Business reflects culture, and those managers who are most successful are those who can interpret shifts in the prevailing attitudes and aspirations of the dominant culture. Dobson argues that the old models of technical and moral management are giving way to the idea of the aesthetic manager, who holds the art of management and the search for excellence as the highest ideals. He incorporates business ethics, postmodernism, virtue-ethics theory, and real-world examples to illustrate the emerging paradigm of the manager as artisan.
Management-science or management-art? This text addresses this question through a philosophy of an art-related management practice, contributing a paradigmatic thesis of management practiced as an art-form. It goes beyond the extension of aesthetic understanding to management and organization study to aid understanding of management.
Organization students and scholars are able to trace the rise of aesthetics in management studies through the papers presented in this volume. The papers are arranged for individual review or thematic explorations of aesthetic thinking; including review papers and articles that focus on fashion, narrative, theatre, music and craft. This volume is a major contribution for those seeking alternatives to rational and positivist perspectives on management and who are willing to explore those alternatives beyond the usual disciplinary bases.
Environmental law has aesthetic dimensions. Aesthetic values have shaped the making of environmental law, and in turn such law governs many of our nature-based sensory experiences. Aesthetics is also integral to understanding the very fabric of environmental law, in its institutions, procedures and discourses. The Art of Environmental Law, the first book of its kind, brings new insights into the importance of aesthetic issues in a variety of domains of environmental governance around the world, from climate change to biodiversity conservation. It also argues for aesthetics, and relatedly the arts, to be taken more seriously in the practice of environmental law so as to improve our emotional and ethical capacities to address the upheavals of the Anthropocene.
Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said, “Ethics is aesthetics.” It is unclear what such a claim might mean and whether it is true. This book explores contentious issues arising at the interface of ethics and aesthetics. The contributions reflect on the status of aesthetic en ethical judgments, the relation of aesthetic beauty and ethical goodness and art and character development. The book further considers the potential role art could play in ethical analysis and in the classroom and explores in what respects aesthetics and ethics might be intertwined and even mutually supportive.
A cool, lucid examination of the thought of the American philosopher Charles S. Peirce, offering an important clarification and an innovative way to view human actions and the way management is practiced.
Unis vers Cythère forms a continuation of the ongoing project to disseminate a new faculty of thought called cytherics, which is defined as the sighting and siting of aphrodisian - aesthetic-erotic - environments. The first part of the book proposes «polis thought» as a subdivision within political theory that would encourage attention to the polis element - the openness furnished by the classical polis/city for disputation, rhetoric, performance, ceremony, and the carnivalesque - for political theory and history. The second part develops the concept of the «artful firm», derived from contemporary firm and management theories on «the art firm» and «artful making», to argue for further convergences in related areas of aesthetics and management. Unis vers Cythère begins and ends with essays on the ancient Hellenic twin concepts of «thalassocracy» and «theatrocracy» in their relations to orthodox contemporary theories of political democracy.
Over the last decade or so, aesthetic and art theory has played an increasingly significant role in the way work and its organization has come to be understood. Bringing together the work of an international spectrum of academics, this collection contributes, in an overall more critical vein, to such emerging debates. Combining both empirical and theoretical material, each chapter re-evaluates the emerging relationship between art, aesthetics and work, exploring its potential as both a medium of critical analysis, and as a site of conflict and resistance.
This book contains an Open Access chapter This volume is the first systematic survey of the interface between the aesthetic and strategic domains. The “aesthetic” turn in strategy encompasses the use of aesthetic features and style to create value, as well as the ways in which the useful and the beautiful can be brought together.
In traditional business circles, wisdom is viewed with a certain scepticism, which is in part due to its historical associations with wisdom traditions and spiritual cultures. However, in business today, wisdom is emerging not only as a viable but also a necessary organizational and management practice. In particular, practical wisdom is being updated and retranslated for today’s issues and concerns in organizations. In recent years, leadership and organizational studies have initiated important changes in the way in which business-as-usual is conducted. In response to the increasingly complex and uncertain conditions of our international business environment, a growing community of ‘scholar-practitioners’ are pushing the boundaries of traditional organizational and leadership thinking and acting, making inroads into processes and applications of practical wisdom and ways of wise leading and managing. Given the unprecedented levels of challenges, dynamics and uncertainties that today’s organizations are exposed to, there is a need for a more integrative and sustainable approach to managing. Following the need for a reconsideration and revival of the meaning of wisdom, the editors explore vitalizing possibilities for the learning of wise practices in organizing and leading. This expansive range of domains where wisdom is currently being explored suggests a promising number of perspectives and possibilities for future inquiries and explorations into the nexus of wisdom and organization, leadership/management education and learning that benefits from cross-disciplinary synergies. This book will be of interest to those seeking to understand the growing significance of wisdom in relation to learning and teaching, especially in business and management education.
We have assembled a distinguished international panel of leaders and scholars in management education whose contributions reflect diverse perspectives on management theory and practice. Gerald Ferris and his associates conceptualize political skill to include self and social astuteness, influence and control, networking and building social capital, and genuineness/sincerity. Their chapter describes methods for developing and shaping such skills. Nick Nissley examines how arts-based learning is informing the practice of management education. How artful ways of knowing are being practiced in organizations. Anne McCarthy and associates provide a cutting-edge balanced assessment of both service learning theory and its current practice. Godshalk and Foster-Curtis present four models of online MBA curricula focused on part-time students including curricular issues, technology requirements, and funding and institutional commitment requirements for each model. Sabine Seufert examines eLearning models of web-based education and web education support services. Her chapter offers a breathtaking, panoramic view of six landscapes for eLearning business models and best practices emerging from both the corporate and academic sectors. Eric Dent's chapter is a thought-provoking critique of doctoral education and innovative suggestions for developing doctoral programs more attuned to the learning requirements of executive managers seeking doctoral education. Tom Moore examines competition within the market for executive education and observes how three sets of rivals have enjoyed distinctive market place perceptions. Antonacopoulou penetratingly critiques the confusion of training with learning in management education. Reed examines the processes of globalization and how their effects should be incorporated into management education.
This timely and incisive Handbook provides critical contemporary insights into the theory and practice of entrepreneurship and marketing in the twenty-first century. Bringing together rich and varied contributions from prominent international researchers, it offers a reflective synthesis of scholarship at the interface between marketing and entrepreneurship.
