Experiencing the Shadow: Organizational Exclusion and Denial within Experience Economy

Abstract

Abstractis article focuses on the dark and hidden aspects of experience economy events. ese aspects are framed as the shadow in the Jungian sense, i.e. an archetype of the unconscious domain. Individuals and organizations create a shadow as a side e ect of attempts at control and ordering of their identity. e article presents stories based on ethnographically inspired eld studies of experience economy events to show how staged experience produces an experiential shadow side. e process is problematized and re ected upon as a shadow producing side e ect of identity production and management in experience economy settings. e possibilities for the integration of the shadow into the normal operation of experience economy organizations are considered with the help of images of the carnival and the archetype the fool. e acceptance of the paradoxical and strange side of such events they may be better understood and their dark side integrated.

The Speed of Experience: The Co‐narrative Method in Experience Economy Education

“…Experience economy described as diff erent from mass production in that it is "mass customized" and thus individual experience is what lies at its very heart (Pine and Gilmore, 1999). Attempts to simplify and streamline such events fail, resulting in feelings of alienation, impatience, and frustration (Kociatkiewicz and Kostera, 2010). A method of education that attempts at embracing the whole complicated experience as an enactment of the syzygy archetype may be particularly useful for the learning of the staging and coordinating of such activity.…”

“…Study of other phenomena would require adopting diff erent experiential roles. We carried out a narrative study of seven diff erent festivals based on hybrid observation (Kociatkiewicz and Kostera, 2010). In most ethnographic studies, directly experienced situations, interactions, personally made observations and interviews, as well as jotted down eld notes are collected and created.…”

“…Jungian archetypes are used in studies of organizations to depict and interpret hidden and dark sides of organizations (e.g. Bowles, 1991;Carr, 2002;Kociatkiewicz and Kostera, 2010), to explore the inspirational potential of images of heroes, heroines and villains (e.g. Bowles, 1993;Aaltio, 2008), to narrate mythologized aspects and qualities of organizations (e.g.…”

Situational liminality: Mis-managed consumer experience in liquid modernity

“…Finally, rendering this succession intelligible to readers of this paper entailed compromising the stories' objective realism--they are 'real' but they are also impressionist tales (Van Maanen, 1988), at times startling the complacent viewers and evoking sense of participation (Van Maanen, 1988). These stories are not limited to relaying the facts and true statements; they aim to make the readers feel as though they were actually there with the author (Kociatkiewicz & Kostera, 2010). In order to create this impressionist landscape of experience (Kociatkiewicz & Kostera, 1999), I intentionally did not distance myself from the studied field.…”

“…The intersubjectivity of experience is rendered through observations of social interactions and through my interactions with others captured through the description of situations, behaviours, feelings as well as explicit 'facts'such as delays or spatial arrangements. Second, I use the hybrid of participant and non-participant observation (previously employed by Kociatkiewicz & Kostera, 2010) as it enables ''merging into an impression of the experience'' (p. 263). My approach to collecting research stories assumes that our experience of spaces, people and events is narrative--it becomes (to us) ''a meaningful succession of sensations and observations'' (Kociatkiewicz & Kostera, 2010, p. 262).…”