https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840617717553 Organization Studies 2018, Vol. 39(1) 121–133 © The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0170840617717553 www.egosnet.org/os On Silence, Creativity and Ethics in Organization Studies Vinca Bigo Kedge Business School, France Abstract Silence is at once a notoriously difficult and most elusive subject. Management and organization studies depict silence as exclusionary, oppressive, needing to be overcome, and as a strategy to resist oppression. The idea that silence might be cultivated for and not against, stressing positive and enabling (and yet non instrumental) aspects of silence, is meanwhile much less considered. Yet if silence excludes, it can exclude all sorts of things, including undesirable things. Silences forge an emptiness, and so a space for the possible emergence of something new, beyond existing beliefs, norms and practices. Certain silences facilitate creativity, including creativity of an ethical sort. The endeavour of this article is to in part interrogate and deconstruct the current status of silence in management and organization studies, and further to anchor the topic more firmly in organizational scholarship and practice, particularly in relation to ethics and creativity. Keywords art, creativity, ethics, silence, transformation Introduction I think perhaps my own best piece, at least the one I like the most, is the silent piece. It has three movements and in all of the movements there are no (intentional) sounds … They (the audience) missed the point. There’s no such thing as silence. What they thought was silence (in 4’33’), because they didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began pattering the roof, and during the third the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out. (Cage in Kostelanetz, 1982, p. 65) Cage’s silent piece touches and disturbs his avant-garde audience. The event sets the stage for a journey into the complex and powerful ways in which silence impacts people and organizations. It began to dawn on me that silence might be much more important than is currently let on, and that our understanding of organizational dynamics and relations could be furthered by unpacking silence more completely than has hitherto been the case. Corresponding author: Dr Vinca Bigo, Associate Professor in Embodied Leadership and Managerial Transformation, Kedge Business School, Domaine de Luminy, Marseille cedex 9 BP921, 13288, France. Emails: vinca.bigo@kedgebs.com; vb243@cam.ac.uk 717553OSS 0 0 10.1177/0170840617717553Organization StudiesBigo research-article 2017 X and Organization Studies