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 counterregulation. (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.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 503-521 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| Journal | Organization Science |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 2011 |
Keywords
- Culture jamming
- Design
- Identity regulation
- Lefebvre
- Organizational aesthetics
- Organizational identity
- Power and control
- Resistance
- Subjugation
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Strategy and Management
- Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
- Management of Technology and Innovation