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This contribution addresses how and when does leadership matter in innovative projects like artistic interventions in organizations. A comparison of three disappointing and three generative cases in four European countries reveals that lack of visible leadership support resulted in isolation and little value added for the organization, whereas various forms of active leadership multiplied participation and generated outcomes for employees and the organization. The analysis also pinpoints two sets of tensions that leaders grapple with: presence and absence; providing orientation and opening to learning, and suggests ways of reconciling them. The discussion contributes to the literature on leadership by connecting suspended leadership with distributed leadership, and by connecting with the emerging body of literature on aesthetic aspects of leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores whether artistic interventions in organizations offer employees the possibility of fulfilling the deeply human need to give meaning to work. It draws on several distinct bodies of theories relating to the non-instrumental management of work to identify dimensions of meaningful work, and builds on previous empirical research to specify analytical categories. The qualitative data consists of responses from 67 employees who experienced such interventions. Our qualitative-quantitative analysis supports the relevance of several existing dimensions. In addition, it enriches theory-building by documenting several more categories of meaningful work that had not yet been identified in the literature. The article concludes by discussing the implications for management in taking the learning forward in the organization after employees have experienced meaningful work with artists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a case study on a two and a half year artistic intervention residency program in a French consulting company to explore whether and how organizations can learn from the unusual experiences such programs offer. It shows that although the participants reject an instrumental relationship to art, engaging with artists at work affords unusual experiences that create opportunities and material for conversations and reflection from which organizational learning can emerge. The presence of artworks may stimulate further sensemaking processes after the completion of the residencies. The article highlights essential functions enabling learning between the world of the arts and the world of organizations, fulfilled in this case by an intermediary tandem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the connections between the values and practices of organizational development (OD) and those characterizing the emerging field of artistic interventions in organizations. Large and small companies, as well as public sector and non-governmental organizations, are drawing on all forms of art - visual, performing, literary - as central features of interventions lasting a few hours, a couple of days, several months, or sometimes even years. We demonstrate that both approaches enable assumptions and values to be revealed and thus worked with in explicit ways. However, the paper also shows that artistic interventions can run the risk of allowing vital values and assumptions to remain invisible, and thus they may not fully realise their potential power as catalysts for change in organizations. After briefly summarizing the forces which have shaped OD practices to set the scene for examining how artistic interventions have come to play a role within organization change initiatives, we present two examples of such interventions in order to illustrate the ways their design and execution contribute to their eventual impact. The paper then discusses the implications of these examples for the stakeholders engaged in artistic interventions to more explicitly consider issues of transparency, visibility and invisibility in their design and enactment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]