Viusal Organizing: Balancing coordination and creative freedom via mood boards

How is organizing accomplished in contexts that require coordination to be balanced with creative freedom? The paper addresses this question by building on literature that highlights the active role of objects in coordination and organizing processes as well as the recent turn to visual objects in organization studies. Using empirical data from a design process in artistic perfumery, the paper shows how independent actors and their sub-products are coordinated by means of a visual mood board that is able to maintain plurality while also having a directing and aligning effect. We discuss the potential of mood boards as an example of the wider phenomenon of aesthetic objects, connecting senses and emotion and providing a link across people in the creative industries and elsewhere.