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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
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Managing with Passion: An Exploration in Organizational Aesthetics

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  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.

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