WHAT INSPIRES THE ACADEMY: Jean M. Bartunek BOOK …

Q Academy of Management Review2017, Vol. 42, No. 2, 382–406.

WHAT INSPIRES THE ACADEMY:BOOK REVIEWS AND BEYOND

Jean M. BartunekReview Essays Editor

Why Art in Management Education?Questioning Meaning

By Danica Purg and Ian Sutherland, IEDC-BledSchool of Management

Why should we care about the arts in manage-ment education?Why are the arts part of reforms indeveloping future professionals? What is the fun-damentalvalueof thearts fordeveloping tomorrow’smanager-leaders? Our response is meaning—howthe arts afford reflection, conversation, and chal-lenge to the meanings and purposes of what we do.

In the followingpagesweelaborate thisassertionthrough the story of one beautiful European man-agement development institution: IEDC-Bled Schoolof Management, Slovenia. The narrativeweaves ourreflections on our own stories—two individualsgrowing up worlds and decades apart—and howthey have intertwined to bring meaning back to lifein the management development classroom.

We start in that classroom, with the words ofa student experiencing the meaning of an organi-zation and what it does. Taking this account intothe critical corridors of management literature, wediscuss how the arts may address the dysfunctionof commodification, dehumanization, and manag-ing the community out of organizations. Our argu-ment, one emerging from lives nourished throughart and artists, demands that management edu-cation engage the arts to revitalize meaning-fullpraxis in organizing, managing, and leading.

OPENING THE STORY

Jeff and the Choir

It was in the final moments of the debrief ses-sion that Jeff, until that moment a shy presence

in the leadership workshop, slowly rose from hisseat:

I have to admit, I came to this workshop veryskeptical. I could not imagine what could be inthis for me, a business guy. I mean, the thought oflearning from a choir, and learning from con-ducting, just did not make much sense. I’m notamusician; I’mnot in the music business. I guessI thought it was another gimmick from our HRpeople, something unusual that was supposed toentertain us or something. But I have to admit, Ifeel inspired. It was the faces of the singers thatdid it. I was struck by the looks on their faces.They were happy. Well, more than happy, theywere totally plugged in, in the moment, together,eyes wide, sparkling. There was an energy here Ihave not felt for a long time, at least not at work. Idon’t really know how to describe it, but it wasamazing. It was about being human. For the firsttime in many, many years, I realized what we arereally capable of doing when working togethertowards something that really matters. I justwanted to share that before the end of today. Ithink it’s important that we think about that asa company.

Quietly, Jeff resumed his seat. An intense si-lence enveloped the room. People stared deci-sively at their feet. Slowly, heads rose, eyes met,and they began to nod to each other. “I think Jeff isright,” came one voice. “Yes, we don’t work likethis choir,” said another. “Howdowe change to bemore like these singers?” queried another. Whatensued was a conversation about the nature andmeaning of how they worked together and whatthey were trying to achieve. They questioned howthey thought and acted, the meanings behindwhat they did.This essay is about how this learning space

came to be, how a relatively young manage-ment school in Slovenia, IEDC-Bled School ofManagement (www.iedc.si), has been inspiredby the arts to raise questions of meaning inmanagement practice. In the broader spec-trum, it is an argument supporting the need forthe arts in leadership development and man-agement education.

We sincerely thank Prof. Jonathan Gosling and Prof. Dr.Arnold Walravens for their invaluable critiques and insightsinto earlier versions of this article. Similarly, we are deeplyappreciative of the feedback, editorial advice, and support ofDr. Jean Bartunek.

382Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the copyrightholder’s express written permission. Users may print, download, or email articles for individual use only.

http://www.iedc.si

From Eccentric Room to Present Conversation

In a previous AMR issue Nancy Adler asked,“Why would we seek out the wisdom of artists?Why would we embrace beauty?” (2015: 491).Twenty years ago such questions—and the arts ingeneral—inhabited an eccentric room of musingsrendered inaudible at the periphery of businessliterature. Today, that conversation has becomeprominent, no longer viewed as a topic of eccen-tricity. What has fueled this change?

The answer lies within Adler’s self-response:“Because we passionately care about the fu-ture of our families, organizations, and country—because we care about our planet and civiliza-tion” (2015: 491). In short, it is because we careabout the quality of the lives of others, as well asourselves. This is a shift toward meaning:“working together towards something that reallymatters.” This raises the question worth probingin management. But is this what preoccupiesmost of our curricula? Or do we spend a dispro-portionate amount of our time with studentstalking about efficiency, profit, and growth?“Business-for-business-sake,” “the bottom lineabove all else,” “greed is good”—these remain

bright banners fervently flapping in the wind.They have become the guiding principles. Wesee these as subterfuge, excusing us from ask-ing, “What really matters?”We are far from the first to raise such concerns.

Indeed, the voices of malcontent have beengathering for some time. Ghoshal (2005), Khurana(2007), and Adler (2010) have decried the “de-struction of good management,” the commoditi-zation of business education and its moralvacuum, the dehumanizing nature of contempo-rary organizations supported by a “dehydratedlanguage.” Mintzberg has bemoaned the MBA(2004) and the dearth of “communityship” (2009)and has called for a rebalancing of society (2014).These scholars’ words articulate the need forsomething fundamentally different in manage-ment education—to rethinkwhat business schoolsdo and how they do it.The arts have entered and found footholds in

these debates. There is bold philosophizing—“leading beautifully” (Ladkin, 2008) and seeingthe future as an artist before a blank canvas(Scharmer, 2007). There are discussions aroundstorytelling (Taylor, Fisher, & Dufresne, 2002), cre-ativity and craft (Austin & Devin, 2003; Taylor &Ladkin, 2014), and the music and theater of orga-nizationalchange (Mantere,Sillince,&Hamalainen,2007; Mirvis, 2005). On the ground there are thepractices of approaching leadership through

Lake of Bled, Slovenia1

1 All photographs are from the book IEDC—A Creative En-vironment for Creative Leadership (Stepancic & Walravens,2013).

2017 383What Inspires the Academy: Book Reviews and Beyond

a choir, valuing emotion, purpose, beauty, andinspiration (Sutherland & Jelinek, 2015). IEDC-BledSchool of Management is part of this chorus.

Recently, the refrains of the songs have calledfor an orientation to beauty (Adler, 2011; Ladkin,2008; Taylor, 2013). While this sways us, we be-lieve the fundamental value of the arts lies issomething other than beauty.

Picasso’s Guernica, Penderecki’s Threnody forthe Victims of Hiroshima, and themementomori ofmedieval sculptors are not beautiful. Much art isnot. It is not beauty that serves as its guiding prin-ciple; rather, it is the capacity to createmeaning. It isart’s ponderous prod, its ability to, as IEDC facultymember Pierre Casse often says, challenge our as-sumptions, raise in us questions about who we are,what we do, how we think and act, that is mostvaluable. This, too, is what managing and leadingare about, raising those same questions in organi-zations:“Yes,wedon’tworklikethischoir,” respondedone of Jeff’s colleagues; “How do we change tobe more like these singers?” asked another.

Thearts remonstrate theavoidanceofmeaning.Listening to the orchestral shrieks, howls, andwails of Threnody, we are brought to the preci-pice of it, and there is nothing beautiful about it.There is truthfulness inherent in those strainsthat speak to the acts of August 6, 1945. Standingon that precipice, there is no excuse, no flappingbanners, just the experience of what the de-struction of Hiroshima meant for so many. In sodoing, art has the ability to remind our humanityabout our inhumanity.

This is an apocryphal example but one thatmakes the point clear: those enactingmanagement

and leadership cannot avoid questioning themeanings of their actions.Bringing this back to our domains of business

management and leadership, we remind our-selves that such thinking is not new; it waspresent in modern capitalism’s foundationalthinkers:

How selfish soever man may be supposed, thereare evidently some principles in his nature, whichinterest him in the future of others, and rendertheir happiness necessary . . . though he derivesnothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it(Smith, 1759: 47).

AdamSmith, by his ownestimationmore amoralphilosopher than an economist, points to thepositive potential of our thinking and acting onothers and the principles of our nature thatdesire it. The question Smith’s words imply is“How do our actions affect the lives of others?”Does current management education ade-quately encourage this? Or are the pervasivecontents and pedagogies of our curricula fo-cused more on preparing managers suited forLouis Blanc’s definition of capitalism: “the appro-priation of capital by some, to the exclusion ofothers” (1850: 161).It is not that efficiency, profit, and growth are

meaningless. Where we err is not asking whatthose meanings are and how our consequentactions affect others. It seems that when artistsdo ask, we are alerted to other truths.This is what Jeff experienced with the choir.

Experiencing the work of the choir gave Jeff andhis colleagues the opportunity to see their ownorganization and practices reflected. That reflec-tion, by comparison, was painful, ugly, and shame-fully petty. That level of engaging with meaning isthe core value of what the arts bring.But where does this leave beauty? In what fol-

lows we reflect back on our stories, asking whathas inspired us and compelled us to bring arts,management, and leadership together. In so do-ing, we relay the journey of building arts-basedprograms at IEDC and how our paths combined.Much is about beauty, but beauty as a means tocritically examine meaning.

DANICA’S STORY

When I ask myself about what inspires me, theconcepts of meaning, mission, and beauty cometo the fore. They have guidedmywork in founding

Tone Kralj, Lake of Bled, 1928

384 AprilAcademy of Management Review

and growing the IEDC-Bled School of Manage-ment and my daily work as a dean. They havebeen, and remain, informing concepts for myactions and decisions.

Yet, as we argued above, meaning precedesbeauty. Take a simple definition of beauty: “thequality . . . ina personor a thing that gives pleasureto the senses or . . . the mind” (merriam-webster.com). This is a “what”definition—the identificationof the quality or qualities that are perceived asbeing beautiful. Beauty is an evaluative conceptaffording us the ability to judge the world aroundus, including our own thoughts and actions, thoseof others,and thoseof theorganizationswearepartof. This must be applied to meaning.

Weunderstandmeaningasan interpretedgoal,intent, or end—the “why” of what we do. Perhapsthemost human ofmeanings is found in the Smithquote above: the rendering of others’ happinessas necessary to one’s self. It is imperative for us toprovide students with experiences that connectthiswith the practices of business—to connect thebetterment of others, ourselves, and societies ingeneral to how we do management and leader-ship. It is a question of the meanings informing ourdecisions and actions and asking whether or notthey are beautiful.

This is a towering imperative. It implicatesdaily managerial decisions, how they affect thelives of a vast array of people, both close at handand far away. It implicates our roles in local andglobal issues. It demandswe focus close-up andon the distance, balancing concerns of imme-diate economic benefits with systemic prob-lems. Art helps. It affords reflection on thedimensions of our existence—history, concepts,ideologies, assumptions, and habits—and doesso through creativity and originality. In thisa sense of beauty may give us direction, goals,and ideals, elevating our demands of self andothers.

This seems an unfair imperative to live up to;perhaps it is. Yet to aimany lower returns us to theamoral terrain critiqued by Ghoshal, Khurana,and others. To not lift our intentions higher is tocontinue to erode the great promise of the pro-fessionalization and development of manage-ment, to continue to commoditize what we do aswe forsake greater meaning.

When I began the journey of founding a newmanagement school thirty years ago, I sensedthe importance of providing students with artisticexperiences as a way to foreground meaning,

cultivating beauty as a way of judging the mean-ing of managerial practice. I wanted to developpedagogical practices in which, through art, stu-dents were confronted with beauty and uglinessso they would consciously know their touches. Iwanted students to be able to feel the quality ofthe meanings behind the managerial decisionsthey make, to regard their work as “meaning-making in a community of practice” (Drath &Palus, 1994: 4).What I relate here is a reflection on what has

informed this direction. It is a historical progress,in order to understandwhat inspiredme and us atIEDC-Bled School of Management and our focuson the arts. It begins as a personal story joinedby many actors along the way.

What Has Formed and Inspired Me?

I am a child of the postwar period, born inYugoslavia, in what is now the Republic ofSlovenia. Reflecting back on those early years,both at home and at school, I became innatelyaware of the importance of, and differences be-tween, ugliness and beauty. It was my good for-tune to have been born into a family that foughtagainst the “ugly”—the scourges of World War II.Family members devoted their lives to meaning-fully creating a more beautiful world for all of us,our communities and societies.It startedwithmy father, a blacksmith who took

time away from forging tools to take the stage intheatrical performances. I proudly recall his per-formances in village operettas like “The WhiteHorse Inn” and the “Mountain’s Flower,” commu-nity performances with the local workers’ or-chestra.2 It continuedwithmymother, crafting themost delicious cakes from meager ingredientsand sewing dresses for the village children. Inthese difficult times they understood themeaningof these actions—that they made the lives ofothers better.We were steeped in the works of our local art-

ists. Almost daily we sang enchanting Slovenianmelodies, sketched local settings, and recitedthe poetry of our land, from the national poetDr. France Preseren (1800–1849) to the young social

2“TheWhiteHorse Inn” isanoperettabyRalphBenatzkyand

Robert Stolz, while “Mountain’s Flower” was authored by Slo-vene composer Radovan Gobec. The performances referredto here featured the factory orchestra of “Tovarna volnenihizdelkov Majsperk d.o.o.” (Factory of Wool Products Majsperk).


http://merriam-webster.com

http://merriam-webster.com

activist and expressionist Srecko Kosovel.3 Hiswords have remained with me across the years:

A staid man walks the field, he is as cold as au-tumn, he is as sad as autumn. Faith is humanity. Tome it is a second thought. A speechless silence islike sorrow. I am no longer sad for I do not think ofmyself (Kosovel, 2004: 120).

To refrain from silence and dwell on others ratherthan one’s self is a more poetic rendering of thethoughts of Smith and, I think, the experience ofJeff, with which we began. It has given me cour-age many times across my career. Starting whatis now IEDC-Bled School of Management was nosimple feat. The school began in 1986 in socialistYugoslavia. Notions of commercialism, manage-ment, and executives were anathema to the po-litical climate; management was understood asa technocratic tool to control and suppress peo-ple. The school was originally one for “leadingworkers.” Yet Kosovel gave me the energy to dowhat I could to develop and professionalize thepractice of organizational management. Morethan this, it gave me the courage to do man-agement education differently than traditionalWestern models, which, in my estimation, havenot changed much. That difference was bringingthe arts—whether paintings, plays, or musicalperformances—to our students; to provide oppor-tunity for beauty, its inspiration, and, throughthis, to dwell on meaning.

I learned this focus on others, of helping man-agers seewhat they do in amuch broader context,frommy high school4 teachers as well. My Frenchteacher inspired me to go to Paris to study its his-tory and culture, so I foundmyself at the Sorbonnein themid 1960s. Later, my English teacher helpedme to study in theUnited States. At home I studiedand worked in the Yugoslav capital Belgrade,at the time a nexus of international artistic life.For four years I soaked in as many films, art ex-hibitions, operas, and theater performances as Icould.

After completing my Ph.D. I returned to Slovenia,becoming a university lecturer in labor relationsand organizational behavior at the Faculty for

Organization and Work. This was my first oppor-tunity tobring thearts intoeducation.At the facultyI dared to facilitate an exhibition that juxtaposedliterature on labor with sculptures formed fromthe guns of World War II.5 Here I began to see thetransformative capacities of art. I was enthralledby the juxtaposition of subtle sculpture with toolsof war, how an artist transformed symbols of ourinhumanity into artwork fully testifying to ourhumanity. This caused pause for reflection. Whatdid this say about the meanings of labor, organi-zation, and management? I found art proddingme to reflect on the nature andmeaning of myself,my actions, theworld aroundme, andwhat I coulddo to change it.In 1985 I was approached by the Slovene

Chamber of Commerce with the offer to revitalizethe School for Leading Workers. This was mysculptural opportunity; the pieces of my life’spuzzle were finding form. I grasped it and fromthose roots built the first modern managementschool in Central and Eastern Europe. What even-tually became IEDC-Bled School of Managementwas the vehicle for my ambitions to create aninternational setting, a meeting place of theworld, nourished by the arts, where we coulddevelop managers who would benefit their or-ganizations and society at large. I set to work,focused on professionalizing management, tak-ing a “best from the West, but leave the rest” ap-proach. To start, our faculty came from abroad,bringing first-class knowledge and internationalexperience. In those early days the students wereexecutives from the Yugoslav republics. Theschool was originally located in a hotel at Brdopri Kranju, connected with the nearby state resi-dency and grounds for state protocol visits andmeetings (until his death in 1980, President Titowas a frequent presence). Within this setting,with the Julian Alps as background, we createdour first home, decoratedwithbeautiful paintingsof regional masters.6

Although the natural and artistic beauty avail-able was inspiring, I wanted our students to havemore meaningful experiences, so we organizedexhibitions and theatrical and musical perfor-mances as extracurricular activities. I also heardof renowned Slovene violinist Miha Pogacnik,3 SreckoKosovel (1904–1926)wasaSlovenepoetwhosework

evolved toward avant-garde forms.4 I attended the “Second Gymnasium” in Maribor (the cap-

ital of the Slovene district of Stajerska). Established in 1949 asthe secondhighschool inMaribor, themodernandprogressiveschool was known for its prowess in sport, dance, and choralmusic.

5 This exhibition featured the works of author-sculptor IvanSvetina and sculptor Joze Volaric.

6 Among others, these included the works of Maksim Sedejand Riko Debenjak.


who used his music and performing as a tool forleadership development. Miha is an inspiringperson; some call him a charismatic dynamo.However, I was as much taken by his ideas as hisenergy. One thing struck me deeply. He pointedout that for artists “excellence” is the startingpoint,whereas formanagers it is the endpoint. LikeMiha’s thoughts, many artists speak of a life spentstruggling for excellence in pursuit of perfection,knowing perfection is unachievable. This is whatmakes the towering imperative discussed aboveapproachable. While one’s leaderly practice maynever be perfect, that is not an excuse to be imper-fect.With a flash of insight I saw that such thinking,emerging from thearts, couldbedirectly relevant tomanagement and leadership development.

In the second half of the 1990s, I decided weneeded a bespoke building, one founded on art.The location was an easy decision: Bled, home toone of the most beautiful lakes in the world. Iconvinced celebrated Slovene architect VojtehRavnikar7 to builda campusnot as amonument tobusiness but as a creative environment for crea-tive leadership. He succeeded. Through amodernrendition of a traditional alpine villa, Ravnikar’sdesign was founded on an art gallery concept.

Walking into the school, if youdidnot knowwhereyouwere, youmight guess an art gallery. For sureyou will find well-appointed classrooms with thefinest IT equipment and learning resources, butyou will also find the halls, lobbies, and class-rooms bedecked with original art. Focusing onmodern art from the region, this collection isintended to draw the eye and question the mind.The building itself is also a work of art. The openspaces, large terraces, and broad windows andglass make the interior an enlivening spacewhere the beauty of nature also folds into theclassroom. IEDC has now stood in Bled for fifteenyears and boasts a permanent collection of morethan 200 paintings and sculptures, living re-minders of our commitment to the arts (see Mljac& Stepancic, 2013).The move into our new campus accelerated

my desire to discover scholars and artists withwhom I could learn and cooperate. Peter Druckerwas chief among them. Drucker’s reflections onJapanese art and the relationships of art to self-awareness, management, and leadership movedme: “Learn more about yourself . . . you cannotmanage other people unless youmanageyourselffirst” (Purg, 2009: 7). With Nancy Adler I found theconceptual and theoretical voice for what I hadfelt and done intuitively, confronting uglinesswith beauty and seeing the artistry of leadershipas facing reality, seeking possibility (Adler, 2006,2011). The way Schein articulated the connectionsums up exactly why the arts are essential to

Ivan Picelj, Ulm Variations, 2006

7 Vojteh Ravnikar (1943–2010) was a lauded architect, de-signer ofmanyof Slovenia’s best knownmodernbuildingsandwinner of numerous local and international awards, includingthe Plecnik Award (1987), the Preseren Award (2003), and theHerder Prize (2006).


business, management, and leadership educa-tion. Art and artists “stimulate us to see more, tohear more and to feel more of what is going onwithin us and around us. Art is shocking, pro-voking, and inspiring” (Schein, 2013: 1).

All through these experiences—the ups anddowns of founding a school, building a new cam-pus, and meeting inspiring colleagues—I wasaware of the growing concern and critiques ofwhat business education had become. What hadbecome traditional in business education was rob-bing business’s soul. The critiques of Khurana,Ghoshal, Mintzberg, and others really struck home.I started to understand that “leaders are trapped bya focus on hyper rationalism and instrumentality”(Sutherland & Walravens, 2011: 4)—the infirmity ofpure transaction and profit.

I knew I could do something about that. Thewords of Slovene poet Kosovel sounded again inmy ears: “A speechless silence is like sorrow”

(2004: 120).

The Sarajevo Experience

Give me the latitude of a narrative tangent,one that will bring form to these reflections.Some years ago Prof. Jonathan Gosling con-tacted me. Jonathan was designing a leader-ship development program for a large defensecompany. He wanted to take executives ona learning journey where they could viscerallyconnect with the reality of their industry and themeanings that lay behind what they do. Hewanted to confront defense executives with themeanings, the real-world consequences, ofwhat they were leading. The idea was set tobring them to Sarajevo. This was not long afterthe war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Now, asthen, I believe everyone should have the privi-lege of visiting this remarkable country. I com-mitted to doing everything possible to make theprogram a reality.In Bosnia they met with business and political

leaders who, in the most difficult times, acted toprovide food, electricity, and medicine for thepeople of Sarajevo. While providing such life-saving means, they also tended to life-givingmeans, supporting cultural activities and artiststhroughout the siege. Knowing some of theseartists, I gathered together musicians, theaterprofessionals,poets,andcultural leaders.Throughstories and performances they recounted how, inthe face of mortal danger, they held rehearsals,concerts, readings,andplays. In themidstofdeath,in candlelit underground shelters, they sharedart with their fellow human beings, to keep themeaning of being human alive. This presentedparticipants with leadership meanings quite dis-tant from efficiency, profit, and growth (Gosling &Purg, 2007).Those days in Sarajevo, the basis of a program

we have now run many times, were catalytic.Seeing, hearing, feeling the spirit of Sarajevo,its business and political leaders, people fromthe street and artists, struck the hearts of man-agers we brought there, growing in them newmanagerial mindsets. It raised fundamentalquestions about the meanings of their organi-zation and the purposes and practices of lead-ership within.

Back to School

All of these experiences and inputs came to-gether, and the artistic heart of IEDC formed.

Zivko Ira Marusic, Dreams, 1996


Frommy earliest memories of my father, mother,and teachers, I knew the precedence of meaningas the core to what needs to inform our actions. Itwas, as Kosovel urged, to go beyond myself tothink on the betterment and happiness of othersthrough beautiful action. From friends and col-leagues I understood this action as confrontingthe ugliness of the world with beauty, the im-portance of self-reflection, and the power of artto form and inspire the understanding of theself and the meaning of working with others.Reflecting on my experiences with theater, film,music, and visual arts—focused with the wordsof Schein—I knew the ability of art to do this notby being beautiful alone but by shocking andprovoking us to see, hear, and feel more of theworld around us.

Connecting all this together, I understood thevalue of the arts in management education asconnecting us to our humanity. We facilitatethis by affording students experiences like theSarajevo program not only to reflect on them-selves but to see reality more artistically, boththe good and the bad. Moreover, these experi-ences give them the ability, like artists, to notbe blinded by probability and the status quo oftransaction and profit but to see the infinitepossibility of human nature and what we cando together.

Across thebackdropof theseeventsand thoughts,I brought together a cadre of artist-educators to

develop an Art and Leadership program as in-tegral to the longer programs and degrees atIEDC-Bled School of Management.8 Prof. Dr.Arnold Walravens engages students in obser-vational exercises using the school’s paintingsand sculptures. These exercises help studentsreflect on themselves and their own leadershippractices by metaphorically exploring themthrough various art styles (impressionism, re-alism, expressionism, etc.) and through howartists see and express the human condition.Via these metaphors students open up, becom-ing better observers of themselves and eachother, coming to important discoveries aboutwho they are and how they see their own lead-ership behaviors. As Paul Robertson, Britishviolinist of Medici String Quartet fame and for-mer musician-in-residence at IEDC, says of artand music: in them “we recognize that there isalways an opportunity to find the most beautifulpart of ourselves” (2009).Through film, Prof. Haris Pasovic, award-

winning director and theater professional fromSarajevo, takes students to the blackness theworld can present. Discussing issues of conflict,genocide, inequality, and oppression, he guides

The IEDC Premises

8 Longer programs at IEDC-Bled School of Management in-volve the five-weekGeneralManagement Program, aswell asthe degree programs delivered through the PostgraduateStudies Faculty, including the MBA and Ph.D.


classes through scenes of ethical and moral cri-ses faced in leadership. Violinist Miha Pogacnik,a continuous collaborator, uses masterworks ofthe violin repertoire to draw students into thevivacity of musical creativity. Like Prof. ArnoldWalravens, he develops observational skills,drawing attention to the centrality of listening inleadership. Through the conflicts and resolu-tions inmusic, heweaves the real-life tapestry ofleadership, its highs and lows, aspirations andachievements. After an experience with MihaPogacnik, participants say they will never listento music in the same way again. Music be-comes a new resource for their future leader-ship development.

Also working with music, Danish conductorPeter Hanke foregrounds the performance ofleadership—how it is not just anactivity ofmindsbut a fully embodied practice. Seeing the greatvalue of conducting as a space for leadershipdevelopment, I also engaged Marko Letonja,celebrated Slovene orchestral conductor, whohasgiven numerous presentations on leadershipfrom the podium.With him I created a video casetranslating lessons in leadership from music tobusiness.

Today, much of the arts-based activities areled by Dr. Ian Sutherland, Associate Dean forResearch at IEDC. In addition to being an edu-cator and researcher, he is a pianist and choralconductor. Ian works closely with many of theaforementioned faculty but also commands his

own portfolio of arts-based pedagogies. Ap-proaching change management from the artisticperspective, he takes managers on listening jour-neys through Beethoven piano sonatas, teachingthem to hear and experience the unfolding of or-ganizational change through the metaphors ofharmony, dissonance, transformation, and resolu-tion. Using group compositional exercises, heopens executives up to the essence of creativeprocesses as they compose unique performancepieces. However, he is perhaps best known forexploring leadership in action. He does thisthrough the activity of choral conducting in work-shops like the one Jeff experienced. Throughsinging, choirs, and conducting, he leads partici-pants to see howsimpleactions of connectingwithothers through shared meaning and purpose,beautifully oriented, are the heart of what organi-zations can achieve together (Purg & Walravens,2015). Here I hand the baton to him.

IAN’S STORY

Like Danica, during childhood I was sur-rounded by creativework and the arts. I came intotheworld to a comfortablymiddle classCanadianfamily in a small coastal town on the island ofNewfoundland. From the start I was encircledwith the arts: my father’s expansive library,school music ensembles, family vacations to thegalleries, museums, and concert halls of Europe.Between the ages of ten and twenty-five, I spent

The IEDC Center for Innovative Learning


my life at the piano, eventually completingbachelor and master’s degrees in music at Me-morial University. I was, and remain, a devotee ofthe arts, trained as a professional pianist andchoral conductor.

As nice as this may sound, in reality, the life ofa pianist is a focused clamor of solitude. It islonely. I first found a counterbalance in choralmusic. From chorister to accompanist and eventu-ally conductor, I found inspiration and fulfillmentin a community of people achieving together. Yetthe experiencewasnot simply aboutwhatweweredoing together; it was about what our collectiveactivity brought to the world and why we did it.A choir is an organization with a deeply socialmeaning—to bring music to life, bringing the en-joyment of it to others.

These experiences, the social dimension ofmusic making, brought me into a world of com-munity music. My work became helping othersexperience the joy of making music together. Iworked as a choral conductor and conservatorydirector, and I coordinated a large internationalmusic festival. I learned much about organizing,projectmanagement, teamdynamics,motivation,budgeting, accounting, event planning, and lo-gistics. Unknowingly, I became a manager.

Later, I returned to academia, completing aPh.D. in cultural sociology under Prof. TiaDeNora at the University of Exeter. Here a jobopportunity landed me in leadership studies.Seeing a fit with my musical background, artsmanagement experience, and base in sociologyand philosophy, Prof. JonathanGosling (the sameperson appearing above in the Sarajevo experi-ence), then director of Exeter’s Centre for Leader-ship Studies, hired me to manage a project onleadership in the creative and cultural in-dustries. Gradually, I found a new focus: lead-ership studies.

This began as a difficult relationship. I foundthe field both intellectually stimulating andshallow. I assumed leadership should considermeaning and purpose and not be so preoccupiedwith getting things done. From my musical back-ground I felt leadership was about collectiveachievement and benefit to others. Yet much ofwhat I read in leadership, management, andorganizational theory seemed to, as Ghoshalhas asserted, propagate “ideologically inspiredamoral theories” (2005: 76). Therewasadisavowalof sociological questions—“who controls andthe consequences of that control” in favor of

instrumental questions and “how to understandand thus design efficient and effective organiza-tions” (Hinings &Greenwood, 2002: 413). In light ofour discussion here, this was a disengagementwith questions of meaning behind managerialand organizational actions in favor of a mecha-nistic view to the bottom line above all else. I willalways appreciate early conversations withJonathan about this. He guided me towardmore subtle, emergent, cultural understandingsof leadership—studies approaching leadershipthrough ethnomethodological and social con-structionist lenses. I was taken by the concepts ofshared, collective, and distributed leadership.These spoke much more to my lived experienceas a musician and arts manager.Serendipitously, Prof. Donna Ladkin, an oboist

and former orchestra manager, was also a mem-ber of the faculty. At the time she was working onconnections among music, leadership, embodi-ment, and authenticity. She wrote about the em-bodiment of mastery, congruence, and purpose,identifying the nourishing capacity of leadershipfocused on beautiful goals (Ladkin, 2008). Herwordswerewhat I had felt asanartsmanagerandas a conductor. She challenged leadership to ask,“Is the purpose of one’s leadership beautiful?”This raises the meaning question by invokingbeauty as a criterion for judging the quality of themeaning in the same sense that the musician—pianist, conductor, or otherwise—does.Up to that point my musical studies were

a search for meaning and beauty, doing some-thing amazing with communities of people. Mysociocultural studies were a means of under-standing that practice through the active pres-ence of the arts in everyday life. My work inleadership was an exploration of the meanings,purposes, and practices of leadership in the artsand creative and cultural industries (see Suther-land & Gosling, 2010). This was a chain—music,cultural sociology, leadership studies. It unifiedas leadership linked back to music, the value ofthe arts to help develop leadership.Through Donna’s work I was introduced to

a growing host of others’ thinking with andthrough the arts for leadership and leadershipdevelopment. The arenas of embodiment, aes-thetics, craft, and artistry in management andleadership began to unfold.In 2010 three events accelerated this thinking:

a performance, an email, and a trip to Montreal.The performance and the email crystallized the


connections between leadership and art; the tripto Montreal was a gateway to Slovenia and whatI do now.

Sometime early in 2010 I was visiting London. Iindulged in a choral performance at theChurch ofSt. Martin-in-the-Fields. I do not remember whatchoir it was, but I do remember their final work,Thomas Tallis’s Spem in alium. If you don’t knowthe piece, it’s readily available on YouTube. Awork intimately known to me, on this occasion ittook on new significance.

Spem in alium is a uniquely impressive, un-fathomably complex piece. Composed in the latesixteenth century, it is a forty-voice motet. We allhave a mind’s ear concept of four-part harmony(soprano, alto, tenor, bass); Tallis’s masterpiecemultiplies that by a factor of ten. It is a work offorty-part harmony—forty unique and indepen-dent voices weaving in and out of harmony anddissonance, creatinga tapestry of vivid colorsandemotions.

Spem in alium is a musical treatise on organi-zations. It is adiverse assembly of peopleworkingtoward a collective goal through planned tasksand actions, a complex division of labor, pro-viding a service to others. When you change yourperspective and view a choir as an organization,you see the refined, beautiful power of a humanorganization. Some will argue this is a metaphor-ical trick—that companies and corporations aredifferent. I fully disagree. Like a corporation,a choir is a group of people coming together toachieve something they cannot do alone. Choirshave products and services (recordings, concerts,merchandise), sold to customers (audiences).They have defined organizational structuresand processes carried out through sections,functions, and roles. They are concerned withmarketing, sales, budgeting, accounting, andstrategic planning. They exist in a competitivemarketplace vying for market share, focusingon audience (customer) development. However,as far as I can tell, there is one fundamentaldifference: the basic logic of how it all fitstogether.

All the structures, functions, and financialand strategic concerns of a choir serve a goalthat has nothing to do with profit; they facilitateacommunityofpurpose: theenrichmentof the livesof people. It is the meaning of the organization—enriching the lives of the organizational mem-bers, the singers, and the wider public andsocieties in which the choir operates. The

choral organization is a real embodiment of whatMintzberg has called communityship: “Commu-nitymeans caringabout ourwork, our colleagues,and our place in the world, geographic and oth-erwise, and in turn being inspired by this caring”(2009: 141).The meaning behind the beauty is the art or-

ganization’s focus on these higher-order values,seeking not the lowest common denominators oftransaction and profit but the highest commondenominator of what organizations can do: enrich-ing the lives of others.Sitting there listening to the familiar sounds

of Spem in alium, my experience, if only fora few minutes, was nourished, transformed forthe better. I understood what the arts bring—avisceral, real-world case study of the positiveaffect and power of organizations, if we chal-lenge ourselves to do no less. This ability of thearts to connect with such meaning, more thanbeauty, is the fundamental value. A past re-search informant said this better than I can:“When you see something that’s amazing, orthat you’re part of something that’s amazingyou have a cultural or creative experience thathasmade you think and act differently . . . that’sits power really” (quoted in Sutherland &Gosling, 2010: 22).Seeing and being part of that amazing perfor-

mance helped me think differently about organi-zations. It was a call to action, to findways to helpothers have similar experiences.The second event of 2010 was an extension of

the first. It reframed leadership. An email poppedup onmy screenwith the subject line “you have tosee this.” A colleague had sent a link. Clicking it,I was redirected to a YouTube video. The screenflashedwith the text “185 voices . . . 243 tracks . . . 12countries . . . Lux Aurumque . . . Eric Whitacre.” Akitschy red digital curtain parted, revealing ablack-T-shirted conductor, Eric Whitacre; a vir-tual camera panned from conductor to a hostof 185 individuals singing from living rooms,kitchens, and studios. It was the Virtual Choir.Sitting in my office, I cried. The tears came fromthe meaning of this form of organization and theleadership that lay behind it.Eric Whitacre has created a global organization

whereanyonewithawebcam, internet connection,anda love for singing can join. I have followed thisorganization for seven years, watching it growfrom a start-up of 185 singers from 12 countriesto a mature company of 5,905 singers from 101


countries. Like experiencing Spem in alium atSt. Martin-in-the-Fields, I experienced the highestideals of human organizing, but with an inspira-tional leadership insight.

I amachoral conductor. I evenused to beagoodone. The conductor’s art takes place in rehearsal,where wework together with the individuals whohave chosen to sing with us. In the rehearsalspace we obsess over every fine detail, spendinghours shaping and molding each phrase. Con-ductors have more than once been accused ofbeing controlling perfectionists. What EricWhitacre did was the opposite. He let go. He cre-ated a space and let others fill it.

In the format of the Virtual Choir, Whitacrechooses a piece, gives general guidelines to sing-ers, but then relinquishes his power to control tothe thousands of singers who choose to join the or-ganization. Each autonomous singer prepares hisor her own recording of his or her individual partfrom which the performance is created. The VirtualChoiracceptsall. Thereareno rehearsals.Therearenowhere near the command, control, coordination,and compliance mechanisms typical of most orga-nizations, and certainly not choirs. The result isspectacular.

The music is good, really good. With eachnew iteration its excellence approaches per-fection. Anecdotes from the singers tell of deepcommitment and immense effort. They spendhours refining their contributions, recordingand rerecording themselves dozens and dozensof times to get that perfect take. They havegrown local and global support groups, GoogleHangouts, workshops. No singer in any choir Ihave been involved with, and I implicate my-self in this statement, ever worked that hard orshowed such self-motivation.

By relinquishing control, Whitacre maximizedengagement and commitment. Why? There aretwo reasons. The first is the line developed above:the beauty of the organization’s meaning. TheVirtual Choir exists to enrich the lives of itsmembers and its audience. It is an organizationfounded on the highest common denominator ofhuman experience—a community caring for itswork, colleagues, the world. It is, in turn, inspiredby this and it grows.

The second is the approach to leadership.Whitacre leads to create a space for others toachieve. The leadership is not about him. It’sabout them. It is not a leadership reducible tocharisma, authenticity, and transactional or

transformational behaviors. It is a leadership fo-cused on others, a leadership of letting go.Contrast this with the general cult of corporate

leadership: “Decades of short-term management,in the United States especially, have inflated theimportance of CEOs and reduced others in thecorporation to fungible commodities—human re-sources to be ‘downsized’ at the drop of a shareprice” (Mintzberg, 2009: 140).Whitacre’s efforts are not short-term manage-

ment focused on maximizing performance.Whitacre knowshe is literally nothingwithout theorganization. A conductor is the only musicianwho makes no sound, much like no CEO actuallymakes a product or service. We are nothingwithout the people who define our ability to lead.This is a humbling realization.The third experience of 2010 was about action.

At home in Newfoundland, I unexpectedly re-ceived aphone call fromDanica Purg.Ourmutualfriend Jonathan Gosling had connected us. Shetold me she was at the Academy of Managementannual meeting in Montreal and would like tomeet with me. Could I come tomorrow? At thispoint I realized two things about Danica. One, sheis awomanof action. Two, she does not takeno foran answer. Within forty-eight hours I arrived inMontreal. Over the course of a day, meanderingaround galleries and museums—I particularlyremember an exhibition about Miles Davis—Danica told me the story of IEDC and its artisticsoul. She invited me to visit IEDC to explore pos-sibilities of working together. I took up that in-vitation, visiting IEDCseveral times in the comingmonths, contributing to the school’s programs.That included the Sarajevo experience. I wasmoved, deeply.I knew then that joining IEDCwas what I had to

do. It was the opportunity to realize the potential Iheard in Spem in alium and the Virtual Choir. Itwas a courageous faculty where we could reallydo things differently.In January 2011 I became a resident of Slovenia.

BRINGING IT TOGETHER AND INNOVATING

Our stories converge around the search formeaning and the experience of finding it throughthe arts. Together we work to bring that to man-agement development, to form learning environ-ments where participants are inspired and havethe opportunity to pause, reflect, question, andsearch for meaning. At IEDC-Bled School of


Management, the arts, along with sustainabledevelopment and ethics, are a pillar of the school’sphilosophy. Themeaning of whatwe do is helpingothers develop into managers and leaders whowill strive for and seek out the highest commondenominator of what organizations can achieve:enriching the lives of others. We seek to providethem with the abilities of excellence and the de-termination to strive for such perfection.

Jeff’s story, where we started this narrative, re-volves around what we call a “leadership master-class,” bringing practicing managers into contactwith a professional chamber choir. It is a culmina-tionof all theexperience, intuition, senses, thoughts,research,andpractice thathavebroughtus together.

It begins with a conversation about the rela-tional aspects of leadership, discussing leader-ship as a situated, social phenomenon andopening dialogue about emotional connectivity,purpose, presence, and meaning. Then we areflash mobbed by a choir, and everything changes.The participants are confronted with a communityof practitionerswhosemeaning exudes beauty. Forthe remainder of theday, themanagersand singersform one learning community discussing the whyand how of the choral organization, the role andpractice of leadership, and the wider meanings ofwhatanorganization isandcanbe.Most important,eachmanagerial participant has the opportunity tocomeforwardandconduct thechoir, to feelwhat it islike to lead this kind of company.

What can occur in this space, and did occur forJeff and his colleagues, is a nourishing of the hu-man condition. When enveloped by the sounds ofa beautiful organization at beautiful work—likeanoperetta in avillage production,Spem inaliumat St. Martin-in-the-Fields, or the Virtual Choir onyour screen—themeaning of whatwe can achievetogether is tangible, palpable. In these momentsthe banners of “business-for-business-sake,” “thebottom line above all else,” and “greed is good,”appear for what they really are, embarrassinglypaltry and lifeless.Yet the global industry of business education,

for the most part, would have us ignore this, ar-guing that efficiency, profit, and growth shouldbe our foci. They may be means, but they are notends.Thearts,bycontrast, refuse to letus ignore this,reminding us that art, music, and culture are morethan means; they give meaning to life. They inspireand form our best possible selves as individuals,managers, leaders, andorganizations: “Andhence itis, that to feelmuch for others and little for ourselves,that to restrain our selfishness, and to indulge ourbenevolent affections, constitutes the perfection ofhuman nature” (Smith, 1759: 30).Today, together, we both continue to be voices

and advocates for the involvement of the arts andartists in management education. We travel theworld, together and separately, speaking to execu-tives, HR professionals, and fellow academics—anyone who will listen—about the value of the

Eduard Cehovin, Europe 2020, 2004 (IEDC Garage Wall Painting)


arts for business education, management andleadership in particular.We tell the stories of ourexperiences with the arts and listen to those ofothers. Along the way, we find inspiration fromothers involved in the practice in an ever-expanding and connecting community.

At IEDC-Bled School of Management, we aredeveloping a robust research agenda around thearts, bringing together faculty and Ph.D. studentsto explore arts-based pedagogy, learning pro-cesses, and the longer-term impacts of artisticbusiness learning.

The greatest inspiration for us both is seeingand hearing our students learn and developthrough choirs, painters, and film directors asmuch as through case studies and finance, mar-keting, accounting, and strategy courses. Today,more than 75,000 individuals, coming from82 countries, haveparticipatedacross the school’smany programs, extending the approach andphilosophy of IEDC-Bled School of Managementaround the globe. Their stories carry the workforward. This enrichment, a reconnection to thehuman spirit of organizations, is what pushes usto continuously invent. Poets and philosophers,architects, designers and dancers have becomefamiliar actors in our classrooms. As managersopen to the possibilities of what we can achievetogether, to companies of community, to businessenriching the lives of others, and as they becomedissatisfied with the lowest common denomina-tors of what management has become, we areinspired. We are formed and reformed.

REFERENCES

Adler, N. J. 2006. The art of leadership: Now that we can doanything, what will we do? Academy of ManagementLearning & Education, 5: 486–499.

Adler, N. J. 2010. Going beyond the dehydrated language ofmanagement: Leadership insight. Journal of BusinessStrategy, 31(4): 90–99.

Adler, N. J. 2011. Leading beautifully: The creative economyand beyond. Journal of Management Inquiry, 20: 208–221.

Adler, N. J. 2015. Finding beauty in a fractured world: Art in-spires leaders—Leaders change the world. Academy ofManagement Review, 40: 480–494.

Austin, R., & Devin, L. 2003. Artful making: What managersneed to know about how artists work. Upper Saddle River,NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Blanc, L. 1850. Organisation du travail (9th ed.). Paris: Bureaudu Nouveau Monde.

Drath, W. H., & Palus, C. J. 1994. Making common sense:Leadership as meaning-making in a community of prac-tice. Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.

Ghoshal, S. 2005. Bad management theories are destroyinggood management practices. Academy of ManagementLearning & Education, 4: 75–91.

Gosling, J., & Purg, D. 2007. How to be sanguine in Sarajevo:Leadership as transformation or tragedy? BAWB-Interactive Working Paper Series, 1(3): 85–98.

Hinings, C. R., & Greenwood, R. 2002. Disconnects and conse-quences in organizational theory? Administrative ScienceQuarterly, 47: 411–421.

Khurana, R. 2007. From higher aims to hired hands: The socialtransformation of American business schools and the un-fulfilled promise of management as a profession. Prince-ton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Kosovel, S. 2004. Man in a magic square: Poems. (Translatedby N. Kocijancic Pokorn, K. Jerin, P. Burt, R. Metcalfe, &Amidas d.o.o.) Tolmin: Myra Locatelli.

Ladkin, D. 2008. Leading beautifully: How mastery, congru-ence, and purpose create an aesthetic of embodiedleadership practice. Leadership Quarterly, 19: 31–41.

Mantere, S., Sillince, J., & Hamalainen, V. 2007. Music asa metaphor for organizational change. Journal of Orga-nizational Change Management, 20: 447–459.

Mintzberg, H. 2004. Managers not MBAs. New York: Harlow.

Mintzberg, H. 2009. Rebuilding companies as communities.Harvard Business Review, 87(7-8): 140–143.

Mintzberg, H. 2014. Rebalancing society: Radical renewalbeyond left, right and center. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Mirvis, P. H. 2005. Large group interventions: Change as the-ater. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 41: 122–138.

Mljac, M., & Stepancic, L. 2013. A collection of three graces. InL. Stepancic & A. Walravens (Eds.), IEDC—A creativeenvironment for creative leadership: 23–31. Bled: IEDC-Bled School of Management.

Purg, D. 2009. Peter Drucker and the arts. Paper presented atthe First Global Peter F. Drucker Forum, Vienna.

Purg, D., & Walravens, A. 2015. Arts and leadership: Visionand practice at the IEDC-Bled School of Management.Journal of Leadership Studies, 9: 42–47.

Robertson, P. 2009. Video interview. IEDC-Bled School ofManagement Developing Leaders Through Art. Availableat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v5m2gN6f5TigE.

Scharmer, C. O. 2007. Theory U: Leading from the future as itemerges: The social technology of presencing. San Francisco:Berrett-Koehler.

Schein, E. 2013. The role of art and the artist. OrganizationalAesthetics, 2: 1–4.

Smith, A. 1759. The theory of moral sentiments. London:A. Millar.

Stepancic, L., & Walravens, A. (Eds.). 2013. IEDC—A creativeenvironment for creative leadership. Bled: IEDC-BledSchool of Management.

Sutherland, I., & Gosling, J. 2010. Cultural leadership: Mo-bilizing culture from affordances to dwelling. Journal ofArts Management Law and Society, 40: 6–26.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2gN6f5TigE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2gN6f5TigE

Sutherland, I., & Jelinek, J. 2015. From experiential learning toaesthetic knowing: The arts in leadership development.Advances in Developing Human Resources, 17: 289–306.

Sutherland, I., & Walravens, A. 2011. Artful leadership: Re-flections from Executive MBA participants. Bled: IEDC-Bled School of Management.

Taylor, S. S. 2013. Little beauties: Aesthetics, craft skill, andthe experience of beautiful action. Journal of Manage-ment Inquiry, 22: 69–81.

Taylor, S. S., Fisher, D., & Dufresne, R. L. 2002. The aesthetics ofmanagement storytelling: A key to organizational learn-ing. Management Learning, 33: 313–330.

Taylor, S. S., & Ladkin, D. 2014. Leading as craft-work: The roleof studio practices in developing artful leaders. Scandi-navian Journal of Management, 30: 95–103.

https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2016.0047

The Making of a Classic Ethnography:Notes on Alice Goffman’s On the Run

By John Van Maanen, Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, and Mark de Rond, University ofCambridge

It is rare for a scholarly ethnography written bya young, untenured professor to generate the sort ofbuzz ordinarily reserved for the progeny of ToniMorrison, Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth, or MargaretAtwood. Yet Alice Goffman’s (2014) On the Run: Fu-gitive Life in anAmericanCityhasmore or less doneprecisely that, and drawn more positive attentionthan almost any social science work in years. Thebook—her first—has been widely praised for itsgut-wrenching, incisive representation of the so-cial life of young African American men houndedby the police in a poor, inner-city Philadelphianeighborhood—a world most of us have limited,if any, knowledge of. Reviewers hailed it as “a re-markable feat of reporting” (AlexKotlowitz, 2013, inthe New York Times Sunday Book Review), and“extraordinary” (Malcolm Gladwell, 2014, in theNewYorker), destined tobecome “anethnographicclassic” (Christopher Jencks, 2014, in the New YorkReview of Books).

But, as might be expected given the acclaim andattention generated since its publication, the bookhas also come in for some sober criticism, the ma-jority of which has come from legal scholars and

journalists. Indeed, any book that raises importantquestions about research ethics coupled with thenear impossibility of specifying consensual rulessurrounding ethnography is bound to stir contro-versy. Who, for example, has the right to study,analyze, and describe the lives of marginalizedsegments of society? How is the Herculean task oftelling what it is like to be someone else best ac-complished? What is the right mix of involvementanddetachment, reportageand interpretation in thesetting?How far does onego to protect the identitiesof those one is close to in the field? How can Alice’sclaims to truth be assessed in light of the anonymitycloak that covers her representation?The questions raised are many, and they are

provoking. There are no easy answers, since eth-nography is always a messy affair. What to onereader is a virtue of the work is, to another, a vice.In this footnote to On the Run, we chase downquestions of veracity, betrayal, exploitation, andparticipation that surround the work. These arematters of particular relevance to a number oforganizational andoccupational researcherswhoregard their fieldwork and textual practices aswell within ethnographic traditions. Few studiesoffer a better, closer, or more intense depictionand forthright confrontationof themoral dilemmasthat are more or less baked into immersion eth-nography. This is the sort of work in which thefieldworker subjects herself—her own body, herown personality, her own social situation—to thelife contingencies of those studied, seeing not justwhat is happening in the research site but feelingit, bodily and emotionally. Since various occu-pational and organizational ethnographies aremaking something of a splash of late in the man-agement research literature, a close look at thishigh-profile ethnography is warranted, especiallyin light of the inordinate commentary, both praise-worthy and blameworthy, it has generated.1

We thank Jean Bartunek for her uncompromising efforts inhelping tobringthisessay to fruition.Wealso thankDvoraYanow,Annette Lareau, Tim Black, Isaac Holeman, and the panelists ofthe “Author Meets Critics” session at the 2014 American Socio-logicalAssociationAnnualMeeting (SanFrancisco) for their input.

1 We have in mind here a number of book-length ethnog-raphies published over the last ten or so years that havereceived considerable attention from various scholarly com-munities in the management and organization researchworlds. A small sample includes Barley and Kunda (2006),Anteby (2008, 2013), Ho (2009), Kellogg (2011), Lane (2011),Nadeem (2011), Sharone (2013), and Turco (2016). Considerableethnographic work is found in the area journals as well, albeitedited to reflect the presentational penchants (“asphalting”)of particular journals, including this one—predilections thatcover such matters as acceptable length, format, framing,research design, presentation of findings, method and analysisdiscussion, theory development, and so on.


https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2016.0047

Documents

WHAT INSPIRES THE ACADEMY: Jean M. Bartunek BOOK …