Spannungsfeld Personalentwicklung pp 237-252 | Cite as
The Spiritual in Organizations
Abstract
Adam Smith realized that aesthetics played an important role in politics. But the kind of aesthetics that Kandinsky is advancing in his manifesto “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” seems better suited to fit some recent studies of “beauty” as an important organizing factor. This paper tries to grasp the novelty, beyond “the design of objects” and the “taste of individuals”, of such an organizational aesthetics. It seems this “aesthetics” has its historical roots in romanticism such as the philosophy of Friedrich Schiller. It has re-emerged in today’s Europe where both a liberal Smithonean aestethics and materialism with its Marxian aesthetics have lost their appeal. Between subject and object the spiritual in organizations takes on an important aesthetic value. The growing interest in organizational aesthetics vanguards the coming importance of romanticism to understand why people organize.
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