Gambiarra as an Emergent Approach in the Entanglement of the Organizational Aesthetic and Technical Controversies: The Samba School Parade Case

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to analyze the aesthetic and material/technical controversies surrounding the production of parade floats from a samba school. Starting from actor-network theory and controversy analysis, we show how actors negotiate interests that exist in carnival production project. Our findings demonstrate that the disagreements over material and aesthetic dimensions are temporarily solved by gambiarra, which is the unconventional use of technical knowledge for generating a creative solution in resource and time constraints contexts. We also argue that controversy analysis is an interesting tool to study organizational aesthetics in project management: it allows for understanding the potential conflictual relationship between material/technical and aesthetic dimensions. We conclude by stating that gambiarra can have both positive and negative consequences of generating creative solutions for controversies.

Keywords:
organizational aesthetics; actor-network theory; controversies; gambiarra; creativity