COS Seminar with Victor A Perez Moraga, (University of York), Marilyn Poon, (University of Innsbruck) & Lynne F Baxter, (University of York)

Tracing affects in organisational research with LEGO® bricks

Victor A Perez Moraga, University of York
Marilyn Poon, University of Innsbruck
Lynne F Baxter, University of York

Abstract

Previous research has suggested how difficult it is to research affect in organisational settings. We offer LEGO bricks as a projective method that helps attune researchers and practitioners to affect at work. Whereas previous uses of LEGO in Management and Organisation Studies have studied humans using bricks as process facilitators, our paper sees researchers as joining with LEGO in a research entanglement to trace and produce relationalities between bodies, both human and more-than-human, that enables researchers to trace affect, something that traditional human-centred over-cognitive methods such as interviewing that remain dominant in the understanding of organisations are less good at embracing. As part of a study of affective ethnography of leadership and creativity in a small UK-based firm, a  series of LEGO models were generated by participants in workshops and interviews. The models surfaced flows of affect in human and nonhuman relations that brought forth and re-enacted affective warm and less favourable presences, absences, and disruptive elements, all of which are crucial in fostering critical viewpoints on organisations. Researchers interested in surfacing affect would do well to explore using LEGO as a method for their study because of its capacity to uncover and produce affective flows.