(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) The Collective Repression of ‘Pathos’ in Organization Studies

Abstract. This paper analyses, from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge, the specifi c way in which rationalist utilitarianism has infl uenced both organizational practices and the experts ’ way of think-ing about organizations from the birth of the discipline until the rise of organizational symbolism in the 1970s. The hegemony of the rationalist paradigm—it is argued—led the scientifi c community to a sort of collective repression of the expressive dimensions of organizational life. The forms of this repression and the expedients adopted to reduce the cognitive dis-sonance created by this kind of blindness are explored. Key words. aesthetic competence; expressiveness; organizational symbolism; pathos; rationalist utilitarianism To readers who belong to the younger generations, and so 20 or 25 years ago were not yet part of the scientifi c community of organizational scholars, it will seem quite normal that in June 2005 a conference called The Passion for Learning and Knowing took place in Trento. Nobody, among participants, believed they were taking part in some unusual event that might call into question academic respectability. Emotions, passions, tacit or aesthetic—in the general sense of the word—knowledge and experience are now perfectly legitimate research topics for people studying organizational decision-making, change and learning. Those attending the Trento Conference shared a specifi c interest for understanding how passion and emotions infl uence learning and knowledge, but few people in our scientifi c community (even those who are not particularly concerned with these topics) would dar