An apprenticeship to pleasure: aesthetics dynamics in organizational learning

Abstract

Purpose: – The purpose of this paper is to show what we can learn from an aesthetics perspective on organizational learning, and especially about some power dynamics unseeable with other perspectives.Design/methodology/approach: – An exploratory ethnographic study based on the turn-to-affect on the case of a theatre play in which many of the bearings that usually guide theatrical creation were removed.Findings: – Analysis highlights that an a priori distribution of the sensible that locks routines, representations and roles is seldom questioned in organizational learning programs; the motion enabling organizational learning is less likely to be brought about by a change in power distribution than with the removal of some elements of power that freeze situations; organizational learning diffusion does not only go through norms, rules, values and repositories, but also through affects; and learning runs through a fragile communication of movements, always under the threat of becoming major knowledge and power distribution.Research limitations/implications: – This paper is based on a single case.Practical implications: – A too tight and close management of organizational learning is likely to thwart and limit its very learning possibilities.Originality/value: – Several findings are in contradiction to technological or too managerial approaches to organizational learning. The study hopes to contribute by providing a supplement of complexity in our analysis of organizational learning, notably advocating for taking into account the role of affects, sensibility and the politics of aesthetics.