Aesthetics and organizations without walls

Abstract

This paper is based on ethnographic research into European art photography conducted at the end of the 1980s. Its conceptual framework is the aesthetic approach to organization studies. It shows that art photography is an organization without walls. This is a new concept that may prove very fruitful to the study of organizations. It analyses the kind of organizations that are invisible to the observer, while at the same time it questions the conventional reading of organizational boundaries. The thesis of the paper is that the aesthetic experience is the glue which cements together and delimits art photography as an organization without walls, and that culture and symbolism are crucial elements in organizations without walls. This thesis is illustrated through the evocative construction of organizational knowledge using the aesthetic approach.