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

2. 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

3. 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?

4. 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)

5. 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
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6. 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
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7. Collecting PAEs and NAEs 2
PANAS-circumflex (Watson, Clark and Tellegen, 1988)
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8. Collecting PAEs and NAEs 3
PAEs Teachers
Beautiful
NAEs Teachers
Emotional activation
Ugly
Emotional activation
Ugly
Beautiful
PAEs Surgeons
NAEs Surgeons
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9. Collecting PAEs and NAEs 3
PAEs & NAEs categorized according categories of events of Basch & Fischer (1998)
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10. 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)
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11. 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
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12. Collecting quantitative data of appreciation of 31 OAS
Canonical Loadings for Set-1 (n=286)
a01 Employees’ qualities , , ,185
a02 Composition of employees , , ,056
a03 Work attitude employees , , ,199
a04 Attention for craftsmanship , , ,092
a05 Personal goals employees , , ,050
b06 Qualities of management , , ,166
b07 Style of management , , ,027
b08 Offered challenges , , ,088
b09 Attention to new ideas , , ,046
b10 Balance between org. goals and indiv. goals , , ,033
c11 Alignment of activities in our organizations , , ,045
c12 Our house style , , ,218
c13 Freedom ( autonomy) , , ,297
c14 Informed about what is happening in our org. , , ,144
c15 Alignment management and employees , , ,105
d16 Business approach (‘this is how we work here’) , , ,218
d17 Organizations rituals , , ,000
d18 Attitude towards our environment , , ,128
d19 All work towards the same goals , , ,019
d20 Working atmosphere in our organization , , ,020
e21 Products and / or services , , ,073
e22 Image , , ,197
e23 Mission statement , , ,102
e24 Organization goals , , ,006
e25 Contribution to society , , ,308
e26 Contacts with our environment , , ,212
f27 Workplace , , ,234
f28 Interior or decoration of my work environment , , ,114
f29 Our (internal) cooperation , , ,071
f30 Opportunities for development and deployment , , ,017
f31 Everything in my organization is nicely in balance , , ,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 , , , ,000
2 , , , ,000
3 , , , ,006
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13. Collecting quantitative data of appreciation of 31 OAS
OASa01
Aesthetic experience
Affective commitment
.61
.91
Flow (g34)
Work pleasure (g37)
.70
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
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)
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14. 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
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15. Aesthetic poperties that trigger PAEs
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16. More information http://repository.tue.nl/774529
Contact:
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