ORGANIZATIONAL AESTHETICS AND THE PROMISE OF HAPPINESS How Aesthetic Experiences of Employees Contribute to Happiness EIPE 2017 dr. S. (Steven) A. de Groot

Propositions For decades organizations have been dominated by the perspectives of the Good and the Truth originated by Plato. Motivated by the strong development of industrialization in the last century, and enhanced by the rules of Scientific Management, standardization efficiency and effectiveness dominated manager´s minds and actions. During these ages, the perspective of the Beauty for long has been neglected in organizations (e.g. Guillén, 1997). In the meanwhile: burn-out & overstrained is the most registered mental occupational disease of employees (77% in 2014 in NL) and 67% of employees doesn’t feel inspired and prefer another job

Research questions Can the perspective of the Beauty be a fruitful perspective on organizations? What stimuli (Organizational Aesthetic Stimuli: OAS) and properties drive employees’ positive aesthetic experiences and negative aesthetic experiences? To what extent affect OAS affective commitment of employees?

Aesthetic experiences Emotion Aesthetic judgment Activation Subject (personal characteristics) Object (aesth. properties) Aesthetic process 1. Perceptual analysis 2. Implicit memory integration 3. Explicit classification; 4. Cognitive mastering 5. Evaluation Affective Commitment Performance Based on Affective Events Theory (AET, Weiss and Cropanzano, 1996)

Data collection Study 1: Examining what aesthetic experiences professionals have during daily work Collecting 124 PAEs and 91 NAEs of five teachers from two elementary schools Collecting 120 PAEs and 98 NAEs of five surgeons from two hospitals Study 2: Examining the relationship between the appreciation of OAS and affective commitment (e.g. pride, work pleasure, and flow experiences); Defined 31 OAS for a survey Collecting quantitative data of appreciation of 31 OAS of 286 respondents representing 5 organizations 15-2-2019 PAGE 4

Collecting PAEs and NAEs 1: Stendahl grid Day 1 Positive Aesthetic Experience (PAE) 3 Ugly High activation Beautiful M1.3 Mr. K. called to thank me for guidance in a difficult and complicated treatment, he recovers well and is sporting again X Low activation Day 7 Negative Aesthetic Experience (NAE) 1 Ugly High activation Beautiful L7.1 Mrs. Ade will leave. How will it continue? Apparently, a new director, a real person ..... no transition, I worry .......... vision or urge retention? X Low activation 15-2-2019 PAGE 5

Collecting PAEs and NAEs 2 PANAS-circumflex (Watson, Clark and Tellegen, 1988) 15-2-2019 PAGE 6

Collecting PAEs and NAEs 3 PAEs Teachers Beautiful NAEs Teachers Emotional activation Ugly Emotional activation Ugly Beautiful PAEs Surgeons NAEs Surgeons 15-2-2019 PAGE 7

Collecting PAEs and NAEs 3 PAEs & NAEs categorized according categories of events of Basch & Fischer (1998) 15-2-2019 PAGE 8

Collecting PAEs and NAEs 3 PAEs/NAES of teachers PAEs/NAES of surgeons Often mentioned PAEs / NAEs in work Highest appreciated PAEs (Aesth.JudgxEmotion, max = 16) PAEs: Goal achievement (50%) Acts of students (39%) Interaction with students / parents (31%) Interaction with colleagues (19%) Receiving recognition (15%) Goal progress (12%) NAEs: No or less influence or control (29%) No or less goal achievement (25%) Negative interaction with customers (24%) Negative interaction with colleagues (20%) Negative acts of customers (students and parents) (20%) Interaction with colleagues (8,2) Interaction with students / parents (7,8) Goal achievement (7,4) Acts of students (7,3) Goal progress (5,5) Receiving recognition (4,1) Acts / interaction with management (3,0) Influence or control (1,5) Involvement with challenging tasks (0,2) Other (0,1) Often mentioned PAEs / NAEs in work Highest appreciated PAEs (Aesth.JudgxEmotion, max = 16) PAEs: Goal achievement (46%) Interaction with colleagues (38%) Acts of customers (15%) Receiving recognition (13%) Goal progress (12%) Interaction with customers (7%) NAEs: Bad Interaction with colleagues (34%) No or less goal achievement (31%) No or less influence or Control (24%) No or less involvement with planning (18%) Bad acts of customers (10%) No or less goal progress (10%) Bad stimulus from physical environment (10%) Receiving recognition (10.2) Goal progress (9.2) Goal achievement (7.0) Interaction with customers (5.9) Interaction with colleagues (3.5) Involvement with planning (2.6) Acts of customers (3.2) Stimulus from physical environment (1.4) Influence or Control (0.9) Involvement with challenging tasks (0.4) Other (0,3) Involvement with decision making (0.2) Acts / interaction with management (0.2) Not-functioning ICT (0.0) PAEs & NAEs categorized according categories of events of Basch & Fischer (1998) 15-2-2019 PAGE 9

Data collection Study 1: Examining what aesthetic experiences professionals have during daily work Collecting 124 PAEs and 91 NAEs of five teachers from two elementary schools Collecting 120 PAEs and 98 NAEs of five surgeons from two hospitals Study 2: Examining the relationship between the appreciation of OAS and affective commitment (e.g. pride, work pleasure, and flow experiences); Defined 31 OAS for a survey (interviewing 10 managers, 6 people from 4 organizations registered 170 PAEs) Collecting quantitative data of appreciation of 31 OAS of 286 respondents representing 5 organizations 15-2-2019 PAGE 10

Collecting quantitative data of appreciation of 31 OAS Canonical Loadings for Set-1 (n=286) 1 2 3 a01 Employees’ qualities ,621 ,127 ,185 a02 Composition of employees ,614 ,065 -,056 a03 Work attitude employees ,501 -,307 ,199 a04 Attention for craftsmanship ,639 ,144 ,092 a05 Personal goals employees ,562 ,011 ,050 b06 Qualities of management ,711 ,095 ,166 b07 Style of management ,691 ,180 ,027 b08 Offered challenges ,750 -,120 -,088 b09 Attention to new ideas ,554 ,132 ,046 b10 Balance between org. goals and indiv. goals ,675 ,305 ,033 c11 Alignment of activities in our organizations ,624 ,139 ,045 c12 Our house style ,503 -,100 ,218 c13 Freedom ( autonomy) ,533 ,035 -,297 c14 Informed about what is happening in our org. ,626 ,305 ,144 c15 Alignment management and employees ,730 ,173 ,105 d16 Business approach (‘this is how we work here’) ,729 ,179 ,218 d17 Organizations rituals ,663 ,154 ,000 d18 Attitude towards our environment ,760 -,081 ,128 d19 All work towards the same goals ,724 -,063 ,019 d20 Working atmosphere in our organization ,782 ,097 -,020 e21 Products and / or services ,628 ,164 ,073 e22 Image ,450 ,415 ,197 e23 Mission statement ,594 ,110 ,102 e24 Organization goals ,618 ,078 ,006 e25 Contribution to society ,519 -,083 ,308 e26 Contacts with our environment ,525 ,115 ,212 f27 Workplace ,405 ,048 ,234 f28 Interior or decoration of my work environment ,551 ,128 ,114 f29 Our (internal) cooperation ,698 ,061 ,071 f30 Opportunities for development and deployment ,686 ,095 -,017 f31 Everything in my organization is nicely in balance ,737 ,285 -,091 Canonical Correlations Relationship aesthetic experiences & affective commitment 1 ,699 2 ,494 3 ,425 Test that remaining correlations are zero: Wilk's Chi-SQ DF Sig. 1 ,317 299,375 93,000 ,000 2 ,620 124,623 60,000 ,000 3 ,820 51,774 29,000 ,006 15-2-2019 PAGE 11

Collecting quantitative data of appreciation of 31 OAS OASa01 Aesthetic experience Affective commitment .61 .91 Flow (g34) Work pleasure (g37) .70 .41 - .78 Proud (g36) OASf31 Set 1 Set 2 .73 OAS… OASa01 OAS… Aesthetic experience Aesthetic value .78 .62 .89 Beautiful work (g35) Beautiful organization (o3) .68 .46 - .75 Attention to aesthetics contributes to performance (g38) OASf31 Set 1 Set 2 CCA is an exploratory tool to determine whether two sets of variables are independent of one another or, conversely, determining the magnitude of the relationships that may exist between the two sets (Hair, et al., 2010) 15-2-2019 PAGE 12

Design principles of beautiful organizations What stimuli (Organizational Aesthetic Stimuli: OAS) and properties drive employees’ positive aesthetic experiences and negative aesthetic experiences? Most strong loadings (>.70) for: - qualities of management - offered challenges - alignment between management and employees - business approach - attitude towards our environment - all work towards the same goals - working atmosphere - coherence of things To what extent affect OAS affective commitment of employees? All 31 OAS show loadings between .41 and .78 with affective commitment 15-2-2019 PAGE 13

Aesthetic poperties that trigger PAEs 15-2-2019 PAGE 14

More information http://repository.tue.nl/774529 Contact: steven.degroot@zuyd.nl 15-2-2019 PAGE 15