An apprenticeship to pleasure: aesthetics dynamics in organizational learning

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to show what we can learn from an aesthetics perspective on organizational learning, and especially about some power dynamics unseeable with other perspectives.

Design/methodology/approach

An exploratory ethnographic study based on the turn-to-affect on the case of a theatre play in which many of the bearings that usually guide theatrical creation were removed.

Findings

Analysis highlights that an a priori distribution of the sensible that locks routines, representations and roles is seldom questioned in organizational learning programs; the motion enabling organizational learning is less likely to be brought about by a change in power distribution than with the removal of some elements of power that freeze situations; organizational learning diffusion does not only go through norms, rules, values and repositories, but also through affects; and learning runs through a fragile communication of movements, always under the threat of becoming major knowledge and power distribution.

Research limitations/implications

This paper is based on a single case.

Practical implications

A too tight and close management of organizational learning is likely to thwart and limit its very learning possibilities.

Originality/value

Several findings are in contradiction to technological or too managerial approaches to organizational learning. The study hopes to contribute by providing a supplement of complexity in our analysis of organizational learning, notably advocating for taking into account the role of affects, sensibility and the politics of aesthetics.

Citation

Moriceau, J.-L. and Paes, I. (2016), "An apprenticeship to pleasure: aesthetics dynamics in organizational learning", Society and Business Review, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 80-92. https://doi.org/10.1108/SBR-10-2015-0059