• Learn how aesthetic management devices such as narratives or visuals contribute to the creation of social worlds and how these can be used in organizational change processes
• Learn of how aesthetic practice is a widespread social phenomena and how this knowledge can be used in the production and commercialization of immaterial goods
• Learn how aesthetic approaches to problem solving contribute to creating value adding solutions
• Learn to make use of management and marketing methods invented by arts and culture businesses.

Recently the Economist wrote that business management has much to learn from the arts: Communicate more eloquently, learn how to manage crucial talent, and become more innovative. It suggests that the art and culture industries are frontrunners in developing aesthetic management practices that work effectively also in the business organizations. This idea of the popular press has deeper roots than it might seem at a first glance. Management scholars and practitioners around the world have discovered the arts as a viable source for new and surprising ways to make their organizations fit for contemporary challenges. Originality, strange encounters, and aesthetically grounded communication are getting appreciated. The arts, artists, and managers of cultural institutions serve as inspiration, generative analogies, and as sources for new management techniques. Since this learning from the arts suggests more intuitive attention patterns, aesthetic means of influence, and holistic ways of thinking than it is common in traditional management, we like to capture it with the general term Aesthetic Management.

We also like to claim that aesthetic management is not really new. Throughout history the use of aesthetic communication in narratives, visuals, gestures, and sounds has been core to managerial power and control. From classical speeches and management autobiographies to intranet mass mailing, from organizational histograms and branded symbols to developer communities, and from corporate anthems and jingles to customized soundscapes, the distribution channels for aesthetic communication have multiplied and diversified through the use of new technologies over the years. This has led to a more open access to devices for aesthetic communication. It is no longer the prerogative of managers but in principle available to everybody.

However, to improve management practice with the help of the arts is not an easy feat. There is quite a lot of nonsense presently on offer. To introduce the student to how managers learn successfully from and with the arts, and to get an overview of what has already been learned, we will draw on a number of case studies like “Olafur Eliasson”, “Zentropa”, “Bayreuth”, “Louisiana”, “Cirque de Soleil”, ”Andy Warhol” and “Michelangelo Pistoletto”. The cases will clearly position the role of professional management towards arts and culture business concepts. This positioning will facilitate exploring new management methods coming out the arts such as improvisations, happenings/installations, collages/assemblages, relational events, or postproduction-techniques. In this part we use sources from the arts to innovate ourselves, and to gain a view on efficient and effective aesthetic management.

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