Arts in business, as it is expressed in this paper, is a manifestation of a management approach to leadership. It is interpreted as an activity that influences the participants’ approach to work, to job assignments, to the organization and accordingly also to the identity work. The main interest here is, as a way to better understand arts in business, to emphasize managers practicing a leadership which, as a result of the meaning making processes in work, may empower the construction of both social and personal identity. Based on interviews with more than thirty Swedish managers with experiences from AIRIS (an artistic intervention project) findings show that most of them are very focused on the human aspects in work. They care for working conditions and inspiring tasks, they love to see their employees grow as persons, they create a sense of “us” and they initiate activities consciously, like artistic interventions, to “trigger” the development of humans and organization. This way of leading is what I would like to denominate a”culturalistic” leadership. Activities in work, like artistic interventions, accordingly impinge both the social identity and the construction of personal identity. These aspects of arts based initiatives in business are an unexplored dimension, to be developed in research about artistic approaches.