Non-representational Thought, Ethics and Aesthetics

The chapter tackles non-representational thought, briefly explained as an attempt to capture the onflow of organizational life. This approach allows organization design to free itself from the representational notion of organization design-as-structure and opens up the possibility of theorizing organization design as action (i.e., designing). Non-representational thought utilizes several epistemological tools, the main one being practice theory, a sociomaterial approach that grants equal status to the humans and the “more-than-humans”. This is relevant to organization design, in so far as organization design also deals with human and non-human actors. The other epistemological tool utilized by non-representational thought is aesthetics as a material, embodied and pre-cognitive component of human knowledge, an element of organizational life now widely recognized by MOS. Aesthetic elements of organizational life originate from “felt meanings”, as well as from judgements that people make based on their sensory experience. These are value judgements that enable people to judge “beauty”, “taste” or “melodious”, but at the same time they also people to judge what is “fair”, “just” or “ethical”. In this way, aesthetics provides new relevance and visibility to organizational ethics through the relationship between aesthetic rationality and the ethical values that ought to steer organization design.