Business as usual or something else: Arts-based and creative approaches in organizational environments

Abstract

The purpose of this master’s thesis is to examine how arts-based and creative approaches can be utilized in organizational environments and what kind of value arts-based and creative approaches can produce for organizations and employees. This master’s thesis is also aiming to find out what kind of boundary conditions exist for service production of arts-based and creative interventions in a business environment. The research questions are: What kind of value can arts-based and creative approaches produce for organizations and employees, and what kind of boundary conditions constrain such services in business environments? Based on the results of this master’s thesis, a model will be created for service providers to produce ethically, professionally, and financially viable arts-based and creative services to organizations.

The data was created via a combination of literature review and expert interview. The literature review was built under themes what has been written about arts-based interventions in organizations, what it is all about, why those are implemented in organizations, how arts-based approaches should be planned and what kind of different stakeholders there are and what kind of requirements there are for them. The purpose of the literature review was to gather understanding of the recommendations and experiences about the use of arts-based activities in organizations. The search for the material for the literature review was initiated using the advanced search of Metropolia's MetCat Finna database. The interview was conducted using semi-structured in-depth approach and analyzed using thematizing.

The findings show that using arts in organizational environments can make it possible to see more and see differently and reach new ways of doing things by for example renewing ways of thinking of e.g. organizations’ processes, values, identity, image, brand and culture and to develop new skills, competences and behaviors. However, the effect of the arts is situational and person-specific, and a dose of courage and open-mindedness is needed to use them. According to the possible service providers interviewed, in a commercial operating environment the most important boundary conditions are finding the right sales arguments, measuring the results in figures that are interesting to customer organizations and financial profitability of the actions. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that finding a suitable operating model depends on the circumstances in which the services are implemented, what the services are intended to achieve, how this is defined, and how success is measured.