your questions Jo, about what would AoM and the general business
academy look like if it were more aestheticized. I would imagine that some
of the answers will revolve around importing more and more rigorous and
high-level arts standards, but also gradually educating the academy's
citizens so that such standards can be understood and valued. Having first
heard the word "qualitative" 20 years ago, it's taken me a good 15 years to
really appreciate and understand what that word means. The same will be true
for the word "art" (though I hope it won't take so long now). I know that's
really abstract and doesn't really address your question . . . but that's
all that's in me just this Easter morning. Daved
-----Original Message-----
From: Aesthetics, Creativity, and Organisations Research Network
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Hatch, Mary Jo
Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2007 5:01 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Art's place in organization studies
Cannot resist jumping in on Daved's point about the scinentification
(chortling required here) of Aacorn. Lusting after publication leads right
back to our jumping off point for Aacorn, ie wanting to do something else,
something aesthetic or artistic. How do we resist this pressure? Is there a
way to satisfy the constraints of jounal publication AND be creative? Isn't
this what many of our artist members have told us makes art great, that
creative responses to constraint can be the most liberativing act we can
perform? Maybe we should focus on not giving up our aspirations. One way of
course is through starting our own journals, but that almost feels like
quitting to me. How can we invade the territory that threatens to redefine
us and redefine it instead? We are starting to get sessions on a variety of
rosters in the divisions of AoM and we are making even greater headway at
other conferences. I know it did not look too good when AoM kicked us out.
But maybe that was only a warm up for the real fight. Sorry to be using so
much aggressive imagery here. Seems to be all I can come up with at the
moment. Jean's article, which I finally got around to reading this week,
enraged me. Another idea would be to use our own theory and envision a
future in which the Academy is aetheticized. What would it look like? Who
would we be in that world? And how would business have had to change to
support our legitimacy? Perhaps that could lay the ground for avoiding what
almost sounds inevitable when framed in the way Daved just described. At
least let's not go there so soon! We are just getting started.
Jo Hatch
________________________________
From: Aesthetics, Creativity, and Organisations Research Network on behalf
of Daved Barry
Sent: Sat 4/7/2007 7:56 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Art's place in organization studies
Beautifully said Steve. A very eloquent summary and a nice addition to Nancy
Adler's points on why the fine arts are so valuable to organizations,
despite that organizational instrumentality often blinds out what you're
saying. I think what goes especially under-recognized is this 'reminder/wake
up' quality (makes sense, if what you want to do is keep on sleeping). In a
different conversation, Henrik Schrat was noting that art's value is in
reminding us of our unique abilities to create, and create/see in unusual
ways (seeing what goes unnoticed)-and that this has always been a feature of
so-called great art-which is why it's worth revisiting, even if we might not
use those techniques or approaches anymore. In this, I suppose it's really
more than a reminder. Or it's a reminder that has a certain lifefulness and
undecidability (unlike post-it reminders).
Your comments also got me to think about where our area is heading. And I'm
starting to think that it may indeed take its place alongside science-based
org. studies-much more than I'd first considered. If you think about it, all
the science-based org. studies have looked to the harder sciences for tips
on quality, rigour, methods, etc. Despite that, we have always acknowledged
that org. studies is a messy business-that organization life could never be
controlled or modelled as well as in a lab and that generalizations from lab
studies would always be a so-so, incomplete endeavor.
As our gaze has shifted toward the arts, I see the same kind of relationship
developing. That is, we are looking to the standards set by the professional
fine arts, while at the same time realizing that they are probably quite
unattainable in organizational circles. Just like the hard sciences were
used to 'keep org. studies honest', we're more and more using fine arts to
set the standard for how we should form and judge organizational art
efforts-whether from an arts and/or a craft perspective. Your quote of one
of your artist-manager colleagues ("as an artist I had certain aesthetic
standards which in the business world had to be so compromised to economic
perspectives and lack of aesthetic sensitivity that I continually felt quite
depressed.") catches this very nicely. D
________________________________
From: Aesthetics, Creativity, and Organisations Research Network
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stephen Carroll
Sent: Friday, April 06, 2007 7:52 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Question about art in international development
Because of illness issues I was unable to read until recently the answers
to the query from Stefan about how the study of artists from the fine arts
(sculpture,painting) might be applicable and useful in the education of
manager-leaders. I did summarize these for my own purposes and then
discussed this issue then with the three artists in my family and also with
several of my business school colleagues. I was surprised at the
considerable skepticism I encountered unlike the responses of most (but not
all) the AACORN respondents.
One said "as an artist I could focus on one project and invest all my
attention there but as a manager I had to split my time over a vast array of
projects, problems, and goals".
The jobs are quite different. Another said "as an artist I had certain
aesthetic standards which in the business world had to be so compromised to
economic perspectives and lack of aesthetic sensitivity that I continually
felt quite depressed. All of my academic colleagues said that the fine arts
were for enjoyment in an aesthetic sense only and not useful for managers.
However they concurred that some of the arts (films and some literature) did
have value in management education and were in fact long used for that. They
also tended to say that contemplating completed art objects added nothing of
educational value but conceeded when asked that studying the artistic
process could have somerelevance with what manager-leaders do at some
times.
Yesterday I visited the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and just looking at
paintings and sculpture I could see lots of educational value in
contemplating fine art. The art also was created with a view to reminding
observers of important stories and myths in particular cultures which
underly fundamental values and beliefs of that culture and which help bond
individuals together. These stories like all of literature obviously help us
to transcend vicariously our limited experiences due to age, era. geography,
genderm ethnicity, etc. As several AACORN respondents indicated art teaches
us to see what we usually do not notice- it tells us this is important! "The
skill of the painter lies in the eye not the hand" Even if we do notice it
helps us to see more clearly (as someone once said the beauty behind
ugliness and the ugliness behind beauty). Art reminds us of the many
exemplar heroes in our past which we obviously need to remember in coping
with great difficulties and trials. It tells us that others who are
different than us can be just as beautiful and wise as we are. Looking at
art can temper our arrogance (of plentiful supply in management) and can
help us to remember what sages of all nations have said are the most
critical human values (compassion, wisdom, etc. ) even if they so often
overlooked. Of course art can help provide us with hope and positive
emotions in such a trying world that all too often breeds synicism and
bitterness. It provides an escape from tension ans stress. If we go behind
the creation of individual objects to the artist we can obviously learn
lessons from the process used to create it and perhaps to the lessons from
the artist creators themselves.
I suppose all of this is obvious but why do so many- perhaps most- ignore it
to their detriment? Of course I'm preaching to the choir here.
Steve
Stephen (Steve) Carroll
Maryland Business School
301/405-2239
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