Becoming Upbeat: Learning the Affecto-Rhythmic Order of Organizational Practices

How is it that some organizational practices flow like clockwork and may even energize us whereas others seem to be stuck in the mud and diminish our capacities to act? In order to understand this, we set out to investigate how rhythms and affects relate in the flow of organizational practicing. We draw upon a practice-based perspective and offer a theoretically and empirically grounded concept, affecto-rhythmic order. This concept captures the entanglement of practice-specific rhythms and affective attunement and highlights their reciprocal nature through which changes in rhythm and the affective attunement of practicing are interrelated. With an ethnographic study of a Nordic startup accelerator, we demonstrate how accelerator participants learn and embody a contextual affecto-rhythmic order and illustrate how this order enhances their individual and collective capacities to engage with the fast-paced development of business ideas and sales pitching skills relevant in the accelerator setting. By so doing, we further elucidate the regulative yet fragile nature of the affecto-rhythmic order. The study contributes new theoretical insights into the entanglement of rhythms and affects in learning and knowing in organizations.