Organizational Aesthetics: Caught Between Identity Regulation and Culture Jamming

Varda Wasserman () and Michal Frenkel ()
Additional contact information
Varda Wasserman: The Open University of Israel, 43107 Ra'anana, Israel
Michal Frenkel: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, 91905 Jerusalem, Israel

Organization Science, 2011, vol. 22, issue 2, 503-521

Abstract: Applying insights from Lefebvre's spatial theory [Lefebvre, H. 1991. The Production of Space . Blackwell, Oxford, UK] to an analysis of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs---recently relocated to its new award-winning building---the present study seeks to offer a more comprehensive model of the role of organizational aesthetics (OA) in identity regulation and culture jamming. Our contribution is threefold. (1) At the empirical/methodological level, this study attempts to simultaneously analyze the three Lefebvrian spaces in a single organization, demonstrating negotiations and struggles over interpretations of OA. (2) We analyze aesthetic jamming as a form of intentional and unintentional efforts at collective resistance that not only reveals the aesthetic mechanisms of regulation, but actually uses them as a method of counter-regulation. (3) Whereas most studies in this emerging body of literature focus on the regulation of organization-based identities (bureaucratic and professional), we show how the translation of extraorganizational hierarchies of identities (national, ethnic, and gendered) into the organizational control system is also mediated by OA.

Keywords: organizational aesthetics; design; subjugation; identity regulation; organizational identity; power and control; resistance; culture jamming; Lefebvre (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1100.0583 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:22:y:2011:i:2:p:503-521

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Organization Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().