Ana Paula Lafaire: Researching creative rhythms in organizations
In this seminar, Ana Paula Lafaire will present work-in-progress research aiming to critically examine how ‘creative’ corporate cultures organize work.
Accelerated forms of creativity are often uncritically celebrated as inherently desirable, something that society, businesses, and organizations always need more of. Within this logic, creativity functions as an engine that drives speed-to-market, fuels business growth, enables crisis adaptation, and supports bold innovation, all while generating profit for shareholders. The research responds to calls for in-depth, empirical analyses of the complexities and fluctuating rhythms involved in organizing for creativity.
Ana Paula Lafaire collaborates with Astrid Huopalainen and Maria Uusitalo to gather a qualitative dataset of over 400 hours of fieldwork and more than 100 semi-structured interviews. This study forms part of the broader co-research project called Creative Leap that investigates creativity as a source of competitive advantage in publicly listed Finnish companies across different sectors.
Bio
Ana Paula Lafaire has always been fascinated by how creative collaborations emerge. Her academic journey began with a Master’s in Business and Design at HDK (2016–2018). Currently, she works as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Management Studies, Aalto University School of Business, Finland. Her research interests focus on the mundane, material, and embodied dimensions of organizing. Drawing on feminist theory, her work has been published in journals such as Organization Studies and Gender, Work & Organization.