The aim of the project is to enhance methodological competence in organizational studies by examining the methods used by the aesthetic approach to the study of organizations. It began with a survey of the literature on aesthetic understanding in order to identify the methods and techniques used by the approach. Then decided were the settings to be investigated (phases two and three), which were of various types: the exhibiting of culture in complex organizations like museums (art management), certain military settings, and telemedicine in health care contexts. The diversity of these settings brings out the importance of the aesthetic dimension in people’s everyday lives and shows how empirical methods can be adapted to very different contexts.
The settings examined, however, have a number of similarities as well. They are work environments with distinctive organizational cultures, where the entry of newcomers, and the transmission of work practices, are decisive for the organization’s survival. Art management, the organizational culture of the armed forces, and trialling practices in telemedicine, require competent actors to use faculties closely connected with perceptive-sensory capacities and the aesthetic judgement connected with them. The project examines both the strengths and weaknesses of the techniques used to analyse organizational settings of these kinds. It uses for this purpose participant observation, analysis of audiovisual materials recorded in organizations (ethnomethodological analysis), in-depth interviews, interviews with doubles, and interviews with professional groups.

Researchers: Antonio Strati (coordinator and referent), Enrico Piras, Paolo Rossi, Alberto Zanutto
Period: 2004-2006
Funding: Miur