‘Do you do beautiful things?’: aesthetics and art in qualitative methods of organization studies

Research in organizational aesthetics (aesthetic judgments of work, organizational practices, architecture, product design, technological environment, quality of organizational life, “atmosphere”) is a well established European contribution to the sociology of organization and the theories of organization. This perspective offers a new methodological and theoretical value to notions of ugliness, beauty and pathos. The aesthetic styles of research challenges are critical of positivist perspectives and of the dominance of cognitive understanding. They are constituted by four approaches which transgress traditional research methods: archeological, empathic-logical, aesthetic, and artistic. Among them, the aesthetic approach is critical also of managerial standpoints and is concerned with emancipation opposing alienating and manipulative processes.