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A RE-VISIONIST CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE ART OF MANAGEMENT: NEW MANAGERIALISM, MOTIVATIONAL ART, AND THE KITSCHIFICATION OF CULTURE

SHAUN BERTRAM LONDON CONSORTIUM, LONDON UNITED KINGDOM shaunbertram@sky.com

A RE-VISIONIST CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE ART OF MANAGEMENT: NEW MANAGERIALISM, MOTIVATIONAL ART, AND THE KITSCHIFICATION OF CULTURE

Abstract: For nearly three decades, managerially driven changes in the

contemporary Anglo-American workplace, both private and public, have increasingly been conveyed through the rhetoric of art and, more broadly, aesthetics. Rational, technical, and modern managerial practices, we are told, must now be supplementedeven displacedby aesthetic practices (storytelling, drama, mythmaking, and song) that: a) inspire people in ways that transcend rationality and b) are essential to the construction of successful organisational cultures. As part of this transformation, the image of the managerial strategist as rational and scientific is being refashioned in the image of the manager-artist. Following a discussion of the new managerial roots of this aesthetic turn, I undertake a critical analysis of one quintessential, yet relatively unexamined form of corporate cultural artcorporate motivational art. Emerging, I propose, as a response to the rise of corporate culturalism, corporate motivational art combines a Taylorist aesthetic (efficiency/standardisation/simplification) with a Human Relations aesthetic (romantic/nostalgic/sentimental/oriented towards stability and social harmony) in an aesthetic manner that renders it closer to kitsch than art.

A RE-VISIONIST CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE ART OF MANAGEMENT: NEW MANAGERIALISM, MOTIVATIONAL ART, AND THE KITSCHIFICATION OF CULTURE

The Aesthetic Turn The problem in America is that our fascination with the tools of management obscures our apparent ignorance of the art. (Peters and Waterman, 1982: xxiv). For nearly three decades, managerially driven changes in the contemporary AngloAmerican workplace, both private and public, have increasingly been conveyed through the rhetoric of art and, more broadly, aesthetics1. Rational, technical, or modern managerial practices, we are told, must now be supplemented by an aesthetic disposition to managerial practice that utilises techniques designed to reach and inspire people through sensory or experiential modes that transcend rationality2. This, in turn, demands a new kind of visionary business leader modelled on the artist or aesthete as opposed to the rational or scientific manager of the past. Although claims to management as a matter of aesthetics or an art form are not new (see, for example, Barnard, 1938: 325), historically most organisational theorising has been preoccupied with instrumental questions such as efficiency or effectiveness (Taylor and Hansen, 2005: 1211). The relatively recent shift to a strategic managerialist concern with aesthetics can be located in the so-called anti-rationalist shift in managerial thought that occurred from the early nineteen-eighties onward. American managerial texts such as Deal and Kennedys Corporate Cultures (1982) and, most notably, Peters and Watermans In Search of Excellence (1982) urged a business paradigm shift away from the old
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In this paper, I will refer to aesthetics in the two senses outlined by Carter and Jackson (2000): a) as a function of individual perceptionthe emotional response of an individual to some stimulus and b) as a property of some object to which we respond, an object that can be subjected to evaluation in terms of the extent to which it conforms to the precepts of beauty or good taste. 2 See, for example, Peters and Waterman (1982), Deal and Kennedy (1982), De Pree (1989), Pitcher (1997), Dobson (1999), and Hatch, Kostera, and Kozminski (2005).

rationality which was identified as a direct descendant of Frederick Taylors school of scientific management (Peters and Waterman, 1982: 42). The central problem with the rationalist view of organising people according to Peters and Waterman, is that it fundamentally misinterprets human nature: people are not very rational due to a number of contradictions built into human nature (55). Peters and Waterman argue that we reason with our right brainthe artistic half that is great at visualizing things (59) as much or perhaps even more than with our rational deductive left half, indicating, in turn, that: [We] reason by stories at least as often as with good data. Does it feel right? counts for more than Does it add up? or Can I prove it? (54, emphasis original). Whats more, despite the vast power of our unconscious brains, we can only hold a limited amount of dataapproximately six or seven factsin our conscious memory (55). Employing techniques such as anecdote, memory hooks, and alliteration throughout, In Search of Excellence thus made allowances for such irrationalities, inaugurating in the process the transition from the academic guru to the consultant guru (Huczynski, 1996: 108) and the beginning of the prolonged success of the popular management text (Micklethwait and Wooldridge, 1997: 8). Irrationality was, however, far more than a matter of the human brain for Peters and Waterman; it was also a matter of motivation. All of us are self-centred, suckers for a bit of praise, and generally like to think of ourselves as winners despite the fact that our talents are distributed normally (55). In this tendency to overrate our own abilities, we are exuberantly, wildly irrational about ourselves (57). We are also irrationally motivated by an essential dualism: the concomitant desire to be part of something and to stick out, to be a conforming member of a winning team and a star in [our] own right (xxi). Whether consciously or unconsciously, top performing or excellent companies, Peters and Waterman argue, appear to allow for or take advantage of these irrational

aspects of human nature (86), drawing largely upon human relations solutions particularly those associated with Elton Mayo and Chester Barnard (5). Peters and Waterman draw upon the Mayoist notion that work satisfaction and thus productivity flows not from monetary rewards but from employee recognition and a sense of belonging. In this regard, excellent companies are designed to produce lots of winners because they reinforce degrees of winning rather than degrees of losing by setting low, easily achievable targets and quotas. They are also constructed to celebrate the winning once it occurs. Their systems make extraordinary use of non-monetary incentives. They are full of hoopla (Peters and Waterman: 57-58). Small, symbolic rewards are particularly effective because big bonuses often become political and discourage those who dont receive them but believe they deserve them (71). At the same time, excellent companies also strive to provide their organisational subjects with a sense of meaning and belonging through the shaping of corporate cultures. On this idea, Peters and Waterman draw inspiration from the Barnardian notion that the the real role of the chief executive is to manage the values of the organisation (Peters and Waterman, 26, emphasis original). According to Barnard: The distinguishing mark of the executive responsibility is that it requires not merely conformance to a complex code of morals but also the creation of moral codes for others. The most generally recognized aspect of this function is called securing, creating, inspiring of morale in an organization. This is the process of inculcating points of view, fundamental attitudes, loyalties, to the organization or cooperative system, and to the system of objective authority, that will result in subordinating individual interest and the minor dictates of personal codes to the good of the cooperative whole. (1938: 279). As the excellent companies are driven by coherent value systems, so virtually all of them were marked by the personality of the leader who laid down the value set (287). Driven by an ethic of creation (Deal and Kennedy, 1982: 43), leaders make meanings, inculcate and shape values, acting as true artists, pathfinders (82), social architects (Peters and

Waterman: 82, 85) and heroes (Deal and Kennedy, 1982).

Organisational values, in

turn, are transmitted not through formal written procedures but through the strategic deployment of aesthetics: As we worked on research of our excellent companies, we were struck by the dominant use of story, slogan, and legend as people tried to explain the characteristics of their own great institutions. All the companies we interviewed, from Boeing to McDonalds were quite simply rich tapestries of anecdote, myth, and fairy tale (Peters and Waterman: 75). Establishing firm central direction through a few overarching corporate values enables employees to have maximum individual autonomy, permitting them to take initiatives in support of those valuesfinding their own paths, and so making the task and its outcome their own (Peters and Waterman: 73). While Peters and Watermans general approach is purportedly anti-rationalist and anti-Taylorist, decrying as it does the numerative, rationalist approach to management and its overemphasis on financial analysis at the expense of attention to employees, it is not clear that these authors move beyond such rationalist concerns. Consistent with a Scientific Management approach, the overarching goal of corporate culturalism is efficiency: Excellent companies, write Peters and Waterman, are organized to obtain extraordinary effort from ordinary human beings (81). When the number of awards is high, they point out, it makes the perceived possibility of winning something high as well. And then the average man will stretch to achieve (269). Since [m]ere association with past personal success leads to more persistence, higher motivation, or something that makes us do better, whether or not employees are actually doing well doesnt seem to matter much (58-59). While Peters and Waterman claim that numerative analysis has no way of valuing the extra oomph, the overkill, added by an IBM or Frito-Lay sales force, their close colleagues and fellow corporate cultural enthusiasts, Deal and Kennedy manage to overcome this dilemma, observing that: The impact of a strong culture on

productivity is amazing. In the extreme, we estimate that a company can gain as much as one or two hours of productive work per employee per day. (1982: 15). In this, and many other respects, the corporate culturalist concern for people, appears superficial. Peters and Waterman , for example, observedextraordinary energy exerted above and beyond the call of duty when the workeris given even a modicum of apparent control over his or her destiny (xxiii, emphasis added). They later explain: Psychologists study the need for self-determination in a field called illusion of control. Stated simply, its findings indicate that if people think they have even modest personal control over their destinies, they will persist at tasks. They will do better at them. They will become more committed to them(102).

As Deal and Kennedy put it: A strong culture enables people to feel better about what they do, so they are more likely to work harder (1982: 16). In contrast to traditional cultures, which were organic in nature, the corporate cultures envisioned by managerialists from the early eighties onwards were thus contrived cultures, cultures constructed or shaped in a top-down fashion on the basis of senior managerial values and norms. Organisational aesthetics, construed primarily as nonrational and non-monetary motivational incentives that often took shape as corporate ritual, mythmaking, storytelling, drama or song did not represent an alternative to a rationalist approach; instead the former came to be harnessed in the service of the latter. When Ray Kroc waxed poetic about hamburger buns, he hadnt taken leave of his senses write Peters and Waterman; he simply recognized the importance of beauty as a starting point for the business logic that ensues (61). The artistic function increasingly assigned to top management also bore little resemblance to the function of the traditional artist. Harding aptly sums the distinction when she differentiates between the art of artists which has generally sought to express the sense of ones (the artists and the spectators) humanity in a hugely complex world, and the art of managementwhich has traditionally sought to

control all expression, to stifle the emotions and ensure conformity and compliance (2003: 113). Since the nineteen-eighties, managerialist claims to a cultural or aesthetic turn have become more exaggerated. Dobson (1999), for example, writes that: For the first time since modernity, that is, for the first time in some 300 years in the West, the manager as aesthete will dominate (14). Hatch, Kostera, and Kozminski (2005), writing more recently, suggest that modern management has not merely been institutionalised within societies that depend upon business; rather, its members are rapidly forming a global culture of their own: That is, through the dissemination of the MBA degree and other professionalizing activities, along with the democratization that has accompanied the spread of capitalism in the late twentieth century, the interests and activities of managers in many countries are merging into a discernable culture with its own values, norms and institutionalized practices. In a world where many international businesses control more resources than some countries possess, the global influence of this emerging managerial culture is practically a foregone conclusion (2). Consistent with a corporate culturalist position, they envision the leader to be part artist and part priest, the latter serving not only as a symbol of the deep values and beliefs that nourish their organizational cultures in order to make their members comfortable with change, helping to convince them to accept innovations they did not themselves produce (4). Glossing over any distinction between organic and contrived cultures, they propose that managerial cultures might compensate for the global loss of traditional ethnic cultures: At a time when many are mourning the loss of ethnic cultures across the globe, it is interesting to consider the possibility of new cultures emerging. In our view, managerial culture represents possibly the most influential new cultural formation in the world today. Recent rapid changes in the economic sectors of most parts of the world suggest that business provides a contemporary cultural frontier and that those most actively engaged in culture building along this frontier are its entrepreneurs and executives. We argue that, if this is the case, it is sensible to look to these business leaders to see who is manifesting the worlds newest expressions of the artist and

priest. If our conjecture is correct, business leaders today will carry the ancient aesthetic traditions of humanity forward into the cultural frontiers of the twenty-first century (Hatch, Kostera, and Kozminski, 2005: 6).

The existing confusion between managerialist and traditional meanings associated with art, aesthetics and culture points to a need for clarification, a task that I shall undertake by grappling with a question posed by Taylor and Hansen: If management is truly a matter of art rather than science, what form of art is it like? (2005: 1218).

Envisioning the Art of Management: Motivational Art in Focus if there is an art to management, and if in general the purpose of art is to create objects of beauty, then it would follow that whatever is managed, if managed well, must be in some sense beautify. For how could the art of managing be practiced in the fullest sense if the product of that art remains neutral and colorless in valuein short, a product without an essential sense of beauty? (White, 1996: 204 ). A simple artifact often holds the essence of a whole social system. (Wuthnow, 1984: 4) In the remainder of this paper, I will focus my analysis upon one relatively unexamined variety of business managerial art generally referred to as corporate motivational art. By corporate motivational art, I refer in general to that combination of (usually) photographic imagery anchored by a caption and underlined by a motivational adage. Although motivational art most commonly assumes the form of framed motivational wall art, it can also take the form of framed desktop plaques, calendars, coffee mugs, appreciation awards, pens, clocks, photo frames, umbrellas, coasters, mouse pads, and many other objects. The underlying assumptions of those who produce and utilise such art appear to be: (1) that a compliant and programmable worker is possible and (2) that seeing is believing; In other words, surrounding the organisational subject with motivational art

will result in an acceptance of the beliefs being communicated through such motivational art. As managerial writers Hatch et al. (2005) explain: The fact that many anthropologists and religious scholars now believe that, wherever culture is found, art and religion will attend its founding, means to us that managerial culture should also evidence artistic and spiritual origins (6). In fact, the emergence of corporate motivational art did closely parallel the rise of corporate culturalism, with the former most likely emerging as a direct response to the latters rediscovery of the ostensible potency of non-monetary incentives. In the face of what Peters and Waterman perceived to be a rapidly growing volume of contrived opportunities for showering pins, buttons, badges, and medals on people (1982: 269), emerged Successories, the first and most internationally established corporate motivational art company. Founded by Mac Anderson, himself now a motivational speaker, Successories, according to its online website, originated as a small company to design and produce quote books, award plaques and customized gifts. Later, building on the success of these original insights, photographic imagery was integrated to create framed motivational art work3. That motivational art companies such as Successories harnessed themselves to the corporate culturalist agenda is clear. As Successories website proclaims: Today, Mac's vision continues to flourish. Each day thousands of organizations and leaders from all walks of life demonstrate that the use of motivational media to communicate corporate culture is an effective organizational tool4. Or, as current Successories chairman and author of Build a Winning Corporate Culture puts it: A Corporate Culture can just happenor you can make it happen!5.

3 4

http://www.successories.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/dir_about.history/history.cfm Ibid. Emphasis added. 5 See: Miller, Jack (2004) Build Your Corporate Culture (June 21), Motivation Matters Resource Library, Successories. www.successories.com. www.successories.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/dir_mot_mat.home/mot_mat_home.cfm

Today, framed motivational artwork represents a distinct art genre that can be found across the globe. Yet, relative to similar art forms such as advertising, it has received relatively little academic attention. On the one hand this blind spot may be linked to the idea that motivational art has not been perceived as worthy of the serious academic attention devoted to similar art forms such as advertising. Stylistically and thematically redundant, relying typically on mass-produced stock photographic images and a relatively small number of textual themes, often well-established corporate cultural truisms such as quality or teamwork, motivational art may be unlikely to produce a deep response on the part of the viewer. Even critics of motivational art, such as the demotivational6 artists who parody this popular art formtend to engage with motivational art at a superficial level, dismissing it as merely risible rather than regarding it as worthy of a more sustained, critical focus. Yet, given the strong association between motivational art and the corporate culture-building agenda, I suggest that motivational art warrants a hard look, particularly for the insight it can afford us with respect to the potential of a global managerial culture that portrays itself increasingly in aesthetic or artistic terms. Taking motivational art seriously by making it the focal point of analysis also enables one to turn a managerialist rhetoric of art and aesthetics back upon itself, challenging it with the evaluative tools offered by the arts. Motivational art, like the corporate cultural philosophy it embodies, represents not a displacement of rationalist thinking by aesthetics or a displacement of Taylorism by Human Relations theory but a synthesis of these orientations ostensibly opposed orientations. Assembled for mass production in a piecemeal fashion by unrelated, subdivided, and generally unacknowledged or anonymous producers such as stock writers

See, for example: www.despair.com

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and stock photographers, textually underlined by a singleminded, dedicated focus on themes such as persistence or innovation, and functionally oriented to the Taylorist goal of increasing productive efficiency, corporate motivational art is consistent with a Scientific Management aesthetic that equated beauty with efficiency, repetition, standardisation, simplification, and economy (Corwin, 2004: Guillen, 2006). Yet, stylistically comprised disproportionately of romantic nature- or (to a lesser degree) sports-based photographic imagery, often with oversaturated colours for added aesthetic appeal, corporate motivational art is also consistent with a romantic, sentimental, and nostalgic human relations aesthetican aesthetic often geared towards the human relations goals of aesthetic stability and social harmony. As a hybrid of these two aesthetics, motivational art can be understood as a form of organisational kitsch. Derived from the 19th century German verb verkitschen, meaning to churn out cheaply, the word kitsch was originally employed in relation to a group of artists in southern Germany who, during the period between 1860 to 1880, began to generate sentimental, nationalistic, and formulaic paintings as a way of making money from undiscerning tourists (Montgomery, 1991: 8; Linstead, 2002; 660). Consistent with this meaning, a central quality of kitsch is its mass-produced feel: Kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas (Greenberg, 1939/1986: 12). Yet, where a mass-produced, formulaic aesthetic is often interpreted as robotic, calculating, and operating against the human or the emotional, kitsch combines the formulaic and the mass-produced with a mawkish or exaggerated sentimentality, lending to it a quality of superficiality, insincerity or cheap sentiment. Montgomery, writing on kitsch, refers to as a mercenary aesthetics, a quality of affect-forhire that promises harmony and light (1991: 7).

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Comprised of simple, yet romantic, motherhood themes such as teamwork or quality and popular images such as sports or nature scenes, corporate motivational art evokes a kitsch aesthetic through an appeal to the broadest common demominator, aiming as it does to evoke the individual, in emotion and in intellect, on a mass basis (Montgomery, 1991:11). As such, it aesthetically reflects the populist rhetorical style adopted by managerialism from the 1980s onward. Harnessing simplified universal and timeless values or motherhood values (such as quality, persistence, and loyalty), imagery (popular aesthetics such as nature or sports imagery), and simplistic, yet persuasive narratives (for example, us against them narratives or change is natural narratives) corporate motivational art reflects managerialisms attempt to mobilise popular support for managerialist objectives such as the battle against bureaucracy through an attempt to conflate instrumental corporate values with more enduring, universal ones. Like kitsch, this polymorphous monster of pseudo-art has the power to please, to satisfy not only the easiest and most popular aesthetic nostalgias but also the middle classs vague ideal of beauty (Calinescu, 1987: 230) and, for this reason, could be harnessed for a range of political objectives: (N)ot only is kitsch a means of achieving cheap artistic effects, it is also a means of achieving cheap social and political effects. Rather than simply selling aesthetic forms, kitsch sells ideas and feelings, and the bag of tricks of art becomes available for any purposean artism which can be can be used to sell souvenirs, soap powder, or political solutions (Linstead, 2002: 666). It is thus noteworthy that the aesthetically populist turn on the part of management epitomized in the rise of corporate motivational artwould coincide with a revaluation and broadening of managerial expertise, particularly when contrasted with other types of authority. Clarke and Newman, for example, observed that: As social scientists were describing a post-modern condition in which traditional forms of authority (monarchies, politicians, professional elites, etc.) were losing public confidence and trust, so managers

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began to take on public roles as authoritative sources of opinion and advice on how to run the world (not just organisations) (1997: 35). Kitsch, writes Linstead, originates not in the cheap imitation of high art but in the faking of the artifacts of traditional crafts (658). Corporate motivational art, I propose, extends this ersatz function of kitsch beyond the realm of the artifact to the working conditions in which the artifact is produced. The frequency and ubiquity of corporate motivational art themes such as quality, teamwork7, creativity, innovation, and customer service encourages the organisational subject to produce in a style superficially resembling pre-Taylorist craftwork. In this nostalgic orientation to work, themes such as teamwork and quality can be understood as denatured, ersatz forms of solidarity and craftsmanship. Where artisanal solidarity was, for example, geared to the goal of advancing producer interests, teamworkof the variety advanced both by Elton Mayo and Peters and Watermanis designed to maximise organisational productivity, often at the expense of workers who are encouraged to monitor each others performance while as, Kunda puts it, deep acting the part of cooperative team player (1999: 56). As such, the experience of the organisational subject is less artisanal than artificialthe lived experience of a managerial directive to behave as if one (the organisational subject) were an artisan in the context of subdivided, alienated labour, as if one were an owner, rather than an employee, and as if one were a key organisational decision-maker rather than an organisational subject encouraged to embrace and celebrate the decisions and innovations determined by top management. While the contrived nature of this form of organisational kitsch is often perceptible by the organisational subject as kitsch or, as Greenberg (1939/1986) puts it, vicarious experience and faked sensations (10), it can

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also be internalised. In her study of one Western kitsch-organisation Kostera (1997) illustrates both possibilities: The firm is well known for its well known for its strong corporate culture, its feelings of belonging, and family feeling. The company often arranges parties, with a lot of ceremonies, common songs, speeches, jokes, etc. The atmosphere of these parties is inofficial in a planned way, liturgical, repetitive: everybody knows what will happen. The employees often receive gifts from the firm: the firms productsThere is a lot of genuine enthusiasm around. People are expected to be enthusiastic and also to have fun, all this while working hard. They work hard for their own and their companys success. They are expected to believe that and to be committed to this statement, even if they do not own the company, do not assist in making more important decisions, and virtually cannot even decide about their own job, the pace, the goals, the means. People are told that they stick together and that they are one family, and care about each other and the company very much. Many look as if they really believed in it. Many live for the company and disrupt their family and private lives. Some get burned out, but that is a taboo: they have just disappeared (168-169). What writers such as Kostera (1997) and Linstead (2002) make clear is that kitsch is more than an aesthetic style; it is an ontology of being which masks the experience of being interposing itself as a comfortable buffer between ourselves and the real, and often being taken for it (Linstead: 657). In this sense, I argue that it may actually be the alienating conditions of the work organisation that render the organisational subject susceptible to the ideological appeal of motivational art. As Hodge and Kress point out in their discussion of reception regimes, the setting of a visual image plays a crucial role in shaping its interpretation (1988). Consisting primarily of nature scenery (landscapes, wildlife) and team sports scenes, corporate motivational imageryread in the context of the captive confines of the work organisation

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may connote a metaphorical window to freedom inviting the viewer to escape the harsh constraints of class-based necessity. The organisational subject, for example, can usually only watch/participate in team sports or experience the beauty of nature on their leisure time. The lure of the corporate motivational art image is one of aesthetic nostalgia: the promise to restore to the organisational subject the very freedoms that have been lost to them through the necessity of wage labour. This idea may extend to other lost attributes that the organisational subject seeks to recover, particularly in the wake of the shift to new forms of flexible working arrangements associated with the new managerialism. For example, consistent with a Barnardian position which depicts the executive function in terms of the management of organisational values, corporate motivational art prescribes not only how organisational subjects should conduct themselves with respect to work, but how, more broadly, they should conduct themselves in general. Key corporate motivational art themes are often centred on the cultivation of particular character traits or values such as loyalty, compassion, integrity, commitment, or honesty. However, as social theorist Sennett

(1998, 2006) has argued, it is precisely these qualities that are presently being corroded in the fragmented, short-term, flexible work environments advocated by contemporary business managerialists.

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Writing on pre-modern cultures relation to kitsch, one author remarks that:

Their immune systems seem helpless in the face of this new contagion; today the mere contact of a traditional culture with Western civilization is sufficient to transmit the disease, rather as tribes were once rescued from their darkness by colonial adventurers and missionaries, only to die at once from smallpox or TB. A century ago, no African art was kitsch. Now kitsch is on sale in every African airportantelopes, elephants, with doctors, and hobgoblin deities, skilfully carved in ivory or tropical hardwood, imitating the enchanted figures that inspired Picasso but, in this or that barely perceptible detail, betraying their nature as fakes (Scruton, 1999). When encountering corporate motivational art, I cannot help but feel that the enchanted themes that once genuinely inspired the organisational subjectideas of craftsmanship, solidarity, and creativitymay have suffered a similar deadening fate. It is not that I deny the possibility of the infusion of artistic values or aesthetics into the world of management and organisation; like many others I may well welcome such an advance were I to perceive it as genuine. Yet kitsch, as Milan Kundera once wrote, is not art, but arts prime enemy (1990: 135) and the danger of corporate kitsch all the more ominous given that managerialisms claim is not just a claim to artistry, but a claim to an artistry that is to take shape on the canvas of global culture. It is only by exposing the hollow, choreographed, and ultimately lifeless vision of contemporary corporate culture for what it is that can we hope to see beyond to a world of genuine artistic and creative possibility.

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Harding, N. (2003). The social construction of management : texts and identities. London ; New York, Routledge. Hatch, M. J., M. Kostera, A. K. Kozminski (2005). The three faces of leadership : manager, artist, priest. Malden, MA, Blackwell Pub. Hodge, B. and G. R. Kress (1988). Social semiotics. Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press. Huczynski, A. (1993). Management gurus: what makes them and how to become one. London, Routledge. Kostera, M. (1997). "The Kitsch-Organization." Studies in Cultures, Organizations, and Societies 3: 163-177. Kunda, G. (1992). Engineering culture: control and commitment in a high-tech corporation. Philadelphia, Temple University Press. Kundera, M. (1990). The art of the novel, London : Faber, 1988 (1990[printing]). Linstead, S. (2002). "Organizational kitsch." Organization 9(4): 657-682. Mayo, E. (1933). The human problems of an industrial civilization. New York, The Macmillan company. Mayo, E. and Harvard University. Graduate School of Business Administration. Division of Research. (1945). The social problems of an industrial civilization. Boston,

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Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University. Micklethwait, J. and A. Wooldridge (1996). The witch doctors : making sense of the management gurus. New York, Times Books. Montgomery, S. (1991). "Science as kitsch: the dinosaur and other icons." Science and culture 2(1): 7-58. Peters, T. J. and R. H. Waterman (1982). In search of excellence : lessons from America's best-run companies. New York, Harper & Row. Pitcher, P. (1997). The drama of leadership; artists, craftsmen, and technocrats and the power struggle that shapes organizations and societies. New York, John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Scruton, R. (1999). "Kitsch and the modern predicament." City Journal Volume, 9(1). Sennett, R. (1998). The corrosion of character; the personal consequences of work in the new capitalism. New York/London: W. W. Norton and Company. (2006). The culture of the new capitalism. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Taylor, S. and H. Hansen (2005). "Finding form: looking at the field of organizational aesthetics." Journal of Management studies 42(6): 1211-1232. White, D. (1996). "It works beautifully! Philosophical reflections on aesthetics and organization theory." Organization 3(2): 195-208. Wuthnow, R. (1984). Cultural analysis : the work of Peter L. Berger, Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and Jrgen Habermas. Boston, Routledge.

Online Sources and Imagery


Successories www.successories.com Despair, Inc. www.despair.com

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