Abstract
In business (and business schools), people often use the word “art” to describe
work done by “creative” people that resists explication. Sometimes the word
bears additional disparaging implications: that the work lacks rigor or
reliability, or that its processes are immature or unmanageable. In this
seminar, I show that such unexamined notions should give way to a more nuanced,
process-based understanding of artfulness that we can derive from careful
inquiry and observation. Specifically, I report results from a multiyear study
of the determinants of work process structure and the resulting principles and
practices of artful work. We show that in appropriate conditions industrialists
may work artfully, and artists may work industrially; and that this refined set
of categories can be used to successfully design and manage innovative work.