"Fit for the job" : a programmatic inquiry on style and aesthetics in the workplace

Abstract

This article showcases central aspects of an operationalizable notion of ‘style’ that aims at studying the aesthetic dimension of organizational life. An example of the agency of aesthetic experiences in organizational processes, taken from the author’s background in the service industry, is first presented as a mean of problematization. A number of theoretical imports from rhetoric, sociology and discourse analysis are then considered in their potential to help make sense (Weick, 1976) of the processes accounted for (Garfinkel, 1984) by the author. The relevance of the resulting framework is then evaluated in light of this preliminary data, before further research is considered.