1 / 12

Managing with Passion: An Exploration in Organizational Aesthetics

Managing with Passion: An Exploration in Organizational Aesthetics PAUL SHRIVASTAVA, Bucknell University, paul.shri@gmail.com MICHELLE COOPER, Artist, mich.coop@gmail.com Outline Issues: Emotions, Passion, Managing with Passion Method: Aesthetics, Organizational Aesthetics, Embodied Learning

Samuel
Download Presentation

Managing with Passion: An Exploration in Organizational Aesthetics

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Managing with Passion:An Exploration in Organizational Aesthetics PAUL SHRIVASTAVA, Bucknell University, paul.shri@gmail.com MICHELLE COOPER, Artist, mich.coop@gmail.com

  2. Outline • Issues: Emotions, Passion, Managing with Passion • Method: Aesthetics, Organizational Aesthetics, Embodied Learning • Research Setting: Argentine Tango as Embodiment of Management Skills • Experience Passion: – Demo, Dance Tango • Discussion – Role of Passion in Organizations & in Life

  3. Emotions, Passion, Managing with Passion • Emotions, emotional knowledge, is critical but a taboo in organizations. • “Managing” is supposedly rational, analytical, & objective. Little space is given to subjectivity, emotions, passion, or intuition. • Yet, no great human feat was accomplished without Passion and emotional engagement. • Passion refers to deep emotional commitment and engagement – it is an embodied experience – using body, mind, and spirit/emotions. • Aesthetics is a path to understanding passion & emotional life of organizations

  4. My Interest in Managing with Passion • Origins - Founding and running eSocrates, Inc. • Passionate entrepreneurs in the incubator, at VC Conferences. • Engaging body (90 hour weeks), mind (planning, strategizing, designing software) and emotions (elation-depression cycles). • Reading philosophy, sociology, and neurology of emotions & passion. • Taking up dance (Argentine Tango) as an aesthetic medium.

  5. Method: Aesthetics • Beauty is an enduring virtue, there is truth in beauty • Aesthetics = sensory knowledge and felt meaning of objects and experiences. • Reason and logic often contrasted with emotion and feeling • What they have in common is that both are sources of knowledge and generate meanings we rely and act on. • Aesthetic inquiry seeks sensory and emotional knowledge, inter-subjective truth • Mode of inquiry is Art – painting, music, dance, drama, theater • Art v/s Science> Art+Science> Art as Science • Dance your dissertation http://gonzolabs.org/dance/contestants/

  6. Organizational Aesthetics • Organizations/Organizing need beauty, art and creativity. • Organizational aesthetics – sensory knowledge and felt meaning of organizational objects/processes, use of artful methods, artistic innovations. • Organizational Relevance of Aesthetics – • Creativity in tech, ads, communications, entrepreneurship • Aesthetic Practices –Architecture, Apple’s product design, Texas Death Row Narratives • Links to larger social, ecological, life context • Organizational Scholarship - AACORN, Aesthesis Journal

  7. Research Setting: Dance, Argentine Tango as a Vehicle for Managing with Passion • Dance - an expressive art, social, cross cultural, historical • Argentine Tango – Social dance, 1880s immigrant to global citizens, • Argentine Tango - an embodiment of management values and skills - improvisation, communication, teamwork, leadership, and community development.  • These managing skills are practiced by couples in social Tango dancing

  8. Argentine Tango: Music, dance, culture of Passion • emotional music with complex intellectual themes (love, loyalty, relationships, beauty, loss, nostalgia, abandonment) • physical sensual, aware • Connection and communication • Socialization and community

  9. Readings • Nussbaum, M. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, London: Cambridge University Press, London 2001 • Hopfl, H. (Ed.), The aesthetics of organization . London: Sage, 2000.

  10. Demo • Leadership (make follower feel beautiful, secure, learn follower steps) • Teamwork (self-practice, synchronicity aesthetic) • Communication (via gaze, smile, embrace, weight shift, steps, torso, arms, legs) • Community

  11. Experiencing Passion - Embodied Knowing • Conceptual/Intellectual to Sensory/Emotional • Aesthetic Experience v/s Prepositional Knowing • Towards holistic embodied learning

  12. Emotional Infrastructure of Organizations • Organizations have an “emotional infrastructure”, much like they have a physical infrastructure (land, plant and facilities) and a technology infrastructure (info systems, equipment, processes). • Passion skills can provide access to emotional infrastructure composed of moods, climate, assumptions, culture, goodwill, beliefs, mutual trust and authenticity.

More Related