This article aims to renew the dialog between art and organization by highlighting the role of street art as a revelation of organizational tensions and paradoxes. In order to understand the role of a work of street art as an organizational artifact, we analyze it as an artistic practice integrated into a process of institutionalization that involves four key contrasting dimensions of organizational analysis: ephemeral/perennial; visible/invisible; individual/collective; improvisation/routines. These dimensions then echo four paradoxical logics of organization (Smith & Lewis 2011) that we highlight around the issues of learning, belonging, management, and execution. Also, by starting with the work of the street artist Invader and his work "Dr House," we reveal the tensions "at work" and "in the work" in organizations, allowing us to highlight three key dimensions of the work as a pedagogical artifact, and a driving force for managerial action and research in management sciences. Finally, this work suggests a better understanding of the triggering of paradoxes and the accompaniment of paradox management in organizations.
- street art
- organizational paradoxes
- organizational artifact
- art-based research
- art thinking