Overcoming Aesthetic Muteness

Researching Organizational Members’ Aesthetic Experience

Bibliographic Data

ID9889201
AuthorsSteven S Taylor (0000-0002-9833-5516, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume55
Issue7
Pages821-840
Publication date2002-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHuman Relations (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-7267 • E-ISSN: 1741-282X
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0018726702055007542
OpenAlexW1998350049
LanguageEN
Citations received32
References cited30

Direct questioning about the ‘felt sense’ of organizational actions or artefacts is an accepted way to explore organizational members’ aesthetic experience. However, this requires organizational members to be able to talk about their aesthetic experience, to translate that felt sense into language. I suggest this is often difficult due to aesthetic muteness, which is a significant problem, not just for research but for organizational practice in general. I use empirical data to illustrate how this aesthetic muteness is manifested in the research process as organizational members’ difficulty in approaching their experience from an aesthetic perspective, reframing from ‘feeling’ to ‘thinking’, inability to recall aesthetic experience and denial of aesthetic experience. I then speculate that aesthetic muteness might be caused by threats to harmony, efficiency and images of power and effectiveness and that the consequences of aesthetic muteness are aesthetic amnesia, a narrowed conception of organizational aesthetics and aesthetic stress

Aesthetic experience · Aesthetics · Art · Cognitive reframing · Denial · Feeling · Harmony (color · Perspective (graphical · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Creativity in Education and Neuroscience · Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior · Management and Organizational Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology