Keywords

1 Theoretical Introduction

This chapter adopts a view that artwork can offer significant ways of experiencing and knowing that they can become of practical interest for business and society. “Action, though it may have a definitive beginning, never, as we shall see, has a predictable end”, according to Hannah Arendt, 1958/2000, p. 175). The artwork at the University of Oslo, exhibited initially in Berlin, became significant for manifesting Edvard Munch's paintings as a lasting value for Society (Ydstie, 2011; see Chapter 5).

As already contended by the philosopher David Hume (1739/1969), exciting experiences are fundamental for human understanding. Wittgenstein (Brockhaus, 1990) found in his Tractatus that the language including the unsaid was the key to understand the relationship between human beings. He expanded this to music and painting giving an insight into what in particular formed human beings. Wittgenstein (Hacker, 1986) found that music and art gave a deeper lasting understanding of the human mindset. What you cannot talk about you have to be silent about or how is this to be understood? Moving music may be difficult to express and for Wittgenstein this is the unrepresented knowing. Kant (Warburton, 2011) formulated the importance of art and music as a part of the educated mindset. Bourdieu (1993) expanded this into the habitus of the educated class where translating art, design, and music into a way of living is important. The educated middle class or the professional class or the creative class have accepted art, design, fiction, and music as a way of being. The class gives art, design, and music cognitive authority in their daily lives and the expressions have then interpretation and model power as a kind of glass the world is observed through (Foucault, 2001).

However, a rich understanding of human knowledge and experiential capacities has tended to become lost in mainstream management studies, control of knowledge is stressed rather than its creation (Von Krogh, 2000). The process of working greener and smarter through new practices requires time for reflection, learning, and knowledge sharing (Jevnaker, 1993; Olaisen & Revang, 2017). The slowness in adapting to emerging ecosystems might be found in hierarchical, top-down management systems not allowing ordinary people to deliver extraordinary results based upon art, new cultural, and social meanings.

Dewey (1934/1980) concluded that all learning happens through experiences where you are participating both through what you are doing and through all your senses (see Chapter 5). The reflection and dialogues in teams give new mental models of the reality and if exposed to art directly or indirectly this will influence upon the models. Equinor (earlier Statoil) is the largest buyer of contemporary art in Norway and Olaisen (2003) found that the art in all the meeting rooms influenced upon both reflections and dialogues giving a more holistic and friendly atmosphere. Olaisen (2003) and Jevnaker (2005, 2012) supported the activity perspective given by Vygotsky (1934 and 1986). The activity perspective describes a form of scaffolding where a dynamic collaboration of impressions and images creates a changed form of reality.

Art may also contribute to magica either as an incremental or radical innovation in products and processes (Jevnaker, 1993). Magica is a dynamic process driven by tacit knowledge where the process is unknown, but the result is visible through the creative artefacts and their performative results like, for instance, design and architecture (Jevnaker, 2005, 2014; Olaisen & Revang, 2018). Chaos might also give magica (Jevnaker, 1995). The importance of art for our daily lives and leadership is difficult to understand but is a part of collective and individual knowing as a foundation for our professional being (Gombrich, 1986). The theory of art, design, and architecture tells us that the past, present, and future are melting together in sustainable solutions (Osterberg, 1998). Sustainable solutions are needed for businesses and societies (see Chapter 1).

2 The Problem

We will in this chapter investigate how collective knowing develops in art and business contexts giving us an expanded meaning of the process of knowing in practice. Our primary interest lies in how collective knowing develops based on art and culture experiences. Related research questions are what kind of understanding we share, what means are used to enable this development and at what pace this development takes place. We also need to account for the simultaneous existence of less-known aspects or even non-knowing, when facing new or unfamiliar matters or concepts.

To illuminate arts as ongoing practices of knowing and non-knowing, we draw on works in two periods of the painter Edvard Munch. Born in Norway, Munch worked and exhibited in several European countries, he self-reflected in both visual artworks and poetic texts and took part in public exhibitions and debating with others. Although being met with much scepticism, he created seminal works for the future.

By addressing arts as a practice of both collective knowing and non-knowing in performances of high interest for society, our chapter seeks to contribute to the future of businesses for society. The implication of art as practice in the knowledge process in businesses is an ambitious task, but we aim to find a theoretical framework for how this works and to state our point of view.

The remainder of this chapter first explores modes of knowing and forms of representability as two fundamental notions in the art as practice. The chapter then describes the emergence of particular artistic ways of illuminating and gaining new perspectives on collective knowledge. We are anticipating that the modes of knowing and non-knowing are resonating with ongoing individuated and collective processes in art and business. The knowledge dynamics of art and business and an expanded dialogue might thus give meaning both to arts and business.

3 Methodology

We base the methodology of the chapter on an exploration of clarified subjectivity concepts. We are exploring the concepts of knowledge together with the concepts of art and business. Our concepts are sensitizing seeking directions along which to look as opposed to definitive concepts seeking already predefined directions (see Chapter 3). We are further exploring the connections between art and businesses. We are not explaining the connections. We are instead using logic and clarification through our argumentation. We define this as a clarified subjectivity as opposed to pure subjectivity. Our methodological support is found in Feyerabend’s book “Against methodology” (1993). Feyerabend argues that any pure falsification and a pure logic process will destroy any creativity or novelty in any science. We are not falsifying anything, but instead exploring possible directions along which to look for art and business. We draw on examples from unconventional artists like Edvard Munch. He explored new ways of painting and printing throughout his lifetime and became influential for international art practices as well as for arts concerning business and society. Munch's art practices are thus of interest for both arts and business.

4 Modes of Knowing

Rather than talking about types of knowledge, we will discuss ways of knowing as it is our perception that understanding is an always ongoing process. Types of knowledge only provide us with a snapshot of this process and thus give a static image of expertise. Hence, our modes of knowing model consists of a fluid scale from non-representable knowing to non-representative making the knowledge into representable knowing, where the boundaries between the aspects or levels are unclear, as will be elaborated below (see Table 8.1, and Fig. 8.1, later).

Table 8.1 The different modes of knowing in art and businessa
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Fig. 8.1
A diagram represents the mode of knowing with abscissa and ordinate. Towards the abscissa, it is written Representable, and Non-representable. Towards the ordinate, it is written Individual and Collective, and two diagrams are drawn above it. Each diagram has two ellipses that intersect, and an incomplete ellipse covers them.

(Adapted from Olaisen and Revang [2018])

Modes of knowing

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Representability refers to what degree knowledge creations become visualized or externalized and represented in texts, art, and metaphors. We have chosen to name three knowing modes. One is named “non-representable” knowing, which refers to the fact that it is impossible to represent. Another is named “non-represented”, which means that through specific processes or means it is possible to externalize parts of the knowledge. Finally, “representable” knowing is externalized and represented in art and texts, videos, or other media. We can refer to, explain and help transfer, or progress this knowledge through different forms of representations. Representable knowledge is the junior professional knowledge used in any training and is the foundation for the superior professional knowledge incorporating knowledge, experiences, and attitudes into own wisdom as an artist, designer, or leader.

Non-representable and non-representative knowledge might also be labelled tacit knowledge, and the representative knowledge might be labelled explicit knowledge (Polanyi, 1958, 1966/1983). The tacit aspects of the knowledge process are challenging to explore. To explain the process towards the concrete result might be impossible both in art and business. Rotating professional roles and observation might give others the possibility to deliver similar results or knowledge about the imitation of the tacit process. To master a complex knowledge practice (doing) inventively may be far more challenging, which thus affects the organization (Jevnaker, 2014 ; Tsoukas, 2005). The management process is also tacit in the way that we cannot say what works in different situations. When Thompson (2019) summarized management to “all you need is love” that also pinpointed the subjectivity of what works in management. The processes of love, emotions, and intuition are indeed working, but how and when to use them remains a part of the tacit experienced way of leadership. There are also composition rules to follow and learn in art practices, but how to make them into high art remain a tacit process. Take the process of simplification of anything. There is nothing more challenging and difficult demanding professional knowledge, experiences, and attitudes in all crafts, art, and businesses. The Japanese artist making the sea wave made it in a couple of hours, and it is spread all over the world as better than the reality (Gombrich, 1986).

4.1 Non-Representable Knowing

Non-representable knowing is a mode that individuals or groups develop over time and that cannot be made fully explicit. Non-representable knowing itself thus takes place as individuals or groups gain experience, but it remains non-representable. Examples of non-representable knowing on an individual level are intuition, imagination, and emotions, although we may of course talk about our ideas. Yet, it may not be easy to express why we make a particular decision, but our “gut-feeling” tells you that it is the right thing to do either you are in business or in arts.

We define non-representable knowing as “What we do not know that we do not know” and “What we do not know that we know”. We will be striving to work with this knowing/non-knowing, which involves tacit and less articulable aspects, but from any great piece of art and a great piece of science and innovation, we know that suddenly one day we feel that we see the light.

4.2 Non-Represented Knowing

The scale of representability flows on towards non-represented knowing. This mode resonates with the (aspects of) tacit knowledge that Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) saw as transferable through observation. It can be regarded as implicit or incorporated know-how and is a result of experiences and learning that individuals, groups, or societies have cultivated. Studying manuals or texts do not lead to this non-represented knowing—it also requires practical experience. Orr explained this mode of knowing as “both the ability to do things without being able to explain them completely and also the inability to learn to do them from a theoretical and a craft understanding of the task” (1990, p. 170).

4.3 Representable Knowing

Towards the end of the scale, we find modes of knowing that we are more easily expressing or representing. We may communicate representable remembering through art, texts, symbols, and products. It recognizes that individuals and collectives rapidly can share and exchange. An example of representable knowing is what we are expressing in this chapter. What we can read is however only a snapshot of our knowing. Hence, we see one state of our work printed on chapter, whereas it may have developed somewhere else—on paper, in our computer or in our mind. These snaps shots may be an art exhibition, a piece of literature, a business decision, a service, or a product.

We define representable knowing as “What we know”. This explicit knowing might be communicated as state-of-the-art knowledge and explained.

Figure 8.1 illustrates the modes of knowing that we have discussed above. The model visualizes how the different styles interact with each other and how they can shift from one degree of representability to another. As we can see in the figure, non-representable knowing only tangents the other modes. The little interaction intends to illustrate that the non-representable style of understanding has an impact on the different patterns, but it is difficult to shift it into more representable modes. The style impression has an impact on any piece of art. We experience it as the art of Edvard Munch or Håkon Bleken (see later sections). How do we make it non-representative and representative for businesses?

The ellipse with an arrow on each end illustrates that knowing can shift in both directions, e.g., both towards, from, and within a mode. There is a tacit and an explicit part of individual and collective knowledge. There is a dynamic relationship between tacit and explicit knowledge. Missing in the figure are the linkages between individual and collective knowledge. This is the linkage that we would like to explore next.

4.4 Knowing and Non-knowing as a Collective Activity

Sharing or appreciating unfamiliar knowing is not necessarily something that happens. From common sense, observations, and articles we can conclude that shared knowledge is a result of a long and continuously ongoing process of uncertainty, conflict, needs, and wants. There must be some prerequisites for collective intelligence to take place (Weick & Roberts, 1993), and there also seems to be a need for a matter, means, or tools that enable shared knowing. What these are and how they support shared knowing is the next thing we will try to establish.

Blackler (1995) argued that knowing both in art and businesses are purposive and object-orientated, which could limit specific knowing merely to clear aims. The existence of a purpose—whether articulated or habitually taken for granted—may be beneficial when seeking to enable the actual sharing of knowledge. A purpose does however not just arise out of nowhere. There must be a context or a situation which identify a need or desire for knowledge.

Even experts may tend to stay in their current position doing more of what they have been doing before although they may have the possibility to explore the anomalies or unexpected phenomena. Kuhn (1970) describes how scientists are doing whatever they can to keep their paradigm as a normal science even if the paradigm is outdated.

Art may thus help us appreciate the knowledge gap and non-knowing but how? Through the socialization of art and businesses, we may get art to talk to us in a different way giving our business more creativity and an ability to walk in another direction. The Art which we are appreciating talks to us in a different language than our professional reality. Individuals are often not aware of their own, deeply rooted, assumptions until a situation occurs where the assumptions surface and are made conscious in an interaction between individuals. Taking part in interactive and unfamiliar situations can create an opportunity for non-representable knowing to move into other known modes.

5 Example: Munch's Art Practices

Given that new or different high-performing perspectives are necessary to develop business and society; how can valuable new art practices be created or learned? In the following, we shall draw on research and arts-based texts grounded in art practices of Edvard Munch (1863–1944), an internationally renowned painter and graphic artist born in Norway. Munch worked for more than sixty years and produced a rich variety and quantity of paintings and prints. He is most famous for a few of his iconic paints such as The Scream, Madonna, Vampire, and the Sick Child. The Scream has become one of the most iconic images of world art, and one of the four original versions was sold at Sotheby’s in 2012 for a price of 120 m USD.

Beyond Christiania, Norway’s capital city (later renamed Oslo), Munch came to spend time in nearby regions, and he painted and sought inspiration outdoors. He travelled especially to Germany and France which offered artistic stimulations, places to exhibit, cafés, friends, as well as enemies. Interestingly, the provincial town Christiania had artists like Henrik Ibsen, Edvard Grieg, Gustav Vigeland, Ludvig Karsten, Arne Garborg, Knut Hamsun (later Nobel prize winner), Harald Sohlberg, Nikolai Astrup, and Bjornstjerne Bjornson (later Nobel prize winner). Many of them travelled extensively. All of them were in opposition to the accepted paradigms within their arts. The contemporary European art, literature, and classical music were through them present in Christiania. Explorers like Roald Amundsen and Fridtjof Nansen and new industrial businesses were also forming the city. Art, literature, music, and businesses were transforming Christiania into a new democratic nation striving to find an identity. Art, music, and fiction became an important part of this identity. Christiania was a liberal place of reflections and dialogues protected by a liberal constitution and out of control by Stockholm (Slagstad, 1998). The whole of Europe was waiting upon a new Ibsen play every second year in the 1880s and 1890s.The shock of Nora leaving her husband to realize herself without children and a husband was debated for years (Aarnes, 2001).

Hamsun’s “Hunger” and Garborg’s “Peace” were regarded as top European fiction (Brynhildsen, 1973). The shock of Munch’s expressive paintings started a debate about if “these sick paintings” really represented art (Stang, 1977).

5.1 Vignette 8.1 The Life Frieze

Several of Munch's most famous paintings—called The Life Frieze—reveal inner states of anxiety and illness and they are often linked to what has been called the symbolism period, which also inspired German expressionism. Particular anxiety and strangeness associated with The Scream (1893) originated in Munch's walk outdoors in Oslo and a sudden moment of visual and emotional impressions. It is however not an explicit self-portrait, or another recognizable person portrayed when walking in the sunset. Instead, it is depicted through a highly abstracted man or creature's apparent scream coming towards us in the scenery where the whole landscape is in a whole disturbing move. Munch himself recalled that he had been out for a walk at sunset when he suddenly sensed “an infinite scream passing through nature” (Stang, 1977).

5.2 Vignette 8.2 The University Paintings

The Aula decorations and Laboratory materials enable us to revisit an artist's work as well as his reflexive writings. Munch was breaking away from the Greek assumptions of what and how to portray in mural decorations and worked hard to find other radical ways of representing knowledge and non-knowledge. The works are a part of expressive German art. The expressionism is evident in Munch's decoration of the University Hall. Munch, who had gained fame in 1892 through his “scandal” exhibition in Berlin, discussed his drafts with German art friends and presented them at the exhibition in Berlin 1913. Highly acclaimed, they contributed to ensuring Munch the commission of decorating the University Hall. He created his paintings between 1909 and 1916 dedicated to representative and non-representative knowing of the past, present, and future melting together in a search for the unknown light. When there is no earlier example of what is happening like today’s digitalization process there is a kind of dynamic magica as found in art (Vygotsky, 1934 and 1986).

6 Towards the Dynamic Arts of Reimagining

Given that new and better thinking and deeper work are necessary to develop business and society; how can valuable new practices be learned? From Munch's art practices, we can learn how the continued experimentation as well as the shared context and situations matter in nontrivial ways. His difficult childhood did not merely harm this artist, which resonates with Csikszentmihalyi (1996); Munch found several ways of creatively dealing with and transgressing the dark sides when he painted and repainted The Sick Child in a close-up more direct fashion that broke away from the conventional images.

Knausgård (2017) underlines that Munch is expressing the closeness of the death itself. Interestingly, the contemporary Norwegian painter Håkon Bleken—who also experienced a challenging childhood and ambiguous relation with his father—also excels by zooming in on the dark sides including painting his dying father and mother in close-up, unconventional ways. In an interview Bleken explains how pace was an enabling factor; in fact, he painted very quickly with few broad strokes to avoid the conventional assumptions. In retrospect, he felt it had opened up for a better portrayal (Bleken, 2018). He also feels that painting fast gives a better expression of the Holocaust, the Utoya, and the Middle East tragedies. The fastness is not representable, and non-representative knowledge was becoming representative to paintings that question the essential existential situation for how we are willing to meet the tragedies of today and yesterday. Bleken paints them as ever existing situations we always have to handle. Bleken paints the climate crisis as an invitation to recreate businesses and societies as sustainable ecosystems. The black death is meeting the blue survival. Bleken represents the optimism and a positive psychology. The darkness in his mindset and material art creation anyhow translates into optimism in his audience. This form of scaffolding contributes to learning and reflection upon the holocaust and the climate crisis (Finborud & Ugelstad, 2018; for more background on Bleken, see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A5kon_Bleken).

Looking afresh at Munch's Scream painting reveals that the human creature approaching has the mouth wide open and with hands running up quickly as in a shocking inner state to embrace the head. The agonized face in the middle of this painting has become an iconic image of art seen as symbolizing the anxiety and uncertainty of modern man. What we are seeing makes us scream. Screaming is a dynamic way of behaving since it opens up a reflection of why we are screaming.

We are moving from individual to collective knowing and vice versa. Munch engaged in various relations with significant others including art buyers, museum directors, art exhibition directors, other painters and writers. The arts circles and their café encounters offered some highly skilled and engaged people recurrent possibilities to share and debate contemporary artwork. Munch's way of evoking another presence in a variety of daily situations breaks with earlier artistic practices, for example, making a crowd appear ugly and hostile rather than beautifully painted. In this manner, the artist opens up for another proximity and even darker sides of human encounters. This darker side compares to Bleken’s darker sides and presents an engaged art talking to us and confronting us with a life and death situation that does not leave us.

6.1 Opening up for New Assumptions and Models

There are individual and shared mental models (Kim, 1993). In a socialization process, an individual's conceptions, understanding, and mental models change. However, the redefinition of the individual mental models can only take place when the individuals face a situation that is relevant to them (Richmond, 2000).

Trying to make mental models representable may however not be easy. It may also be an uncomfortable process because by expressing our deeply rooted assumptions we also expose them to critique and revision. Blackler (1995) argued that it is incoherencies, inconsistencies, and conflicts that offer learning opportunities. By facing incoherencies, disagreements, and disputes an individual is exposed to alternative assumptions and can thereby choose to adopt these or stick to the old ones. Bleken and Munch might give assumptions on sustainable and engaged businesses (Fig. 8.2).

Fig. 8.2
A cyclic chart with five key points, new assumptions mental model, current assumptions mental model, experience, rejection and adoption. All of them are interconnected with each other.

(Adapted from Olaisen and Revang [2018])

Development of new assumptions and mental models

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6.2 Communication, Language, and Metaphors

Weick and Westley stated that “language is both the tool and the repository of learning. It is the critical tool for reflection, both at the inter- and intra-personal level. Also, language is a social phenomenon or stated differently, learning is embedded in relationships or relating learning is an inherent property not of an individual or an organization, but rather resides in the quality and the nature of the relationship, between levels of consciousness” (1996/1999, p. 196). From Munch, we may learn that both visual arts and poetic language can support individuals and collectives to make their knowing representable. When the Christiania Bohemians were talking with each other, writing and painting, some of their knowing/non-knowing became expressed and materialized. Their art became a manifest in a variety of ways of representing and non-representing knowing. Moving into non-representable knowing also means that metaphors (see Morgan, 1986) partly determine the future collective knowing; “Metaphor is not merely the first step of transforming tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge; it constituted an important method of creating a network of concepts which can help to generate knowledge about the future by using expressions from any existing knowledge” Nonaka (1994, p. 21). These expressions are a part of Munch and Bleken’s paintings.

6.3 Observation and Imitations

Figure 8.3 illustrates the dynamics of knowledge between individuals and collectives and within a collective. The ellipses with the arrows in both ends visualize knowing moves within as well as between the modes and organizations. As in Fig. 8.1, non-representable knowing serves as a basis for the other knowing styles, since it filters what impressions, alternative assumptions, and mental models that a group adapts.

Fig. 8.3
The image represents the mode of knowing with abscissa and ordinate. Towards the abscissa, it is written Representable, and Non-representable. Towards the ordinate, it is written as Individual and Collective. A diagram is drawn, labelled as socialisation. Some key points, metaphor, imitation, texts, production, and dialogue, are interconnected.

(Adapted from Olaisen and Revang [2018])

Knowing as a collective project activity

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In Fig. 8.3 we also find the means or tools that enable and support the link between individual and collective knowledge. Socialisation contributes to all modes of knowing but is especially crucial for non-represented and non-representative knowing. We have illustrated this with the horizontal ellipse that connects individual knowing to collective non-represented and non-representable knowing. Socialization contributes to both individual and collective knowledge since it provides a context within which both personal and shared mental models and doings (practices) are challenged. For example, painting outdoors side by side with other painters, the young Edvard Munch assembled not only seminal experiences but also gained constructive feedback, exhibition news, and philosophical reading suggestions (he was not operating in a vacuum, as a lone genius). Furthermore, the young Munch and art companions for some time even hired an atelier together, sharing space and a bold instructor (Christian Krohg), who also as art critic helped initiate the new generation including Munch to a wider audience (see Naess, 2004).

Socialization and dialogue also give individuals an opportunity to develop and share metaphors and stories, which links non-represented knowing to non-representable knowing (illustrated by the vertical ellipse that flows through all three knowing modes). We use art and texts as a means of distributing metaphors and stories. However, because documents are static, only a one-way link is enabled, from representable to non-represented knowing. Dialogues, on the other hand, allow the interactive development of a story. In Fig. 8.3, the line that links the individual to collective representable knowing illustrates this.

The question often posed is if art can change the world or the actual behaviour. The traditional way of thinking is that art cannot transform businesses and society. Ideas and concepts can only do this transformation. We propose that art – like the monumental works of Munch – may also be converting or even help constituting community, such as in a symbolic, aesthetic as well as ethical sense (see Strati, 2021). The conversion might be instantly or continuous. The Life magazine photo of the American soldier killing a pregnant woman in the Vietnam war changed the attitudes instantly (Olaisen, 2003). The Munch Scream describes the anxiety of modern times anytime (Stang, 1977). Picasso`s Guernica changed the way we were and are looking upon the Spanish Civil War (Gombrich, 1986). Art is in transit between the non-representative and representative and might of this reason change an individual and collective perspective. Bleken’s picture “Living the sales” shows the “best” in life is to save money on every seasonal sale. Having seen it, we reflect upon our life. We are concluding that art certainly can change perspectives, attitudes, and behaviour. The design process opens up for the configuration of something new and different based upon professional knowledge from many fields (Jevnaker, 1993, 2014) and the performance of tacit knowledge (Olaisen & Revang, 2018). This might be a form of non-linear or interactive learning process and may happen in chaotic or structured environments (Jevnaker, 1995).

6.4 The Pace of Sharing Knowledge: A Proposed Conceptual Framework

What we have not accounted for hitherto is the pace at which knowing takes place. Knowing takes place and is shared at a different speeds depending on what mode it is in, which means that we use and, on the individuals, involved. We can for example almost instantly share representable knowing, whereas non-representable knowing can take years to share.

All knowing takes place over time but at what pace is determined by how well the individuals know each other and what kinds of means they use to support recognizing. Our understanding is that the more time individuals spend together, the faster the pace at which knowledge becomes collective. On the other hand, a problem can be that after a while collective non-representable knowing becomes so strong that it may be difficult for the group to adopt new assumptions and mental models.

Finally, the pace at which knowing shifts between the different modes depends on the circumstances under which knowing takes place. If the knower is contributing necessary ingredients or a leader in a collective, it is more likely that knowing is adopted than if the knower is at a lower level or working in unrecognized enclaves of the organization. Art may influence what we think about the knower. In Fig. 8.4, we have illustrated the dynamics of knowing within a team and between individuals and organizations.

Fig. 8.4
The image represents the mode of knowing with abscissa and ordinate. Towards the abscissa, it is written Representable, and Non-representable. Towards the ordinate, it is written as Individual and Collective. Another line is drawn extending an ordinate labelled as "pace of change," with its two ends labelled as slow and fast.

(Source Jevnaker and Olaisen [2019]; Olaisen and Revang [2018])

Pace of change within a collective and between individuals and collectives

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The greyed-out lines in the figure illustrate that there are no absolute ends on the scales. In a new team, it takes some time to get to know each other, define the individual roles, and develop a shared culture and maybe shared reflections. The black circle in the lower right corner illustrates this. With “shared” we do not mean that people think similarly, rather they may share engagements in related actions (Richter, 1998) and discourses (Jevnaker & Raa, 2017). Further, at this early stage of the establishment of a team, the influence of new members is faster than it is when the team becomes more established. The lack of a strong-shared culture makes it easier to influence the development of a collective culture. The black line that goes from individual to collective non-representable knowing illustrates this. The lower grey line, on the other hand, demonstrates that, once the team culture is becoming established, the team tends to be sceptic towards new ideas and assumptions, which also makes it slower to change. As team members get to know each other better the pace of non-representable knowing is somewhat faster than in new teams.

7 Conclusions

Firstly, we identified three similar modes of knowing in art and businesses. The non-representable knowledge is what we do not know that we do not know and what we do not know that we know. We can thus not make the knowledge representable, but suddenly we will know that this is the painting, the book or the innovation to be made. Non-representative knowledge is what we do not know. We are still able to see or feel or make a kind of representation. Munch made multiple sketches and recurred to motives. Exhibiting his Aula-oriented paintings in Berlin contributed towards a beneficial dynamic reimagining something sustainable. Representative knowledge is what we know and how we can represent the knowledge through a piece of art, a book or a product. In the making, we revisit our tacit knowing and non-knowing and explore their boundaries further in process and product. A piece of art might then start as well as nurture the process of a business idea or an innovation.

Secondly, we recognized that what makes thinking interwoven in a piece of art exciting and influential is that it challenges our assumptions in some significant way. The piece of art or theory talks to us in a way which we can use in our daily life. Art melts the future, present, and past into one reality and gives an opportunity for relearning and new perspectives. Collective knowing are ideas and concepts that a collective and its allied interests engage in and develop over time, and that guides and give meaning to actions and organization in a specific context.

However, collective knowledge with its implicit shadowing also needs confrontation and illumination of possibly veiled non-knowing of dark or ignored sides to test and renew our assumptions of true beliefs. We have revealed that art practices and their collective apprehension can become contested and transformed into new meanings of societal importance, as exemplified in the paintings of Munch and Bleken.

Thirdly, the boundaries between individual and collective knowing are blurred, and it is difficult to determine how they affect each other. Everyone has individual mental models but we move about in highly sensuous bodies in often shared landscapes. We participate in social worlds and share assumptions, ideas, and reflections in action with others. This implies that art unfolds and travels between individuals and groups and can make the leaps involved in reimagination.

Arts in its ancient sense of moving onwards with techne—skills, practical wisdom (phronesis), and also with a creation of moving value, poeisis—is vital for making original or innovative work. As illuminated in the artworks discussed in this chapter, reimagining activity can unfold with all this in surprisingly significant combinations and can thus bring forth something that is giving deeper value to human action.

Finally, art might also start a process of business and societal responsibility looking at for example the Håkon Bleken’s picture of the tragedies of Utoya, Holocaust, the Middle East, and the Climate. Art represents a form of its ecosystem where Bleken’s tragedies and Munch’s Aula pictures (University of Oslo Assembly Hall) with its central Sun might be triggers to start thinking about sustainable practices in learning institutions and enterprises for society. These ecosystems are today represented in the way that we know that we are reaching a global warming crisis (Sachs et al., 2022), but we do not know how to recreate organization and businesses with eco-friendly systems and by that contribute to the survival of the earth. Art might thus be one of the dynamic factors for a sustainable process.