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Editorial Managing Creativity in the Cultural Industries Paul Jeffcutt and Andy C. Pratt
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EDITORIAL
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Editorial Managing Creativity in the Cultural Industries Paul Jeffcutt and Andy C. Pratt
T
his special issue brings together a series of contributions that are exploring a relatively new interdisciplinary space – the organisation and management of cultural industries1. This opening paper provides an introduction to and a consideration of that territory; it is divided into four main sections. We begin by outlining a conceptual position on creativity and management, and how we might define the cultural industries. Our objective here is to present creativity in a broad organizational field, much in the way that innovation has recently become discussed. Second, we examine the particularity of the cultural industries compared to other industries and how issues of management, organisation and governance are problematic, particularly given the nature of their transformation, or convergence. Third, we outline the broad intellectual space for understanding creativity in a knowledge economy, and indicate how this too presents challenges and opportunities. Finally, we review the dimensions of a significant new space for interdisciplinary research (and policy making) – the organisation and management of cultural industries. We conclude by considering emerging themes from this field and by introducing the contributions from the individual papers to this special issue.
Exploring creativity as a strategic business process Creativity is currently a very popular term with both the public policy and business community. In one sense this is obvious; who would aspire to be ‘uncreative’? However, the recent obsession with the concept can be related to a particular set of government and corporate strategic responses to competition and globalisation (Porter, 1990; DTI, 1999). The standard argument has two cycles. In the # Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002. 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
first, as international competitive pressures increase, there is a downward pressure on costs that can either be met by labour substitution, by the substitution of labour by technology, or by cheaper labour (usually in a different region). In the second (alternative) cycle, competitiveness can be maintained through innovation in products and services. Plainly, in this cycle, innovation relies upon ‘creativity’ – as in the creation of novel products and services. In the first cycle, one that elsewhere has been characterised as Fordist or Taylorist (see Lipietz, 1992), the emphasis is upon cost alone and the organization of the labour process to achieve these ends; a common strategy is to de-skill work processes such that cheaper, untrained, labour can carry out tasks. Broadly, the policy responses, both public and corporate, have been to favour foreign direct investment (FDI); either as a means to exploit lower cost production, or as a means to attract new investment and grow regional economies. The strategic drawbacks of such a policy for a host region are two-fold; either the investor is attracted elsewhere after a short period, or/and, there is little or no technology, or knowledge, transfer to the region, and limited use of local suppliers. In the second cycle, institutions may be configured such that they prize creativity and innovation as sources of competitive advantage rather than as additional costs (as in the first cycle). More generally, the second cycle has intuitive attractiveness, as it will, logically, lead to endogenous growth. This is broadly the thrust of the argument advanced by Piore and Sable (1984) in their seminal text The Second Industrial Divide, where they argued that Fordist economies were faced with a choice, or a branching point. One possible route (that they favoured), was to adopt flexible specialisation strategies that placed emphasis upon a loose network of small
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producers that could mix and match skills and expertise to produce short runs of new products of high quality at short notice. This line of argument also has been explored under the rubric of Post-Fordism (see Amin, 1994; Hirst & Zeitlin, 1989). PostFordism is suggestive of the emergence of new organisational forms with a spatial localisation: new industrial districts (Amin & Thrift, 1994). Tellingly, writers in this field, especially those broadly situated within a neoinstitutionalist framework, have highlighted that the spatial clustering that characterises new industrial districts might be seen as a solution to an organisational problem resulting from the fragmentation of production activities. Moreover, both post-Fordist and Flexible Specialisation theorists highlight the role that new forms of governance (corporate, state and civil society) must play. Broader theoretical accounts of this solution are currently one of the most hotly debated topics in fields such as economics, economic sociology and economic geography. We will not attempt to review the parameters of these debates here – it is sufficient to note that organisation, social context and strategy are commonly invoked in such accounts. A point that is not picked up in this literature, but one which we feel is relevant is that fact that creativity is at a premium in short product runs and rapid changing product ranges2. We would argue that this offers a particularly appropriate site at which a debate about the interplay of management and creativity can be developed. The question that follows on from such an observation is how to maximise creativity in any individual, organisation, or economy. In order to answer this question one has to decide where creativity is ‘located’. Obviously, individuals are a primary source of creativity, but, like innovation (with which creativity studies have many parallels), it is somewhat shortsighted, although very popular, to simply seek to increase the ‘creativity’ quotient of each individual in the hope that this will make a significant difference. Just as with innovation, we should note that new ideas require a context in which they may be nurtured, developed and passed on, or made into something more generally useful (see Lundvall & Johnson, 1992; Morgan, 1995)3. Creativity requires a context and organisation. This is not to suggest that creativity is all context. Whilst it is clear that some contexts and organisational settings enable creativity to flourish, the truth must lie in a complex interaction of the two – which we might better think of as a duality rather than a dualism. In other words, creativity is a
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process (requiring knowledge, networks and technologies) that interconnects novel ideas and contexts. The response of the orthodox neo-classical field is to understand such activity as ‘spillovers’ or ‘externalities’ (see Krugman, 1991), or in economic sociology, and economic geography as ‘embeddedness’ (Granovetter, 1985) and ‘untraded dependency’ (Storper, 1997). Reviewing this literature, despite its divergences, it is noteworthy that creativity, and innovation, comes to be portrayed as an ‘effect’ of the system4. Thus, strategies that seek to raise the ‘creativity quotient’ in individuals or firms may be missing the point. A parallel response has been discussed in terms of industrial strategies more generally. The focus on ‘price’, which underpins the FDI model, has been termed ‘Old competition’, whilst the focus on quality, innovation (and, we would add, creativity) has been called ‘New Competition’ (see Best, 1990; 2001). Strategies to support ‘new competitive economies’ focus on the adoption of new organisational paradigms that seek to capitalise on, and to develop, a new form of governance across a dispersed network of firms and other agencies (see Pratt & Totterdill, 1992). We might ask, with some justification, are not all industries creative? Thus, following from the debates about the emergent organisational forms of post-Fordism, we can discount analyses of creativity as uniquely found in a small number of expressive activities5. Indeed, there are clearly some organisational fields in which creativity is configured at a premium; in others it is either discouraged, or discounted6. We think that it is logically consistent to argue for a situated analysis. From a social constructivist position, the organisational form constructs ‘creativity’ in a particular setting; in this light, we argue that the cultural industries are such a particularity. Before discussing this further, it is necessary to make a few points of clarification. We would want to challenge the assumption that if we seek the ‘magic dust of creativity’ then we need look no further than the cultural industries. We would point out that there is no magic ‘inoculation’ of innovation, to an organisation or individual, nor are cultural industries – in principle – any more or less creative than others 7; nor, are cultural businesses, just because they produce ‘creative’ products, a potential model that may be transferred elsewhere. In choosing to focus on the cultural industries, we are seeking to avoid the elision of creativity and organisational anarchy on the one hand, and rationality and standardisation
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on the other. We are also seeking to avoid the traps of the commonly repeated notion that only cultural activities are creative, or that creativity and management are oxymoronic. All of the above views stem from what we regard as a process of essentialising dualisms. For example, the capabilities of organisations with a ‘creative output’, such as theatre companies, are often dismissed with the suggestion that they simply need good management (the assumption being that ‘artists’ cannot manage). Similarly, the equal and opposite reaction suggests that ‘conventional’ businesses need to buy-in ‘artists’ with the objective of inculcating ‘creativity’ into workers, or to learn the techniques of ‘creative businesses’. Often overlain on these dualist strategic concepts (see Jeffcutt, 1996; Jeffcutt et al., 2000) are stereotypes about public and private sector management practices, where the public sector is characterised as an inefficient bureaucracy and the private sector as an efficient machine. None of these dualisms are helpful, either alone or in combination. What is called for are analyses that are not rooted in atomistic assumptions about creativity – analyses that seek to understand how creativity is manifest in different ways in differing organisational contexts.
Examining the Cultural Industries The UK government has ‘branded’ the cultural industries as the ‘creative industries’. Whilst one might dispute the detail of boundaries (see Pratt, 1997; 2000a; Jeffcutt, 1999; 2000), the significance is that this does signal a contemporary policy focus on a sector that is engaged in producing novel cultural products. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), in an attempt to create a broader alliance of interest, and to foster a wider inter-Departmental appeal8, have defined the creative industries in the following terms, ‘those activities which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property. These have been taken to include the following key sectors: advertising, architecture, the art and antiques market, crafts, design, designer fashion, film, interactive leisure software, music, the performing arts, publishing, software and television and radio’ (DCMS, 1998). In terms of conventional indicators, the volume and value of activity in the cultural industries is highly significant for western economies (EC, 2001). For example, in the UK, in one of the few attempts that have been
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made to seriously collect systematic information on the creative sector, the cultural industries were valued at 5% of GDP (approximately 170 billion Euro turnover per annum), employ 1.3 million people and are growing at twice the rate of the rest of the economy (DCMS, 2001). This broad territory of activity is shaped by dynamics of development that are driven externally and internally. Externally, the pressures of innovation and new products, or content, are dominant. Internally, and to an extent a feeder for external pressures, are the creative and innovative challenges of convergence of content and technologies. Convergence is a crucial operational dynamic, which we argue has three main dimensions (see also Jeffcutt, 2001):
Intersectoral The cultural industries are shaped by convergence between the media/information industries and the cultural/arts sector – this is evident at all levels of activity, from the growth of new cultural entrepreneurs to the recent merger between Time/Warner and AOL to produce one of the worlds largest corporations.
Interprofessional The cultural industries are shaped by convergence between diverse domains (or forms) of creative endeavour (i.e. visual art, craft, print, video, music, etc) that are brought together by new opportunities for the use of digital media technologies. For example, over the past decade, the UK video game sector has developed from the cult activity of teenagers in suburban bedrooms to an international export industry equivalent in value to that of Radio and TV (DCMS, 2001).
Transgovernmental The cultural industries as a policy field (at whatever level) brings together a complex network of stakeholders – departments of culture and departments of industry, trade, professional and educational bodies – to try to do effective ‘joined up’ governance. The outcomes of this operational convergence are complex and challenging. The cultural industries span a diverse range of activities (i.e. arts, genres, crafts, specialisms and domains of endeavour) all of which have creativity at their core (‘where creativity is the enterprise’, Kane, 1999). This produces a terrain with a very mixed economy of forms
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– from micro-businesses, through microenterprises to trans-national organisations – encompassing the range from sole artists to global media corporations. The creative process in these organisations is distinguished by a complex cycle of knowledge flows, from the generation of original ideas to their realisation (whether as products or performances). As Leadbeater and Oakley (1999) argue, the creative process is sustained by inspiration and informed by talent, vitality and commitment – this makes creative work volatile, dynamic and risk-taking, shaped by important tacit skills (or expertise) that are frequently submerged (even mystified) within domains of endeavour. Despite their contemporary influence and value, the crucial dynamics that form and transform the creative process in knowledge economies remain unruly and poorly understood. In particular, there is a lack of strategic knowledge about the relationships and networks that enable and sustain the creative process in a knowledge economy. These relationships are enabled between the diverse contributors to the creative process (whether helping with the inspiration or the perspiration) towards the achievement of successful outcomes (whether realised in terms of performances or products). These relationships are sustained in diverse communities of activity, from project-based/hybrid/virtual organisations to cultural quarters and digital media hubs. Clearly, these diverse relationships and networks are organised, even if they may not always be managed (in conventional terms) – one of the key challenges for researchers and policy-makers is thus to better understand these crucial dynamics so that insightful and supportive action may be taken. We believe that there is value in, and much to be learned from, the cultural industries. A primary reason is that they are what we might term ‘chart businesses’ – businesses that live or die by the volume and success of their output being valued as ‘best’ in the market place for a limited period. In short, they are very good at producing products and markets for novelty9. This discipline exerts peculiar pressures on business organisation. We can illustrate this by reference to the Computer Games Industry (CGI). An individual game, such as Tomb Raider, can take up to 18 months and cost in the region of £2 million to develop. However, once it is released it needs to gain publicity and sales very quickly, or drop into obscurity. Crucial is getting favourable reviews and featuring in the games chart – factors which generate sales in themselves, as well as deciding which
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games get distributed. Commonly, the time span in which they ‘chart’ and thus need to recoup their investment is less than 4 weeks. After this, if they are not successful, they are likely to be removed from retailers’ shelves and replaced by another product. The studies that we have of ‘chart businesses’ in fields such as publishing, film, music and the games industry, clearly point to the fact that there is not a single ideal organisational form – rather different forms that emerge as ‘local solutions’ at different times, and for different technologies and industries. Like the rest of advanced western capitalist economies, in general terms, chart businesses have shifted from vertically and horizontally integrated monsters to vertically disintegrated forms. Whilst part of the rise of interest in the ‘creative sector’ has been associated with the rapid absolute and relative growth of these industries, it has in also been stimulated by views that the cultural industries, being also at the cusp of technological innovation and digital convergence, might be pre-figurative examples of the contemporary transformation of economies10 in North America and Europe11. At the danger of collapsing the very differences that we want to foreground, we can note that chart businesses in the North America and Europe are characterised by a functionally bifurcated structure and size of unit. The numerically dominant firms are micro-enterprises that specialise in content origination, the financially dominant firms are a small number of trans-nationals who control distribution and control intellectual property rights. Whilst considerable progress has been made in the measurement of the cultural industries, particularly in terms of employment and turnover, the topic of organisation and governance has yet to receive the attention it deserves from either academics or policy makers. However, we can begin to sketch out some of the important dimensions. a. There is not one cultural industry, there are several. Each industry (film, television, new media, etc.) has its own ecology of labour markets and contracting networks. The cultural industries are best described as a sector, or a production system (see Pratt, 1997; 2000a). Within this system are several industries. There are (organisational) connections of both a horizontal and vertical nature in the production process. b. Many of the firms are young, many are very small: micro-business. However, participants have often been in the industry or sector for a while.
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c. The industries are mostly dominated by 2 or 3 major business. Major may mean a world dominating multinational. The merger of Time-Warner and AOL has created one of the largest corporate entities in the world. d. Most businesses are started, owned and employ ‘creatives’. Most focus on the problems of ‘here and how’, not the future. In practice, most do not have management as either a core task or a core competency. e. Competition is fierce – de/re-regulation of broadcasters/publishers has given birth to a large number of independent operators. f. Firm life cycles are short-term, sometimes a matter of weeks, and/or are single project based. The future is uncertain: though growth may be significant and on-going. (see Pratt (2002b); Grabher (2002)) g. Employment is commonly short term, often highly skilled, casual or short term contracting and freelancing. Serial, shortterm contracts are common (see Blair, 2000). h. In a specialised and high skill industrial sector that is based around individual expertise, individuals can be ‘leached out’ of firms, or lost altogether, through employee migration and poaching. Training is seldom provided, except on a justin-time basis. i. The labour market pool may acquire strategic skills and knowledge due to multi-tasking and multi-experience. Over time this can be a strategic resource for a locale. However, lack of training can undermine this sustainability. Each of these topics deserves further work in its own right and potentially presents considerable scope for debate regarding the appropriate role of management.
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longstanding intellectual heritage – as the following summary shows, the relationship between ‘culture’ and ‘industry’ has typically been understood in terms of key separations and 4 distinctive views can be outlined:
Romantic: an opposition to cultural decline In the 19th century, alongside the development of a modern economy in Britain, Romantics (such as Coleridge and Arnold) envisaged a society led by an artistic elite who would be untainted by commerce. This influential movement rejected rationalism, celebrated individual inspiration and opposed what they saw as cultural decline. These understandings establish key separations between high (canonical) culture and mass (popular) culture.
Critical Theory: the industrialisation of leisure time. Adorno and Horkheimer (Marxists who had fled from Germany to New York in the 1930s) coined the term ‘culture industry’ in 1944. In a context of US consumerism, they argued that culture had become industrialised through a controlling process of uniformity and predictability, akin to Fordist mass-production. These understandings establish key separations between mass deception and authenticity.
Economic: culture at the leading edge of late-capitalism. As was recognised in the preceding section, the cultural industries have become seen as a leading or privileged sector of contemporary capitalism. As we also observed – these understandings establish key separations between aesthetic goods and non-aesthetic goods.
Interdisciplinarity and Conceptual Convergence
Socio-political: culture as an instrument of community regeneration.
The dynamics of convergence in the intellectual context are similarly diverse and multi-layered, bringing together fields of knowledge with different approaches to the relationship between creativity and the economy. As has already been seen, contemporary approaches to the cultural industries value creativity in some industrial settings, but overlook it in others. In order to explore the structures that produce this valuation, we need to reflect on the web of conceptual relationships between ‘culture’ and ‘industry’ (see also Jeffcutt et al., 2000). Appreciating the complexity of this relationship necessitates engaging with a
Over last 20 years or so (in particular), the cultural or creative sector has also become seen as an instrument of community development and thus a focus of state investment, often around agendas of social inclusion. These understandings establish key separations between socio-cultural costs and sociocultural benefits.
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It is clear that the four distinct positions discussed here each incorporate their own value systems and judgements – romantic, critical, economic, socio-political, – in constructing a meaning for the relationship
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between ‘culture’ and ‘industry’. However, they are also joined by their views that the distinctions and relationship between ‘culture’ and ‘industry’ form a relatively stable structure that is coherent and manageable (whether positively or negatively valued). In contrast, a number of contemporary critical approaches would argue that these distinctions and relationships are blurred, unstable and unmanageable. For example: Romantic: Over the past century, artists from Duchamp to Warhol have sought to overturn the distinction between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture. Subsequently, postmodernists have argued that there can no longer be any absolute criteria of judgement; all is open to critique and debate (Hutcheon, 1989). Critical Theory: Baudrillard and others have suggested that the spheres of economics and of culture can no longer be realistically separated. In this ‘hyperreal’ world there is no originary authenticity, only image and delusion – culture is simply another form of transactional activity (Lash & Urry,1994). Economic: Recent work from anthropology (eg Fjellman, 1992; Miller, 2001) and consumer behaviour (eg Brown, 1995; Brown & Patterson, 2001) has argued that all goods are expressive and can be consumed for their aesthetic qualities, whether tractors or movies. Socio-political: Recent work from cultural policy (eg Pick & Anderton, 1999) has argued that state-led neo-patronage may be more effective at constraining rather than enabling creative space for community development. Through these critiques we can see an emerging conceptual territory for understanding the creative process in a knowledge economy. This territory extends to a range of recent work from the arenas of organisational analysis (Bjorkegren 1996: Davis & Scase, 2000), media and cultural studies (Du Gay, 1997; Du Gay & Pryke, 2002; Hesmondhalugh, 2002), cultural policy (Pick & Anderton, 1999), economic geography (Scott, 2000), critical anthropology (Fjellman, 1992; Miller, 2001) and consumer behaviour (Brown, 1995; Brown & Patterson, 2001). Characterised by its interdisciplinarity, this range of work is linked by a concern for the dynamics of the cultural production/consumption interface in a developing economy of ‘signs and space’.
Management, Convergence and Situated Creativity Over the course of this paper we have argued that the cultural industries can be characterised by dynamic contact-zones that are interoperational and inter-disciplinary – providing
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a territory that is hybrid, multi-layered and rapidly changing. A key challenge for researchers is to develop an appropriate conceptual and organisational framework within which to focus and situate analyses of this territory. Questions of organisation, management and governance are fundamental to understanding the cultural industries; they require the development of a strategic framework of knowledge concerning the dynamics of the creative process in knowledge economies. As we have shown, this strategic knowledge, where it exists, is currently fragmented and partial. Clearly, such knowledge is needed for assimilation, current and forward assessment, and to create and sustain a credible evidence-base for strategic action. A framework, around which to build and further develop this strategic knowledge, can be set out as follows:
Micro Analysis of the process and craft of creative activity in different ‘industries’, concentrating on what is distinctive about these activities in each domain of endeavour (i.e. situated knowledge, identity) and what could be identified as catalysts for creative invention and its successful translation into the processes that lead to innovative outputs.
Meso Comparative analysis, across domains, of what enables and supports innovation processes in their (unruly) interface with creative invention; concentrating on these dynamics in relation to key intermediary factors for creative enterprises, such as organisation, networking, expertise and media, that impact across the territory.
Macro Comparative analysis within and across cities, regions and nations of the relationship between creative enterprises and socio-economic development in knowledge-based societies; concentrating on the role of key environmental enablers/inhibitors such as intellectual property rights, cultural diversity, skillsets and access, entrepreneurship capabilities, ICT capabilities, governance, institutional partnerships, labour markets, development policy and funding etc.
Meta Analysis of the longer-term impact of changes in aesthetics, lifestyle, commodification and
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spatiality on the development of an evolving network society (i.e. local, regional, national and transnational). Earlier, we noted that research activity across this framework is both dispersed and in the early stages of development; it is significant to note the following main trends. To date, there has been much greater emphasis on macro (e.g. Landry, 2000) and meta (e.g. Castells, 2000) analysis, with a relative neglect of micro and meso analysis. Significantly, there has been little joining up of analysis across levels to produce a more integrated framework of strategic knowledge. However, debates emerging in the field of the ‘new regionalism’ are suggestive of a conceptual framework within which to consider this problem (see Soja, 2001; Storper, 1997; Scott, 1998; Amin & Cohendet, 2000) In this paper, we have proposed that issues of management, organisation and governance are fundamental for the strategic framework of knowledge outlined above. We have argued that strategic knowledge in the cultural industries must be situated in the analysis of particular organisational fields; not simply imported from other sectors or industries. A significant theme that has emerged from the small body of research in this area points to the importance of emerging organisational space, interfaces and intermediaries (see Jeffcutt, 2001; Pratt, 2002c). Over the course of this paper, we have recognised that cultural industries occupy an unruly organisational space between the domains of culture and industry, that they articulate the contested interfaces between the practices of management and creativity, and that they mobilise these complex operational interrelationships through intermediaries. Each paper of the special issue contributes to this key theme of work in a distinctive way. Hitters and Richards are concerned with management strategies in cultural clusters. They examine two multi-stakeholder clusters in the Netherlands, considering how the organisation and governance of each enables the sustainable development of an innovative milieu. By way of contrast, the nature of interorganisational relationships and their impact on business strategy is the concern of Gander and Reiple. They concentrate on complex strategic interrelationships between ‘the majors’ and ‘the independents’, arguing that these different interorganisational forms are complementary but hostile, whilst their exchanges are functional to the development of the industry. Picking up on the theme of creativity per se, Banks et al are primarily concerned with the
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new media industry; specifically how creativity is defined, located, valued and managed in a rapidly developing area that manifests significant differences between firms. Prichard’s paper offers a critical reading of individual creativity as being functional to business performance; using the ‘hero manager’ as an exemplar, he focuses on the debilitating effects of normative and performative behaviour in workplaces. A contrasting analysis of the multi-agent and dialogic nature of the creative process is presented by Kavanagh et al. They employ a novel interactive method of knowledge building about the domain and process of creativity, likening it to ‘origami’ – an emergent practice of folding and enfolding. This collection of papers engages with the strategic framework that we have outlined above: specifically, by focusing on macro (Gander Reiple), meso (Hitters & Richards; Banks et al.) and micro (Prichard; Kavanagh et al.) dimensions of organisational knowledge, whilst they all make contributions to meso concerns. The papers highlight the fact that interfaces and intermediaries are axiomatic in the organisation and management of creative space in the music industry (Gander & Reiple), new media (Banks, et al.) and ‘creative clusters’ more generally (Hitters & Richards). Furthermore, they demonstrate the fact that interfaces and intermediaries are also crucial to the organisation and management of creative practice, whether in work settings where creative space is sought to be circumscribed (Prichard), or in settings where creative space is sought to be opened up (Kavanagh et al.). These hybrid and emergent organisational spaces, made up of dynamic interfaces between multiple stakeholders with many layers of knowledge, are both characteristic of, and endemic in, the cultural industries. As we have argued, these distinctive organisational spaces represent both challenge and opportunity for a developing interdisciplinary field, and over the course of this paper we have explored key issues that are shaping the development of this territory. Significant amongst these issues has been the role of intermediaries – individuals, formations and institutions that not only seek to make connections at interfaces (whether between persons, parties or knowledges), but which also seek to transform the space in which they are operating. In other words, these intermediaries have the potential to form learning or intelligent agencies12, able to address future challenges of organisation, management and governance in the cultural industries.
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Notes 1. Throughout the paper we use the term ‘cultural industries’, for consistency we have chosen to use this instead of ‘creative industries’ (the term most commonly used in policy debates) – our rationale for doing so is discussed in sections one and two of the paper. 2. The permanence, or otherwise, of a product is, of course, not intrinsic; rather it is evidence of an organisational field that has been created such that this value (permanent or transitory) is amplified. For example, there is no reason why pop music should be ‘ephemeral’ however the chart system by which singles or albums are promoted stresses this dimension. It can be argued that more and more products are being constructed as ‘ephemeral’ as they then generate repeat or multiple purchase. In this way it could be argued that the whole economy might be characterised as one that is shifting to a pattern common in the cultural industries (see Lash and Urry, 1994, for a more general version of this argument). 3. Studies of innovation began by focusing on the production of ‘big ideas’, then progressed to exploring the chain of events that took ideas to markets; more recent work has offered a critique of such linear models of innovation and favoured recursive, iterative and heuristic networks (see Pratt, 1998) 4. In neo-classical economics knowledge and technology, and presumably creativity, are deemed to be externalities: some general benefit that is equally available. Generally more socialised, and anti-atomistic, accounts favour an internalisation of these elements and a recognition of their potential to be structured by organisational forms, and thus to be unevenly available. 5. Definitionally, the location of creativity is problematic. Does theatre administration count? If not, the case is for creative occupations (rather than industries). This means that it is possible to define people as creative when not in a creative business, and not creative when in one. Such debates, though practical, do highlight the conceptual weakness of terms such as creativity when used in this manner. 6. The classics of labour process debates may be cited here (see Braverman, 1974; Willis, 1986) 7. One of the debates about the measurement of the cultural industries in terms of employment is whether to measure only ‘creative’ occupations, or, all occupations in a ‘cultural business’. There is a clear case for appreciating the interdependency of ‘creative’ and ‘noncreative’ occupations. A point we make elsewhere is that the ‘creatives’ would not be creative without the social and material infrastructure to mobilise their creations (see Pratt, 1997). 8. The key targets here are the DTI and its policies on Competition and the Knowledge Economy, and the DFEE (see Our Creative Futures). 9. This is not to suggest that ‘novelty’ exhausts the category ‘creative’.
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10. This notion of economic transformation is a false one. The break up of the film industry in 1940s Hollywood, and the fragmentation of TV production in 1980s London was figured by regulatory changes, not simple market optimisation (see Christorperson, 2002; Pratten and Deakin, 2000; Deakin and Pratten, 2000). 11. Such predictions are prone to universalise business organisational forms. As Hamilton and Biggart (1998) have noted, there is more than one form of economic organisation under capitalism, the Asian version contrasts strongly with the US version. For example, we can note that micro- and small enterprises are quite uncommon in the Japanese cultural industries (see Pratt, 2002a). 12. Reference may be made here to Artificial Intelligence, where interactive programmes are created that can learn and thus create a form of agency for themselves.
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DTI (1999) White Paper: ‘Our competitive future: building the knowledge driven economy’ Du Gay, P. (1997) Production of Culture/Cultures of Production. Sage, London. Du Gay, P. and Pryke, M. (eds) (2002) Cultural Economy. Sage, London. EC (2001) Exploitation and Development of the job potential in the Cultural Sector in the age of Digitisation. DG Employment and Social Affairs. Fjellman, S.M. (1992) Vinyl Leaves. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado. Gibbons, M., et al. (1994) The New Production of Knowledge. Sage, London. Grabher, G. (2002) Editorial to the special issue on project networks. Environment and Planning A, 34, 11, 1911–1926. Granovetter, M. (1985) Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 91, 481–510. Hamilton, G. and Biggart, N. (1998) Market, culture and authority: a comparative analysis of management and organisation in the Far East. American Journal of Sociology Supplment, S52–S95. Hesmondhalugh, D. (2002) The cultural industries. Sage, London. Hirst, P. and Zeitlin, J. (eds) (1989) Reversing industrial decline? Industrial structure and policy in Britain and her competitors. Berg, Oxford. Hutcheon, L. (1989) The Politics of Postmodernism. Routledge, London. Jeffcutt, P. (1996) The Organization of Performance and the Performance of Organization. Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies, 2, 1, 95–110. Jeffcutt, P. (1999) Report from the First International Workshop on Management and the Creative Industries. Creative Industry Research Network, Belfast. Jeffcutt, P., et al. (2000) Culture and Industry: Exploring the Debate. Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies, 6, 2, 129–143. Jeffcutt, P. (2001) Creativity and Convergence in the Knowledge Economy: Reviewing Key Themes and Issues. Culturelink, Special Issue 2001, 9–18. Kane, K. (1999) Creativity and Enterprise. Scottish Enterprise, Glasgow. Krugman, P. (1991) Geography and Trade. Leuven University Press, Leuven. Landry, C. (2000) The Creative City. Earthscan, Leicester. Lash, S. and Urry, J. (1994) Economies of Signs and Space. Sage, London. Leadbeater, C. and Oakley, K. (1999) The Independents. Demos, London. Lipietz, A. (1992) A new economic order. Polity Press, Cambridge. Lundvall, B.-A. and Johnson, B. (eds) (1992) National Systems of Innovation. Frances Pinter, London. Miller, D. (ed) (2001) Consumption: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences. Routledge.
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Morgan, K. (1995) The learning region: institutions, innovation and regional renewal, Papers in planning research, No 157, Department of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff, University of Wales. Pick, J. and Anderton, M. (1999) Building Jerusalem. Harwood Academic Publishers, Amsterdam. Piore, M. and Sabel, C. (1984) The second industrial divide. Basic Books, New York. Porter, M. (1990) The competitive advantage of nations. Free Press, New York. Pratt, A.C. (1996) The emerging shape and form of innovation networks and institutions. In Simmie, J. (ed) Innovation, networks and learning regions. Jessica Kingsley, London, pp. 124–136. Pratt, A.C. (1997) Employment in the cultural industries sector: a case study of Britain, 1984– 91. Environment and Planning Vol A, 29, 11, 1953– 1976. Pratt, A.C. (2000a) Employment: the difficulties of classification, the logic of grouping industrial activities comprising the sector, and some summaries of the size and distribution of employment in the creative industries sector in Great Britain 1981–96. In The new cultural map: a research agenda for the 21st century. Bretton Hall, Leeds. Pratt, A.C. (2002a) The Geography of Employment in The Cultural Industries: toward a cross national comparison (UK and Japan), Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Association of Geographers, Los Angeles, March 22. Pratt, A.C. (2002b) ‘Firm boundaries? The organisation of new media production in San Francisco 1996–8’, mimeo. Pratt, A.C. (2002c) Understanding the cultural industries: is more less? Culturelink, 51–68. Pratt, A.C. and Totterdill, P. (1992) Industrial policy in a period of organization and institutional change. Environment and Planning C: Government and policy, 10, 375–385. Pratten, S. and Deakin, S. (2000) Competitiness policy and economic organisation: the acse of the British Film Industry. Screen, 41, 2, 110–34. Soja, E. (2000) Postmetropolis. Blackwell, Oxford. Scott, A. (ed) (1998) Regions and the world economy: the coming shape of global production, competition and political order. OUP, Oxford. Scott, A. (2000) The Cultural Economy of Cities. Sage. Storper, M. (1997) The regional world. Guilford Press, London. Willis, P. (1986) Learning to Labour. Pergamon Press.
Paul Jeffcutt, Centre for Creative Industry, Queen’s University Belfast. Andy C Pratt, Department of Geography, London School of Economics.
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The Creation and Management of Cultural Clusters Erik Hitters and Greg Richards This paper analyses two cultural clusters, the Westergasfabriek (WGF) in Amsterdam and the Witte de Withstraat (WdW) in Rotterdam, and evaluates their contrasting creative management strategies. The WGF has to date been fairly successful in creating an attractive mix of different cultural activities, based on the creative potential of the buildings on the site, its image as a cultural centre and the general atmosphere of creativity. The more ‘top-down’ approach of the Local Authority owned but commercially managed WFG has injected new commercial skills and investment into the cluster, and creates the conditions for innovation through managing the mix of creative functions. The WdW, on the other hand, takes a more ‘bottom-up’ approach to the problems of cultural management, and so far the participants have resisted the imposition of formal management. This may allow cultural and commercial functions to co-exist more easily, but, thus far, there seems to be less evidence of innovation.
Introduction
I
n an increasingly competitive global urban field, creativity is being extensively used as a tool for urban development and to create competitive advantage through developing innovation. The creative industries have a crucial role to play in this development, as many cities are developing cultural clusters or districts designed to stimulate creative activities and to act as a leading edge for economic and physical development. However, ensuring these clusters have the right climate in which new cultural enterprises can grow is a difficult business. Usually such endeavours require close collaboration between the wide range of actors involved in the management of such locations, drawn frequently from the private, public and voluntary sectors. Even if the right conditions can be created locally to allow new creative enterprises to flourish, their success is also increasingly dependent on the global cultural market. Not only is the media playing a growing role in the promotion of cultural consumption at an international level, but the growth of cultural tourism is making it increasingly possible to attract international as well as local audiences. New cultural clusters therefore have to consider their position in a local, national and international context if they are to succeed. This places extra pressure on the managers of
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such areas to generate revenue and to raise their profile on the international cultural scene. The result is often a growing tension between the requirements of cultural management and the demands of commercial management. This paper considers the relationship between the management structures and styles of two cultural clusters in the Netherlands and their ability to generate innovation in cultural production and consumption. The relatively centralised management strategy evident at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam is compared and contrasted with the more open and less structured Witte de Withstraat cluster in Rotterdam. In order to provide a broader context for this analysis, the following sections consider the forces of globalisation and localisation stimulating the development of cultural clusters, the role of the creative industries in such clusters, and previous studies of cultural cluster development and management.
Globalisation and the Network Society Globalisation primarily refers to the continuous scaling-up of markets and the increasing growth of trans-national financial and economic networks (cf. Sassen, 1994; Waters, 1995). But this process is equally characterised # Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002. 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
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by the fading of national cultural identities, increasing geographical mobility, worldwide migration, ethnic hybridisation and apparent cultural homogenisation (Zukin, 1995). The corollary of globalisation, and inevitably linked with it, is the revival of local autonomy. This is apparent in the strengthening of local identities and ethnicities and in the growing strength of administrative and political intervention on a local level. This duality in the process of globalisation can be characterised by the term ‘glocalisation’. This process is precipitated in cities faced with the concrete consequences of economic and cultural globalisation. In the face of growing inter-urban competition, the increased mobility of capital and the diminishing importance of purely physical location factors cities attempt to distinguish themselves in terms of their social, cultural and symbolic characteristics. The recent work of the Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells (1996) on the ‘network society’ provides a powerful analytical background to the processes of globalisation, their causes and their consequences. The combination of an information society and a globally networked economy has introduced a new logic of economic space, which Castells defines as the ‘space of flows’. He opposes the space of flows to the ‘space of places’, the localities that shape people’s daily activities. Castells warns us that those two spaces become fundamentally separated form one another unless ‘cultural and physical bridges are deliberately built between those two forms of space’ (Castells, 1996: 428). What we will argue here, is that the creative industries can function as such a bridge. In doing so, however, cultural enterprises have to take account of the shift to a new business logic in the global and informational economy. Castells (1996: 61) points out that businesses operate in networks. According to Kelly (1998) this network logic is driven by perpetual and inevitable innovation. It involves three interrelated organisational principles: flexible specialisation, networking and competitive collaboration. Here then, it becomes clear that the physical agglomeration of businesses can be advantageous. Scott (2000) distinguishes three primary benefits to such agglomeration in general; firstly a reduction in transactions costs, secondly an accelerated circulation of capital and information and thirdly reinforcement of transactionally based modes of social solidarity. Likewise, Amin and Graham (1997: 415) have argued that ‘. . . the advantages of proximity, associated with the exchange of information, goods and services, [. . .] face-to-face contact, [. . .] incremental innovation, learning and the
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exchange of tacit knowledge, are the assets of comparative advantage in a global context of increasingly ubiquitous forms of codified or scientific knowledge. Thus localisation is a source of dynamic learning that reinforces and is reinforced by the agglomeration of firms in the same industry’. This point is reinforced by the work of Camagni (1995) who has pointed out that innovation is most likely to occur in locations that can ground the space of flows through linking local actors. Locality or clustering becomes important in this respect because of: 1) The presence of ‘quasi-immobile’ human capital 2) The presence of informal contacts between local actors that create a certain ‘atmosphere’ 3) Synergy effects stemming from shared experience of the local which creates common representations and beliefs. Creating clusters of creative enterprises can therefore produce the conditions necessary for a ‘milieu of innovation’ to develop a bridge between global and local flows. Although such milieus can be spontaneously created and informally maintained, after a while more structure becomes desirable as endogenous and exponentially growing locational costs, which may be considered as the opportunity cost of utilisation of the ‘milieu’ and evident limits in the static or dynamic performance of the ‘milieu’ itself, push towards the creation of a new organisational and behavioural model, a new ‘operator’ enhancing the control capability of the firm upon its turbulent environment (Camagni, 1995:135). This also implies the need for careful management of creative clusters in order to produce the conditions necessary for innovation to flourish. This is particularly important given the central role of the ‘creative industries’ in most cultural clusters.
The Creative Industries and Cultural Clusters Mommaas (2000) identifies the increasing strategic role of the creativity in the urban economy and the important role of cultural clusters in stimulating the development of creativity. The creative industries incorporate all branches of industry and trade that rely on imaginative creation and cultural innovation aimed at the production, distribution and consumption of symbolic goods. They include film, literature and publishing, theatre, recorded
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music, concerts and performance, fashion, design, architecture, old (broadcast) and new media, visual art, crafts, museums and galleries (cf. O’Connor, 1999). These creative industries are central assets of the contemporary urban economy and the social fabric of the city. They operate through a specific spatial logic, by which they are strongly linked to the mutual dependency of culture and the city. Furthermore, they are highly dependent upon each other’s proximity, as this provides them with competitive advantages through creative exchange and networking (cf. Porter, 1998, Scott, 2000). Creative industries show a strong proclivity to clustering. This explains why specifically urban renewal areas in inner cities have provided the opportunities for such spatially concentrated industries to develop and for these new collaborations to emerge. In her study of the Northern Quarter in Manchester, Van Bon (1999) has found that especially small and medium sized cultural businesses apply such new management principles and thus opposes the global footloose economy with a renewed meaning and importance of locality. Further examples of initiatives that centre on this new concept of clustered creative industries are the Huddersfield’s Creative Town concept, Temple Bar in Dublin, Rotterdam’s Witte de Withstraat, the Gazi in Athens and the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam. The nature of the creative industries themselves also tends to stimulate clustering. Because of the difficulty of substituting capital for labour in most areas of cultural production, it is difficult to achieve significant economies of scale in the creative industries (Heilbrun & Gray, 1993). This means that economic advantage must be gleaned instead from economies of scope. Economies of scope tend to be generated in culture through spatial proximity of producers, which allows them for example to share production facilities, to draw on the same audience, or to engage in collaborative marketing. Exploiting such economies of scope, however, requires appropriate management of cultural clusters. The different management strategies that have been developed for cultural clusters can be identified through a review of previous studies.
Managing Cultural Clusters Recent decades have seen the development of a wide range of cultural clusters aimed at cultural and economic development in major cities in Europe and America. A number of studies have described these developments
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and their effects on the cultural and economic life of their host cities, drawing divergent conclusions about their achievements and effectiveness. The ‘discovery’ of the cultural sector as a means of economic development during the 1980s (e.g. Myerscough, 1988) focussed attention on the development of cultural facilities in urban environments. Miles (1997) demonstrates how this idea was imported into the UK from the USA during the late 1980s and served to stimulate the development of ‘central cultural districts’ to act as magnets for industrial location and as sources of employment, particularly in declining manufacturing cities. The growing attention paid to the cultural industries in the 1990s led a number of authors to study the development of creative activities in the urban environment. For example Derek Wynne’s (1992) study of the role of the cultural industries in urban regeneration identified the emergence of ‘cultural quarters’ as important growth engines in a number of cities. He defined a cultural quarter as ‘that geographical area that contains the highest concentration of culture and entertainment in a city or town’ (1992: 19). Such clusters can grow organically or they can be stimulated and directed by the public sector. Bianchini and Parkinson (1993) took a wider, European perspective of these developments, and analysed the growing role of the cultural industries in cities such as Bilbao, Manchester and London. Their analysis indicated that a growing number of local authorities were taking a more active role in the development of cultural infrastructure, particularly in what they termed ‘declining industrial cities’ such as Glasgow and Rotterdam. In many of these cities the approach was to develop cultural clusters in order to provide a stimulus for economic as well as cultural development. A prevalent idea in the study of the cultural industries is the need to develop clusters of producers in order to produce the cultural climate and products necessary to attract consumers and their expenditure. For example, in considering the role of New York as a ‘cultural capital’ Zukin (1995: 150) argues that a culture capital must be a place where art is actually produced as well as sold and consumed. The transformation of urban space into ‘cultural space’ depends on developing the two sides of cultural capital. It requires not only the material capital of cheap space and attractive buildings, an arts labor force, and investment in culture industries, but also the symbolic capital of vision . . . It is
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also critical to have a large infrastructure of men and women whose job is to translate the work of producers for a larger public. This need to combine productive and consumptive functions in urban areas produces pressure for producers to cluster in order to make themselves visible in the urban fabric and to distribute their products more effectively to a wider public. Very often, the public sector plays a key role in promoting such clustering and developing cultural networks. Brown et al. (2000) compared the development of two cultural quarters in Sheffield and Manchester, both of which have a strong music industry component. They point out the importance of local authority intervention in supporting the development of ‘soft networks’ to link global and local cultural flows. More recently, attention has been focussed on the way in which events have been used to support the development of cultural activity in cities and to stimulate the development of cultural clusters. For example Hitters (2000) presents an analysis of the development of Rotterdam as a centre for cultural consumption, which in recent years has been based on the staging of festivals and the designation of the city as the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2001. Richards (2000) compares the use of the Cultural Capital event in a number of European cities, and concludes that growing intraurban competition is making it increasingly difficult to derive long-lasting economic and cultural impacts from such events. Significantly, these events seem to be increasingly used to justify major infrastructure investments in order to try and capture long-term economic and image effects. Using events to kick-start cultural industrial development is not necessarily a new
idea, however, as studies of London’s South Bank attest (Smith, 2001; Newman & Smith, 2000). The South Bank area became a site of modern cultural production with the staging of the Festival of Britain in 1951, which left the South Bank centre with the Royal Festival Hall, National Film Theatre and Hayward Galleries as a cultural infrastructure legacy. In their analysis of the subsequent cultural strategy development of the South Bank, Newman and Smith (2000) identify three phases of policy: an initial phase of resistance to high cultural production (1980–92), a phase of embracing cultural production as an economic activity (1993–95) and a phase of promoting fragmented and market-driven cultural production (1995–present). This emphasises the fact that the development of cultural clusters is dependent on the strength and direction of public sector intervention, as well as the global cultural market. This is a point that has also been made by Brooks and Kushner (2001), who reviewed the operation of a number of cultural districts in major American cities. They analysed four different dimensions of management in these districts: administration, degree of public involvement, degree of physical change and programming. In terms of administration they identified a continuum of management strategies ranging from a relatively hands-off approach to centralised directive management (table 1). This continuum suggests that cultural clusters can be created and managed in different ways, with a greater or lesser degree of intervention. Brooks and Kushner (2001) conclude that successful cultural districts require effective leadership and intervention by multiple levels of government and the private and voluntary sectors. However, they compare
Table 1. Management strategies for cultural clusters (after Brooks and Kushner, 2001) Management Strategy
Characteristics
Designation
The local administration calls the area a ‘cultural district’ but makes no other specific interventions. Cultural district leadership is a catalyst for private participation and removing legal barriers to development. The administration actively seeks external funding for independent district arts organisations. District administration strategy includes some active planning. The district administration collects and distributes funds and engages in considerable planning efforts. The administration supports and directs all aspects of district development and activity.
Development Donation
Direction Domination
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the cultural clusters at a fairly general level, without looking in detail at the management styles and strategies adopted in each cluster. Mommaas (2000) in his analysis of five cultural clusters in the Netherlands points out that cultural clusters usually assume a ‘hybrid form of cultural governance’ whose combination of private and public sector intervention enables them to be more flexible in a rapidly shifting urban economic/policy field. He sees the developments of cultural clusters being stimulated by a variety of public policy justifications: place marketing and positioning, stimulating an entrepreneurial approach to culture, stimulating innovation and creativity, finding new uses for old buildings and derelict sites, stimulating cultural democracy and diversity. This suggests that the management context of cultural clusters is more complex than the continuum of intervention levels drawn up by Brooks and Kushner. Mommaas shows in the case of Tilburg, for example, that the ‘bottom-up’ clustering of creative industries has been penetrated by transnational interests, including Warner Music and the Texas-based Clear Channel company. In his view the challenge of global and national capital interests to local cultural policies requires a more strategic interventionist approach on the part of local authorities. In order to assess the extent to which local authority intervention can be successful in developing coherent cultural clusters and in stimulating local creativity and innovation, we examine two case studies in the Netherlands. The local authority-led clustering strategy at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam is compared with a less centralised clustering of creative enterprises in the Witte de Withstraat in Rotterdam. This review of the cultural cluster literature indicates that most attention has been paid to the spatial clustering of creative functions, rather than the management strategies adopted by individual clusters. In this article we attempt to make a link between the management of two cultural clusters and their development of creativity and innovation.
Methods The analysis of the two case studies is based on both primary and secondary data analysis. The primary data were collected through interviews with cluster managers, local authority representatives, individual enterprises in the clusters and interviews with visitors. Secondary data was obtained from reports and studies undertaken during the development of these clusters.
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In Rotterdam, information was collected on the different parties that were identified as having a significant influence on the development of the Witte de Withstraat and the centre of Rotterdam. This included studying the annual reports, policy documents, plans and research reports for the area. Semi-structured interviews were subsequently conducted with representatives of different interest groups and the local authority involved in the governance of the area. Subsequently a sample was selected of businesses and organisations located in the cluster. The interviews covered 30 organisations, including museums, galleries, shops, catering outlets and performing arts companies. The interviews focussed on the meaning of the cultural cluster for the enterprises and organisations in the local area. In addition 350 visitors to the area were interviewed at four different sites around the cluster in February 2001. The visitors were asked about their reasons for visiting the cluster, and the extent to which they saw the area as a unified cultural cluster. In Amsterdam, the Director of the WGF was interviewed personally, and interviews conducted with tenants and potential tenants of the site were subjected to secondary data analysis regarding the motivations for locating at the site. In total, 35 interviews were conducted with a wide range of cultural organisations, including performing arts organisations, media companies, arts administrators and servicing companies. The interviews covered the activities of the organisation, their target groups, extent of demand, catchment area and motivations for locating to the WGF (both in terms of ‘pull’ and ‘push’ factors). In the interviews held with site managers, particular attention was paid to the interplay between local and global forces, and the relationship between different levels of management and administration (enterprise, site, locality, city). In addition, the style of management adopted and the extent to which the supposed advantages of clustering were exploited were examined. The following sections present a description of the two clusters as well as an analysis of the management of creativity and innovation in each area.
The Westergasfabriek The WFG case study is particularly interesting because it represents a new model in cultural management in a Dutch context. Although the site is owned by the Local Authority, the buildings have been sold to a property development company, which is
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responsible for their letting and management. This structure is supposed to inject new commercial skills and investment into the running of the site, but the overriding cultural function of the cluster is made clear in the strategic vision of the Westergasfabriek (2001: 3): ‘the management (of the WGF) must result in a financially viable operation that sustains the cultural function of the area’. The Westergasfabriek (WGF) is located in a former gas works west of the inner city of Amsterdam. Many of the Westergasfabriek buildings were demolished when the site closed in the 1960s. During the last decade, however, there has been a growing interest in and appreciation of old industrial sites as historically valuable urban areas, and today 13 of the factory’s 19 remaining buildings are state-protected monuments. The city council already started discussing possible new uses of the WGF complex in the late 1970s. Developing the site met with great difficulty, because of a lack of funds, the level of soil pollution and the lack of consensus among the various groups involved. In the meantime, in 1992, the buildings were put to temporary use, and leased for short periods to meet the growing need for ‘cultural’ spaces in Amsterdam at the time. Because of their different shapes and sizes the buildings proved to be very popular and for some a waiting list existed. The giant gas holder proved suitable for big events like house parties, pop concerts, operas and other manifestations. For a few big festivals the grounds as well as the buildings were used. In three years time over three hundred exhibitions, performances and concerts were held at the WGF and since 1995 the area has attracted some 250,000 visitors annually. In 2001 the use of the site has been limited by the redevelopment of the park surrounding the site, which has caused many users and events to move. The expectation is however that most of the tenants and events will return as soon as the redevelopment is complete.
Management and Administration Since 1994, a project team, led by project manager Evert Verhagen, has managed the development of the Westergasfabriek on behalf of the local authority. Liesbeth Jansen, Director of the WGF, has managed the activities, programming and letting of the site. The project team has been, and still is, a key element in the project’s success. In 1996 the Westerpark district council published a development plan for the WGF, prepared by
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the project team. The plan provided a structure for the WGF in three themes: ‘park’, ‘culture’ and ‘cultural enterprise’. The future development of the WGF will take the shape of a public-private partnership. The need for private resources and management expertise to rehabilitate the buildings and operate the cultural venues was based on two premises. Firstly, it would increase the stability of the project. Were it to remain connected to the district council, it would be dependent on changeable politics with the risk of stagnation and disintegration. Secondly, the local authority budget was too small to allow them to invest in the WGF. At this moment the project requires an additional investment budget of 60 million guilders (27 million Euro). The necessary cash has been injected largely by property developer MAB, which has become owner of the buildings on the site. MAB expects the WGF in its current form to be sustainable for ten or twenty years, but to them only the profitability over the next five years is relevant. MAB will restore the buildings, and create 600 square metres of new building space. The new buildings will be made complementary to the existing site. This investment will add value to the site, making its sale profitable after five years. MAB will not invest in the park, which remains the responsibility of the District Council. The only risk for MAB is the possibility that they will not attract enough tenants – new occupants will have to pay and cultural organisations are notorious for being poor. Fuelled by market research and current negotiations with potential tenants, MAB is confident about the future of the WGF. (Buwalda et al., 1999: 48). The contracts between MAB and the District Council were finalized at the beginning of 2000. The project bureau is currently the operational unit for the Westerpark District. MAB has set up a new formal management corporation, which will become responsible for programming and management of the buildings. This corporation (‘Westergasfabriek BV’) will rent space from the owners and lease the spaces to tenants. Thus, the Project bureau will hand over control of the buildings to MAB and Westergasfabriek BV. A point of discussion is to what extent it is possible to retain low rents for current tenants, within a commercial setting. And is it possible to allow differentiation between old and new tenants, or for instance between non-profit and commercial users? Overseeing the sustainability of the cultural function of the project will be an important task for the managers of the site.
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The district council, as owner, plays a key role in the privatisation of the buildings. The council has fixed the cultural use of the buildings, the rent levels, and rules for temporary and permanent leasing in the deeds of sale. Even though MAB owns the buildings and the management corporation Westergasfabriek BV, many formal and legal ties bind MAB to the local authority. As the land owner the council can fix functions in a land use plan and it is also responsible for construction of the park. The buildings are also designated as National Monuments, and therefore have restrictions placed on their redevelopment. An advisory board will also advise the Director of the Westergasfabriek BV, and it will have to approve of changes in the current planning (Daems et al., 2000). The District Council stresses the value of the site for the neighbourhood and it is expected that the council will foster the unity of the site as a cultural park, including both green space and buildings. The question here, is to what extent the politics of culture can prevail over the politics of economy.
Current Use and Management of the Area Because of the impending extensive restoration of the beautiful old buildings and the construction of the new park, most of the buildings are occupied by temporary tenants. Most of these are cultural or culturally-related organisations. They are, we would argue, typical of the creative industries. Between 1992 and 1997 400 contracts were given out for incidental rental. Half of these were for festivals, performances and exhibitions, the other half were for business events, fashion shows, movie and video recording and other non-public activities. Permanent tenants include the ‘Toneelgroep Amsterdam’, operating a venue for performing arts in the Transformatorhuis, ‘West Pacific’, a dining and dancing cafe´, ‘Studio Wenck’, a studio for video & movie productions, ‘Orkater’, a performing arts group & rehearsal studio, and ‘Dasarts’, a school for advanced education in performing arts. The local government development plan (Stadsdeel Westerpark, 1996) gave clear criteria for redeveloping the area. These were used by the project bureau as guidelines for the selection of temporary and long-term tenants: . A combination of visitor attractions and
cultural activities . A combination of cultural use and park use
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. Cultural attractions should not be orien-
. . . .
.
tated to the mass-market, but mixed cultural forms of subsidised and commercial activities Opportunities for starting organisations through differentiated rents Day and night activities to spread the number of visitors Flexible use of the buildings Use of a number of buildings by the inhabitants of the area (local organisations, cultural education) Intercultural character
One of the priorities stated in the development plan is the need to attract established cultural organisations because of their ‘involvement in change and renewal’ and because they ‘are not aimed at a mass audience, but are the leaders of networks’ (p. 10). The networks developed in the district were assumed to be strengthened by clustering cultural entrepreneurs from different sectors. Clustering is also a conscious policy of the new management, De West. In their view leisure facility supply is growing fast, so any cultural cluster needs to offer a unique combination of activities and links with the locality. They argue that clustering can provide better services, more opportunities for collaboration, stimulating the development of a cultural climate and increasing the profile of culture in the city as a whole. The development of dynamic networks of cultural entrepreneurs was seen as a vital element in creating the necessary ‘cultural atmosphere’ in the area: In the permanent, by definition static presence of the historic buildings there is continual change. Change is one of the basic characteristics of the cultural park that the WGF must become. This creates a paradox. You can’t grasp change, it must be stimulated or if necessary forced (p. 12). In order to establish the attractiveness of the WGF for cultural organisations, research was conducted among current and potential users of the site. The organisations were interviewed about their present activities, their future activities, the reasons for their interest and their expectations and requirements for working in the area. The main reasons why organisations were interested in renting space in one of the buildings were the mix and clustering of cultural organisations, the cultural and creative image of the area and its accessibility. Table 2 indicates that the major ‘pull factor’ for the WGF is accessibility, underlining the importance of central location to cultural organisa-
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Table 2. Reasons for Locating to the Westergasfabriek Pull Factors
Number of Respondents
Accessibility Clustering, collaboration Cultural profile Cultural atmosphere New, challenging environment Isolated, peaceful Buildings
14 13 9 6 3 2 2
Push Factors Lack of space Poor accessibility Lonely/isolated Cost Lack of inspiration
10 5 3 2 1
tions. This is particularly important where they fulfil a consumptive as well as a productive function. Locational factors were also important because of the lack of space in other parts of the city, emphasised by the large number of respondents indicating that lack of space and poor accessibility were ‘push factors’. However, the role of cultural factors, such as the clustering of cultural organisations, the development of a cultural image for the location and a cultural ‘atmosphere’ on the site provided the bulk of the motivations for locating at the WGF. The cultural organisations obviously recognise the advantages of clustering in a competitive-collaborative way, particularly in terms of developing the creative ‘atmosphere’ described by Camangi (1995). Their main interest in the area is being a part of a mixed cultural environment. The respondents clearly state that it is important to be surrounded with other cultural organisations and organisations indirectly involved with culture. This is also the view of the managers of the site, who see the ‘mix’ of tenants as crucial to developing and maintaining the cultural ‘atmosphere’ that is crucial to producers and consumers alike. The clustering process has therefore been developed through formal mechanisms, such as the selection of tenants for the area and the drawing up of letting contracts. One of the considerations for the managers of the site is the way in which the cluster of tenants develops synergies. As Westergasfabriek manager Liesbeth Jansen emphasises:
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We look at what elements are missing in the mix of tenants. For example at the moment we see that a printer or a bike courier firm would be useful. These are not cultural functions, but they are services that all cultural producers can utilise. Therefore the selection of tenants is made on the basis of function. The basic question is – why is this tenant useful for the WGF? (interview 6th June 2001). The mix of tenants is also important from the perspective of the consumer. Unless there is activity all the time, people will tend to restrict their visits to particular times of day, which will in turn tend to decrease the overall attractiveness of the site: The mix of production and consumption functions has been laid down in the development plan. Roughly 35% production, 35% consumption and the rest support functions. The mix of production and consumption is not in itself so important, but it is important to make sure that there is always life on the site. Festivals only happen in the summer. It is also important to make sure that the tenants have an open door – it would be easy to let the space to architects, but they would not welcome visitors. Therefore it is better to have a sculptor who has an open workshop. This creates contact with the public, and also lays the basis for collaboration with other tenants. It is also important that tenants have some economic link with the site or the local community – otherwise they become footloose and create no added value (interview 6th June 2001). In addition to the functionality of each tenant, there is also the need to develop a collective identity for the site. This creates a need for collective marketing: Collaborative marketing has been an important element in identity formation – and this needs to be encouraged by the management. Otherwise the individual participants find it hard to agree on common activities – they are all concerned with their own agenda (interview 6th June 2001). Creating a collective image for the cluster is not just important for the sake of collective identity – it has real economic implications too: One of the advantages of clustering is that it raises the cultural profile of the zone, which in turn increases the value of the site. This is important because the total value of the site is determined by the rental
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income and the site value. So the cultural image of the WGF creates value. The need to create income of course means that the decision about lettings is a balance of rent and function. But the function is usually more important. A metalworker who can provide services for other tenants has a greater added value for the network. There is also a need to broaden the mix beyond art alone. There also needs to be room for crafts and other functions (interview 6th June 2001). Even though the foundations for collaboration have been laid through the letting contracts, actual collaboration between the users of the site has emerged organically, rather than being directly stimulated by the managers of the site. The managers have tended to take the view that direct intervention is not conducive to cultural innovation. However, the new management of the site are likely to take a more pro-active role in order to ensure that collaboration develops on a more structured basis.
Leadership One of the important aspects of the WGF has been the leadership given to the project by the interim management installed by the district council. Without the development of a clear vision, it would not be possible to create synergy between the tenants on the site, or to create a coherent image for the WGF. As Lisbeth Jansen emphasised, ‘everybody has to share a vision, motivated people have to work there’. The need for a shared vision is underlined by the BRO report, which outlines the following conditions for effective ‘site-orientated management’: – – – –
a shared vision willingness to collaborate organisational framework adequate financial resources
In order to create a ‘shared vision’ the report suggested that a ‘tenants association’ should be formed consisting of permanent and temporary users as well as public and nonpublic orientated users. This vision seems to be shared by many users. Interviews with tenants revealed a desire for an independent foundation consisting of different actors involved with the site, with significant representation for themselves. This fits the Dutch model of consensus management. However, creating a shared vision is not always an easy matter, since the individual tenants of the site often see themselves as
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being engaged in a zero sum game. One of the problems is that each of the major cultural organisations in the WGF can play its own political game to try and gain the best deal for itself in the city. This sometimes leads to friction between the participants. Another potential source of internal conflict is the fact that the management team of the WGF has two functions – business management and artistic management. This often creates tensions, but splitting the functions also leads to problems. Liesbeth Jansen does not want to split the functions because it is important to create a unified organisational culture, rather than an ‘us and them’ culture. However, there is also a tension between creativity and structure. In order to stimulate creativity you have to ensure that the right conditions are in place. But by providing those conditions you may well take away the stimulus for creativity. There is equally a tension between the need to provide leadership and defending the cultural function (day to day management) of the area. The management of the WGF has therefore tried to walk a fine line between leadership and management, between cultural management and management of culture and between collective interests and individual needs. The ’hands-off’ approach adopted in terms of the development of innovation and cultural collaboration has tended to limit the amount of innovation so far. The tendency has been for existing cultural organisation and events to move to the site, rather than the WGF becoming a centre for new initiatives. The only notable exception so far has been the Think Global, Act Local festival, which was a ‘spontaneous’ innovation developed by tenants at the site.
Witte de Withstraat The Witte de Withstraat (WdW) is a cultural cluster located in the centre of Rotterdam, within easy reach of Central Station and other attractions in the city. The cultural cluster centred on the Witte de Withstraat links the Museum Park in Rotterdam (home to the Boymans van Beuningen Museum, the National Architecture Institute and the Kunsthal) with the Maritime Museum situated on the old Leuve Harbour. The WdW therefore acts as a ‘cultural axis’ linking these two areas. Unlike the WGF, however, the cluster is not a clearly defined terrain, but a loose collection of streets surrounding the Witte de Withstraat. 15 years ago the WdW was a disadvantaged area affected by drugs and crime. A
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turning point in the downward spiral of social and physical decay was the creation of the local tenants association, which wanted to stimulate the economic recovery of the area. The tenants association joined forces with the Rotterdam Arts Foundation, which was in charge of some galleries in the area. Together they launched a plan to turn the area into a cultural route or ‘museum boulevard’. Although the area itself was in decline, its location close to important cultural centres at the Museum Park and the Maritime Museum provided the basis for recovery. The aims of the WdW were somewhat different to those of the WGF, as in Rotterdam culture has been used to stimulate urban redevelopment, whereas in Amsterdam redevelopment has provided the support for cultural activities. Towards the end of the 1980s changes began to be visible in the WdW area, but real progress was not made until the 1990s. The Neighbourhood Development Company, founded in 1990 was a major catalyst for revitalisation, stimulating the development of a number of galleries, the Witte de With arts centre and trendy bars and restaurants that attracted a culture-loving clientele. Festivals and events were organised in the area, which increased its attractiveness with consumers still further. The area now has a diverse selection of shops, cafes, restaurants, cultural organisations and galleries. Collaboration between the different organisations has created a strong cultural cluster and has made the area more attractive for enterprises, residents and visitors.
Management and Administration Interviews with the local authority indicated that public sector interest in the development of the WdW cultural cluster is high. However, most of this interest lies in the Economic Development Department and the Urban Development and Housing Department. There is no direct involvement by the Cultural Affairs Department in the cluster. There are close links between the local authority and representatives of the WdW area, including the tenants association and the local business association. These parties come together on a regular basis in the ‘Witte de Withstraat Advisory Group’ to discuss the development of the area. However, this Group has no administrative power, nor do any of the other parties involved have a central management role. The overall management of the area is of a diffuse and informal nature.
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In the view of the local authority the WdW cluster plays an important role in its strategy to raise the profile of the inner city. By linking the relatively isolated clusters of economic and cultural activity in the city Rotterdam hopes to stimulate local economic development. This will be achieved mainly by strengthening the functional infrastructure and attractiveness of the city, increasing the length of stay and expenditure of visitors. The local authority sees the development of a different ‘cultural axis’ between the Central Station, Museum Park and the Kop van Zuid on the south bank of the River Maas as an important element in this strategy, which will increase the accessibility of the WdW cluster. The aim is to increase the liveliness of the area and to make the boundaries of the area less distinct, so that the cluster becomes less isolated from the rest of the inner city. Both the local authority and the local enterprises want to maintain the intimate nature of the cluster. The area will be made more attractive for residents through building renovation, and the entertainment functions of the area will also be strengthened. The overall aim seems to be the creation of a ‘Latin Quarter’ for Rotterdam. However opinions differ in terms of the cultural development of the area. The Urban Redevelopment Department of the local authority and the visual arts centre feel that more active intervention is needed to consolidate the cultural development of the area. However many voluntary sector organisations such as the Rotterdam 2001 Foundation and the Cultural Axis Foundation argue that the cluster is no longer a problem area, and can therefore be left to stand on its own two feet. Further development would in their view leave less room for new and spontaneous initiatives.
Current Users of the Cluster An analysis of the cultural organisations in the WdW cluster underlines the dynamic nature of recent developments. Most organisations are relatively young, with the majority having been established in the past seven years. Only the museums that form the anchors of the cultural axis of the WdW cluster are significantly older. Most organisations are also relatively small, with the vast majority being ‘micro-enterprises’ with less than ten staff. The organisations in the area indicated that the incentives provided by the local authority were the most important reason for them to locate in the WdW cluster. Many respondents
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also saw the presence of other cultural organisations in the area as important. Many respondents also indicated that the flow of visitors to the area created by the clustering of functions is a major benefit. The interviews revealed very little structural collaboration between organisations located in the WdW cluster. Most contacts were informal, and based on the exchange of information, knowledge and occasionally resources. The most frequent collaboration is between the galleries located in the cluster, who participate in joint openings and festivals. In the opinion of the gallery managers such collaboration is purely the result of geographic proximity. Other co-operative activities within the cluster are largely ad hoc and sporadic. Cultural organisations also see little need for an increase in collaboration within the cluster. In spite of this, there was widespread support for increased information exchange between cluster participants. In practical terms the WdW cluster seems to deliver few of the supposed cultural and economic advantages associated with cluster formation. The anchors of the cultural axis, the museums, on the other hand, see themselves as independent organisations that are functionally and geographically removed from the WdW cluster. Their perception is that the WdW cluster leans on their role as cultural attractions for the city, but the WdW adds little to the attractiveness of the museums. However, most cluster participants do feel themselves to be members of a specific cluster, if only in a geographic sense. The central location of the WdW cluster in Rotterdam is also seen as a major advantage by most organisations. It seems that the WdW area can only be identified as a cluster in terms of the geographical concentration of cultural and supporting organisations in the area. There are very few functional links between the different members of the cluster. This tends to suggest that the WdW cluster relies heavily on the consumption-related advantages of clustering, rather than production related factors. The major benefit seen by the cultural organisations in the area is the ability of the cluster to attract a wide range of visitors who may then make use of different elements of the cultural supply in the area. This view was confirmed by the visitor research carried out in the WdW cluster in February 2001. The visitors were relatively highly educated, two thirds having had some form of higher education, and almost half had an occupation related to the cultural sector. Almost 30% were professional or managers,
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and 23% were students. This indicates that the area is largely visited by representatives of the ‘new middle class’ or ‘new cultural intermediaries’. Their main reason for visiting the area was to visit a museum or gallery or for eating and drinking. Over half the respondents had combined two or more different functions in their visit, either visiting more than one cultural attraction, or combining a cultural visit with a restaurant or cafe´. The most frequent impressions of the area given by visitors were that it was ‘diverse’, ‘lively’ and ‘attractive’. Almost 80% of visitors thought that the WdW cluster was distinct as an area of the city, but only 51% recognised a relationship between the different elements of the cluster. The visitor research therefore tends to confirm the image of the cluster as a geographically-defined consumption-led cluster.
Conclusion The Westergasfabriek and the Witte de Withstraat present interesting case studies of cultural cluster formation with differing policy objectives, management strategies and functional outcomes. Coming back to the original question posed in this paper, to what extent have the cultural clusters analysed been successful in creating an effective ‘milieu of innovation’? In terms of policy, the local authority has been actively supportive in both areas, although the degree of intervention has been much greater in the case of the WGF, which tends towards Brooks and Kushner’s (2001) ‘direction’ or ‘domination’ strategies. The WdW, on the other hand, has been directed largely in terms of urban redevelopment rather than cultural development, and in view of the limited intervention in terms of cultural cluster formation it can probably be seen as a ‘donation’ strategy. This difference in terms of public sector intervention has led to differing outcomes in terms of the mix of organisations in each area. Conscious efforts have been made at the WGF to produce an appropriate blend of cultural and supporting organisations in the cluster, which has been possible thanks to the total control that managers have over letting contracts. In the WdW, however, growth in this city centre location has been far more organic, with the mix of organisations occurring more or less on an ad hoc basis. There is limited functional integration in the WdW cluster. The major link between members of the cluster is their common interest in the varied ‘postmodern’ audience that the cluster attracts.
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Another striking similarity between the two clusters is the fact that both have developed in spite of, rather than because of, deliberate cultural policy on the part of the local authority. In the case of the WGF, one of the advantages mentioned by the management team was the fact that the local council did not have a cultural policy at all, which left them free to determine their own cultural strategy for the cluster. In Rotterdam the Cultural Affairs department was not actively involved in the development of the cluster, which was primarily driven by urban redevelopment and housing policy. This underlines the tendency for cultural development to be driven increasingly by economic considerations rather than cultural needs in the postmodern urban economy. In spite of management efforts in both clusters to create a milieu of innovation, it seems that innovation has been driven largely through spontaneous activities rather than structured management intervention. At the WGF managers have tried to shape the conditions for innovation by controlling the mix of cultural organisations on the site. This has led to a number of innovative events being staged at the site, but most organisations are still primarily concerned with their own agenda. In Rotterdam the WdW cluster has produced little in the way of collaboration, and the advantages of clustering are seen far more in terms of access to audiences than in functional links between producers. At both sites, however, producers and consumers stressed the importance of the ‘atmosphere’ of the cluster in making it an attractive place to work or visit. This indicates that of the three advantages of clustering identified by both Scott (2000) and Camangi (1995), the ability of informal contacts between producers to create atmosphere is most important in these clusters. There is far less evidence that the two other factors, human capital and synergy effects, are significant in the WGF or WdW. The role of consumers and visitors, then, may well be an important factor in the logic of cultural clustering. Nevertheless, there is certainly an indication that the WGF has been successful in creating what Camangi terms ‘common representations and beliefs’, particularly in the ‘pioneer spirit’ shared by tenants of this newly-developing area. But this has yet to produce any tangible synergy effect. This may be because the local networks, arguably needed to support synergy effects, are not yet well developed enough. If the clusters have yet to produce significant innovation, to what extent have they been able to build the ‘bridges’ that Castells considers crucial to linking the space of flows
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with the space of places? In the case of the WGF there is a heavy emphasis on the advantages of clustering from a global perspective, encapsulated in the role identified for the WGF in raising the cultural profile of Amsterdam. In addition the site has been linked into global capital flows through the involvement of international property developer MAB. These global interests are balanced by the influence of the local authority as owner of the site, and the involvement of local interest groups in the management of the site. However, the embedding of cultural organisations in the local area through creation of the cluster is less certain. The tenants remain relatively ‘footloose’ and are not shy of pursuing their own political agenda outside the bounds of the cluster. In Rotterdam the embedding of the WdW cluster in the local context is somewhat firmer, thanks to its central location and the mixed cultural, business and residential functions. But here too the local foundation is not all that secure, since many organisations see the centrality of the location and its ability to attract a wide audience as the main binding agent of the cluster. This indicates that the WdW cluster is primarily based on consumption functions, and as such operates mainly in the globalised space of flows. This is underlined by the predominantly new middle class audience for the area, even though it is physically close to areas of urban deprivation. The WdW is basically a consumption space, rather than a local place rooted in Rotterdam. Therefore, we stress the importance of consumptionbased agglomeration benefits to the understanding of the innovative potential of these clusters. These case studies underline the difficulties of managing cultural clusters. Creating an atmosphere conducive to collaboration and innovation may well be easier in a cluster that mixes cultural and other functions. Cultural producers recognise the advantages of locating together to attract an audience, but actively working together to develop innovative cultural products is still relatively rare. This seems to be true whether the management style is strongly interventionist or not. In the case of the WGF, which seems to have more active public sector intervention, what innovation there is still happens spontaneously. The major advantage of public sector intervention seems to be a clearly defined identity for the cluster and a closely controlled programming policy. However, there are indications that the high degree of control required may contrast with the openness required to stimulate innovation. Innovation is taking place through informal
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contacts between organisations placed in proximity to each other through the letting policy of the WGF, but this is largely dependent on the creative programming abilities of the management. In the case of the Witte de Withstraat, which has a more loose designation strategy, the public sector has adopted a more handsoff approach, which is also openly supported by cultural organisations in the cluster. Innovation here is also happening spontaneously and on an ad hoc basis, but at a much lower level. In addition, the identity of the cluster is more vague, which is perhaps not surprising given the deliberate policy of the local authority to blur the edges of the cluster. But this does make it more difficult to stimulate collective action or to mobilise local support in the face of pressures from the global economy. The contrasting management styles adopted by the WGF and the WdW have responded to differing external conditions and have produced differing outcomes in terms of creativity and innovation. In the case of the WGF the cultural emphasis of the cluster results in more incubation spaces being created for enterprises with supposed common interests. In the WdW case creative clustering has been a more ad hoc result of general urban development. Both management styles have produced identifiable spatial clusters of creative functions and enterprises, but the image and identity of the WGF is much clearer. In spite of the involvement of international property developers the public sector leadership in the WGF has maintained the cultural priorities of the cluster. This has arguably protected the mix of functions as a breeding ground for innovation. In the WdW individual creative enterprises are more subject to market pressures owing to the general urban redevelopment function of the area. Without more active direction of the cluster this may eventually lead to creative functions being forced out as property values rise. This would ultimately undermine the creative and innovation functions of the cluster.
References Amin, A. and Graham, S. (1997) The Ordinary City. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 22, 411–429. Bianchini, F. and Parkinson, M. (1993) Cultural Policy and Urban Regeneration: the West European Experience. Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK. Brooks, A.C. and Kushner, R.J. (2001) Cultural districts and urban development. International Journal of Arts Management, 3(2), 4–15.
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Brown, A., O’Connor, J. and Cohen, S. (2000) Local music policies within a global music industry: cultural quarters in Manchester and Sheffield. Geoforum, 31, 437–452. Buwalda, D., Delalex, G., Sluiter, F., Valentin, C. and Van Bon, S. (1999) Westergasfabriek. The culture factory. POLIS Group Report 1998/99, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands. Bon, S. van (1999) The cultural industries: fostering the local in the network economy. A case study of the Northern Quarter in Manchester. POLIS MA thesis. Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands. BRO (1997) Marktonderzoek functiemix Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam. BRO, Vught, Netherlands. Camagni, R. (1995) The concept of innovative milieu and its relevance for public policies. Papers in Regional Science, 74, 317–340. Castells, M. (1996) The information age: Economy, society and culture. Volume I: The rise of the network society. Blackwell, Oxford, UK. Daems, G., James, K., Kerchmar, C. and Andreen, I. (2000) The Westergasfabriek. POLIS Group Report 1999/2000, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands. Heilbrun, J. and Gray, C. (1993) The Economics of Art and Culture: an American Perspective. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Hitters, E. (2000) The Social and Political Construction of a European Cultural Capital: Rotterdam 2001. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 6, 183–200. Kelly, K. (1998) New rules for the new economy. 10 radical strategies for a connected world. Penguin, New York, USA. Miles, M. (1997) Art, Space and the City. Routledge, London. Mommaas, H. (2000) Cultural clusters and the post-industrial city: remapping urban cultural governance, paper presented at the conference Cultural Change and Urban Contexts, Manchester, September 8–10. Myerscough, J. (1988) The Economic Importance of the Arts in Britain. Policy Studies Institute, London. Newman, P. and Smith, I. (2000) Cultural production, place and politics on the South Bank of the Thames. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24, 10–24. O’Connor, J. (1999) The definition of cultural industries. Unpublished paper. Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK. Porter, M. (1998) On competition. HBS Press, Boston, USA. Richards, G. (2000) The European cultural capital event: strategic weapon in the cultural arms race? International Journal of Cultural Policy, 6, 159–181. Sassen, S. (1994) Cities in a world economy. Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks, CA. Scott, A.J. (2000) The cultural economy of cities. Sage Publications, London, UK Smith, M. (2001) Bridging the gap through cultural regeneration: the future of London’s north-south divide. In Toivonen, T. and Honkanen, A. (eds) North-South: contrasts and connections in global tourism. ATLAS, Tilburg, Netherlands pp. 227–238. Stadsdeel Westerpark (1996) Ontwikkelingsplan voor de Westergasfabriek. Amsterdam.
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Waters, M. (1995) Globalization. Routledge, London, UK. Westergasfabriek (2001) Profiel Westergasfabriek. WGF, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Wynne, D. (1992) The Culture Industry: the arts in urban regeneration. Avebury, Aldershot, UK. Zukin, S. (1995) The Cultures of Cities. Blackwell, Cambridge, MA.
Erik Hitters is senior researcher at the Department of Culture and the Arts of Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands. He has published on culture and the city, patronage and philanthropy in the arts (sponsorship, private giving etc.) and culture and leisure policy and management issues. His research interests include contemporary patterns of intervention in
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the field of culture and leisure, cultural clustering, urban cultural tourism, and urban cultural infrastructure. He is coordinator of the ‘culture and the city’ research group of the Erasmus Research Centre for Culture and the Arts. Greg Richards lectures in leisure studies at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and has led a number of EU funded projects in the fields of tourism education, cultural tourism, sustainable tourism, tourism employment, conference tourism and ITC in tourism. His main research interest is cultural tourism, and has edited books on Cultural Tourism in Europe (1996), Crafts Tourism Development and Marketing (1999), Tourism and Sustainable Community Development (2000) and European Tourism and Cultural Attractions (2001).
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Inter-organisational Relationships in the Worldwide Popular Recorded Music Industry Jonathan Gander and Alison Rieple This paper analyses the worldwide popular recorded music industry and examines how product, firm and industry features result in key resources coagulating around the two firm types; the major and independent. We argue that these firm specific resources are complementary and participating firms would benefit from their union. However though complementary, they are inimical and close association risks damaging their value. Collaboration between the two firm types that hold these resources therefore needs to be designed not along traditional concerns of protection from opportunism, or the requirement to control key resources. Instead competitive advantage may be gained by designing and managing structural relationships that protect each partner’s resource set from the hostile elements of the others; a contamination rather than an appropriation focus.
Introduction
T
his paper examines boundary decisions taken by firms operating in the popular recorded music industry, and focuses on what can be regarded as one of the key drivers of the industry and source of competitive advantage; the identification and management of musical talent (Belinfante & Johnson, 1982). An identification and discussion of product characteristics, market idiosyncrasies, and firm typologies results in the paper’s overall proposition; that the resources and capabilities required to identify, attract and manage emerging talent cannot operate within the same business unit boundaries as those resources and capabilities required to effectively distribute and market the resulting product. The set of strategic resources and capabilities required to build sustainable competitive advantage therefore cannot co-exist within the boundaries of one firm. The resulting interorganisational structures can thus be seen not just as a means of accessing valuable and complementary resources and capabilities of another firm but also to shield the associating firms from exposure to inimical practices and culture of their partner. We therefore conclude that in the popular recorded music industry it is not just issues stemming from the cost of opportunistic partner behaviour, or
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social congruity that inform inter-firm structural decisions, but contamination concerns as well. The music industry is dominated by a group of global firms commonly referred to as the ‘majors’. These are the largest (by number of artists and soundcarrier market share) record companies in the world. The group currently consists of, Universal Music Group, (formed from a 1998 merger of MCA/Universal and PolyGram, previously majors in their own right), Sony Music Entertainment (SME); Bertelsmann Music Group Entertainment (BMGE); Warner Music Group (WMG) and EMI. These companies have a global market share of around 80%. The remaining share is taken up by a large number of smaller, relatively short-lived and highly specialised companies known as the ‘independents’. Music Business International (1999), producer of the industry’s year book, defines independents as ‘companies who derive most or all of their profits via the direct exploitation of music copyrights . . . whose shares are at least 50% owned separately from the multinational music majors and who were not originally bankrolled by any of the majors.’ Such a definition groups together one or two-man outfits with large organisations (sometimes known as ‘mini-majors’) such as Zomba, which has a wide range of artists, estimated # Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002. 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
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turnover of $575m in 1998 and a global distribution network. Since the 1950s, when independent music labels started to take advantage of the majors’ reluctance to carry rock and roll music (Gillett, 1996), the independents and the majors have had an inter-worked history. Throughout this highly interconnected history the relationships between major and independent firms have encompassed a wide range of structural relationships from full ownership, to distribution and licensing contracts lasting a few years or covering a few albums. Some writers (Peterson & Berger, 1975) have pointed to the frequent acquisition of independents by majors and the differing organisational cultures as evidence of hostile relationships between these two ideal-types, with each form going through cyclical periods of fortune and power at the expense of the other. However in recent years, industry commentators (Negus, 1992; Frith, 1990) have identified a more co-operative model, similar to the conceptualisation of co-opetition advanced by Brandenburger & Nalebuff (1996). Lopes (1992) has found support for the hypothesis that the oligopolistic conditions in the music industry (Belinfante & Johnson, 1982) have not produced the homogenisation of product assumed to accompany such control (Peterson & Berger, 1975) the identified diversity and innovation being due to a more open system of co-operation with independent record companies. We propose that this current and historical pattern of close inter-organisational relationships between majors and independents reflects the industry’s market and product idiosyncrasies (Hagedoorn & Sadowski, 1999) and the simultaneously complementary and inimical nature of the firms’ differing resources and capabilities (Dyer & Singh, 1998). We begin by identifying the industry, firm and product idiosyncrasies that underpin the logic of collaboration and then discuss how the attempt to unify runs the risk of reducing the value, and impairing the operation, of the creative resources involved.
Industry and product features that encourage major/independent collaboration One characteristic of the music industry is the oversupply of potential product creators (Throsby, 1994; Kretschmer, Klimis & Choi, 1999; Hirsch, 1972). The raw material for the creative product, artistic endeavour, is subject to relatively low creation barriers, e.g. a guitar, paper, and enjoys a degree of intrinsic
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utility. This results in a large amount of potential product relative to the number actually marketed. Music research has so far been largely written on the victors (those artists who become successful), so figures on number of potential artists are unavailable. However Finnegan (1989) estimated there were around 100 practising bands in a UK city of around 100,000, and Negus (1992) cites Cohen (1991) as finding a similar proportion for the city of Liverpool in 1991. This oversupply contributes to another noticeable feature of firms involved in cultural environments, that of uncertainty ‘at their input and output boundaries’ (Hirsch, 1972:639). As definitions of cultural goods commonly refer to their ‘aesthetic, rather than clearly utilitarian purpose’ (Hirsch, 1972:639) the evaluation of both the producers (artists) and their product relies upon matching already imperfect information on the talent of an artist (Strobl & Tucker, 2000) against abstract and fluid criteria (Hutter, 1996). It is worth mentioning briefly at this point that, unlike ‘pop’ genres, the classical music market enjoys a relatively more stable predictive framework. Classical music recordings can be measured against more definable criteria, such as conductor or orchestra skill and reputation, popularity of the composer, and sound recording quality. Expert judgement on the quality of a recording is shared to a large degree by its market. However, classical music comprises a relatively small proportion of recorded music sales (currently about 5% in Europe and the USA). The oversupply of potential acts and uncertainty over their quality makes predicting which act are likely to ‘take off’ a task of extreme uncertainty. Perhaps the most notable effect of these factors is that it makes the ability to identify and capture (i.e. sign) tomorrow’s mainstream act an industry success factor that cannot easily be substituted by a heavily funded large-net strategy. The challenge is summed up by one industry executive as ‘What’s weird today could be mainstream tomorrow’ (Independent, 27th October 1991). Musical styles such as rock ‘n’ roll, punk, rap, and grunge have all had their origins in the rejection of the prevailing mainstream music. While large multinationals by virtue of their size, culture and reputation are to some extent distanced from grassroot musical developments, there are some indications that independents are better equipped to spot the next trend. These smaller record labels have greater artistic flexibility, closer ties to the non-mainstream music scene, and through their social similarities with the artists can inspire the trust (Zucker, 1986) that improves
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their ability to ‘win’ the signature of ‘up and coming’ artist(s). Although we are not aware of any published research which correlates the type of firm and the successful identification of new musical styles and artists, casual empiricism can comfortably identify examples of independent-discovered artists that have enjoyed notable success; Elvis Presley (Sun Records) Nirvana (Sub Pop Records), Oasis (Creation Records) and Britney Spears (Jive Records). If one accepts that the identification of new talent is a ‘critical key to success in the recorded music industry’ (Belinfante & Johnson, 1982:12) it is clear that the majors are critically dependent upon the independents. Another defining characteristic of the popular music industry, the nature of consumer demand, provides the independent with a rationale for collaboration with a major. Demand patterns in the music industry, driven by dynamic consumer tastes for product with aesthetic rather than functional value, are highly variable and difficult to predict. This uncertainty of demand inherent in such cultural product (Caves, 2000) is exacerbated by the herding behaviour of individual consumers (Kirman, 1993) that results in a high concentration of sales among relatively few artists (Cox, Felton & Chung, 1995). Referred to as the ‘superstar phenomenon’ (Rosen, 1981; Hamlen, 1991) attempts have been made to explain how small differences in talent produce massive differentials in earnings, or even how no difference in talent (Adler, 1985) can produce high concentrations. The phenomenon of self-enforcing feedback loops (Arthur, 1996), decreased consumption costs (Adler, 1985), ‘social contagion’ (Kretschmer et al., 1999), or as Becker (1991:1110) puts it, buyer behaviour, ‘depends positively on the aggregate quantity demanded of the good’. All refer to the utility derived from purchasing products that have been purchased by others, a feature of many cultural markets, but particularly visible in popular music. The dynamic thus experienced by a few artists is one of increasing returns. Although it does not result in the lock-ins which create monopolies as in Arthur’s technology-based model or hypercompetition (D’Aveni, 1995), presumably because of the ephemerality of the music product, nevertheless there are large sales differentials between products that catch the wind and those that do not (Ormerod, 1998). Due to this demand phenomenon, establishing initial interest and early sales to achieve the required momentum is key
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(Strobl & Tucker, 2000). Firms can accordingly devote substantial resources to the promotion of new product, which, while increasing the chances of catching the sales wind, exposes them to risk. Strauss Zelnick, ex-President/CEO of BMGE, has described how his company could spend around $1m on a new act, yet of the 60,000 new records released annually by the record industry only 1% sell more than one million, the industry yardstick for success. The ratio for mere profitability is higher, though still daunting. Denisoff (1986) and Burke (1996) have both estimated that only one in ten albums would deliver positive net results for their labels. For those products that enjoy the above snowballing effect, the low marginal costs of production produce very favourable revenue/ sales quantity relationships. In 1997, for example, the Financial Times estimated that PolyGram’s per album profit would increase from $2 for sales of 3 million units to $5 for sales of 10 million. Maximising sales requires the physical distribution of what is a low unit value item, across disparate markets and numerous sales outlets. Such an exercise requires well developed logistical assets and competencies and enjoys significant economies of scale. The above analysis suggests that a competitive music firm needs to have marketing competences and bargaining power to establish market awareness, sufficient financial resources to absorb inevitable product failures and to fund promotional campaigns, and a large output to allow it to benefit from available scale economies in distribution and manufacturing. The major’s superior economic power therefore appears to complement the independent’s knowledge based product development resources.
The inimicality of complementary resources We argue that these product, firm and market-based idiosyncrasies demonstrate that both firm types (major and independent) enjoy a degree of resource complementariness (Chung, Singh & Lee, 2000) and would thus benefit from the co-ordination of their particular assets and competencies. The paradox in the music industry is that while value can indeed be generated by the combination of resources, it is the maintenance of the boundaries between the firm types across which the respective resources and capabilities are exchanged that ensure their optimisation. We go on to discuss the reasons for such a paradox.
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Discussion One source for the proposed inimicality is linked to the key strategic resource of an independent firm; its credibility. The firm and its key individuals’ reputation among the various music and social scenes is crucial if the required trust is to be generated to encourage the artist(s) to place their early development in their hands (Hesmondhalgh, 1998). Close ties with a major can damage this asset and thus reduce the ability of the independent to attract the next star act. The music industry’s highly networked social structure acting as an efficient conduit for such information (Burt, 1992). The external impact of inter-organisational relations between majors and independents is matched by the possibility of negative internal consequences. The high levels of causal ambiguity over successful product creation, added to the distance between senior management and emerging music trends, restricts the ability of the major’s hierarchically decision making structure to make effective interventions in the operation of the independent. In this respect the independents resemble the ‘craft’ organisation introduced by Stinchcombe (1959) and later defined by Powell as being where ‘each product is relatively unique, search procedures are non-routine, and the work process depends to a considerable degree on intuition and experimentation’ (Powell, 1987:68). The ‘craft bureaucracy’ framework requires a different management structure and environment to that typically adopted by large firms, which are characterised by centralised planning, hierarchies of decision-making, and clearly defined roles and tasks. The conventional monitoring and supervision systems designed to manage and control such explicit processes will be of reduced effectiveness (Leifer & Mills, 1996) when applied to the more ambiguous process of popular music production and management. In addition to hampering the production process of the independent, Ghoshal and Moran (1996) propose that such attempts can, by signalling mistrust, create mistrust and increase the likelihood of uncollaborative behaviour (Dyer, 1997; Wicks, Berman & Jones, 1999). The use of hierarchy to control assets and protect against opportunistic behaviour (Williamson, 1985; Das & Teng, 1996) when applied to creative resources can therefore be seen as either offering limited effectiveness or, in the worst case scenario, counterproductive results. The possibility of such a negative cycle is higher where there already exists potential for mistrust, such as in the
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wide cultural distance separating the major and independent. A ‘them and us’ perspective is part of the discourse of independent managers such as Allan McGee, head of a successful independent Creation, who described staff at a major music company with whom his company had had an alliance, as ‘nice people but not my people’. Thus, we argue, the restricted power of fiat to control and protect the major from uncooperative behaviour by the independent, when added to the self-defeating potential of its use, suggests that structural relations between the two firm types be designed to limit the independent’s exposure to the bureaucratic processes and administrative preferences (fiat) of the major. The conclusion, that resources held by the two firm types while complementary have mutually hostile features, runs counter to a central strategic management axiom; that sustainable competitive advantage lies in a firm’s control over resources which are valuable, rare, hard to trade and difficult to imitate (Barney, 1991; Grant, 1991; Teece, Pisano & Shuen, 1997; Dussauge, Garrette & Mitchell, 2000). The resources and capabilities required to identify, secure and develop new musical talent, due to their social complexity and causal ambiguity offer strategic advantage (King & Zeithaml, 2001), yet they resist full control by the majors who themselves control what are arguably only threshold resources, such as capital, logistical infrastructure support and marketing skills. The variant to this hold and protect imperative (Porter, 1986), the share and learn perspective (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990; Barney, 1991; Mowery, Oxley & Silverman, 1996; Lorenzoni & Lipparini, 1999; Khanna, Gulati & Nohria, 1998, Teece, 2000) is also of questionable appropriateness in the music industry. The same idiosyncrasies that would restrict and degrade the transfer of creative resources in the form of people or credibility also apply to their movement in the form of explicit knowledge. Such knowledge is culturally embedded and socially constructed (Powell, 1987; Szulanski, 1995) and thus is inextricably tied to particular individuals and particular cultural environments. It follows that sustainable competitive advantage can only be obtained through the development of relational competencies that preserve the value of both the major’s but especially the independent’s knowledge assets, maintain the incentive levels necessary for the independents’ entrepreneurial behaviour, and at the same time secure the benefits of the resulting product for both firms. The alliance perspective that emerges is one
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where value-creating activities and even competitive advantage are not just contained within firm boundaries, but also reside in the unique combination of the collaborating firms’ assets (Chung, Singh & Lee, 2000, Holm, Eriksson & Johanson, 1999; McConnell & Nantell, 1985; Anand & Khana, 2000) and the way the collaborating firms manage the relationship (Gulati, Nohria & Zaheer, 2000; Kale, Singh, & Perlmutter, 2000). Viewed from this perspective, decisions over firm boundaries in the music industry are not made relative to the level of perceived threat presented by collaborating with another firm (Williamson, 1975, 1991), neither from the possible appropriation of key resources (Coase, 1937). Nor are they drawn in order to acquire, through integration, the resources identified as necessary to pursue a particular strategy (Porter, 1986). Rather they are drawn according to the need to protect the competences and intangible assets of the collaborating firm from contamination by the organisational and cultural features of their partner. A potentially useful metaphor suggests itself here; that the boundaries between these firms be viewed as semi-permeable membranes that can regulate exchanges between partners. It appears critical in this case that governance decisions are made with regard to their anticipated impact on this notional ‘membrane’. Effective operation of what can be termed this ‘composite quasi rent’ strategy (Hill, 1990:500) requires the careful patrol by both firm types of their organisational boundaries to ensure that mutually hostile elements of their resources do not cross along with the planned exchanges. For the independents there must be competencies in protecting the wilful artist from the source of promotional and management resources (the major), without conveying the sense that they are ‘selling out’ or at risk of losing their independence of spirit and decision-making. For the major, care must be taken to ensure that monitoring and control mechanisms typically employed by the firm toward its operations are adjusted in regard to the independent, and that operational collaboration (distribution, marketing aid) does not damage the independent’s credibility.
Conclusion It has been proposed that the strategic resources and capabilities held by the majors and independents, whilst complementary, are a feature of the typology of each firm and resist transfer from one to the other. The
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resulting paradox challenges firms to manage their boundaries not according to their concern over the possible cost of opportunistic behaviour, in other words what a partner might take, rather over what a partner firm might receive through association. Competitive advantage in such a scenario lies in a firm’s ability to protect its partner(s) from exposure to its inimical practices and hostile features whilst at the same time benefiting from the union of their respective resources.
References Adler, M. (1984) Stardom and talent. The American Economic Review, 75, 1. Anand, B. and Khana, T. (2000) Do firms learn to create value? The case of alliances. Strategic Management Journal, 21, 3 Arthur, W. (1996) Increasing returns and the new world of business. Harvard Business Review, 74, 4. Barney, J. (1991) Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of Management, 17, 1. Becker, G. (1991) A note on the restaurant pricing and other examples of social influences on price. Journal of Political Economy, 99, 5. Belinfante, A. and Johnson, R. (1982) Competition, pricing and concentration in the U.S. recorded music industry. Journal of Cultural Economics, 6, 1. BMG Distribution highlights success. Billboard (1999) February 6th. Brandenburger, A. and Nalebuff, B. (1996) Coopetition. Doubleday, New York. Burt, R. (1992) The social structure of competition. In Nohria, N. and Eccles, R. (eds.) Networks and organisations: Structure, form, and action. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA pp. 57–91. Caves, R. (2000) Creative Industries. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Chung S, Singh, H. and Lee, K. (2000) Complementarity, status similarity and social capital as drivers of alliance formation. Strategic Management Journal, 21, 1. Coase R. (1937) The nature of the firm. Reprinted in Williamson O. and Winter S. (eds.) (1993) The nature of the firm: origins, evolution and development. OUP, New York. Cohen, S. (1991) Rock culture in Liverpool: popular music in the making. Clarendon, Oxford. Cohen, W. and Levinthal, D. (1990) Absorptive capacity: A new perspective on learning and innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35, 128–152. Cox, R. Felton, J. and Chung, K. (1995) The concentration of commercial success in popular music: an analysis of the distribution of gold records. Journal of Cultural Economics, 19, 4. D’Aveni, R. (1994) Hypercompetitive Rivalries; managing the dynamics of strategic manoeuvring, Free Press, New York. Das, T. and Teng, B. (1996) Risk types and interfirm alliance structures. Journal of Management Studies, 33, 6.
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Denisoff, R. (1986) Tarnished Gold: The record Industry revisited. Transaction Books, New Brunswick. Dussauge, P. Garrette, G. and Mitchell (2000) Learning from competing partners: outcomes and durations of scale and link alliances in Europe, North America and Asia. Strategic Management Journal, 21, 2, 99–126. Dyer, J. (1997) Effective interfirm collaboration: How firms minimise transaction costs and maximise transaction value. Strategic Management Journal, 18, 7, 535–557. Dyer, J. and Singh, H. (1998) The relational view: cooperative strategy and sources of interorganizational competitive advantage. Academy of Management Review, 23, 4, 660–679. Financial Times (1992) Steve Lewis November 29th, London. Financial Times (1997) Bankable pop stars June 6th, London. Finnegan, R. (1989) The hidden musicians: Music making in an English town. CUP, Cambridge. Frith, S. (1990) Facing the music: essays on pop, rock and culture. Mandarin, London, Ghoshal, S. and Moran, P. (1996) Bad for Practice: A critique of the transaction cost theory. Academy of Management Review, 21, 1. Gillett, C. (3rd Edition. 1996) The sound of the city: The rise of rock & roll. Souvenir Press, London. Grant, R. (1991) The resource-based theory of competitive advantage: implications for strategy formulation. California Management Review, 33, 3. Guardian (2000) End of the revolution: Alan McGee January 19th, p. 14, London. Gulati, R. Nohria, N. and Zaheer, A. (2000) Strategic Networks Strategic Management Journal, 21, 3. Hagedoorn, J. and Sadowski, B. (1999) The transition from strategic technology alliances to mergers and acquisitions: an exploratory study. Journal of Management Studies, 36, 1. Hamlen, W. (1991) Superstardom in popular music: Empirical evidence. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 73, 4. Hesmondhalgh, D. (1998) The British dance music industry: a case study of independent cultural production. British Journal of Sociology, 49, 2. Holm, D., Eriksson, K. and Johanson, J. (1999) Creating value through mutual commitment to business network relationships. Strategic Management Journal, 20, 5. Hill, C. (1990) Co-operation , opportunism, and the invisible hand: Implications for transaction cost Theory. Academy of Management Review, 15, 3. Hirsch P. (1972) Processing fads and fashions: An organisation-set analysis of cultural industry systems. American Journal of Sociology, 77, 4. Hutter, M. (1996) The impact of cultural economics on economic theory. Journal of Cultural Economics, 20. Kale, P., Singh, H. and Perlmutter, H. (2000) Learning and protection of proprietary assets in strategic alliances: building relational capital. Strategic Management Journal, 21, 3. Khanna, T., Gulati, R. and Nohria, N. (1998) The dynamics of learning alliances: competition, cooperation and relative scope. Strategic Management Journal, 19, 3.
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King, A.W. and Zeithaml, C. (2001) Competences and firm performance: examining the causal ambiguity paradox. Strategic Management Journal, 22, 75–99. Kirman, A. (1993) Ants rationality and recruitment Quarterly. Journal of Economics, 108, 1, 137–156. Kretschmer, M., Klimis, G. and Choi, J. (1999) Increasing returns and social contagion in cultural industries. British Journal of Management, 10. Leifer, R. and Mills, P. (1996) An Information processing approach for deciding upon control strategies and reducing control loss in emerging organisations. Journal of Management, 22, 1. Lorenzoni, G. and Lipparini, A. (1999) The leveraging of inter-firm relationships as a distinctive organisational capability: a longitudinal study. Strategic Management Journal, 20, 4. McConnell, J. and Nantell, T. (1985) Corporate combinations and common stock returns: the case of joint ventures. The Journal of Finance, XL, 2. Mowery, D., Oxley, J. and Silverman, B. (1996) Strategic alliances and interim knowledge transfer. Strategic Management Journal, 17, Winter special issue. Music Business International (1999) Special Report on Independents. December, p. 11. Negus, K. (1992) Producing Pop: culture and conflict in the popular music industry. Edward Arnold, London. Ormerod, P. (1998) Butterfly Economics. Faber and Faber, London. Peterson, R. and Berger, D. (1975) Cycles of symbol production: the case of popular music. American Sociological Review, 40, 2, 158–173. Porter, M (1986) Competition in Global industries. Free Press, Cambridge, MA. Powell, W. (1987) Hybrid Organisational Arrangements: New Form or Transitional Development? California Management Review, 30, 1. Rosen, S. (1981) The economics of superstars. American Economic Review, 71, 5. Stinchcombe, A. (1959) Bureaucratic and craft administration of production: a comparative study. Administrative Science Quarterly, 4. Strobl, E. and Tucker, C. (2000) The dynamics of chart success in the UK pre-recorded popular music industry. Journal of Cultural Economics, 24, 2, 113–134. Szulanski, G. (1995) Unpacking stickiness: An empirical investigation of the barriers to best practice inside the firm. Academy of Management Journal Best Papers Proceedings. Teece, D., Pisano, G. and Shuen, A. (1997) Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management. Strategic Management Journal, 18, 7, 509–533. Teece, D. (2000) Strategies for managing Knowledge assets: the role of firm structure and industrial context. Long Range Planning, 33, 35–54. Throsby, D. (1994) The production and consumption of the arts: A view of cultural economics. Journal of Economic Literature, 32, 1. Wicks, A., Berman, S. and Jones, T. (1999) The Structure of optimal trust: Moral and strategic implications. Academy of Management Review. 24, 1. Williamson, O. (1975) Markets and Hierarchies. Free Press, New York.
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Williamson, O. (1985) The Economic Institutions of Capitalism. Free Press, New York. Williamson, O. (1991) Comparative Economic Organisation: The analysis of discrete structural alternatives. Administrative Science Quarterly, 36, 2, 269–296. Zucker, L. (1986) Production of trust: Institutional sources of economic structure 1840–1920. Research in Organizational Behaviour, 8, 53–111.
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Jonathan Gander is Senior Lecturer, Business School, University of East London, UK. Alison Rieple is Professor of Strategic Management, University of Westminster, UK.
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Where the Art is: Defining and Managing Creativity in New Media SMEs Mark Banks, David Calvey, Julia Owen and David Russell This paper examines the definition and management of creativity in the ‘creative industries’. Initially the paper sets out the economic and cultural context for the emergence of the creative industries, before going on to argue that there are gaps in our understanding of the role of creativity and particularly the management of creativity within these industries. Based on research undertaken with new media SMEs in the North West of England, the paper then explores the ways in which creativity is defined and managed within this sub-sector. It is shown that the meanings attached to creativity are variable and contested and that the precise definition and management of creativity is strongly determined by the internal workplace culture, and the external social and economic conditions within which firms operate. It is further suggested that while creativity is often seen as a ‘must have’ attribute for new media firms it may also, conversely, be considered a barrier to commercial success. The paper concludes that if we are to understand work and production in the creative industries, and offer institutional support for firms to develop and sustain creativity for competitive advantage, it may be necessary to develop a more detailed understanding of the role of creativity and creative management as both a general and specific, socially embedded process.
Introduction
G
iven the growing interest in the ‘creative industries’ there is a surprising lack of knowledge and understanding of the specific role of ‘creativity’ within this sector (Leadbeater & Oakley, 1999; Davis & Scase, 2000). The aim of this paper is to examine more fully the role of creativity, and ways of defining and managing creativity, within small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) working in the creative industries. The diverse and fastgrowing sub-sector of ‘new media’1 is chosen as a case through which to analyse the issue of creativity. While new media production is only one of many activities routinely categorised as a ‘creative industry’, given the rapid growth of this sub-sector and its increasing convergence and integration with other sub-sectors (Preston & Kerr, 2001; Pratt, 2000; Scott, 2000), we suggest an analysis of creativity in new media firms may offer some # Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002. 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
pertinent insights that could be tested more broadly across the creative industries. The paper begins by setting the economic and cultural context for the emergence of the creative industries, before going on to argue that there are gaps in our understanding of creativity, and the management of creativity within this growing sector. We argue that much of the contemporary literature on creativity has failed to show how the meanings attached to creativity are variable and contested, and how, within firms, the definition and management of creativity may be highly context specific, being strongly determined by the internal workplace culture, and the external social and economic conditions within which firms operate. The core of the paper is selections of findings from our research2 that show how new media SMEs3 define and manage creativity in the context of production. The findings are drawn from in-depth interviews with managers and
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owners from over 20 new media firms in the North West of England and an ethnographically based case study programme with five of these firms. The data reveal that the ways in which creativity is defined and managed are both varied and context specific – with notions and practices of creativity being utilised for a variety of personal and organisational ends. We conclude that this may have important implications for how policy makers, educators and skills development agencies can intervene to enhance creativity to improve organisational competitive advantage (Groth & Peters, 1999).
The coming of ‘creative’ industries Within Western economies, the creative or cultural industries have been identified as a new and fast growing industrial sector (Banks et al., 2000; DCMS, 1998, 2001; Hall, 2000; Lash & Urry, 1994; Pratt, 1997). The reasons for their emergence are manifold and complex. We can, however, point to a number of key factors that derive from new convergences between the traditionally distinct spheres of ‘economy’ and ‘culture’. The term ‘creative industries’ itself hints at this resolution of opposites – the blending of the historically separate worlds of culture and economy, or art and commerce, to form a new and hybrid sector. The driving force of the cultural or creative economy is primarily to be found within capitalism’s seemingly limitless quest for new commodities to bring into the market system (Harvey, 1989). Further, the rise of discretionary leisure time and disposable income have fuelled the demand for unique and niche, creatively or culturally distinct goods and services (Lash & Urry, 1994). As Scott notes, for good or ill, ‘the realm of human culture as a whole is increasingly subject to commodification’ (2000, 2) – with the result that commodities now being circulated and exchanged are just as likely to be valued for their aesthetic, informational or symbolic attributes as they are material qualities. Creative industries are both cause and consequence of a new convergence, at the local, national and global level, of culture and economy, art and technology and the shift towards an ‘informational’, ‘symbolic’ and ‘knowledge-based’ modes of production – largely, but not exclusively, realised through the boom in informational, leisure and educational products (Castells, 1996). We argue that this process shows little signs of abating and will ensure that creativity and innovation continue to become more central to the generation and exploitation of new products and productivity.
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Defining creative industries In the UK context, debate over creative industries has been framed around the work of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport’s Creative Industries Task Force (CITF) and their 1998 Creative Industries Mapping Document. The aim of this report was to flag up the growing importance of creative industries, and to make some quantitative estimate of the economic value of the sector. In this document 13 sub-sectors are identified as being part of the Creative Industries4. An update of this report in 2001 claimed that over £112 billion pounds of revenue are generated by a sector that now employs over 1.3 million people – the majority in freelance, micro- or small and medium sized enterprises. The CITF defines creative industries thus: . . . those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property (DCMS 2001, 5). This attempt to define ‘creative industry’ is not without problems. Firstly, it is problematic in that it places creativity firmly within the hands of the individual – thus ruling out the role of social context in the creative process (Davis & Scase, 2000; Leadbeater & Oakley, 1999; Scott, 2000). As we will show, what counts as creativity, and what is often seen as a discrete innovation of the ‘creative mind’ (Boden, 1990) is, in actual fact, defined and socially structured through organisations and forms of group interaction. Secondly, it assumes that creativity can be defined by what firms produce or make rather than what they do; it is essentially output rather than process driven. It does not shed light on the creative process; rather it assumes that creativity is represented by, or inherent to, the product itself. This may or may not be true; for instance mass reproduction of a copied or long established design would challenge any definition of creativity. More broadly, the term ‘creative industry’ is further problematic in that it undermines the role creativity has in other industries. Creativity can be applied to a range of other activities, which have nothing to do with art, culture, or designated ‘creative’ practice. For instance, a new engineering solution, transport plan or medical advance can all, in some sense, be deemed ‘creative’ (Evans, 2001; O’Connor, 2000) Yet, beyond the work of the CITF, in the wider and international context, it is clear that creative industries have been designated a special site for creativity, for it is in this sector that creativity is seen to be the most crucial
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element in the generation of new products, competitive advantage and increased productivity (EC, 2001; UNESCO, 2001). However, it is difficult to substantiate this while a full understanding of the actual creative process remains elusive. We argue that in order to better understand the different dimensions of creativity it is best to move away from a fixation with the product or the individual ‘creative’ and to concentrate more on organisational processes and relationships within designated creative firms (Pratt, 1997). We believe that if we want to use the term ‘creative industries’ in any meaningful sense, then we ought to pay closer attention to what it means to be ‘creative’, in terms of how creativity is defined and managed in the context of production.
Creativity in management While the links between creativity and entrepreneurship have long been explored (Schumpeter 1961), only recently has creativity become an issue for management learning and development (Davis & Scase, 2000). An increasing number of observers have attempted to define what creativity is, and commonly refer to activities such as ‘lateral’ ‘original’ or ‘novel’ thinking, exploration, experimentation and imagination as well as more ‘postmodern’ qualities of intuition, playfulness and selfexpression (Higgins & Morgan, 2000; Rickards, 1999). Whatever the specific definition, the belief that creativity is a positive process with beneficial outcomes is common thread in business, management and social science literature. Most would agree with McFadzean (1998), who argues that creativity is an important aspect of organisational and business life and should be encouraged to ensure business growth. Others have tried to pin down how to nurture creativity in a business context. Proponents of what Tan (1998) calls ‘dispositional’ theories of creativity, espouse the notion that creativity is dependent on a set of individual traits and characteristics (Boden, 1990; Gardner, 1982), and thus firms may, for example, try to identify the in-house ‘creatives’, or place emphasis on devising selection procedures to identify creative candidates for the company (Singh, 1996). As others have observed, in a management context, creativity remains closely associated with the identification and manipulation of individual capriciousness, non-conformity and eccentricity (Rickards, 1999; Shirley, 1997). As Tan (1998) also shows, those who adopt a more group and process perspective of creativity believe
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that creativity can be strategically developed and, thus, rely on formal training programmes (see McFadzean 1998 for review) or structured techniques to enhance creativity in organisations – like de Bono’s (1982) lateral thinking, Buzan’s (1995) mind-mapping techniques and Isaksen’s (1989) Creative Problem Solving Process. Whether individual or group in emphasis, we argue that dominant approaches to managing creativity are often behaviouristically driven within management and business contexts and fail to acknowledge the conflicting agendas and priorities of organisational members (see Stacey, 1996), as well as the complex relationships an organisation has with the outside world. While the description of what creativity is may be contested and varied – we see little attempt to lift study out of its behavioural or closed system organisational context. Although, as Tan (1998) notes, there may be sufficient success stories to indicate that these approaches may make individual organisations more creative, in wider reality, managing creativity is a complex problem and somewhat messy business. We want to highlight the potential benefits of moving away from normative approaches that solely view creativity as predictable and manageable behaviour, by undertaking a more pluralistic and open-ended analysis of creativity as a context-specific social process. By concentrating on particular firms and their interactions, as embedded social contexts, we hope to shed light on the varied and often uncertain dimensions of creativity and its management.
The data: defining and managing creativity in new media SMEs Semi-structured interviews were carried out with managers and owners from over 20 SMEs from a variety of new media subsectors including advertising and marketing, education and e-learning, graphic design, digital art and IT/business systems software. Further, ethnographically based, case studies were carried out with five of these firms. The common link was that each of these firms specialised in the provision of new media based designs, services and applications. The following data is drawn mainly from our interviews, which lasted between 1–2 hours and explored a number of issues around the themes of creativity and creative management. Interviews were analysed using qualitative techniques of ‘grounded theory’ (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) and also managed through the N-Vivo qualitative software
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programme. The overall aim of analysis was to develop our understanding of how owner/ managers defined, valued and managed creativity.
i) What is creativity and where is it located? The majority of managers interviewed defined and perceived creativity as an amalgam of individual skill, personal attributes, organisational capacity and – not least – managerial capability, necessary to facilitate innovation in product development and enable effective problem solving. Few managers differentiated between the concepts of creativity, innovation and problem solving, indeed definitions of creativity detailed how they were inextricably linked (Higgins & Morgan, 2000). Managers’ definitions consistently described how they saw the firm’s core business to be the formal provision of ‘solutions’ to client ‘problems’. Within this context, creativity was repeatedly defined as having the ability to identify, distil and capture the client’s problem and develop and provide an effective solution: A creative is able to derive a solution to a problem which didn’t exist before so they are coming up with innovation in some way, be it mechanical, electrical, making marks on paper, creating music so I don’t think a creative is necessary the guy with the magic markers and sketch pad.5 However, while, in this context, the concept of creativity was often referred to as a shared process that arises out of a collaboration between organizational members and the dynamics of team working, there was a notion that in some areas, generally those understood to be more commercially sensitive areas (such as the ‘client relationship’), managers had greater creative skills than other staff – it is here we began to see conflict emerging over the definition of creativity: A junior new media designer is unlikely to be able to define an application embodying creativity to solve a customer solution because they have not got the experience to be able to do it. Moreover, we found that managers working in advertising and marketing firms or from more ‘corporate’ backgrounds tended to emphasise their own creative qualities in areas of client management and corporate marketing, and downplay the role of creativity at other stages of the production process. This often bought them into conflict with other staff that practiced and championed a different definition of creativity:
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Er . . . occasionally they get stroppy [annoyed] because they don’t want to give something up. We’ve had that on colour in the past particularly. [Someone] was putting green numbers on purple backgrounds . . . and we had this long discussion and got it sorted out . . . another one wanted black skies, you can’t do that . . . I went down and said [so] – they were designing for themselves and designers can do that occasionally. Overall, new media firms with both a background and strong focus on advertising and marketing tended to favour definitions of creativity which promoted the performance of key business functions such as marketing and customer relations: Creativity is seen in the way ‘you market’, the way you create your markets and secure a share of what is increasingly becoming a highly competitive market place. Within these type of companies the customer or client was often seen as being inextricably linked to creative processes, managers describing how clients’ demands for complex services meant they had to evolve their own creative capabilities: Our customers stimulate new ideas, they tell us what they want, in a sense our customer direction is also telling us what they will need as well. The manager/client relationship becomes the crucible of creativity here. Indeed, several of these managers were explicit in their rejection of creativity as being an attribute or skill confined to just the producers of the visual components of a product, and were almost dismissive of the ‘pure’ creatives such as graphic designers and animators, arguing for the ascendancy of meeting the client needs: . . . you know all our designers come with differing creative skills and ideas but most of it as the end of the day is subsumed by the customer requirement and the customer requirement is not about fantastic, whizzy stuff but its actually looking at the functionality.’ In e-Learning and education based firms, which often saw themselves as being primarily ‘knowledge-rich’ and ‘learning-led’, creativity was also seen to be much more than a design and visualisation issue – but in a different way. For firms specialising in the creation and imparting of ‘knowledge’, such as e-learning, training, business consultants or HRM/management development, creativity also encompassed innovation in relation to the content development and the mechanisms for promoting new knowledge and understanding:
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Creativity comes from lesson writers – new and exciting ways to teach and learn, web page design is creative but not to same extent as the content originators. Such firms pointed to the emergence of ‘learning designers’ – key figures in the provision of creative educational and learning content. Further, the management of learning and the development of ‘learning communities’, defined as the firm, and the range of external experts, clients and end-users implicated in the creation of an e-learning product, were often seen to be at the creative hub of the firm (Russell et al., 2001). In further contrast, managers within more digital art based activities, or those managing small graphic design firms, were more inclined to insist on the autonomy and eminence of creativity and defined it in terms of its distinctiveness from more process, technical or functional elements of the business. For these companies pushing the boundary of artistic production, creativity was a key concern, with the clients (in contrast to the advertising/marketing firms) often being seen as hindrances and blocks on creativity or distractions that had to be distanced from the production process: I’ve got quite a strong style, I don’t know how I would describe it. . . . I’m a designer so I try and design for people but I’m also an artist . . . In such firms designers were also more often identified as being the key source of creativity, one manager even described how in his company designers were discouraged from using computers and software during the preliminary phase of the project as it was felt ‘the technology’ could impinge upon the creative process. Managers of firms that saw themselves as having a ‘team’ focus frequently made reference to how creativity was located within the diverse and differing perspectives offered by multi-skilled teams. Their argument being that the innovation and experimentation necessary to deal with a constantly changing environment was principally sustained through questioning and challenging ideas with multi-skilled or multi-disciplinary teams: As I said to you there’s no prima donnas in there, nobody’s precious about knowledge or otherwise, everybody will help and the way they develop as a group is with mutual respect and they just help one another out. It’s as simple as that. Such firms actively developed internal mechanisms and structures that could facilitate this
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group based approach to creativity. Often, in small graphic design and e-learning enterprises, staff would work at close quarters, in small offices and workspaces, providing a climate where ideas and knowledge can be freely exchanged. Yet firms were aware that hidden or unbridled creativity can result in individuals ‘talking past’ one another; thus structures were put in place to try and take advantage of the ideas that were being generated and encountered in the workplace. One small graphic design firm reported that it allowed staff four hours per week ‘free time’ in order to surf the internet for new ideas and applications that could serve the company – individuals would then share and discuss their findings with colleagues. Other firms looked to devolved team-based structures to create a space where new creative ideas and exchanges could be tabled. As a number of firms insisted, knowledge is the key asset that new media firms exploit and utilise in the construction of their products – so ensuring a free flow of knowledge amongst the production team was essential for projects to be satisfactorily realised. Managers that looked beyond the firm for sources of creativity further extended this group-based dynamic. Given increased demands for more sophisticated and digital products, we observed that it was becoming increasingly crucial for new media firms to source and exploit content, skills, knowledge and expertise extrinsic to the traditional boundaries of the ‘firm’. Particularly in elearning firms, the need for ultimate flexibility in a fast changing and uncertain market place now meant that the role of external ‘creative experts’, such as freelance designers, technical specialists and market experts had increased: We’ve had a group of experts in the field writing materials for us, to put together, to create a programme, which has been quite interesting because they’ve all been very, very much their own people, very much with their own ideas. In a number of cases, creativity was now located outside the traditional boundaries of ‘the firm’. Creative inputs were often sourced through close knit and informal networks, often (though not necessarily) geographically ‘clustered’ around the firm, bound together by a history of collaboration, shared experience and know how. We found that personal trust, friendship and a history of co-operation tended to lead to successful relationships. Given the high levels of self-employment and freelance work in the creative industries (O’Connor, 1999), the role of the ‘external’
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creative expert is perhaps becoming more pronounced and vital than in other, more traditional, industry sectors – how to manage this will be a key issue.
ii) What is creativity for and what is its’ importance compared to other resources and capabilities? Regardless of background or sub-sector, the majority of new media managers considered creativity, however defined, to play some role in securing competitive advantage. However, and contrary to popular understanding, for most, creativity was not perceived as the primary determinant of organizational success and competitive advantage. Other capabilities and expertise were perceived as having greater bearing on securing competitiveness. Definitions, significance and the extent to which other expertise and capabilities were identified as being more important than creativity were to a large extent determined by a combination of factors such as the histories of the firm, the core business and market and not least the priorities and goals of managers/owners. For example, those firms specialising in providing Information Technology (IT) or e-commerce solutions tended to place less value on ‘pure’ creativity than on technical production and implementation. As one manager explained: It is all about solving solutions and the pretty pictures aspect is important but it is the convergence of that with Information Technology which is becoming more valuable. And reinforced by another manager from a similar IT-led firm: Creativity in its narrower sense in terms of the creative art or the creative profession, we would tend to outsource that specific type of creativity . . . it is more about the clever use of technologies rather than whizzy graphics and award winning animations. Alternatively for those firms from a more marketing and advertising background, who prioritised commercial capabilities and ‘client management’, creativity was of secondary importance, as one manager argued: . . . The most important skills are commercial skills, it doesn’t matter how good your designers are or how good your solutions if you can’t realise a dialogue with a customer into business then it just doesn’t happen . . . so the important skills are commercial skills, people skills, people management skills, technology management skills and service delivery.
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In general, managers of market-driven, customer focussed advertising and marketing companies, while often describing the company as being part of the ‘creative sector’ were most categorical in their assertions that creativity was not the major determinant of success. As one manager in this sub-sector stated: In a management sense I would define myself as creative, in a new media sense much less so. Having said that the ability to devise creative solutions, and I don’t mean pretty pictures and things is difficult, but creativity is subservient to our customers’ business objectives and our own business objectives. But for those managers with a strong design aesthetic, creativity was much more central – not only to the business but to their own identity: I’m creatively driven I’m not driven by pounds shillings and pence as such. I’m a designer that happens to be in business, I’m not a business man who happens to be a designer. Of those managers who perceived themselves principally as ‘creatives’, several described how creativity was used not just in product ‘look and feel’ but also as a driving force for enhancing organizational capacity. As one manager, described creative thought was used to challenge existing ways of doing things: I want people who welcome the strange . . . in the small organization I need flexibility, intelligence and aptitude . . . I need people with ideas who would come in and say why are you doing that . . . I need that challenge for two reasons so I’m not wasting their time but I could well be wasting mine.
iii) How is creativity managed? Only one manager took the view that creativity could not be managed and that creatives needed to be ‘left to get on with it, as prescription kills creativity’. It was more common for managers, particularly those in larger firms, more ‘corporate’ in ambition – to detail how they focused upon providing ‘creative direction’, and directing a collaborative process to facilitate creativity. We offer, from an art point of view, a reasonable challenge. They have a chance to express themselves. I want them to put in ideas as well. I usually start if off by saying I think this is a good idea and we’ll all sit around the table and break it down and go away. Other, similar managers described how in facilitating and supporting creativity it was often necessary to introduce challenge, un-
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certainty and risk and persuade individuals ‘to step outside their safety zone’ and to implement management, team building or projectled systems that encouraged them ‘to think outside of the box’: The people we are dealing with are creative whether they appreciate it or not, there’s a rather interesting expression I heard about a year ago in the states which is its ‘like herding cats’. So you have to create an environment in which they all want to go in the same direction. Even those managers who made no explicit mention of structures or systems, did suggest they had adopted a less traditional managerial approach and style which they felt was more facilitative of creativity and new ways of working: You have to have flexibility in the system which says well, okay, we will re-jig things until the right idea comes along, you don’t just go with the one that fitted in with your Gantt chart. [You need to have] organised looseness. In those companies where the managerial practice appeared loose in terms of control – predominantly smaller art, design and elearning based enterprises – with managers adopting a more facilitative than managerial role, creativity was not limited to a certain group and the creative process arose out of dynamics within the wider organization, which engaged all members. However, in those companies where creativity was confined to specific individuals and groups, managers – while acknowledging that creativity needed to be harnessed within the production process – did insist that this had to be controlled and often constrained to ensure realization of the firm’s business objectives and meeting of customer expectations. In these firms – predominantly larger, business led advertising and marketing firms – often the manager kept a tight control over all ‘creative’ work: The creative mind is a very interesting kind of thing to try and control, that’s my job in a way. While these managers claimed to be keen to develop an image and identity for the firm, which emphasized and promoted its creative/design capabilities, their dilemma appeared to be how to delegate the responsibility for creativity to others within the organization: Because we have such a big product and everything moves so fast the majority of product enhancements are actually agreed through me . . . it’s me who makes the final decision but its not me that makes all the decisions.
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While the facilitation of ideas was seen to be important, managers felt the need to place time limits on this, so as to discourage designers from spending too much time perfecting an idea or design at the onset of the project. The challenge therefore is for the manager to direct and focus creative skills and persuasions of staff on the basis that if not checked they (the ‘creatives’) will produce too many options and most crucially run out of time and over budget: Creatives have to be given certain freedom but within an organised structure. However, some control over creativity may be necessary and can be positive. Through managers assessing individuals’ areas of expertise and skill, and then allocating them to project teams and roles according to what they felt an individual’s strengths to be, creativity can be positively mobilized: Creativity is important and I think it’s important that creative people are encouraged to play to their strengths and they’re placed on the kind of projects that their strength helps them to develop. Yet, the cultures of firms also served to act as more pernicious constraints and control over creativity, with some managers describing how there was an implicit expectation that staff will learn to adapt to the way of working since ‘if somebody doesn’t it sticks out like a sore thumb’ – managers often resorted to removing ‘bad apples’ either temporarily or permanently. Moreover, some managers deliberately devised strategies and practices which effectively could be seen as placing constraints upon creativity, particularly those activities that were felt to be experimental and outside realms of project outputs and deliverables. There was both an implicit and explicit understanding that it is more important to deliver on time and within budget and avoid unnecessary complications that could be associated with freer, more artistic designs. There was an assumption that customers/ clients appreciated such complications being kept to a minimum and looked for immediate commercial relevance as opposed to visually spectacular or other creative images and designs. One manager of a new media advertising company who argued that there was no managerial obligation to facilitate or manage creativity gave an extreme example of this perspective: Everyone has a first class honours here, they get the training they require when you switch the computer on, that’s it. Go and learn it. We shout and they learn it . . . they are bright guys
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and they can pick things up (. . .) everybody has a chance to expand into as much risk as they want to take because you get fired if you screw up or you lose money.’
Conclusions: supporting creative work? Initially, we have confirmed that creativity is a central part of the competitive resources of the ‘creative industries’. In the SMEs we studied, creativity is needed to meet demands for bespoke and tailored new media products, requiring increasingly creative approaches to the development and management of high level design and technical skills. Further, to be a creative manager in new media means adapting to the shifting patterns of demand for standardised, bespoke and new applications, navigating a marketplace that is fast moving and uncertain, and sourcing and managing employee skills, training and development as and when required. The industry increasingly values managers who can successfully generate the required levels of creativity and creative action within individuals and teams (Speake & Powell, 1997; Swanson & Wise, 1997). While the ‘creative industries’ is used as a catch-all term, in just one sub-sector, we found considerable variation in how creativity is defined, located valued and managed. New media managers in the advertising and marketing sub-sector tended to define creativity in terms of managerial skills and responsibilities that led to commercial success. In turn they downplayed the role of the designer and the other more ‘traditional’ creative elements in media production. Education and e-learning firms defined creativity in terms of content and content design; graphic designers and more artistically inclined managers valued a more traditional, aesthetic notion of ‘pure’ creativity. Creativity was seen to be located within both individuals as well as multi-skilled or multi-disciplinary teams – often it was located outside the firm itself in a network of freelancers, external experts and collaborators. Views on the relative importance of creativity in the production process also differed – from IT-led firms who saw ‘technical solutions’ as more of a priority, to advertising and marketing firms who saw the ‘client relationship’ as paramount, through to e-learning firms who valued ‘learning design’ over visual design creativity. Approaches to the management of creativity varied between formal and paternalistic to facilitative and enabling – depending on who the ‘creatives’ were deemed to be
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and how important creativity was perceived to be relative to other inputs. We also found that size and maturity of company to be important indicators of creative ‘freedom’. The smaller and less developed the company, the more scope managers perceived they had to take creative risks or pursue creative ends. In particular, firms working in graphic design or e-learning based enterprises tended to prioritise ‘staying small’ to help maintain creativity. Larger firms, with ‘corporate’ ambitions, tended to downplay the significance, and place structural limits on, creativity. Yet, in all sub-sectors, as firms expanded, creativity became less unfettered and increasingly subject to managerial control and constraint. We conclude that in order to help business support agencies identify or enhance the role of creativity in firms, closer attention must be paid to the contexts in which creativity is being defined, located, valued and managed. Thus, while in a general sense, we would agree that to be creative is to possess the ability to transform, adapt and make anew (Groth & Peters, 1999), the value of a situated approach is that it opens up the debate on creativity to incorporate elements previously deemed marginal – such as industry and workplace context, social and cultural exchange and the importance of recognising practitioners own understandings and negotiations of the ‘creativity’ issue. As Preston and Kerr (2001, 110) observe, the development of a new media product is a ‘process of negotiation’ between different constituencies and is a fundamentally social process. This has been lacking from previous conceptualisations of creativity – where ‘individual’ acts of creativity are often idealised as key drivers for success (Boden, 1990; McFadzean, 2000). Our approach may have implications at the policy and education and training level. How policy makers, consultants and support agencies can encourage or stimulate creativity within the context of these, and similar, firms is a central challenge. Agencies that attempt to enhance or inspire corporate creativity or ‘creative willingness’ (Groth & Peters, 1999) may benefit from taking a closer look at all angles of the creative issue – creativity is so variably defined, utilised, valued and managed that even amongst what are called the ‘creative industries’ there is no real consensus as to what creativity is and how it can be harnessed. Any kind of formal intervention to improve competitive advantage needs to recognise this – policy intervention is possible, but must be sensitive to variations, as well as similarities, in the conceptualisation and mobilisation of creativity. There are no magic
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formulas – as interventions that stimulate creativity in one firm may suppress or destroy it in another. In turn, encouraging managers to accept that they their own actions may inhibit or hinder creative production is a further challenge – we suggest that the creative resources firms possess may be better exploited through management more rooted in an exploratory and open process of ‘mutual adjustment’ (Davis and Scase 2000) than one founded in formal bureaucratic control.
Notes 1. We use this term to refer to firms involved in the production of Internet based designs, services and applications. This may include educational and training materials, business and systems software, computer and video games, advertising and marketing materials and digital art. 2. Findings are drawn from two ESF/AdaptUniversity for Industry backed projects, firstly Creative Leadership in Media Enterprises (CLIME) which examined management skills in the creative industries and, secondly, Skills for the Missing Industry’s Leaders and Enterprises (SMILE) which evaluated management skills within small and medium sized new media enterprises; both projects were undertaken in the North West of England. Both projects were conducted by interdisciplinary teams managed by the Centre for Employment Research (CER) based within the Manchester Institute of Telematics and Employment Research (MITER) at MMU. 3. It is estimated that Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs), along with sole practitioners and micro enterprises contain around 60–70% of employment in the creative industries sector (O’Connor, 1999). 4. The 13 sub-sectors are advertising, architecture, arts and antique market, crafts, design, designer fashion, film, interactive leisure software, music, performing arts, publishing, software and television and radio. 5. All quotes are from owner/managers of new media SMEs.
References Banks, M., Lovatt, A., O’Connor, J. and Raffo, C. (2000) Risk and trust in the cultural industries. Geoforum, 31, 453–464. Boden, M.A. (1990) The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms. Weidenfield and Nicolson, London. Buzan, T. (1995) The Mindmap Book. BBC Books, London. Castells, M. (1996) The Rise of the Network Society. Blackwell, Oxford. Davis, H. and Scase, R. (2000) Managing Creativity: the dynamics of work and organisation. Open University Press, Buckingham. de Bono, E. (1982) Lateral Thinking for Management. Pelican, Harmondsworth.
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Department of Culture, Media and Sport (1998) Creative Industries Mapping Document. DCMS, London. Department of Culture, Media and Sport (2001) Creative Industries Mapping Document. DCMS, London. European Commission (2001) Culture 2000. Guidance notes. http://europa.eu.int/comm/culture/ culture2000_en.html Evans, G. (2001) Cultural Planning: an Urban Renaissance? Routledge, London. Gardner, H. (1982) Art, Mind, and Brain: A Cognitive Approach to Creativity. Basic Books, New York. Groth and Peters (1999) What Blocks Creativity? A Managerial Perspective. Creativity and Innovation Management, 8, 179–187. Hall, P. (2000) Creative Cities and Economic Development. Urban Studies, 37, 639–649. Harvey, D. (1989) The Condition of Postmodernity. Blackwell, Oxford. Higgins, M. and Morgan, J. (2000) The role of creativity in planning: the ‘creative practitioner’. Planning Practice and Research, 15, 117–127. Isaksen, S.G. (1989) Creative Problem Solving: a Process for Creativity. Centre for Studies in Creativity. Buffalo, New York. Lash, S. and Urry, J. (1994) Economies of Signs and Space. Sage, London. Leadbeater, C. and Oakley, K. (1999) The Independents: Britain’s new cultural entrepreneurs. Redwood Books, Demos London. McFadzean, E. (1998) The Creativity Continuum: Towards a Classification of Problem Solving Techniques. Creativity and Innovation Management, 7, 131–139. McFadzean, E. (2000) What Can We Learn From Creative People? The Story of Brian Eno. Management Decision, 38. Pratt, A. (1997) Production Values: From Cultural Industries to Governance of Culture. Environment and Planning A, 29, 1911–1917. Pratt, A. (2000) New Media, the New Economy and New Spaces. Geoforum, 31, 425–436. O’Connor J. (1999) The Cultural Production Sector in Manchester. Manchester City Council/Manchester Institute for Popular Culture, MMU. http:// www.mmu.ac.uk/h-ss/mipc O’Connor, J. (2000) The Definition of the Cultural Industries. Draft paper Manchester Institute for Popular Culture, MMU. http://www.mmu.ac. uk/h-ss/mipc Preston, P. and Kerr, A. (2001) Digital Media, Nation States and Local Cultures: The Case of New Media Content Production. Media, Culture and Society 23 109-131. Rickards, T. (1999) Creativity and the Management of Change. Blackwell, Oxford. Russell, D., Calvey, D. and Banks, M. (2001) How elearning businesses meet client and end user needs: analysing the collaborative contexts. Paper presented at the Eighth EDINEB conference: Nice, France. Available from http://www.smile.miter.org.uk/ Schumpeter, J. (1961) The Theory of Economic Development. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. Scott, A.J. (2000) The Cultural Economy of Cities. Sage, London.
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Shirley, D. (1997) Managing Creativity: A Practical Guide to Inventing, Developing and Producing Innovative Products. Available from http://www. managingcreativity.com Singh, B (1996) Role of Personality Versus Biographical Factors in Creativity. Psychological Studies, 31, 90–92. Speake, T. and Powell, J. (1997) Skills for the Missing Industry: An Exploratory Study. A report for the Training Technology Unit of the Department for Education and Employment, University of Salford. Stacey, R. (1996) Complexity and creativity in organizations. Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco. Strauss, A. and Corbin, J. (1990) Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. Sage, London. Swanson, G. and Wise, P (1997) Digital Futures: women’s employment in the new media industries. Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy, Brisbane.
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Tan, G. (1998) Managing Creativity in Organisations: a Total System approach. Creativity and Innovation Management, 7, 23–31. UNESCO (2001) Creativity, Copyright and Cultural Industries. http://www.unesco.org/culture/cic_ eng.shtml
Dr Mark Banks and Dr Dave Calvey are Lecturers and Julia Owen is a Research Associate, at the Department of Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester M15 6LL, UK. David Russell is a Research Associate at the Centre for Employment Research, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester M15 6LL, UK.
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Creative Selves? Critically Reading ‘Creativity’ in Management Discourse Craig Prichard In broad terms the critical tradition in organization studies (Marsden & Townley, 1996) is concerned with understanding and questioning the elaboration of power relations in worksites, particularly as they induce oppressive and exploitative practices. This paper begins by outlining some of the key features of what might be regarded as a traditional critical reading of creativity in work organizations. This initial discussion is presented via an analysis of two texts from Fortune magazine’s account of the performance of Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Without dealing in detail with some of the problematics and limitations of these approaches, the paper then outlines the key features of a Foucauldian critical discourse approach to the analysis of creativity. The discussion proceeds to identify key features of such an account. These include the position of academic experts as agents of knowledge in the production of ‘creativity’, the organizational prescriptions and devices used to visualize and normalize ‘creative’ managers and professionals, and the ontological and epistemological tradition that is drawn on in the production of both the agents of knowledge of creativity and the devices that identify, classify and regulate ‘creativity’ with respect to managing and organizing workplaces. Using the term ‘economy of identity’, the concluding section discusses the implications of this approach, including the oppressive and exploitative dimensions of ‘creativity’.
Introduction
Extract Two: Earlier, at the computer convention (Mardesich, 2000):
Extract 1: From Fortune Magazine (Schlender, 2000: 66-72):
People practically flew to their feet and there was a spontaneous combustion of applause. The enraptured crowd started chanting, ‘Steve! Steve! Steve! Steve! Steve!’ I wouldn’t have been surprised to see tears or screaming or people speaking in tongues. It was as charged as a rock concert or religious revival.
Steve Jobs, the personal-computer industry’s chief aesthetic officer, is in his element. Here in the boardroom at Apple Computer’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, he’s the only person seated – reclining, actually. Hands clasped behind his head, he stares pokerfaced at a couple of Web pages displayed side by side on an outsized 22-inch-wide Apple Cinema flat-panel monitor. Twelve weary-looking men – programmers, marketers, graphic designers and Web experts – stand in pensive poses, forming an arc behind him, some scribbling notes on Palm hand-held devices whenever the 44-year-old iCEO comments. ‘The icon for ‘‘real estate’’ doesn’t do anything for me at all,’ announces Jobs, snapping out of his reverie and leaning forward. ‘But this old-fashioned highway sign for ‘‘cars,’’ now that’s cool. I love it! You instantly know exactly what it means.’ (Schlender, 2000) # Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002. 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
On stage, Steve Jobs was soaking it all in. At first, [he] didn’t seem that psyched to be there on the Macworld stage. Wearing the uniform (jeans and a black mock turtleneck), giving us the same history, the same spiel. But as he started unveiling one cool new thing after another, from new Internet services that are blended into the Mac operating system, to a whizzy new version of the operating system itself, he started to perk up. ‘We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them,’ he says. (from Fortune magazine: Mardesich, 2000)
S
teve Jobs, as the above stories suggest, is widely regarded as one of the most creative members of the new economy’s
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business elite. The companies he has founded and currently heads (Apple Computers, NeXt, Pixar), and the products they produce (Apple II, Macintosh, iBook, iMac; Toystory), have been ground breaking works using state of the art technology, exciting design and consumer affability. What also makes Steve Jobs interesting in the above extracts is the way in which his presence seems to evoke creativity. This paper is concerned with a critical reading of ‘creativity’ in work organizations. It begins with an assessment of the above extracts drawing on what might be regarded as traditional critical resources. Without dealing with either the problematics and limitations of these ‘traditional’ approaches, nor with more recent contributions and extensions of such approaches, the paper outlines the key features of a Foucauldian-inspired discourse approach to the critical analysis of ‘creativity’. Analysis in this vein is primarily concern to show how knowledge about ‘creativity’ works to normalize and organize ‘creativity’ with respect to work organizations. Such an approach is not concerned with the validity or truthfulness of current knowledge about creativity. Rather it is concerned with the power effects of such knowledge. The analysis will explore the position of academic experts as agents of knowledge in the production of normalizing ‘creativity’ for the workplace. It will touch on the organizational prescriptions and devices used to visualize and normalize ‘creative’ managers and professionals. And it will identify the underpinning assumptions that guide the production of both these agents of creativity knowledge and the devices that identify, classify and regulate ‘creativity’ with respect to managing and organizing workplaces. The paper’s final section discusses the implications of this approach including the contribution of ‘creativity’ to oppressive and exploitative workplace relations.
Critically Reading the ‘Creativity’ of Steve Jobs Critical social science is concerned broadly with the appraisal of the intersection of social, economic and political relations (Fay, 1987). It has tended to dismiss ‘creativity’ as a topic of debate and research. Marxist and feminist works, as Rapley notes (1998), tend to regard creativity as a bourgeois or masculinist myth. The creative person or those features associated with creativity – divergent thinking, spontaneity, novel behaviour, intrinsic motivation – are ideological or discursive ploys which fetishise the autonomous, often male, subject, and deny the complex historical,
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social and economic relations which precede and constitute such a subject, its practices and relations. We can illustrate these points using the stories above. Consider for a moment why the first extract, which goes on to describe the recent renaissance of Apple Computers, uses these descriptions of Jobs. One reason would have it that there are some magical, charismatic features to the embodied presence and posture of Jobs himself. These features challenge those normally ascribed to one domain (e.g. the corporate boardroom), and/or allow practices normally associated with another domain to be transferred to the first domain. The first piece suggests that the boardroom has been transformed into a design loft via Jobs’ posture. The second suggests that Jobs’ presence has the same effect on the sales convention, turning it into a rock concert or religious revival. The implication is that such transformations provoke a sense of joy and euphoria, or creativity and commitment amongst the followers. Fortune’s stories of Steve Jobs can be read as conforming to this mythical or ideologically individualized reading of creativity. They do not for instance attribute creativity to the historical, social, political and technological networks that bring huge numbers of people together to built computers or assemble movies. Rather than address creativity as interdependent with technological change, or with capitalism’s proclivity for waves of creative destruction, or with gender power relations that position men – and no women – around this ‘iCEO’, the stories attribute creativity to Steve Jobs himself. We might identify this as the ‘great man’ theory of creativity (Bennis and Biederman, 1997). The words, the gestures and the clothes are features of this presence that are described, even idolized, in the context of adoring audiences and attentive workers. Critical social science challenges this narrow inference by suggesting that there are implicit interests at work in such stories. For example the Jobs’ stories might be read as ideological fictions – ideas in support of corporate interests – that the corporation known as Apple Computers (US$ 7Billion turnover in 2000) needs in order to reassert itself. Jobs is a powerful rhetorical figure reacquired by the corporation (after he left following a dispute in the late 1980s) to stave off diminishing returns, and to attempt to re-acquire profits lost to competitors. The journalists in this reading conspire in this ideological pretence. Using the tools of the now not so ‘New Journalism’ (Wolfe, 1975) their reports conceal both the contrived
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nature of the events reported, and the economic relations that demand them. The reports are written as if they are ‘windows’ into Apple’s boardroom and the MacWorld convention. When ‘really’, critical social science argues, they are painted pictures. The colour and detail of the descriptions are designed to counter dis-belief among readers and support the claim that this description is really what occurred. Critical social science questions, in a number of ways, the basis of the claim to truth made implicitly in these stories. Both stories are grounded on a rhetorical claim to ‘being there’ or ‘presence’. This obscures the management of the readers’ experience and economic and political interests that precede, construct or build the ‘frames’ around these images or ‘windows’. And further to this critical social science might also suggest that more humanly satisfying stories ought to be told ahead of the above. Such stories might tell us of the power relations that fill the Apple boardroom with men and no women. They might explain why the workers stand and the boss sits. They might identify who was in the convention crowd, and how it was encouraged to a chanting frenzy in the mode of the rock concert or the religious revival. And there are many other stories of production, or context, that might be told. There are those that surround Fortune magazine and its practices. These include stories that claim that wealth and talent are individualize-able, rather than the product of a long history of material appropriation by virtue of ownership. Fortune after all is a conservative business magazine that provides positive representation of people like Jobs who have acquired huge personal fortunes. Fortune is famous for its yearly list of America’s 100 richest individuals. Such stories might help us to understand the MacWorld convention. The story above does not highlight how this sales convention’s aim is to entice and enrapture audiences and reporters from trade magazines like Fortune. The stories suggest spontaneity and euphoric moments which are not part of the highly organized and routine character of these promotional vehicle run to enhance desire for industrial products. It implies, but does not state, that Steve Jobs’ body, and its symbolic linkage to creativity and success, is being used to enhance the event and the company’s distinctiveness from its competitors. The event itself is carefully managed, and a euphoric crowd of Apple salespersons, stockholders and staff are likely to be more than willing to play their part. Now having said all this, and without attempting to undermine the points just
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made, I want to ‘recover’ some conceptual ground for a critical study of creativity which does not ‘collapse’ it into a strictly class or gender orientated analysis. Rapley’s general point (and noting his own move to extend discussion) is a strong one, but it does not explore the expanding field of critical scholarship in management and organization studies that addresses identity and subjectivity. In this paper I seek to draw on some of these critical conceptual resources to help a critical engagement with creativity. In order to achieve this I turn to Foucauldian-inspired critical discourse analysis. As noted the emphasis in such an approach is not on the underlying interests served by various practices and forms of knowledge, but on the normalizing effects of these and how they are dispersed and make up forms of conduct in, for instance, work organizations.
Foucauldian Discourse Analysis – key features Historically the three key themes of critical social science have ‘labour’, ‘language’ and ‘power’ (Habermas, 1976). ‘Labour’ refers to embodied practices and embodied knowing. ‘Language’ refers to those texts and discursive practices through which we communicate and which are drawn from and can be said to form part of broad ‘discursive formations’ (Foucault, 1972). ‘Power’ can be regarded as embedded in practices that attempt to induce relations of domination, or exploitation, or subjection in or between subjects (be they individuals, or organizations, or states). Power itself might be understood as a variably unstable and dispersed force/energy that has the effect of forming assemblages of practices (e.g. practices that make certain things visible, practices of labour, and of force) that work to establish these relations. For Marx it was the relations of production, and not the forces of production that distinguished one mode of production from another and relations between different modes. While the current mode might be distinguished by its forms of technological production (petro-chemical and computerchip based technologies), the salient feature from this point of explanation, for both Marx and Foucault (in Foucault’s terms), is the relations of production: the politics that surround the formation of knowledge-able labour, its access to and combination with these forces of production. While Foucault recommended political economic argument as one way of explaining the transformation and dispersal of discursive
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formations (1977, 1991), what is important is how the formation provides productive forms of discipline e.g. forms of self-knowledge and self-discipline. Writers influenced by Foucault’s cartographies (Butler, 1997; Deleuze, 1988; Knights & Willmott, 1989; McKinlay & Starkey, 1998; Miller & Rose, 1990; Miller & O’Leary, 1987) suggest that in the current era relations of exploitation and domination are less important than the power relations embedded in relations with oneself and one’s body. While bureaucratic forms of domination and political economic necessities continue to organize populations they form a background against which highly elaborated and seductive forms of self-discipline are propagated and dispersed (Miller & Rose, 1990; Rose, 1996). In the first instance they work to establish us as individuals with particular potentialities (such as the potential for ‘creativity’), tastes, biographies, dispositions, personalities and make us responsible for developing these in their various forms. The point is that we do not so much choose these modes of being as they become the ways in which we are required to work on ourselves to be confirmed as human. These ways of being include bodies of seemingly scientific knowledge that outline forms of embodied conduct and reflexivity. For example knowledge about how to increase or improve one’s creativity and innovation in work organizations. In our relations with the world these forms of knowledge and conduct focus, enhance, empower, enliven and ultimately normalize particular ‘selves’. They also, in the process, narrow, constrain or pattern, our forms of conduct. This is not to suggest some form of global totalitarian regime or bourgeois conspiracy, but rather to identity the character of that unstable discursive political terrain in which we are located. This approach does not assume the security of the current power bloc – that alliance of forces that variably cohere to reproduce the current political economic complex – that ‘demands’ ‘creativity’ in the form outlined below. On the contrary, resistance signals points where ‘human-ness’ is constantly under contention, and points where expertise is being accumulated and directed e.g. by academics, consultants and practitioners in the field of ‘creativity’. Given this methodological position, the critical questions become: what ‘new’ forms of self and new ways of working on the body are being put to work? What forms of knowledge and truth about human being are drawn upon in such production? Analysis based on such questions, for instance, might explore how management and popular knowledges and practices are involved in
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the production of ‘creative’ or innovative body-subjects for a so-called ‘knowledge economy/society’ (OECD, 1996). Given these assumptions ‘labour’, ‘work’ and ‘organizations’ are conceptualised quite differently from those understandings that appear in management and organization literatures. The workplace is understood as simply one site in a series where powerinduced relations between labour and language are said to articulate through our bodies, on its surface, in its depths, in what Burrell identifies as ‘visceral morphological flows’ (1996: 657) in the production of various identities. Power relations in the workplace are not directly linked to exchange relations or bureaucratic domination, but involve a range of practices and knowledge that work to produce an economy of identity. The plethora of pedagogically orientated practices that make up this economy of identity include what McDowell and Court outline as the manipulation of patterns of desire, fantasy, pleasure, and self image, in which gendered notions of appropriate behaviour and expressions of sexuality in this widest sense are important mechanisms in the establishment of particular norms of acceptable workplace behaviour. (1994:773) This broad focus suggests a way of extending our understanding of our relationship to work and the reconstruction of labour in post-industrial settings. For instance if we were asked to account in traditional political economic terms for the current attention given to ‘creativity’ in work organizations we might suggest that the answer lies with changing business needs or the ongoing reconstruction of capitalism. In a post-Fordist economic environment attention has turned to the more intensive exploitation of communicative, interpersonal and creative forms of work. It is this that management and organizational knowledge seeks to explore, reproduce, instil or evoke, and this that leads to the more intensified study of ‘creativity’ (Rickards, 1999). Critical social science however suggests that communicative practices do not just transmit these changing relations of production, distribution and exchange. They are at the core of its instantiation and dispersal. The crucial feature is a reconfigured understanding of how power relations work through language and communicative practices. Power relations do not simply station us in subordinate positions by force, rather discursive formations explain the truth about particular ways of being human, and enjoin, or entice or seduce us to recognise and enact
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these truths ourselves – through intensive communicative activity e.g. counselling and dialogue. For example when we join organizations or take up new positions we do not so much get told ‘our place’, but are required to be discursively skilled at ‘taking our place’ in the complex subject positions, relations and knowledges which organize work sites. In these processes we become, to varying degrees, the subject of the statements made, and subject to the particular forms of knowledge. While we might not become thorough converts (Casey, 1995), we do come to recognise part of ourselves in the production of particular statements and discursive practices (e.g. ‘I’m a creative, intuitive person’).
Creativity’s discursive formation – agents of knowledge In order to develop this form of critical knowledge about knowledge, so to speak, Foucault suggests that we plot the ‘discursive formations’ that establish themselves in particular fields. A discursive formation can be regarded as a group of statements linked together by a whole range of discursive practices (speaking, writing, interviewing, publishing, lecturing etc.). These allow particular objects, for example ‘creativity’, and particular subjects, e.g. the creative employee, to be identified and articulated. More specifically the formation delimits this field of objects in particular ways. For instance the formation around ‘creativity’ is particularly concerned to configure its object as useful and task focused. It is not rebellious or chaotic. To support this re-configuration the formation includes and provides a position for agents of knowledge who define and elaborate legitimate knowledge and perspectives. The formation provides a position which can be taken up which speaks for the object. In relation to ‘creativity’ academics such as Howard Gardner, John Kao and Teresa Amabile occupy such positions. Alongside these are the ‘creatives’ themselves; people whose stories elaborate, embody and articulate the discourse, e.g. Steve Jobs. These ‘agents of knowledge’ positions identify various truths, norms and practices for the further elaboration of the field (e.g. Feldman & Csikszentmihalyi, 1994; Gardner, 1993; Kao, 1997; Amabile, 1983, 1997) and generally provide a ‘play of prescriptions that designate its exclusions and choices’ (Foucault, 1977:199). In order to explore this further it is useful to provide a counterpoint to the discourse. D. H. Lawrence suggested that creativity is inherently rebellious (1955). Creativity as under-
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taken by artists, those ‘enemies of convention’, involves exposing us to raw ‘reality’ (It is worth quoting this at some length. Thanks to Richard Hull for drawing my attention to this reference). As Lawrence wrote: Human beings fix some wonderful erection of their own between themselves and the wild chaos, and gradually go bleached and stifled under the parasol. Then comes the poet, enemy of convention, and makes a slit in the umbrella, and lo! the glimpse of chaos is a vision. But after a while getting use to the vision and not liking the genuine draught from chaos, commonplace people daub a simulacrum of the window that opens on to chaos, or patch the umbrella with the painted patch of the simulacrum . . The wild sky moved and sang. Even that became a great umbrella between human kind and the sky of fresh air, and then it became a painted vault, a fresco on a vaulted roof, under which men bleach and grow dissatisfied. Till another poet makes a slit on to the open and windy chaos. (1955:90–91) While popular, consultant and academic forms of business and management discourse often note the rebellious character of creative effort (and then distinguish their reading from this one), they do not advise managers to take a knife to their ‘parasols’ or ‘hose-off’ the simulacrum. Rather they focus on establishing the boundaries and supports for ‘useful creativity’ (Amabile & Conti et al., 1988; Bennis & Biederman, 1997 Handy, 1999; Rickards, 1999; Kao, 1989; 1997; Kanter, 1983; Leonard & Swap, 1999; Wallace & Gruber, 1989). This is creativity which may challenge convention but which has an appropriate objective. Teresa Amabile, social psychologist and Harvard professor of creativity, whose work is liberally spread across the discourse – due in part because it addresses the tension between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards of creativity – argues that creativity is simply the production of novel, appropriate ideas in any realm of human activity from science, to the arts, to education, to business to everyday life. The ideas must be novel -different from what’s been done before – but they can’t be simply bizarre; they must be appropriate to the problem or opportunity presented. Creativity is the first step in innovation, which is the successful implementation of those novel appropriate ideas. Because the business world is seldom static, and because the pace of change appears to be rapidly accelerating, no firm that continues to deliver the same products
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and services in the same way can long survive. By contrast, firms that prepare for the future by implementing new ideas orientated toward this changing world are likely to thrive. (1997:40) Creativity here does not address our existential questioning. It does not seek to expose us to the ‘vision’ or fundamental ‘terror’ of our reality. Creativity is not bizarre or destructive. To be known as ‘creativity’ at all it must, according to the advice of this agent of knowledge, be socially appropriate and orientated toward (particularly business) objectives. The statement, which can be read as a microcosm of the discursive formation around ‘creativity’, goes on as we hear to establish the object as the appropriate response to the problems of capitalist crises and instabilities. The formation thus collapses ‘creativity’ into a financial prerogative, and opens the way for an extended play of managerial prescriptions. Strenberg and O’Hara (1997) for example argue (in a special edition of the Californian Management Review on creativity) that new ideas are like investments. Creative individuals, and we can add firms and nation states to this, are regarded as rational and self-maximising subjects seeking to produce ideas cheaply and sell them for a high return (1997:9).
Creativity’s discursive formation – the play of prescriptions These authoritative speaking positions provide a play of prescriptions that ‘spread out’ from this central delimited object, ‘creativity’, and form a set of mechanisms and practices. These could be said to attempt to re-route the ‘creativity’ of rebellion, unconventionality and the challenge to authority (and the inherent chaos it suggests), toward manageability and economic objectives. This reconfiguration requires various cues, techniques and mechanisms that allow the appropriate performance of creativity along with its prediction of success and calculation of risk. Here Strenberg and O’Hara and many others provide advice (Amabile et al., 1996; Amabile, 1997; Clapham, 2000; Filis & McAuley, 2000; Drazin & Glynn et al., 1999; Gryskiewicz, 2000; Kanter, 1983; Kao, 1997; Kuhn, 1988). Again it is worth mentioning that as with all forms of management discourse the formation also works to construct the ‘manager’ as the appropriate agent of this knowledge. The prescriptions suggest a battery of tools and techniques from tests, to games, to interpersonal communication practices, to reward
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structures which – it is suggested – link the object ‘creativity’ with financial objectives. For example psychometric ‘creativity’ tests such as Gough’s ‘Creative Personality Scale’ (Gough, 1979, quoted in Oldham & Cummings, 1996) are suggested as means of recruiting creative people. In terms of retention and stimulation, the texts outline how managers should attempt to develop a creativity-supportive climate (Amabile et al., 1996) and behave appropriately toward ‘creative’ staff. Linked to research which supports the claim that over-controlling supervision reduces intrinsic motivation – a key terminate of creativity – the texts suggest managers adopt the following practices: considerate and supportive supervision and the provision of complex challenging jobs that offer high levels of personal satisfaction. Supportive supervision here includes showing concern for feelings and needs, encouraging involvement and the voicing of concerns, giving positive informational feedback and facilitating skill development. Alongside this is advice that suggests employees be offered appropriate reward structures (Amabile, 1997; Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Kao, 1989; 1997).
Creativity’s discursive formation – humanist underpinnings The discursive formation around ‘creativity’ thus provides, to use Lawrence’s metaphor, a shelter or ‘parasol’ against ‘windy chaos’ and risk. In these next two sections I deal initially with the humanist underpinnings of this discursive formation around creativity, and then briefly with the ‘creative manager’ as subject position established by it. Humanist psychology’s assumption that creativity is a universal attribute and part of the make up of psychologically healthy human beings is a key underpinning basis of the discursive formation around ‘creativity’. ‘Creativity’ is not attributed to a psychodynamic subject (Oremland, 1997) where creative impulses are an outpouring of unconscious processes. Neither is creativity strictly a behavioural response to rewards and conditioning. Nor is it an effect of broader power relations and structures (Gardner, 1993). Rather, under humanist psychology, creativity is a normal part of the life of the psychologically healthy individual. In the analysis presented here, such an individual is not ‘normal’ but constituted via this normalizing discourse. Like others in this field John Kao, a Harvard Business School academic who trained in medicine and psychiatry (1989; 1999), references Abraham Maslow’s work to support his prescriptions
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for a managerially supported ‘creativity’ in organizations. Following Maslow he distinguishes generalizable creativity from genius: While most would agree that the creativity of Mozart or Einstein operated at a high level sometimes described as ‘genius’, others would argue that creativity is at least latent in everyone. The psychologist Maslow writes that there is a type of creativity that ‘is the universal heritage of every human being’ and strongly associated with psychological health. He distinguishes between ‘special creativenesses’, such as the musical talent of a Mozart, and ‘self-actualising creativeness’ which he believed originated in the personality and was visible in the ordinary affairs of life. (1989:15) The work of Maslow, and Carl Rogers, provides much of the base for humanist psychology. This ‘third force’ opposed the reductionism of both behaviourism and pathological psychoanalysis in favour of humanist and moralist/ethical ‘science’ of human potential and growth (1954; 1968). It posits a human being bestowed with an intrinsic hierarchy of human needs ‘topped off’ with a need for self-esteem and selfactualisation. These higher intrinsic needs urge individuals on to fulfilment of their full potential. Maslow suggests that this inevitably leads individuals into questioning and challenging social control, and their own internal self-knowledge. Maslow wrote: Self-actualising people are not well adjusted (in the naı¨ve sense of approval and identification with the culture). They get along with the culture in various ways, but of all of them it may be said that in a certain profound and meaningful sense they resist enculturation and retain a certain detachment. (1954:224) Creativity has a special place in Maslow’s schema. It is that which ‘comes spontaneously from the well integrated person’ (1968:137). It is both universal and humble: ‘It looked like a tendency to do anything creatively: e.g. housekeeping, teaching etc’ (1968:137). Being ‘well integrated’, for Maslow, who was deeply influenced by Gestalt psychology and the work of critical theorist Eric Fromm, involves the development of an intimate understanding of, rather than an estrangement from, one’s primary and unconscious processes. Maslow saw an important role for psychoanalytic therapy in performing such integration. The civil war within the average person between the forces of the inner depths and
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the force of defences and control seems to have been resolved in my subjects and they are less split, as a consequence more of them is available for use, for enjoyment and for creative purposes. They waste less of their time and energy protecting themselves from themselves. (1968:141) As a consequence of this openness, Maslow suggests, self-actualising creativity has a child-like character. His subjects, he suggests, were able to become deeply absorbed in a child-like way in the projects of the here and the now; to experience the world more directly and to thus come to know and work with it in new and creative ways. Such people can see the fresh, the raw, the concrete, the idiographic, as well as the generic and the abstracts . . . they live far more in the real world of nature than in the verbalized world of concepts, abstracts, expectations, beliefs and stereotypes that most people confuse for the real world. (1968:137) However we also identify at the core of Maslow’s work a politics of self and identity. Creativity is one part of the process. It signals growth toward self-fulfilment. It signals also a way of being in the world that is confident, fearless, spontaneous and outwardly engaging. While Maslow is cautious in his pronouncements for this psychology of the ‘good’ person (he suggests that ‘good’ people are also prone to ‘lapses’), his conceptualisation nevertheless provides a foundation for a broader politics of the self-determination or, from a critical perspective, a politics of self-discipline. Critical social science has been roundly critical of Maslow’s discourse on needs (Knights & Willmott, 1974/5; Cullen, 1994; 1997; Townley, 1995). The key points here is that Maslow’s hierarchy lacks an appreciation of identity as a political ‘product’ (Cruikshank, 1993). While Maslow himself was circumspect on such issues, the implications and extension of his work seemingly supports a liberal political position and the reading of economic, social and political issues as problems of personal growth. For example ‘the problem’ with a particular group of workers – women for example (Wilson, 1995) – is not their common political history of domination or exploitation, but rather ‘low self esteem’. And in work organizations the problem of particular people (recalcitrant professionals for instance) is not intimidating and authoritarian management practice, the intensification of work or poor working conditions, but rather an assumed lack of drive to satisfy intrinsic needs for selfactualisation and esteem.
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Maslow’s ‘common sense’ about the inherent nature of human being form, as Maslow hoped they would, a programme of reforms in both education and business fields. In the latter field Maslow’s practical psychology was popularised and dispersed via the human relations school of management as outlined in the 1960s by Douglas McGregor particular through his book ‘The Human Side of Enterprise’ (McGregor,1960). McGregor’s famous ‘theory Y’ recommends that organizations create conditions where members ‘can achieve their own goals best by directing their efforts toward the success of the enterprise’ (1960:49). He grounded this on the assumption that the most significant of rewards for people are those associated with ‘ the satisfaction of the ego and self-actualisation’. McGregor also assumed in concert with Maslow that The capacity to exercise a relatively high degree of imagination, ingenuity and creativity in the solution of organizational problems is widely, not narrowly, distributed in the population. (1960:47–48) While a number of writers suggest that ‘inside’ work organizations such prescriptions continue to be broadly subordinate to the capitalist imperatives for economic growth, cost reduction and task achievement (Hollway, 1991; Watson, 1994), they nevertheless have become firmly established as part of the official doctrine of human resource management, and popular theorizing around the organization of work (Drucker, 1985; Peters, 1997; Senge, 1990). However, as suggested above, the Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis of creativity is not concerned directly with the way the social relations of capitalist production reconfigures ‘creativity’ based on humanist psychology’s ‘parable’ of universal human growth and potential. Rather than suggest some kind of play between the truth of capitalist appropriation and the un-truth about ‘creativity’ in work organizations, the emphasis here is on the politics of the discursive formation around ‘creativity’. ‘Creativity’ in this discursive formation is not simply the practices of organization, but rather a wider set of prescriptions operating in a number of fields that become an individualized set of practices by which managers and workers generally work on them/ourselves (Rose & Miller, 1990; Rose, 1996). Rather than regard creativity as spontaneous, collective, rebellious and chaotic, ‘creativity’ (note quote marks) is configured as sets of individualised performable dispositions by which we come to know and work-on ourselves (Townley, 1994; 1995) – in the pursuit of material and symbolic rewards.
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There are numerous examples from the organizational change and development literature particularly that might be drawn upon to show how discursive formation around ‘creativity’ contributes to commonknowledge about the ‘creative manager’ and other employees. In broad terms these elaborate and prescribe how to perform ‘creativity’ in the workplace. I offer one example here from the prescriptive literature. Similar advice can be found in the prescriptive work by Kao (1996), Miller (1999) and West and Farr (1990) and much of the empirical literature, in the positivist tradition, includes similar advice as it takes up the objectives and subject positions from the discursive formation around ‘creativity’, and attempts to more precisely map the relations between these (see for example Therney & Farmer, 1999; Oldham & Cummings, 1996). The key features of Karl Albrecht’s The Creative Corporation (1987:66–67) are neatly summarized in the following quote: The way to join the ranks of the creative, innovative thinkers is to find out what they do and then imitate them. In other words, by adopting the behaviours of creativity, you become more creative. That’s all there is to it. . . . There are five basic characteristics that make the difference for innovative and creative thinking. We all have these characteristics to some extent, but the great thinkers of the world really have them. They have made these attitudes and habits of thought a basic part of their approach to living. I’ll explain each one in detail in the chapters that follow: they are: 1. Mental Flexibility. 2. Option thinking. 3. Big-picture thinking. 4. Skill in explaining and selling ideas. 5. Intellectual courage. The book’s chapters go on to discuss each of these five characteristics in a familiar fashion. Each uses popularised stories of well know creative people to exemplify the characteristic, e.g. Edison’s light filament trial and error process is an example of intellectual courage and persistence. Each chapter then provides sets of helpful hints on how to produce the particular behaviour. For instance, chapters provide catalogues of normative mental and verbal exercises aimed at, among other things, broadening one’s conceptual universe and dealing with the idea crushing comments of the workplace bully. The book also provides at outline of various forms of creativity training, and finishes with a ‘who’s who’ of the creativity consulting business that includes, as we might expect, the firm ‘Karl Albrecht and Associates’. The book, in both form and prescription, is a useful example of
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the discursive formation surrounding ‘creativity’ at work. Far from being ‘creative’ in Lawrence’s terms, the book offers readers the normative elaboration of ‘creativity’ as the performance of a ‘creative’ self or identity. This can be acquired through private study, through group intervention and mimesis (copying ‘creative’ behaviour), and through ‘creativity’ training and reward system changes.
Critically Reading ‘creativity’ as an economy of identity Given the approach sketched out above, how can we make sense of the presentation and presence of Steve Jobs in the stories that began this paper? The approach leads to a critique of the devices (of visibility for instance) and the practices (for example forms of language and dress) that attempt to constitute particular forms of identity e.g. ‘creative selves’, and how these are dispersed, modelled and imitated. It leads, in the critical tradition, to a discussion of the interdependence of capitalism and processes of identity production; what might be termed the economy of identity (Laclau, 1994; Knights & Willmott, 1989; Willmott, 1996). Before concluding with a short discussion of the implications of this approach I want to firstly summarize the discussion above and link it to Jobs example. The methodological position briefly sketched above involves us in a reading of the world as constituted via discursive formations (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985; Hall, 1997; Miller & Rose, 1990). It assumes reality is realized discursively in the first instance. We cannot know and enact or articulate the world without such formations. As a consequence traditional assumptions about the nature of power and the stability of such entities as individuals and the organizations are questioned. Through this methodological move we become concerned with the practices and prescriptions around creativity as they attempt to normalize features of the world in particular ways e.g. as attributes of ‘creativity’ or ‘creative people’. We become aware, for instance, of the normalizing power of naming and ascription as a material practice. Describing people as ‘creative’ rather than say ‘bizarre’ or ‘depraved’ or ‘rebellious’ or ‘chaotic’ is a function of discourse, and not, directly, of the features of the person themselves. From this we begin to explore multiple sites and processes which are ‘at work’ on us as situated users of discursive formations. For example we become aware of the intensive presentation and
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scrutiny of the performances of those presented as ‘creative’ (in academic texts, in advertising and the media generally) and the practices that they ascribe and embody for us for imitation and inclusion in organizational routines. For instance appraisal interviews, ‘team’ building events and problem solving meetings may require us to speak about ourselves as ‘creative managers’ and to draw appropriate discursive resources provided by the formation surrounding ‘creativity’. The notion of an economy of identity involves us in this more intensive reading of relations between various forms of available knowledge, and capitalist processes. It helps us understand how communicative practices prepare the ground, so to speak, and are deeply involved in the formation of capitalist relations of production, distribution and exchange. We might argue that in the current era identification with, or fetishisation of, ‘creative selves’ – such as those attributed to Steve Jobs – are an aspect of the development of capitalist relations. The descriptions of Steve Jobs quoted above are not simply ideological practices demanded by his corporate backer. They are part of broader ‘ideological’ practices that surround the production and distribution of desired and ascribed forms of self and ways of being. Such identities also of course take on the form of commodities as they are enhanced and exchanged via the publishing, conference and consultancy industries (Quitner, 2001). And, of course, Apple Computers inevitably sees the importance to its interests via these processes. But what distributes Jobs’ performance across newspapers, magazines and television is not solely these collective interests. ‘Jobs’ and others that enact this ‘creative self’ are not simply fetishized commodities. They are positions established by and propelled by a broader discursive formation around ‘creativity’. This includes academic knowledge production and political action by states, corporations and other authorities involved in producing forms of what Foucault termed governmentality (Dean, 1999; Burchell et al., 1991; Rose, 1996) that accord with neo-liberal political agendas. ‘Governmentality’ refers to the complex form of modern political power that includes both forms of supervision and attempts to transmit forms of rationality (about health, wealth, education etc.) to the population as forms of self-hood that align with broader political economic processes. It is an appreciation of this broader economy of identity that helps us, I would argue, to better understand the place of ‘creativity’, and the production of the ‘creative manager’ for instance, in the changing character of work
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and work organizations in contemporary capitalist economies.
Concluding Points – the effects of ‘creativity’ It is perhaps unremarkable to argue that identity and self-hood are central processes in the reproduction of contemporary capitalism. This is not however a reductive argument that provides a means of forgetting that capitalist relations are engaged in the search for, realization and appropriation of exchange value. It is a means of drawing closer attention to the intermeshing of the regulatory production of ‘self-hood’, and the production and distribution and exchange of goods and services as a broader economy of identity. Yet it is worth noting, by way of a short conclusion here, some of the debilitating effects of this interdependence. If economic and political relations are played out in the current period through the requirement that workers perform themselves as particular identities, then the debilitating effects of this are likely to differ from those traditionally associated with workplace politics i.e. ‘exploitation’ and ‘oppression’. Again this is not to suggest that exploitation and domination are not features of contemporary workplaces. Rather it is to draw attention to the effects of subjection as a mode by which the intensification and exploitation of available labour is attempted and variably achieved. While the prescriptive literature provides resources on how to perform appropriate workplace identities, including advice on performing ‘creatively’, some of the critical empirical literature identifies the debilitating and destructive effects of these (Collinson & Collinson, 1997; Hochschild, 2001). There is little doubt that the thorough performance of ascribed workplace identities, as a ‘creative manager’ for instance, can lead to what is described in lay discourse as workaholism, or in sociological discourse as compulsive workplace presentism (Collinson & Collinson, 1997), and to tensions and destructive conflict in relations between home and work (Hochschild, 2001). The key problem here is that the prized workplace subject ascribed and performed as ‘flexible’, ‘entrepreneurial’ and ‘creative’ has few boundaries. It is as if, as Stuart Hall notes in his review of Thatcherism (1993:15), ‘You have to take the whole organization home with you every night, go to bed thinking about it, wake up at 7am and ask: ‘Why aren’t I at work’. The workplace has been ‘moved’ in other words. It has become a more central part of the performance of
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oneself. The identities provided by the discursive formation around ‘creativity’ are part of a broader challenge to the bureaucratic positioning of the workplace within variably rigid time, space and conduct boundaries. What is clear is that the practices performed by this creative, flexible and entrepreneurial subject can have certainly antagonistic and potentially destructive effects on other identities including those located and performed outside of ‘work’. It is these, and how they are an effect of the elaboration of workplaces power relations in rejuvenated forms, that is the target of the critical social science tradition.
References Albrecht, K. (1987) The Creative Corporation. Dow Jones-Irwin, Homewood, Illinois, US. Alvesson, M. and Willmott, H. (1996), Making Sense of Management, London: Sage. Amabile T. M., Conti, R., Coon, H., Lazenby, J. and Herron, M. (1996) Assessing the work environment for creativity. Academy of Management Journal, 39, 1154–84. Amabile, T. M. (1997) Motivating Creativity in Organizations: On Doing what you love and loving what you do. California Management Review, 40, 39–58. Amabile, T. M. (1983) The Social Psychology of Creativity. New York: Springer-Verlag. Bennis, W. and Biederman, P.W. (1997) Organizing Genius, the Secrets of Creative Collaboration. Brealey Publishing, London. Burchell G., Gordon, C. and Miller, P. (eds.) (1992) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Harvester, London. Burrell G. (1996) Normal Science, Paradigms, Metaphors, Discourses and Genealogies of Analysis. In Clegg, S. et al. (eds) Handbook of Organization Studies. Sage, London pp. 642–658. Butler, J. (1997) The Psychic Life of Power, Theories of Subjection. University of Stanford, Standford. Casey, C. (1995) Work, Self and Society, After Industrialism. Routledge, London. Clapham, M. M. (2000) Employee Creativity: the role of leadership. The Academy of Management Executive, 14, 138–139. Collinson, D. and Collinson, M. (1997) Delayering Managers: Time-Space Surveillance And Its Gendered Effects. Organization, 4, 375–407. Cruikshank, B. (1993) Revolutions within: selfgovernment and self-esteem. Economy and Society, 22, 327–344.. Cullen, D. (1994) Feminism, management and selfactualisation. Gender, Work and Organization, 1, 123–137. Cullen, D. (1997) Maslow, Monkeys and Motivation Theory. Organization, 4, 355–373. Cummings, A. and Oldham, G.R. (1997) Enhancing Creativity: Managing Work Contexts for the High Potential Employee. California Management Review, 40, 22–38.
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Dean, M. (1999) Governmentality: Foucault, power and social structure. Sage, London. Deleuze G. (1988) Foucault, Athlone, London. Drazin, R., Glynn, M. A. and Kazanjian, R. K. (1999) Multilevel Theorizing About Creativity in Organizations: A Sense-Making Perspective. Academy of Management Review, 24, 286–307. Drucker, P. F. (1992) Managing for the Future. Butterworth, London. Du Gay, P. (1994) Colossal Immodesties and Hopeful Monsters: Pluralism and Organziational Control. Organization, 1, 125–148. Fay, B. (1987) Critical Social Science; liberation and its limits. Polity, Cambridge. Feldman, D. H., Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Gardner, H. (1994) Changing the World, A framework for the Study of Creativity. Praeger, Westport, Conn. Fillis, I. and McAuley, A. (2000) Modelling and Measuring Creativity at the Interface. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 8, 8–17. Foucault, M. (1972) The order of things. Tavistock, London. Foucault, M. (1977) Language, Counter-Member, Practice Selected Essays And Interviews By Michel Foucault. Blackwell, Oxford. Foucault M. (1983) The Subject and Power. In Dreyfus, H. L. and Rabinow, R. (eds) Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago University Press, Chicago pp. 208–266. Foucault, M. (1991) Discipline and Punish, The Birth of the Prison. Penguin, London. Gardner, H. (1993) Creating Minds. Basic Books, London. Gryskiewicz, R.E. (2000) Cashing in on Creativity at Work. Psychology Today, Sept–October, 62–65. Habermas, J. (1976) Communication and the Evolution of Society. Beacon Press, Boston, MA. Hall, S. (1993) Thatcherism Today. New Statesman & Society, November 26, 14–16. Hall, S. (ed.) (1997) Representation: cultural representations and signifying practices. Sage, London. Handy, C. (1999) The New Alchemists. Hutchinson, London. Hochschild, A. (2001) The time bind: when work becomes home and home becomes work. H. Holt, New York. Hollway, W. (1991) Work Psychology and Organizational Behaviour. Sage, London. Kanter, R. M. (1985) The Change Masters: Corporate Entrepreneurs At Work. Unwin Paperbacks, London. Kao, J. (1997) Jamming: the art and discipline of business creativity. Unwin Paperbacks, New York. Kao, J. (1989) Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Organization. Prentice, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Knights, D. and Willmott, H. (1974/5) Humanistic Social Science and the Theory of Needs. Interpersonal Development, 5, 213–223. Knights D. and Willmott, H. (1989) Power and Subjectivity in Work. Sociology, 23, 537–555. Kuhn, L. (1988) Handbook for Creative and Innovative Managers. McGraw-Hill, New York. Laclau, E. (ed.) (1994) The Making of political identities. Verso, London, New York. Lawrence, D. H. (1955) Chaos in Poetry. In Beal A. (ed.), Selected Literary Criticism. Heinemann, London.
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Leonard, D. A. and Swap W. C. (1999) When Sparks Fly Igniting Creativity in Groups. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Mass. Mardesich, J. (2000) Steve Jobs, iCEO, Valley Talk. Fortune.Com., January 6, Available at: www.path finder.com/fortune; Accessed November 12, 2000 Marsden R. and Townley, B. (1996) The Owl of Minerva: Reflections on Theory in Practice. In Clegg et al. (eds) Handbook of Organization Studies. Sage, London pp. 659–675. Maslow, A. H. (1968) Toward a Psychology of Being, 2nd edn. D. Van Norstrand, NY. Maslow, A. H. (1954) Motivation and Personality. Harper and Brothers, New York. Miller W. C. (1998) Flash of Brilliance; Inspiring Creativity where you work. Mass: Perseus, Reading. Miller, P. and O’Leary, T. (1987) Accounting and the Construction of the governable person. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 12, 235–66. Miller, P. and Rose, N. (1990) Governing economic life. Economy and Society, 19, 1–31. McDowell, L. and Court, G. (1994) Performing work: bodily representations in merchant banks. Environment and Planning D: society and space, 12, 727–750. McGregor, D. (1960) The Human Side of Enterprise. McGraw-Hill, NY. McKinlay, A. and Starkey, K. (eds) (1998) Foucault, Management and Organization Theory, From Panopticon to Technologies of the Self. Sage, London. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (1996) Employment and Growth in the Knowlege-based Economy. OECD, Paris. Oldham, G. R. and Cummings, A. (1996) Employee Creativity: Personal and Contextual Factors at Work. Academy of Management Journal 39, 607–634. Oremland, J. D. (1997) The Origins and Psychodynamics of Creativity: A Psychoanalytic Perspective. International Universities Press, Madison, Conn, USA. Peters, T. (1997) The Circle of Innovation: You Can’t Shrink Your Way to Greatness. Hodder and Stoughton London. Quittner, J. (2001) Apple’s New Core. Time, January 14, 38–44 (cover story) Available at: http://www.time.com/time/covers/11010 20114/index.html (accessed January 15, 2002). Rapley, M. (1998) Creativity. British Journal of Aesthetics, 38, 265–278. Reed, M. I. (1997) In praise of duality and dualism: Rethinking agency and structure in organizational analysis. Organization Studies, 18, 21–42. Rickards, T. (1999) Creativity and the Management of Change. Blackwell, London. Rose N. (1996) Identity, Geneology, History. In Hall, S. and Du Gay, P. (eds) Questions of Cultural Identity. Sage, London pp. 128–150. Schlender, E. (2000) Steve Jobs’ Apple Gets Way Cooler. Fortune, 141, 66–72. Senge, P. (1990) The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organziation. Doubleday, NY. Sternberg, R.J. and O’Hara, L. and Lubart, T. I. (1997) Creativity as Investment. California Management Review, 40, 8–21.
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Therney, P. and Farmer, S. (1999) An Examination of Leadership and Employee Creativity: the Relevance of Traits and Relationships. Personnel Psychology, 52, 591–621. Townley, B. (1994) Reframing human resource management. Sage, London. Townley, B. (1995) Know-Thyself, self-awareness, self-formation and managing. Organization, 2, 271–289. Wallace, D. B. and Gruber, H. E. (1989) Creative People at Work; Twelve Cognitive Case Studies. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Watson, T. (1994) In Search of Management, Culture, Chaos and Control in Managerial Work. Routledge, London. West, M. and Farr, J. (1990) Innovation and Creativity at work; psychological and organizational strategies. Wiley, Chichester, UK.
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Wilson, F. (1995) Organizational Behaviour and Gender. McGraw-Hill, London, New York. Wolfe, T. (ed.) (1975) The New Journalism. Picador, New York. Willmott, H. (1997) Rethinking Management and Managerial Work: Capitalism, Control and Subjectivity. Human Relations, 50, 1329–1359.
Craig Prichard is a senior lecturer in the Department of Management at Massey University, New Zealand
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Art, Work and Art Work Donncha Kavanagh, Clodagh O’Brien and Maurice Linnane This paper introduces a novel method for investigating the interfaces between art work and managerial work in the creative industries. The method, which we are calling dispraxis, seeks to transcend the traditional divisions between the academic world and the world of practice. This particular dispraxis is a structured, iterative dialogue between an academic, a manager, and an artist on the themes identified in the call for papers. In this dispraxis the following four themes were elicited. The first theme centred on the explosion of management discourse into the creative industries. The second theme explored the difference between the creative industries and ‘normal’ business and introduced the metaphor of chelation to describe the primary need to manage and protect safe spaces for creativity to happen. The third theme was money and this theme explored how art is valued and funded, especially in a postmodern world where the notion of authenticity and Taste have been problematised. The fourth theme discussed how art is routinely identified as the highest expression of human achievement and yet is largely ignored in commercial discourse. One explanation for this is to consider artistic work as part of the abject. The metaphor of origami is used to gather together the various themes explored in the dispraxis.
Answering the Call
T
his paper was originally presented at the Second Critical Management Conference in the ‘Management of Creativity and the Creative Industries’ stream. That stream’s call for papers asked contributors to focus on the (contested and unruly) interfaces (a) in the Creative Industries, (b) in the Management of Creativity – especially between art work and managerial work – and (c) between analysis and practice, especially in the context of the creative industries. In particular, contributors were exhorted to use creative and hybrid approaches in studying these interfaces. This is important because these interfaces are socially constructed and because the favoured epistemologies and methods of academic practice may merely re-inscribe existing categorical distinctions rather than illuminate or modify them. For instance, the very notion of ‘studying boundaries’ is itself invested with a spectatorial epistemology through which subjects and objects are constituted – such as the analyst and practitioner – which in turn creates a prejudice towards some methodologies and excludes others. Moreover, the use of conventional methods means that the analyst – necessarily, if not intentionally – interprets, # Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002. 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
mediates, translates, and even silences the practitioner’s voice in the discourse about practice. Put another way, the traditional division between theory and practice, while it may be usefully retained for many purposes, should not be seen as primordial or essential, nor should we forget that this division is invested with a particular set of prescribed roles and power asymmetries that may not always be worth perpetuating. It seems especially important in an undertheorised context such as the creative industries, where there is the obvious danger that academics will merely cloak the empirical world with their own favoured theoretical carapace.
Introducing Dispraxis This paper introduces and uses a particular methodology, which we are calling dispraxis – coined from the words discourse and praxis – that seeks to transcend the traditional divisions between the academic world and the world of practice in a way that other micro approaches do not. Our objective is not to re-present the world of practice, or to analyse it in the conventional sense, but to let the practitioner and
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academic speak together and to represent their conversation together. Unlike action research, this approach is not focused on a parochial problem; rather, it is a forum wherein the academic and the practitioner can speak and debate, on an equal footing, about the more general issues and themes relating to their interacting worlds. And this, indeed, is the point: because unlike the natural sciences, the ‘double hermeneutic’ of the social world ensures that theory and practice are always and necessarily interpenetrating, reflexively informing, and changing one another. Thus, dispraxis is a focused conversation between a practitioner and an academic that, in the end, may reach the point where the appellations ‘practitioner’ and ‘academic’ become redundant, or at least not self-evident. By deliberately colliding and conjoining quite different frames of meaning (Goffman, 1974, 1986), dispraxis allows us to explore and reflect on the ongoing struggle over meaning that occurs within and at the boundaries of these frames. At the same time it differs from conventional forms of frame analysis in that the analyst’s role is intentionally subverted and reflexively displaced. The particular dispraxis that this paper documents is an extended dialogue between an academic, a manager, and an artist. The academic (DK) researches in the fields of management and organisation studies; the manager (COB) is currently general manager of the Ark, a cultural centre for children in Dublin, and has previously held senior marketing positions in the Irish pharmaceutical sector; and the artist (ML) has worked on both the creative and business sides of multi-media production. Dispraxis is based on a method originally developed by Brownlie and Desmond (1996). They used metaphors from the game of baseball to describe their approach and we have followed (and extended) their nomenclature. Essentially, dispraxis involves four steps that are repeated iteratively. First, one person asks one of the other two contributors a question, relating to the theme. We call this the pitch. The second person then responds to this question (the bat). The third person then comments on both the question and response (the catch). Finally, the person who originally asked the question makes a comment on the previous bat and catch (the retrieve). Together, the pitch, bat, catch and retrieve constitute an innings. After the first innings, it becomes the turn of another contributor to make their ‘pitch’. The cycle would then continue until the exhaustion, or, in keeping with the baseball metaphor, until nine innings have been completed. The resulting dialogue, which is
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done via e-mail, is then jointly edited and structured according to the most salient themes that emerged. Our original intention was that the bat, catch and retrieve would each consist of about 300 to 500 words and that they would occur in strict sequence, as would the innings. In practice, it was a bit messier than that. The method can certainly be criticised and we will discuss some of its limitations towards the end of the paper. Nevertheless, it does involve the Other in a quite unique way. Moreover, maybe the important issue in research is not how it was done, nor what question was addressed, nor what was said, but who said what and who remained silent. If this is the case, then dispraxis certainly offers a potent form of researching not only the creative industries, but also other contexts and social phenomena.
Making the pitch Since this paper is as much about the method used as the ‘findings’ we are including as much of the raw ‘data’ as possible so as to give you an understanding of how dispraxis works in practice. In the following table we list the various questions (pitches) that were asked. (The actual questions did not quite follow the order shown in some cases a number of questions were included in a single pitch). Pitch 1: What’s different about ’management’ and ’managing’ in the creative industries, based on your experience? [DK] Pitch 2: Do you believe that the different nature of organisations working within the creative industries affects how they’re managed, with particular reference to the high concentration of women in management in the Creative Industries? [COB] Pitch 3: If a book is a bad book does it matter if it gets burnt? [ML] Pitch 4: Now that we’re about half-way through the process, what do you think of it (the process, that is) and would you have any suggestions for improving it? [DK] Pitch 5: Do you believe that the different nature of organisations working within the creative industries affects how they’re managed, with particular reference to (a) the high degree of ’R&D’ activity without
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the real ability to test-market; and (b) the fact that managing in the creative industries is often like serially managing a high number of short-term start-ups (e.g. Each different production / artistic project is finite)? [COB] Pitch 6: Maurice, why are you so antagonised by the language I use and would you not agree that those functions – like R&D, marketing, etc. – no matter what you call them, are necessary? I also want to ask why one can’t ‘manage’ a creative process, but that’s maybe two questions [COB] In formulating our questions, the three of us were very much guided by the ‘call for papers’ and the stream’s overall theme. So, for instance, the first pitch more or less abbreviated an underlying question that ran through the call. Clodagh’s various pitches followed in this vein by raising what she saw as issues and logics that distinguished the creative industries from other ‘normal’ industries. However, Maurice’s mischievous pitch (pitch 3) sought to steer things in another direction.
‘Analysis’ Although the purpose of dispraxis is to move us away from the ways of thinking, talking, writing, and doing that are hegemonic in academia, this is at best only marginally achieved. We are, after all, submitting a paper to an academic journal rather than a magazine article and our audience is primarily academics. Thus, we have spoken a good deal about our ‘method’ and its merits, the ‘data’ that it produces, and now how we are going to ‘analyse’ the data. Scare quotes might indicate a degree of scepticism about the vocabulary, but the vocabulary of academic research, with all its positivist heritage, is retained. This concern with method and the vocabulary of management is not indulgent. Even a cursory examination of the data – the emails that were produced by the dispraxis – shows a considerable amount of what we might call paradigm confusion. We may have engaged in the exercise as a joint endeavour, but this barely hides the profound insecurity and unease that befell each of us as we collided with one another’s alien worlds. Here, for instance, is a selection of extracts from the emails:
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‘having already established that i am without doubt the weakest link let me cement that claim with my first question . . . ’ [ML] ‘I’m wondering why you’re asking this question.’ [DK] ‘I’m not sure what language to use at this stage . . . ’ [COB] ‘The one part of Donnacha’s answer I did understand is also possibly very relevant . . . ’ [ML] ‘I think my last bat may have been a strike!’ [DK] ‘I am so singularly unqualified to answer this question on so many different levels it makes me dizzy.’ [ML] ‘I don’t understand the relevance of the question and I certainly don’t understand the complexity of the answer and I’m left wondering if this makes me a sexist or a moron or both.’ [ML] Of course, this confusion is maybe not surprising. It is well-known, for instance, that the cabalistic language of academics makes their writings and conversations practically impenetrable to others. What is surprising, however, is that our communal perplexity did not easily map onto an academic-practitioner division. Instead, we each found it difficult to grapple with, never mind understand, the other’s worldview and language. Maurice, for instance, seemed to be just as confused by Clodagh’s questions and terms as he was about Donncha’s answers. In turn, Donncha’s indeterminate answers probably demonstrated his unwillingness or inability to engage with the Other – notwithstanding his protestations to the contrary. In the remainder of the paper, we will discuss what we consider the four most important topics that emerged from the dispraxis.
Theme 1: The Exploding/Imploding World of Management In our introduction to this paper, we suggested that dispraxis might bring us to a point where the appellations ‘practitioner’ and ‘academic’ would become redundant or at least not selfevident. In reality, the practitioner-academic boundary proved to be less of an issue. Instead, the most troublesome boundary was the one around the domain of ‘management’. As Maurice put it at one point, ‘One major part of the problem is that we still have no
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definition of what management is, or at least what level of management interests us.’ Likewise, Clodagh concurred that ‘we need to think about the word ‘‘manage’’’. In some respects, management as a discourse is exploding, colonising one domain after another, and therefore its expansion into the creative industries is predictable, inevitable, and inexorable. Clodagh, for instance, takes ‘a very traditional definition [of management] incorporating all the relevant functions: vision; financial; human; strategic; resource; marketing/sales; production; organisational etc.’ From Clodagh’s point of view: management in the creative industries has many common areas with that in industry generally. Of particular importance in managing within the creative sector would be the following areas of management: vision, financial, HR, Production and resource managent. [COB] At the same time, she believes that ‘managing within the creative industries is an extremely complex process by comparison to general industry.’ The reason why this is so, according to Clodagh, is because creative industry ‘at its heart is a high-risk, pure R&D process in the commissioning and designing of work.’ For Clodagh, the language of management seems to enable her to understand her world. She speaks of ‘functions,’ ‘HR,’ ‘R&D,’ ‘resource management,’ ‘production,’ and ‘startups’. And while she recognises the unique attributes of the creative industries, these differences are cast within management’s linguistic architecture: ‘the producers are ‘‘artists’’’ – and conversely the artists are ‘producers’ – and she speaks about ‘understanding and valuing the product of the creative industries.’ Elsewhere she describes the creative process as follows: ‘Presuming this R&D process is fertile, the product then has to be taken through a full range of disciplines including production and direction, financing (often programme specific fundraising) and sales and marketing.’ [COB] Maurice, in contrast, is much more sceptical about management discourse. For him, ‘R & D in a creative world is another word for test marketing which is the very death knell of creativity. If they knew what they wanted they’d be looking at it all ready.’ (Clodagh subsequently pointed out that Maurice simply misunderstands what R&D means, but this in itself is important.) More fundamentally, he questions the value of marking a boundary between the management and creative activities: ‘Do you even recognise the management role of the editor on any given project over
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and above the creative role he/she also plays?’ Here, he makes the point forcefully: Derek ‘Bagwan’ Bell, harpist, composer and Chieftain, has a good line about all of this. As a musician his least favourite part of the process is the start/stop act of recording, ‘Music should flow out and away like a stream, not be truck-chopped up into little bits’, is his mantra. All this talk of areas of management . . . vision, financial, HR (the dreaded Human Resources), production and resource management, marketing etc. etc. to my mind falls neatly into the realm of truck-chopping. The less than appetising view from inside the sausage factory. This is industry terminology but there seems to be a great confusion in the arts in Ireland as to what the ‘industry’ actually is. Is it the act of creation or the various systems that allow and pay for that creation? Is it the art or is it the Arts Council? Is it the film or is it the Film Board? Of course, this leaves Maurice open to claims that he is, as Donncha put it, ‘a desperate Romantic’. Donncha’s point is that Maurice’s pining for a pure space for the creative genius is little more than naı¨ve nostalgia. Art – or more precisely the creative process – today is not the same as it was in the early 19th century. We can never lay claim to an essential definition of what ‘art’ is – no more than we can with management – which is why any attempt to reclaim a ‘pure’ notion of ‘art’ is doomed to fail. Two theoretical contributions are worth mentioning here. First, there is Adorno’s ([1944] 1991) insight from 1944: that leisure and ‘art’ have been subjected to the same technologies of rationalisation and representation that had, by then, already transformed production into mass production. From Adorno’s point of view, domination by instrumental reason is a pervasive, subtle and insidious ideology that permeates not only organisational life in the form of ‘management discourse’, but also penetrates into the realms of entertainment, leisure, and art. Second is Donna Haraway’s ([1985] 1991) more recent contribution on cyborgs and gender. Haraway’s argument is that we live in a messy world – a world of cyborgs in her language – and we should abandon attempts to identify, reclaim or fix pure categories of thought, such as ‘woman’, ‘technology’, ‘culture’, ‘self’, ‘nationhood’, ‘natural’, ‘artificial’. And ‘art’. Art is an artifice. Or, to paraphrase Yeats, Romantic Art is dead and gone. In any event, Maurice knows that his appeal to the rhetoric of Romanticism is, on its own, inadequate:
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‘You can’t manage a creative process, you might as well dedicate your life to herding mice at a crossroads; but what you can do is light the blue touch paper and stand back. Hmm. Dream on, Maurice. Falling to earth off my Utopian high horse I will happily cede that you can manage the environment in which creativity at any level and in any discipline can flourish.’ [ML] Maybe Maurice might have given the following answer to the first pitch: ‘that’s an interesting question, but I’m not interested in it’. In effect, this is the message running beneath his own question (pitch 3) – ‘If a book is a bad book does it matter if it gets burnt?’ In his retrieve, Maurice explained that he asked the question ‘because I wanted us to talk more about the mindset and less about the management.’ [ML]. For Maurice, the ‘management’ of art/creativity and the separation of artistic practice from management practice is not very helpful. The categories and distinctions that Clodagh finds so helpful, do not speak to his world or his way of seeing. This, then, is why we say that the discourse of management may be imploding in the very sector – the creative industries – where its recent explosion has just sent it. That said, Clodagh quite rightly argued that the language of management does map usefully on to the creative industries – there are people so we can talk about HR, there is a creative process so we can talk about R&D, etc. etc. The counter to this is that the discourse of management is a metanarrative, a big story that can seem to ‘work’ in virtually every context (akin to Freudian theory, Marxist theory, etc.). If this is the case, then the challenge is to invent a new language that better fits the context. In other words to theorise. Clodagh sought to do this by arguing that while ‘management’ in what one might call ‘normal’ industries is centred on control, in the creative industries it is, for her, centrally about supporting and enabling the creative process. But one cannot easily ditch meaning, and this only highlights the urgent need for a new vocabulary to help us make better sense of this context.
Theme 2: Pigs ‘n Space Maurice’s understanding of ‘management’ is that it ‘is an exercise in restraint’. For him, this means that management is fundamentally at variance with creativity, since ‘True creativity cannot and should not be inhibited and the act of management is an imposition of inhibition’ [ML]. Building on this point,
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Maurice employed a brilliant metaphor from the pig processing industry: The creative process cannot be managed in the way that the food processing industry can be managed. In the one you start with a pig and end up with bag of rashers. In the other you can, very occasionally, begin with a sows ear and end up, if the Gods are truly smiling, with a silk purse. For Maurice all you can do is ‘manage the environment in which creativity at any level and in any discipline can flourish.’ This helped him pinpoint what, for him, is the essential difference between managing a rasher production process and managing a creative process: ‘So maybe that’s the difference – in one you manage the process and in the other you manage the space.’ Donncha picked up on this distinction in his contribution and related it to some earlier research he had done on film production projects. What’s remarkable about film production is that it is a highly structured process and a highly creative process. For instance, production is organised along functional lines with each function being led by a Head of Department. It is also highly unionised. Dayto-day production planning is done along military lines with call sheets specifying, down to the nearest quarter of an hour, when each character will be picked up from their accommodation, when they will be in wardrobe, make-up and when they will be on set. In addition, a complex network of management technologies operates to give the film producer a clear picture on cost and schedule performance. But at the heart of this managerial scaffolding is a creative space that is jealousy guarded. In other words, a militarylike machine ensures that actors etc. get to the set on time, dressed and made-up etc. but then an intimate and exclusive space is created around the actors and directors, where they could ‘do the unimaginable’, where they could ‘play’, ‘act’ and ‘escape’ from the mundane. Donncha introduced the metaphor of chelation to describe these protected spaces that are to be found in the interstices of the organisational scaffolding. (Chele is the Greek word for claw, and in chemistry the term chelation describes how a metal atom or ion, which one wants to protect, is surrounded by a larger molecule in a claw-like manner.) Another example of this practice of chelating – creating protected space – is what’s called a ‘first look’ deal in the film business, which are deals that the large studios have with actors, directors and producers. Crucially, what these deals create is space, temporally, spatially and
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economically. Here’s how Steve Norris, managing director of the film production company Enigma Productions, described these deals. The luxury of a housekeeping deal is that it helps us with that cost of running offices and salaries and the likes of that, and it allows the creative people to be more creative. Which is part of the intent – you don’t want people who should be spending their days or evenings scouring theatre looking for ideas to be worrying about overdrafts and how they are going to pay the telephone bill. In software design, which Donncha also studied, the same issue was also to the fore. Here, a manager talks about what happens in these multi-company, multi-site, multimanaged software projects. . . . the minute there is any sort of problem it’s at the top level, and there’s table banging and international phone calls and nobody has any time to think, nobody is in the position to sensibly sit down and discuss it because you’re under pressure all the time . . . Interestingly the construction industry, which is often seen as ‘low-tech’ or ‘no-tech’, has evolved its own set of practices to enable such ‘chelated spaces’ to be created and maintained. Donncha suggested that there are a number of interesting paradoxes running around these chelated spaces. First, film and software design projects involve a huge amount of networking and interacting, but the product of all this networking is the creation of a protected and almost isolated space. Thus, the first paradox is that isolation is the product of intensive networking. The second paradox is that management technologies – which give managers much of their legitimacy and power, may, if their operation violates chelated spaces, destroy that which is being ‘managed’. This maybe helps explain why there is so much confusion about management in the creative industries. The third paradox is to do with work and play. The creative industries involve an awful lot of serious work, but the objective of this ‘work’ is that some people should be able to ‘play’ – to ‘escape’ as it were. Clodagh concurred with the paradoxical view of managing creativity (which is itself probably an oxymoron). One has to organise – ‘otherwise the children won’t all turn up at the same time’ – and this often calls for a ‘militaristic’ approach. But this is purely to create that creative space, to serve the creators, who are, after all, ‘the most important cog’ [COB].
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Theme 3: Money Art costs money and artists often find it difficult to obtain enough money to allow them to practice art. At the organisational and industrial levels this dearth of money is also an issue that captivates attention so it was not surprising that it featured in this dispraxis. Here, is an extract from one of Clodagh’s contributions. Today, many arts and culturally based organisations are becoming increasingly aware of the need to become more ’commercial’ in adopting styles, theories and practices from regular industry, but do not have the resources. Indeed, in my area, working within a not-for-profit, the financial resourcing of the company takes up a huge amount of my time. Fund-raising is the order of the day and with many grantmaking bodies awarding annually, planning for the future becomes difficult. This could partly explain the inherent weakness in strategic management. [COB] Most creative organisations operate on restricted budgets and have insufficient resources. Their operational style is therefore very reactive. In today’s labour market where costs are so high, many people who might in the past have worked in the arts are choosing more lucrative options elsewhere. The creative industries, mostly, cannot compete and human resourcing is quickly becoming a big issue for the sector, in my experience. [COB] Maurice was just as concerned about the monetary side of his work and life: To be allowed to create the artist needs time, space and, horror of horrors, money. To get the money he or she needs to spend that time and fill that space with the act and effort of raising that money. In effect the life support system is strangling the patient. The old way of judging and funding doesn’t work or at the very least is totally inefficient. And if there isn’t an inordinate effort to maintain this status quo then nor is there a concerted effort to find a new way around the course. [ML] Donncha, however, referred to a recent article about W.B. Yeats and marketing by Stephen Brown (Aherne and Brown 2000). Brown argued that even though Yeats constantly complained about commerce – ‘fingers in the greasy till’ – he was a dab hand at selfpromotion and working the system to his own designs as well. Yeats, like Maurice and probably akin to many other artists, paraded
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the romantic image of the creative genius, left alone from the world. Yet he was, as Brown showed, ‘brilliant at marketing’. Moreover, art has always needed some form of funding structure and while it’s always easy to complain about whatever structures are currently in place, the ‘more difficult task is to imagine new funding mechanisms.’ [DK]. Maybe the first step in organising a new funding mechanism is to be able to articulate a good set of reasons as to why this funding is required. Allied to the rather obvious reason that creative work is inherently valuable – producing as it does a ‘social’ good – it is also, as Clodagh put it, a ‘high-risk, pure R&D process’ with very limited potential for ongoing return on investment. Clodagh also emphasised that the different nature of the creative industries had to be recognised. To be able to attract and retain adequate human resources to deliver on this package in a financially restrained environment is key to successful management in the creative industries and involves uniting permanent and sub-contracted individuals to be energised in pursuit of a common vision. This requires a grasp of a more ’ephemeral’ management style than traditional target and goal-setting which operates within the ’for profit’ world of general industry. [COB] For Clodagh, what is so different about the creative industries is that Taste is central, while in other contexts it is much less so. Here, Pierre Bourdieu ([1979] 1984) provides some interesting theoretical insights. Bourdieu argues that Taste plays a crucial role in maintaining social distinctions and shaping class identities. Although tastes may seem natural, universal and eternal to those who share them, alternative tastes, which might even be considered deviant by some, can seem just as ‘natural’ to their proponents. Thus, even though boundary lines between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ taste are routinely drawn and patrolled, they are always illusory. This feeling of ‘living on quicksand’ means that Taste is in perpetual crisis, invoking feelings of liminality, insecurity, and even death. This, perhaps, partly explains why Maurice is so concerned that the life support system would ‘strangle the patient’. It also possibly explains the general feelings of insecurity that ran throughout the dispraxis and maybe more generally the insecurity that we tend to find in the creative industries. This brings us back in some ways to Maurice’s enigmatic question about book burning. As he explained, the
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Art sucks most when society’s having a party. Art needs an edge to live on and the price of your telecom shares isn’t really edgy enough I don’t think. The great Chinese curse, ‘May you live in interesting times’, springs to mind here. No Spanish civil war – ‘no Guernica’ etc. etc. The greatest pleasure coming as it does not from the absence of pain but from the release from pain. I don’t know what all this means. Ask God. Later in the same contribution he explained that the reason he asked the question was ‘Because I was attempting in a cack handed way to lead us into the territory of selling the arts to people who consider it all a luxury we can ill afford while there are kids sleeping on the streets.’ [ML] And at the end of this contribution he wondered: ‘Maybe a better question would have been, ‘What do you do when having taught a man to read you find him reading the Sun?’ In essence, Maurice is questioning the earlier assertion that creative work is inherently valuable, which raises more profound questions about the need to fund it. As he put it himself, Art is a precious thing – at its best it can embrace and enhance, at its worst it can at least decorate. It is to be cherished and I believe it deserves to be nourished. But it must also and always be accountable to its audience. Art without accountability can quickly veer towards indulgence. [ML] Likewise, Donncha had this to say on the issue: What struck me about the Irish film industry was how many people within it bought into an artistic-commercial dichotomy: if a film was ‘commercial’ then it wasn’t ‘artistic’ and if it was ‘artistic’ it would not be ‘commercial.’ And if a film lost money then ergo it was ‘artistic’. I was always uneasy about this argument. That said, it’s difficult to avoid the art-commerce (or art-accountability) axis; maybe all one can do is not be blinded by it. One option is the elitist model: allow an elite to dictate what should be considered ‘art’. Of course, the ideology of elitism is not fashionable in liberal democracies – even if, paradoxically, it is pervasive in practice. [DK] On this question, Donncha referred to a recent interview with Jean Baudrillard in the Irish times: In last Saturday’s Irish Times there was an interview with Jean Baudrillard, in which he spoke about the contemporary world
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where ‘You cannot judge; you’re inside it. What is lost, what is disappearing, is secrecy. Everything has to be rendered visible. Nothing exists unless it is hypervisible . . . We no longer need meaning. Things function. Full stop’. His worry is that we’re living in a meaningless, tasteless, valueless, world, where nothing matters (in more ways that one). So maybe your worry about the burning of bad books is really a metaphor for your larger worry about the abandonment of meaning and value? How can we have authentic Taste in an inauthentic, meaningless world?
Theme 4: Art and the Abject Art and creativity are routinely identified as the highest expression of human achievement. Paradoxically, producers of art – both individuals and organisations – tend to be ignored in commercial discourse. This, at least, is Clodagh’s experience. In her opinion, she and other ‘managers’ in the creative industries are not really considered to be ‘managers’ in an ‘industry’ at all, in for example, dealings with banks, etc. In other words, producers of art are, or at least feel they are, alienated from the practice of business, and, in the extreme, creative organisations are often not seen as being businesses at all. The phenomenon whereby business appears to treat art as its Other suggests interesting theoretical parallels between art work and sex work, as recently explored by Brewis and Linstead (2000). For instance, it was interesting that Clodagh routinely referred to other industries, such as the pharmaceutical and creative industries as ‘normal’, suggesting that the creative industries are in some sense ‘abnormal’. The concept of the abject captures the idea that in human selfunderstanding there is always some aspect of the self, some aspect of our desire or our past experiences, that we find unacceptable. We seek, with greater or lesser success, to reject this unacceptable part of the self but it always comes back to haunt us and often draws us towards it in fascination. Alternatively, Clodagh’s feeling of alienation may be due to her gender and this is implicit in one of her pitches. However, both Donncha and Maurice were somewhat uneasy about the assumption that underpinned Clodagh’s question (maybe because they’re both men!). Donncha, for instance, observed that it was worth making a distinction between (a) the high concentration of women in the cre-
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ative industries, and (b) the high concentration of women *in management* in the creative industries. We need to be careful that we don’t attribute causality to the latter when maybe the former (or some other factor) is the real driver of difference. [DK] The lower percentage of women in management in other industries may be because MNCs are more of a feature in these ‘other’ industries, and MNCs, perhaps, have a more robust glass ceiling than the creative industries. In other words, maybe the relative dearth of MNCs in the Irish creative industries is what is most salient. Donncha speculated that Clodagh’s three questions (pitches 2, 4, and 6) were related because the issue of ‘time’ runs across the three questions. Women’s time is different to men’s time (men don’t talk about the ‘clock ticking’, and women’s time is punctuated by menstrual cycles, pregnancy, childbirth, etc). Likewise, R&D doesn’t follow the neat ticktock process that is the hallmark of the bureaucratic machine – instead it goes in jumps and starts, stalls and stops, then sprints. Similarly, a series of short-term start-ups is characterised by temporal discontinuities: when a project begins or ends so does its own local sense of ‘time’ (i.e. the collective understanding of the meanings of the past, present and future and the relevant rhythms of work). In other words, the linking hypothesis is that women’s ‘disjunctured temporality’ might be suited to R&D and startup/projectised contexts while the more masculine ‘tick tock’ temporality is suited to the bureaucratic machine. In short, if Fordism constituted a ‘masculine’ temporality – and was therefore more suited to men – then post-Fordism is constituted by a ‘feminine’ temporality. Maurice partly agreed and noted that ‘it is possible to work on a very full time basis in the arts while only putting in what might appear to other industries to be part-time hours.’ [ML]
Reflections In this section we will begin by discussing how his particular instance of dispraxis has contributed to our understanding of the web of textual relationships between Culture and Industry, and the Arts and Management before concluding with some remarks on methodological issues.
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For us, origami provides a powerful metaphor that synthesises the meta-thematic issues raised in the dispraxis. Origami is the Japanese art of folding objects out of paper without cutting, pasting or decorating. Repeatedly, the origami artisan is faced with the decision of where to make the next fold, and, in turn, this fold conjugates two planes of paper. For us, a specific fold represents a creative act, the indeterminate moment of creativity. Alternatively, we can think of the difference between an origami object’s folds and flat planes in terms of Kermode’s (1967: 45) temporal distinction between kairos and chronos. Kairos (the fold) is a moment of crisis, a point in time filled with significance, charged with a meaning derived from its relation to the end, while chronos (represented by the flat planes) is the interval between states of crisis, ‘passing time’ or ‘waiting time’ or what Deleuze and Guattari term the meanwhile (entretemps – between times). In terms of a cinematographic metaphor, chronos is the dark strip between the frames of the film, which is still necessary for the film to be viewed and for time to pass. Each fold in origami conjoins two planes of paper and this connection represents, for us, Koestler’s (1975) notion of ‘bisociative’ thinking – the creative leap that connects previously unconnected frames of reference. Our own creative contribution, our own fold as it were, is to introduce and use dispraxis to conjoin two different specialisms or frames of reference, the ‘Arts’ and ‘Management’. Out of this conjunction – transgression even – a creative space emerges where categories are commingled, where meaning is contested, and where only hybrid notions seem appropriate. The origami metaphor also vividly illustrates the dialectical relationship between structure and agency, in other words the interpenetration and interdependency of these core concepts. Books on origami show us that there is always the possibility of design, of teleology, while the art of origami highlights the actuality of individuality and the emergent nature of processes and structures. Thus, in the tradition of Bergson and others, we reject teleological theories and deterministic models that do not include the possibility of emergence. Yet, the metaphor also reminds us that while past actions can constrain us, one can always seek to impose/ create an end (even if we also know that outcomes often escape intentions). The richness of the metaphor is that it encapsulates some of the paradoxes explored in our dispraxis. Origami objects may be quite robust and easily retain their shape; paradoxically, they are also very fragile and are
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often discarded once completed. Similarly, the structure within which creative acts takes place are both compelling and constraining; there is a strong ‘path-dependency’ phenomenon that cannot be ignored. At the same time, the metaphor avoids over-determinancy, since a variety of final objects can be made from the same intermediate basic structure. For example, a Flapping Bird, a Praying Moor, a Rabbit, a Fish, a Lamp, or a Squirrel can all be constructed out of the Bird Base. Moreover, even small changes in the nature or sequence of folds, particularly the initial folds, can result in totally different objects. Spinning away from these meta-thematic issues, we will conclude the paper by briefly reflecting on some methodological issues. Our dispraxis project was quite experimental and therefore any conclusions must be provisional. One lesson that we learned was that just as the most potent ideas often emerge towards the end of brainstorming sessions – after the rather obvious ideas have been elicited and abandoned – a few initial practice rounds of the dispraxis can help to ‘bed things in’. The approach is not without its drawbacks. For instance, it makes no claim that it is presenting the Truth about the world, and positivist researchers would most likely dismiss it for this. While one should not necessarily be in the thrall of positivists, one should also be concerned about the tendency towards self-indulgence that this approach may inspire. Moreover, there is the added danger that the approach may be used to present opinion and prejudice as profundity. An important bulwark against this is to choose the members of the dispraxis carefully and to forestall such tendencies whenever necessary. Notwithstanding some of these difficulties, we hope and believe that the approach has demonstrated its potential to engage in a novel and interesting way with individuals working in the creative industries. All of us were enthusiastic about the method and would encourage others to experiment with it and develop it. Clodagh, for instance, said that practitioners usually tend to be intimidated by academics and are cautious about volunteering information. The engaging nature of the dispraxis makes it an excellent way of eliciting information and beliefs that other more formal methods might not reach. In particular, this dispraxis has presented some interesting insights into the oftentimes conflictual interface between the manager and the creative worker, and how the various roles delineated by this boundary are constructed, managed, and negotiated. One interesting
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observation was that while this research was premised on the idea that there is a significant division between theory and practice, the dispraxis indicated that the more important division seemed to be between the discourse of management and alternative discourses such as the discourse of romanticism. Maybe most importantly, the dispraxis seems especially apposite to the creative industries given the dearth of theory that has been developed in this context. In this situation, it is imperative that we do not fall into the trap of applying ready-made theories to the creative industries. Rather, we must make sense of the world by developing theory, like the early Greek philosophers, in media res – in the middle of things. We believe that dispraxis can prove to be an important and fruitful way of doing just that.
Brewis, J. and Linstead, S. (2000) Sex, Work and Sex Work. Routledge, London. Brownlie, D. and Desmond, J. (1996) Apocalyptus Interruptus: A Tale by Parables, Apostles and Epistles. In Brown, S. et al. (ed.), Marketing Apocalypse: Eschatology, Escapology and the Illusion of the End. Routledge, London pp. 66–86. Goffman, E. ([1974] 1986) Frame Analysis. An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Northeastern U.P., Boston. Haraway, D. ([1985] 1991) A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980’s. In Haraway, D. (ed.), Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Free Association Books, London pp. 149– 81. Kermode, F. (1967) The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. Oxford U.P., Oxford. Koestler, A. (1975) The Act of Creation. Picador, London.
References Adorno, T. ([1944] 1991) The Culture Industry. Routledge, London. Aherne, A. and Brown, S. (2000) Chronicles of the Celtic Marketing Circle, Part I: The Paradise Parchment. Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 18, 400–413. Bourdieu, P. ([1979] 1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgements of Taste. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
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Donncha Kavanagh is a Lecturer in Management at University College Cork. Clodagh O’Brien is General Manager of the The Ark, A Cultural Centre for Children in Dublin, Ireland. Maurice Linnane is Artistic Director of Dreamchaser Productions, a multimedia production company in Dublin, Ireland.
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Index to Volume 11 (e.g. 2/79 = number 2, page 79)
BANKS, Mark, CALVEY, David, OWEN, Julia, RUSSELL, David. Where the Art is: Defining and Managing Creativity in New Media SMEs 4/255 BECKER, Bill. The Alignment Conference: A Stakeholder’s Way to Create a Competitive Advantage
2/115 KAVANAGH, Donncha, O’BRIEN, Clodagh and LINNANE, Maurice Art, Work and Art Work 3/175
BREU, Karin and HEMINGWAY, Christopher. Collaborative Processes and Knowledge Creation in Communities-of-Practice
4/277
3/147
KRISTENSSON, Per, MAGNUSSON, Peter R. and MATTHING, Jonas. Users as a Hidden Resource for Creativity: Findings from an Experimental Study on User Involvement
1/55
4/248
KYLE´N, Sven F. and SHANI, A.B. (Rami). Triggering Creativity in Teams: An Exploratory Investigation
1/17
GROEN, Aard J., DE WEERDNEDERHOF, Petra C., KERSSENS-VAN DRONGELEN, Inge C., BADOUX, Rob A.J. and OLTHUIS, Gerard P.H. Creating and Justifying Research and Development Value: Scope, Scale, Skill and Social Networking of R&D 1/2 ¨ M, Christina and HELLSTRO ¨ M, Tomas. Highways, HELLSTRO Alleys and By-lanes: Charting the Pathways for Ideas and Innovation in Organizations
1/74
JEFFCUTT, Paul and PRATT, Andy C. Managing Creativity in the Cultural Industries 4/225
BOURGEON, Laurent. Temporal Context of Organizational Learning in New Product Development Projects
GANDER, Jonathan and RIEPLE, Alison. Inter-organisational Relationships in the Worldwide Popular Recorded Music Industry
ISAKSEN, Scott G. and LAUER, Kenneth J. The Climate for Creativity and Change in Teams
2/107
HITTERS, Erik and RICHARDS, Greg. The Creation and Management of Cultural Clusters 4/234 HUTCHINGS, Kate and MURRAY, Georgina. Working with Guanxi: An Assessment of the Implications of Globalisation on Business Networking in China 3/184
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MITCHELL, Will, DUSSAUGE, Pierre and GARRETTE, Bernard. Alliances With Competitors: How to Combine and Protect Key Resources? 3/203 OTTESEN, Geir Grundva˚g, GRØNHAUG, Kjell and JOHNSEN, Oddrun. Benefiting from Commissioned Research: The Role of Researcher – Client Cooperation
2/88
PRICHARD, Craig. Creative Selves? Critically Reading ‘Creativity’ in Management Discourse
4/265
RADNOR, Zoe J. and NOKE, Hannah. Innovation Compass: A Self-audit Tool for the New Product Development Process 2/122 REINMOELLER, Patrick and CHONG, Li-Choy. Managing the KnowledgeCreating Context: A Strategic Time Approach 3/165
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RODRIGUEZ, Miguel A., RICART, Joan E. and SANCHEZ, Pablo. Sustainable Development and the Sustainability of Competitive Advantage: A Dynamic and Sustainable View of the Firm 3/135 RØYRVIK, Emil Andre´ and WULFF, Egil. Mythmaking and Knowledge Sharing SKARET, Mona, BJØRKENG, Kjersti and HYDLE, Katja Maria. Knowing Activity: Corporate Bridging of Knowledge and Value Creation SMULDERS, Frido E., BOER, Harry, HANSEN, Poul H.K., GUBI, Ebbe
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3/154
3/192
and DORST, Kees. Configurations of NPD – Production Interfaces and Interface Integration Mechanisms
1/62
VAN DER LUGT, Remko. Brainsketching and How it Differs from Brainstorming
1/43
VISSERS, Geert and DANKBAAR, Ben. Creativity in Multidisciplinary New Product Development Teams 1/31 ZAIN, Mohamed , RICHARDSON, Stanley and ADAM, Mohd Nazri Khan. The Implementation of Innovation by a Multinational Operating in Two Different Environments: A Comparative Study 1/98
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