Exploring the Value of Arts-Based Interventions in Organizations from a Systems Perspective

There is a growing interest in arts-based innovation (ABI) in organizations to foster human capital as a value-added resource to achieve and sustain quality. As a co-creative process, arts-based practice stimulates out-of-the-box thinking and reflection essential to leading organizations in complex times. Transforming arts-based interventions into systemic organizational practice and understanding its value for the organization is one of the contemporary questions for leaders. This article presents an exploratory qualitative analysis of an arts-based intervention in a health care facility to explore new insights into understanding the value of arts-interventions for organizations. The current models for determining the value of ABIs lack a focus on the presence of systemic practice as a key variable to transforming individual experience into organizational value. Organizational learning theory provided a theoretical backdrop for understanding organizational growth as a socially derived process, defined by the interplay between the micro and the macro. The learning organization model served as an analytic framework to identify the presence of systemic practice through architectures for social interaction and deep learning that support the interplay between the micro and the macro. Clinical trial number: Not applicable