Artifacts and Organizations

2

Organizational Artifacts and the Aesthetic Approach

Antonio Strati

University of Trento, Trento, Italy

 

There is by now a substantial body of organizational literature on artifacts, and it has gained accreditation among organizational theories as the crisis of the rationalist and positivist paradigm has deepened (Hatch, 1997b; Strati, 2000). And since the pioneering works of Fred Steele (1973) and Franklin Becker (1981), it has also developed in relation to aesthetics (Gagliardi, 1990; Ramirez, 1991; Strati, 1992; Turner, 1990). Toward the end of the last century, the pathos of organizational artifacts highlighted by study of aesthetics and organizations was flanked by Michel Callon's (1980) sociology of translation—thereafter termed “actor ...