Using artistic form for aesthetic organizational inquiry: Rimini Protokoll constructs Daimler's Annual General Meeting as a theatre play

Abstract

This paper reviews and analyses an artistic intervention in the context of aesthetic organizational inquiry and theatre in organizations. Having served as inspiration and as a tool within organizations, theatre now has returned the favour: Rimini Protokoll, a group of directors, used Daimler's 2009 Annual General Meeting in Berlin as a ready-made and constructed it as a theatre play entitled Hauptversammlung. Two hundred theatre spectators were channelled into the event via the purchase of shares. This study focuses on the aesthetic experience of the event and underlines the potential of artistic forms for aesthetic organizational inquiry. Implications suggest that a so-called postdramatic, nonlinear aesthetic form can be most promising for enabling critical interpretations of organizational issues.

Keywords:

• aesthetic experience
• artistic intervention
• performance
• theatre in organizations

Acknowledgements

The author thanks two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper and particularly points out one reviewer's comments on the discussion of theatrical consciousness in relation to postdramatic theatre.