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This paper aims to present historical examples of collaborations between brand strategists and artists; provide an extensive, structured overview of existing published research on such collaborations and their effects; present seven papers comprising this special issue; and discuss ideas for further research into brand–art collaboration.

This is an editorial based mainly on an extensive and broad literature review.

First, this editorial underpins the relevance of brand–art collaboration in the past and present by reference to real examples. Second, it structures the diverse literature into four key aspects of the topic: inspiration, insights, identity and image. Third, it provides a glimpse of the seven papers selected for this special issue. Fourth and finally, it identifies a total of 16 avenues for further research, on four levels (artist, brand owner, consumer and cooperation process).

This editorial and the entire special issue together represent the first anthology on the topic of the interface between brand management and arts. The collection and classification of the existing literature, the formulation of ideas for future research and the content of the seven papers are collectively excellent starting springboards for new and fresh brand research projects.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on arts-based interventions as a management tool for personal, team and organisational development. How have management teams implemented art in their organisations, and toward what end? The literature has focused predominantly on a single case, creating many possibilities of constructing arts-based interventions. Yet, a typology is still missing. This paper examines various arts-based interventions and their underlying principles from a business perspective.

The paper is based on a systematic review of the literature in English and German, with special consideration for articles and books within the field of business.

The typology presented in this paper, based on a mapping of the field, should contribute to a more coherent understanding of arts-based interventions. My goal is to provide researchers with a more structured perspective for approaching this academic area. Furthermore, the findings suggest that over and above the various types of arts that can be introduced to organisations, there are three basic principles for the achievement of this goal.

This paper presents a mapping of the cases in literature on arts-based interventions and presents a coherent understanding of ways of bringing art into organisations.

The three underlying principles presented in this paper should assist practitioners in designing arts-based interventions for specific problems.

This paper provides assistance to consultants, business executives, leaders, managers, researchers and students for understanding the basics of arts-based interventions. Furthermore, it provides a structure for the body of literature on cases of arts-based interventions.

This article offers an up‐to‐date overview of the emergent practice of arts‐based learning in business. First, arts‐based learning is situated within the broader arts in business context as well as our present reality of the economic downturn. Then, the article shares why arts‐based learning has emerged as a new pedagogy in management education. Next, a working definition of arts‐based learning is shared as well as an exploration of how others are conceiving it. Lastly, the article turns attention to the question, what are the strengths and limitations of arts‐based learning, and suggests a couple leading‐edge management education programs that are framed by arts‐based learning approaches.

In addition to the author's expertise in arts‐based learning and his role as executive of one of the world's premier institution's of arts‐based learning in management education/leadership development, the author exchanges ideas with a number of prominent business leaders, artists and respected management educators from around the globe, whose comments about arts‐based learning in business color the ideas presented in the article – adding texture and a richer perspective.

This article directly addresses what has changed since the 2005 special edition of the Journal of Business Strategy. Of course – the economic downturn. And, now, more than ever, this article asserts, that leaders are looking to arts‐inspired creativity, as a means to realize the upside of the downturn. The article asserts an integral role for the arts to play in an organization's efforts to create a culture of innovation – which is central to business strategy in the economic downturn. More specifically, the article documents how new ways of working together in business (resultant from the continued emergence and growth of the knowledge economy) will require new ways of learning how to work together. This article suggests that arts‐based learning may offer such a new way of learning how to work together.

This article affords the reader insights to how arts‐based learning may enable your strategic actions and the innovation upturn that you're being asked to deliver.

Arts-based cooperations between business and the arts create innovative solutions for companies by introducing artistic practices. Cooperations of this nature are predominantly prepared and implemented by intermediaries who act as “matchmakers” and bridge the cultural clash. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

For the present study on the function of such intermediaries, qualitative data material from interviews and case studies on arts-based cooperations was collected and analysed.

This paper analyses the results from an institutional economics perspective. By drawing on transaction cost theory and information economics, the findings are transformed into an intermediation theory of arts-based cooperations. The theory postulates that intermediaries are able to reduce transaction costs as well as the risks which are contingent on asymmetric information. Involving an intermediary produces cost advantages compared to direct contact between companies and artists.

The analysis illuminates an important but heretofore neglected aspect of arts-based initiatives thus providing an indication for their successful implementation.

The purpose of this study is to examine the potential of integrating material from the arts into postgraduate curricula to deepen students’ engagement with marketing phenomena. The authors assess the use of arts-based activities, within a broader critical pedagogy, for encouraging imaginative and analytical thinking.

The authors devised two learning activities and an interpretive method for studying their value. The activities were an individual essay connecting themes in song lyrics to marketing, and a group photography project. These were applied, within a broader, critical approach, in postgraduate modules on sustainability, ethics and critical marketing. Data collection comprised diaries kept by the teachers, open-ended feedback from students and students’ assignments.

Students showed high levels of engagement, reflexivity and depth of thought, in felt experiences of learning. Their ability to make connections not explicitly in the materials, and requiring imaginative jumps, was notable. Several reported lasting changes to their behaviour. Some found the tasks initially intimidating or, once they were more engaged, stressful or saddening.

This adds to scholarship on management education by showing the usefulness of an arts-based approach towards a transformative agenda.

It offers a template of how to draw from the arts to strengthen critical engagement upon which marketing teachers can build. It also contains practical advice on the challenges and benefits of doing so.

The authors provide evidence that this approach can enhance sensitivity and reflexivity in students, potentially producing more ethical and sustainable decisions in future.

The pedagogical interventions are novel and of value to lecturers seeking to enhance critical engagement with theory. An empirical study of an attempt to integrate arts into teaching marketing represents a promising direction, given the discipline’s creative nature.

This study aims to think critically about collaborative working through the practical application of an ethics of care approach. The authors address the following research questions: How can the authors embed an ethics of care into academic collaboration? What are the benefits and challenges of this kind of collaborative approach? The contextual focus also incorporates a collective sense making of academic identities over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors focus on the activities of the “Consumer Research with Impact for Society” collective at and around the 2021 Academy of Marketing conference. The authors draw on the insights and labour of the group in terms of individual and collaborative reflexivity, workshops and the development of a collaborative poem.

First, the authors present the “web of words” as the adopted approach to collaborative writing. Second, the authors consider the broader takeaways that have emerged from the collaboration in relation to blurring of boundaries, care in collaboration and transformations.

The overarching contribution of the paper is to introduce an Ethics of Collective Academic Care. The authors discuss three further contributions that emerged as central in its operationalisation: arts-based research, tensions and conflicts and structural issues. The application of the “web of words” approach also offers a template for an alternative means of engaging with, and representing, those involved in the research.

Business leaders, in increasing numbers, are looking to the creative power of the arts in their efforts to manage strategic change, to enhance innovation, or to strengthen corporate cultures. In this case study, we focus attention on what is widely regarded as one of the world's most extensive corporate arts‐based learning initiatives, the Catalyst program at Unilever.

In a wide‐ranging interview with James Hill, now a group vice‐president and Catalyst's leading executive sponsor, this paper explores the origins, operations, and outcomes of this innovative program.

Finds that Catalyst came about as a result of savvy leadership and a corporate willingness to take risks in developing an “enterprise culture;” it now flourishes in three divisions due to ownership at multiple levels of the organization as well as its ability to stimulate new product development, attract and retain creative people, and boost the company's marketing efforts; and it persists because its starting points are always actual business problems, the solutions to which improve financial performance and shareholder returns.

To management scholars, this case provides an additional data point in the ongoing study of strategy implementation and organizational change. To corporate executives seeking fresh ideas, the Unilever/Catalyst story offers a novel and intuitively appealing approach to the vexing challenges of leading strategic change, told from the perspective of an experienced executive.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the claim that artworks and corporate art collections contribute a qualitative dimension to corporate identity by satisfying aesthetic, social and cultural standards.

To explore the qualitative research purpose, the theoretical framework is supplemented with in-depth interview data from five European banks.

The findings show that corporate art achieves synergies between culture and capital, internal and external communication and thus offers significant opportunities for innovative marketing communication and identity-building strategies.

The paper provides insights into how the arts interface with branding-related innovations, assisting managers in long-term decisions on value-based branding and identity construction.

Increased arts engagement by corporations creates new synergies between cultural institutions and corporations through partnerships and philanthropic initiatives.

The originality of the paper is twofold. It thematically explores the under-researched field of art in marketing scholarship. From a methodological point of view, the research design is multidisciplinary and thus delineates new avenues for marketing practice and scholarship.

Corporate communications and music seem unlikely bedfellows. Increasingly, businesses are turning to non‐traditional methods to create competitive advantage. This case study demonstrates how such alliances can reveal new opportunities for creating sustainable differentiation in the marketplace.

This paper examines the strategy and processes behind a specific positioning initiative undertaken by one of the global leaders in the hospitality industry. It charts its genesis, and the evolution from a simple concept into a major international initiative.

Although interventions may start from a simple conceptual basis, in this instance the more effective use of music in hotels, this study shows how the development of a systematic, arts‐based training initiative, making direct connection with the business imperatives of a client, can prompt more exacting inquiry into established industry practice and act as a catalyst for organisational change. It demonstrates the importance of developing a shared understanding between the protagonists of the culture within which the process takes place, and how necessary it is to establish a mutually acknowledged “lingua franca” for the purposes of conceptual exchange. In this way, additional and unexpected benefits can emerge.

Music is acknowledged universally as having profound personal impact, but that this is generally a highly subjective experience. As this paper shows, in the light of new research into the wider context of music in society, it also presents opportunities as a catalyst for the pursuit of deeper levels of learning with value to be accrued at both corporate and personal level.