The effect of art in organizational contexts: evidence from an Italian case

More and more often when one enters a company, even before people, one is welcomed by some works of art. Sculptures, installations and paintings populate the external and internal spaces of the offices. A superficial reading of this aspect could lead to think of a form of neo-patronage. The patronage, however, suffers from the existence of an elite (Sacco and Teti, 2017). More often, on the other hand, entrepreneurs and management declare themselves convinced that "beauty" can also characterize work environments, both so that pleasant sensations are transmitted to people and they feel they are operating in a refined environment, both because the works of art they have the ability to stimulate creativity, passion and curiosity by proposing new points of view of reality, indispensable elements to unleash innovation and business productivity, especially in so-called contexts "Knowledge-intensive" (Starbuck, 1992). The work presents the synthesis of a qualitative research work, carried out thanks to exploratory interviews conducted in depth with representatives of an Italian software giant. The considerations reported in the work represent what emerged from the qualitative analysis of the data, collected at different times and interpreted between April and November 2018, until a significant level of conceptual saturation was reached. Furthermore, the firm made use of a substantial amount of internal material generously made available by the corporate press office.