Value-creation processes in artistic interventions and beyond: Engaging conflicting orders of worth

The art world and the business organisation sphere considerably differ in their values, codes and practices. Researchers advocating artistic interventions in organisations often claim that tensions arising from these differences can add value in that they can be made productive for initiating overdue changes in organisations. The results of a qualitative meta-synthesis of evaluative studies on artistic interventions in organisations, however, show that whilst organisation actors value experiences with the art individually, very few report impacts on an organisational level. Asking how researchers search for values-added, this paper introduces Boltanski and Thévenot's (2006) theory of different orders of worth to propose a shift from finding values-added to engaging with processes of value-creation. After demonstrating how researchers manage different orders of worth in evaluative studies by subsuming the inspirational world of art under an industrial order of worth, this paper introduces a different notion of evaluation that might support business organisation members to create value from the experiences made with the art on an organisational level. It concludes with discussing the implications involved in such a shift of perspective for both researchers and business organisational members.