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Enlivening Management Practice Through Aesthetic Engagement: Vico, Baumgarten and Kant

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Abstract

Organisational aesthetics is a burgeoning field with a growing community of scholars engaged in arts-based and aesthetic approaches to research. Recent developments in this field can be traced back to the works of early Enlightenment writers such as Vico, Baumgarten and Kant. This paper examines the contributions of these three philosophers. In particular it focuses on Vico’s treatment of history and myth; Baumgarten’s notion of sensation and its relationship to rationality; and Kant’s investigations into form and content. An exploration of an artistic organisation in change demonstrates how the conduct of an aesthetically aware manager can be informed by qualities such as an alert imagination and intuition, comfort with the chaotic, backward thinking, and attention to inner sensations and perceptions, all working together to provide a coherent view of the organisation.

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References

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  4. Ibid. In his summary of Karl Weick’s theoretical contribution to organisational studies, Eisenberg quotes Weick’s statement ‘remember that ambivalence builds resilience’.

  5. Ibid

  6. Ibid

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  8. For an analysis of the isomorphic problem see Param Srikantia & Diana Bilimoria ‘Isomorphism in Organization and Management Theory’ Organization &Environment, 10 no 4 (1997) pp 384—406

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  27. Ibid (p 19)

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  29. Discussions on these ideas were not limited to these three philosophers, however. For example, in the English speaking world the Scottish lawyer, minister and academic, Archibald Alison (1792-1867) maintained in his Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste (1790) that works of art trigger ideas and images beyond the works themselves and that enjoyment of art means indulging in the stream of these perceptions. According to Alison, art provides the stimulus for connections to be made between a specific art work and the reflexive examination of life. For Alison, aesthetic engagement ‘almost involuntarily extend[s]…to analogies with the life of man, and bring[s] before us those images of hope or fear, which, according to our particular situations, have dominion of our hearts!’ (p 10).

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  38. Ibid (p 42)

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  50. Ibid ‘poiesis’ which literally means ‘to make’ is derived from the ancient Greek and is the root for the contemporary word ‘poetry’

  51. Rudolf Makkreel loc cit 1994

  52. Steffen Gross loc cit 2002

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  57. Ibid (§ 26)

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  59. Op cit (§ 10)

  60. Op cit (§ 10)

  61. Kant devotes an entire section of The Critique of Judgment to a specific discussion on this subject in ‘Of purposiveness in general’ (§10). An end is ‘the object of a concept, in so far as the concept is regarded as the cause of the object,’ and purposiveness is ‘the causality of a concept with respect to its Object’ (Kant’s emphasis). But Kant often uses the terms ‘end’ and ‘purposive’ in ways that are related to, but do not quite fit these definitions. In particular ‘end’ is sometimes used to apply to the concept rather than the corresponding object (Introduction IV), and ‘purposiveness’ is usually used to denote, not the causality of the concept, but the property in virtue of which an object counts as an end.

  62. Op cit (§ 59)

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  64. Op cit §15

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  68. See for example the report Americanizing the American Orchestra Washington DC: American Symphony Orchestra League 1993. Richard Florida makes a similar claim for the involvement of creative people in community life: Richard Florida ‘The Rise of the Creative Class: Why Cities Without Gays and Rock Bands are Losing the Economic Development Race’ Retrieved 23 December, 2002, from http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.florida.html 2002

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Bathurst, R. Enlivening Management Practice Through Aesthetic Engagement: Vico, Baumgarten and Kant. Philos. of Manag. 7, 61–76 (2009). https://doi.org/10.5840/pom20097229

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