Donatella De Paoli is Associate Professor and leader of the research group Organizational Change and Development at the Department of Leadership and Organizational Behaviour. She holds a PhD from the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration NHH in Organizational Behaviour, on a dissertation about team processes in large projects. She spent a year as visiting scholar at Stanford University during her PhD period.
Research areas
As part of an international research project on how places and spaces shape leadership, she became especially interested in analyzing leadership in digital space and its specific challenges. The aesthetic and material aspects of leadership and organizations have been a recurring thread in her research, as well as the study of creativity, both in arts organizations as well as in general organizations. Her research publications in international refereed journals and scientific books are mostly about the embodied and aesthetic leadership (tilstedeværende ledelse) in the digitalized worklife, as well as studies of open-plan offices, creative workspaces and office design for a digital time. Through her research, the importance of presence and embodiment in leadership, to counterbalance the negative effects of digital distractions and distance, has been put the agenda. This is further elaborated in her latest published book ‘ Mindful leadership or ‘Tilstedeværende Ledelse’ at Cappelen Damm Akademisk.
Teaching areas
De Paoli has since she started working at BI, been involved in developing many courses and programs, all about about different aspects of leadership. First, she developed the field of arts and cultural management. Starting with exploring how the arts and creative industries can be better managed and led, the shift has since been in researching how creativity can be fostered and led in general organizations. Her teaching is reflecting her research and is now mainly about different aspects of leadership in knowledge based, digitalized and hybrid organizations. She is responsible and teaches both for the Executive Master of Management programs Team Leadership and ‘Tilstedeværende Ledelse’.
She gives regularly many speeches in business and public organizations about her main research topics. Lately, her speeches are about how the communication, offices and leadership approach should be developed to meet the challenges of constant change, complexity and a sustainable development.
Following the spatial turn in organisation studies, this research attempts to investigate the relation between designed organisational space and organisational control. In particular, the study explores how middle managers experience control in open-plan offices and how this affects their feelings and daily work activities. Through a study of a major Norwegian telecom company - which has redesigned its headquarters, transforming them from traditional closed offices to open-plan offices - this paper illustrates the experience of ambivalence felt by middle managers in the studied environment, which is perceived by managers as a tension between feeling empowered and in control versus feeling trapped and controlled. We illustrate how this ambivalence emerges through the interplay of various feelings connected to seduction, equality, performance evaluation, enacting control and being controlled, frustration and the need to escape. The findings show how this contradictory experience negatively affects middle managers' daily work activities.
Røyseng, Sigrid; Paoli, Donatella De & Wennes, Grete (2019)
As You like It! How Performance Measurement Affects Professional Autonomy in the Norwegian Public Theater Sector
The aim of this article is to study the effects of performance measurement on professional autonomy in the Norwegian theater sector
and how these effects have changed over two decades, from the
1990s to the 2010s. We do this by introducing the concepts of
decoupling and disciplinary power and by studying the dialogue
between five case theaters and the Ministry of Culture as part of the
system of Management by Objectives. We find effects both related
to processes of decoupling and disciplinary power in this period, but
the decoupling effects seem to be most notable in the first part of
the period of the study. Consequently, we must also conclude that -
though not totally in danger - the professional autonomy of the theaters was increasingly challenged during this period.
Vaagaasar, Anne Live; Müller, Ralf Josef & Paoli, Donatella De (2019)
Project managers adjust their leadership: to workspace and project type
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the triadic relationship between project workspace (i.e. spatial context), project type and project manager’s leadership style. It develops the concept of leadership construct (i.e. mental models of leadership to predispose the way leadership is performed) to explain related preferences for workspace and behaviors.
Røyseng, Sigrid; Wennes, Grete & Paoli, Donatella De (2017)
Kunsten har blitt karakterisert som det økonomiske feltet snudd på hodet (Bourdieu 1993). Å rette seg etter det som er økonomisk gunstig, har ikke alltid vært gangbart om man skal lykkes i kunstens verden. Like fullt, og i økende grad, må også kunstinstitusjoner fokusere på kostnadseffektivitet og sørge for å ha orden på de økonomiske og administrative sidene ved sin drift. Innføringen av mål- og resultatstyring i 1996, som ledd innføringen av nytt økonomireglement i staten og tilhørende den omfattende New Public Management-reformen(e), er en markant endring hvor hensynet til kostnadseffektivitet er blitt tydelig forsterket. Systemet med mål- og resultatstyring (MRS) og kunst representerer på mange måter ulike verdisystemer. Mens mål- og resultatstyring representerer verdier som kontroll, kostnadseffektivitet, regelfølging og planmessighet, representerer kunst verdier som kreativitet, nyskaping, estetiske regelbrudd og rom for det uventede. Følgelig blir spørsmålet: Hvordan berører og påvirker innføringen av systemet med mål- og resultatstyring forholdet mellom de kunstneriske og økonomisk-administrative sidene i kunstinstitusjoner? I denne artikkelen undersøker vi nettopp dette og ser nærmere på perioden fra to år før systemet ble innført i 1996 og fram til 2012. Mer spesifikt presenterer artikkelen en longitudinell studie av hva innføringen av systemet med mål- og resultatstyring har betydd for norske institusjonsteatre.
Ropo, Arja; Paoli, Donatella De & Bathurst, Ralph (2017)
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the current trend of designing workspaces to foster creativity. The paper brings forth themes that seem to be connected with the so-called ‘creative workspaces’. The paper discusses how the findings relate to recent theory and research. Finally, the paper develops propositions to further elaborate the issue.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper adopts an inductive and social constructionist approach. In all, 40 internet pictures of workspaces claimed to be creative among a broad range of industries and companies which were analyzed through an aesthetic lens and compared to what theory and research about organizational creativity and space inform us.
Findings
The designs of ‘creative workspaces’ follow a rather standardized and deterministic assumption of what kind of spaces are considered to produce creativity: open offices, happy, playful communities of close-knit teams and spatial arrangements that resemble home, symbols and memories, sports, technology and nature. This view of creativity and workspaces remains a management fad unless a more balanced approach to the issue is assumed.
Research limitations/implications
The sample is not to be representative and the findings generalizable as such, but to bring forth the phenomenon. This exploratory and inductive approach calls for a systematic study to prove the propositions in a more controlled research setting and with a bigger sample.
Practical implications
The paper makes a few suggestions of what companies should pay attention to when building workspaces to improve organizational creativity – and to overcome the fad.
Social implications
The proposed end-user perspective may ultimately save costs, if people can voice their needs on the space arrangements from the beginning and throughout the building process, not only after the spaces are fully complete, as is typically the case.
Originality/value
The paper provides a critical view on the trend of building work spaces to purposefully enhance organizational creativity. It brings forth themes that are connected to creativity and workspace designs and suggests that more nuances are involved in the issue.
Gaustad, Terje & Paoli, Donatella De (2017)
New Faculty Roles in Online Education: The Professor as Writer, Director, Actor and Producer?
This paper examines office design as a spatial context of organizations. Organizations increasingly invest in designing workspaces to support employee creativity, foster company innovation and communicate a positive company image. This paper takes a critical view of this ‘hype’ by describing and analysing images of the headquarters of allegedly ‘creative workspaces’ published on the Internet across a broad range of industries and corporations. Our analysis shows how their design follows standardized or stereotypical approaches to nurturing creativity: playfully or artistically designed open spaces, environments reminiscent of home, sports and play, nature, past/future technologies, or culturally aligned symbols. We discern underlying connections between office spaces and creativity, suggesting that creativity flourishes in happy, relaxed and playful communities within close-knit teams. We then identify three contradictions in relation to the existing literature on creativity and workspaces: individually versus collectively produced creativity; professionally designed workspaces versus workspaces created through participation; and planned versus emerging creativity.
In this article, we seek inspiration from the performative theatre arts to better understand creative work and leadership in a digital age. Theatre artists work and lead creative processes toward theatre performances without any digital distractions. Theatres are a physical manifestation of art. The aesthetic and embodied creative work and leadership is essential for a play that engages and touches the audience. While theories and research about embodied leadership scarcely address digitalization or technology, research about digital and virtual leadership oversees the importance of embodied processes and leadership. Through insight acquired by interviewing theatre directors, we describe how these creative work and leadership processes are about developing and maintaining embodied, emotional and mental focus. We explain and analyse this phenomenon through a description and analysis of theatre art and theatre leadership, where we argue that theatre productions resemble many kinds of temporary creative projects in regular work organizations. Theatre directors lead people in a way that makes theatres one of the last frontiers of digitalization. We also explain what there is to learn from theatres in a digitalized work life, where smart phones, I-pads, PCies or other digital devices never are turned off.
Paoli, Donatella De & Ropo, Arja (2015)
Open plan offices – the response to leadership challenges of virtual project work?
Grenseløs norsk film – mellom Hollywood og lokal patriotisme
[Kronikk]
Paoli, Donatella De (2016)
Kunsten å lede primadonnaer
[Kronikk]
Paoli, Donatella De & Ugo, Fermariello (2015)
Ledelse av primadonnaer - Arbeidskonflikt ved Den Norske Opera
[Kronikk]
Paoli, Donatella De (2015)
Arabeidskonflikt i Den Norske Opera - operasjef Per Boye Hansen får ikke forlenget åremålet sitt
[Kronikk]
Paoli, Donatella De (2014)
Kvotering av innvandrere til kulturstyrer og ledelse
[Kronikk]
Paoli, Donatella De (2014)
Vil kvotere inn innvandrere i kulturmakten
[Kronikk]
Paoli, Donatella De (2014)
Dagsnytt 18 - Diskusjon med kulturminister. Kvotering til norske kulturstyrer og ledelse
[Kronikk]
Paoli, Donatella De (2014)
Ledelse av folk du ikke ser
[Kronikk]
Gaustad, Terje & Paoli, Donatella De (2014)
En utredning til besvær
[Kronikk]
Paoli, Donatella De & Gaustad, Terje (2014)
Film som kultur og næring - en utredning til besvær
[Kronikk]
Paoli, Donatella De (2012)
Involvering av innvandrerbarn i kunst- og kultur
[Kronikk]
Paoli, Donatella Maria De (2011)
Italiensk økonomisk politikk og Berlusconi
[Kronikk]
Paoli, Donatella Maria De (2011)
Høyt gjennomtrekk av internasjonale kunstneriske ledere i norske kunstinstitusjoner/ organisasjoner
[Kronikk]
Strøm, Heidi Angell & Paoli, Donatella De (2022)
How to foster creativity and innovation in everyday work spaces? – the case of cultural entrepreneurs
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Paoli, Donatella Maria De (2022)
How to foster creativity and innovation in everyday workspaces? – the case of cultural entrepreneurs
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Gaustad, Terje; Erni, Lukas & Paoli, Donatella De (2021)
Storytelling as arts-based intervention for transformative change: Overcoming story-making skills barriers
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Foss, Lene & Paoli, Donatella De (2019)
How does network funding enhance cultural and artistic collaboration across regions?
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Paoli, Donatella De & Molli, F De (2019)
Artists and Networks: How the change of organizational space affects individual creativity.
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Paoli, Donatella De (2018)
Constructing 'sacred' moments for creativity - Learning from theatres.
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Traavik, Laura E. Mercer & Paoli, Donatella De (2018)
Do material artifacts act as conduits of emotional abuse?
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Gaustad, Terje & Paoli, Donatella De (2017)
New Faculty Roles in Online Education: the Professor as Writer, Director, Actor and Producer?
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Paoli, Donatella De & Ropo, Arja (2017)
Middle-level managers in an open-plan office under double control
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Through the case of an international telecom company, investing in grandiose elegant facilities and implementing open-plan offices, we tell the story of how middle-level managers are at the same time seduced and suppressed. Using a spatial power and control organizational perspective, we analyze interview data of 20 middle-level managers across functions and show how the architecture and open-plan offices are creating ‘illusions of control’. Middle-level managers feel free, empowered and in control in the open-plan offices, while at the same time being controlled regularly by several management performance systems. Elaborate on the surveillance by their employees and colleagues, spatial control of middle-level managers. We illustrate, through an analysis of respondents’ perception of the built space, how spatial control through enchantment is obscuring power executed by performance evaluations systems. Middle-level managers are reporting challenges being managers in open-plan offices, in addition having developed various escape strategies to get their work done. While in a short time perspective, this tension seems to be positive for organizational high-performance, in the long run, this situation may put an unlivable burden for middle-level managers’ situation.
Embodiment, space and technology in the leadership of theatre productions
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Paoli, Donatella De & Gaustad, Terje (2016)
Film as Arts-based Intervention in Management - the case of Hollywood storytelling
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Paoli, Donatella De & Ropo, Arja (2016)
Leadership in a digital time calls for rethinking leadership
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Paoli, Donatella De (2016)
Theatre art as inspiration and metaphor - in handling Dilemmas
[Lecture]. Event
Paoli, Donatella De (2016)
Hva kan ledere lære fra teatret?
[Popular Science Article].
Wennes, Grete; Røyseng, Sigrid & Paoli, Donatella De (2016)
Wennes, G., Røyseng, S. and De Paoli, D. (2016) Changing values in the public art sector? Rethinking leadership in the arts towards value-based leadership. Paper presentert på ‘International Studies Leadership Conference’ (ISLC), 11 – 13 December 2016, Edinburgh
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Røyseng, Sigrid; Paoli, Donatella De & Wennes, Grete (2015)
Decoupled, Disciplined or Both? The Effects of the System of Management by Objectives in Norwegian Theatres
Why does space need to be taken seriously in leadership and organization studies and practice?
Ropo, Arja; Paoli, Donatella De, Salovaara, Perttu & Sauer, Erika (red.). Why does space need to be taken seriously in leadership and organization studies and practice?
Salovaara, Perttu; Ropo, Arja & Paoli, Donatella De (2015)
Space and Materiality in Organizations
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Paoli, Donatella De (2015)
Re-conceptualizing Leadership and its Development: Space, Place and the Virtual World
Building and transferring corporate culture and leadership philosophy through alternative work place design. The case of Telenor, Norway
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Paoli, Donatella Maria De & Hansen, Tor Borgar (2010)
To mål - to midler. Økt kunnskap om virkemidler i kulturnæringene
[Report Research].
Paoli, Donatella Maria De (2009)
Networks in arts and culture – a categorization by purpose and performance level
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Myrtveit, Ingunn & Paoli, Donatella Maria De (2009)
Leading and manageing creative projects – transferring competence between arts and business
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Bjerke, Rune; Ind, Nicholas & Paoli, Donatella De (2007)
The impact of aesthetics on employee satisfaction and motivation
[Professional Article]. 2(1)
Wennes, Grete & Paoli, Donatella De (2004)
Measuring the Arts : the Case of Norwegian public Theatres
[Report Research].
This article is signalling the start of a large debate (ref. to an article in Aftenposten)about the purpose and consequences of installing quantitative performance measures in public theatres and management by objectives, amongst other things.
Paoli, Donatella De & Wennes, Grete (2004)
Measuring the Arts - the Case of Norwegian Public Theatres
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Bjerke, Rune & Paoli, Donatella De (2004)
The impact of aesthetics on employee satisfaction, identity, creativity, mood and motivation
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Paoli, Donatella De (2003)
A critical perspective on corporate branding
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Paoli, Donatella De & Strønen, Fred (2003)
Strategic Use of Work Place Design
[Conference Lecture]. Event
Colbjørnsen, Tom; Paoli, Donatella De & Jakobsen, Erik W. (1997)
Processforbedring, organisering og medvirkning i Pripps Ringnes (Process improvement, organizational design and participation in Pripps Ringnes)
[Report Research].
Rapporten diskuterer hvordan det kan utvikles mer fleksible grensesni tt i verdikjeden i Pripps-Ringnes produksjonsanlegg. The report discusses how production process efficiency may be improve d by developing more flexible interfaces between different stages in the value chain.
Gran, Anne-Britt & Paoli, Donatella De (1991)
Teaterorganisering – en tverrfaglig tilnærming
[Report Research].
Academic Degrees
Year
Academic Department
Degree
1996
Norwegian School of Economics, NHH
Ph.D Dr. Oecon.
1989
BI Norwegian Business School
Master of Science in Business
Work Experience
Year
Employer
Job Title
1999 - Present
BI Norwegian Business School
Associate Professor
2011 - 2014
University of Tampere
Researcher
2006 - 2009
The Strategic Danish Research Agency
Member Program Committee
1999 - 2001
Norwegian Building Research Institute
Researcher
1996 - 1999
AFF at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Adm, NHH
Consultant
1995 - 1996
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU
