Center for Arts, Business & Culture
The studies carried out at Center for Arts, Business & Culture (ABC) focus on aesthetic and cultural analyses of economic activities, for example how experiences, emotions, stories, and symbols are used to create economic value, or on economic analysis of aesthetic activities, for example how creative and cultural entrepreneurs build economic value from their artistic practices.
Examples of empirical fields in the program are organizations and organized contexts that have an intrinsic tension between economic and aesthetic forces: art galleries, museums, performing arts, architectural firms, and design agencies. In addition, the centre hosts studies of organized contexts that have a more straightforward orientation toward generating profits but increasingly have become subject to the logic of aesthetization: hotels, retail environments, restaurants, fitness and corporate headquarters.
Also,the center hosts projects where aesthetics and business directly meet, such as when artists work in business organizations or are brought into management education. Finally, as media and media culture is a key activity in cultural production, the center will host projects that focus on the interplay between media, culture and organizational change. The research centre welcomes a multitude of theoretical and methodological approaches.
ABC is a research center at SIR, Stockholm School of Economics Institute for Research. SIR is a national research institute for the economic sciences, with a focus on Business Administration in the broadest sense.