special track details

Organizational Aesthetics in the Ecology of Knowledge: Sensing, Feeling and Knowing in the AI Era

Reference No. of the Track: 45
Description
Knowledge does not exist in isolation; it lives within an ecology. An ecological perspective moves beyond seeing knowledge as a discrete resource and instead considers it as something that emerges, circulates, and evolves through relationships among actors, practices, artefacts, technologies, organizations, and environments. Akera (2007) uses the ecology of knowledge to capture the contingency, indeterminacy and heterogeneous complexity of knowledge production, while Goonatilake (2006) portrays knowledge as an evolving “knowledge jungle” in which multiple knowledge lineages interact and transform in relation to changing environments. If knowledge is an ecology, what kinds of knowledge inhabit it? This track focuses on aesthetic knowing as a fundamental yet often overlooked component of organizational knowledge ecologies. Organizational knowledge is commonly approached through cognitive, linguistic, informational and, increasingly, computational forms. Yet people also know organizations through their bodies, senses, emotions, intuition, imagination and lived experiences. Strati (1995) conceptualizes aesthetics as a distinctive form of knowledge of organizational life, while Ewenstein and Whyte (2007) show that aesthetic knowledge is embodied and situated, encompassing symbolic and experiential dimensions. We therefore propose that aesthetic knowing contributes to the biodiversity of the knowledge ecology. Thinking, sensing, feeling, and doing represent interconnected ways through which organizational actors understand, interpret, and transform their organizational worlds. Aesthetic knowledge is thus not peripheral to organizational knowing but contributes to maintaining its plurality. This perspective becomes particularly relevant in the AI era. Schiuma et al. (2026) argue that organizational knowledge and innovation require the integration of rational and emotional thinking: while AI predominantly augments analytical and computational capabilities, aesthetic technologies can strengthen emotional, experiential, and sensory dimensions of human cognition. Their Convergent Knowledge Innovation Model highlights the value of a dialogic integration between AI and aesthetic technologies rather than their substitution. The arts provide a particularly powerful expression of this complementarity. Carlucci and Schiuma (2018) conceptualize the arts as a management resource and source of organizational development, capable of engaging emotions, energy, and creativity. As learning platforms and aesthetic technologies, arts-based practices can stimulate new ways of seeing and feeling organizational issues, expand perspectives and connect rationality with intuition and emotion. Rather than opposing human and artificial knowledge, the track therefore invites scholars to investigate their interdependencies, complementarities, tensions and co-evolution, asking: What role does aesthetic knowing play in sustaining the biodiversity of organizational knowledge ecologies, and how can sensory, embodied, emotional and experiential ways of knowing coexist and evolve alongside increasingly powerful forms of AI-mediated knowing?
Indicative Topics
  • Aesthetic knowing in AI-mediated organizational knowledge ecologies
  • The impact of AI on aesthetic, embodied, sensory, and experiential knowledge in organizations
  • Complementarities and tensions between aesthetic knowing and artificial knowing
  • The role of organizational aesthetics in balancing human and computational forms of knowing
  • Organizational aesthetics in physical, digital and hybrid workplaces
  • Organizational spaces, workplaces and atmospheres as contexts for aesthetic knowing
  • Organizational aesthetics, identity, culture and sensemaking
  • Aesthetic knowledge in organizational learning and knowledge-sharing processes
  • Organizational aesthetics as a source of creativity and innovation
  • Aesthetic technologies for modern organizations in the AI era
Keywords
Organizational aesthetics, Aesthetic Knowing, Aesthetic Technologies, Aesthetic Experience, Knowledge Diversity; Artificial Intelligence
Organizers

Giovanna Afeltra - San Raffaele University, Rome, Italy
Maria Menshikova - Universitas Mercatorum, Rome, Italy

Maria Pia Ciano - Nottingham University, UK

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