Managing Creativity: Exploring the Paradox

by Barbara Townley, Nic Beech

Overview

What are the challenges and opportunities of managing people in creative industries? How are the tensions between creative and commercial pressures mediated? The creative industries are an area of increasing economic importance. Yet creative industries and creative-based organizations are rife with problems such as whether and how control of the creative process should be exercised; the extent to which knowledge of creative production may be made explicit; and how the 'connection' between producer and consumer should be mediated. In Managing Creativity a team of experts from a diverse range of fields - including management, fine art, music, the internet, design, theatre and publishing - discuss these and other problems concerning the relationship between management and creativity. Developing an appreciation of these problems is theoretically productive, not only because it throws light onto our understanding of creative-based organizations, but also because it can be revelatory about organizations more generally.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521518536
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/24/2009
Pages:	364
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Barbara Townley is Professor of Management and Director of the Institute for Capitalising on Creativity at the University of St Andrews. Her research concerns the introduction of managerial technologies (appraisal systems, business planning and performance measures) and the impact of these on institutional logics that inform organizational functioning. Her most recent book is Reason's Neglect (2008).

Nic Beech is Professor of Management at the University of St Andrews. He is the founding chair of the British Academy of Management special interest group on identity and co-chair of the Scottish Network on Organizational Vitality. His research is mainly focused on the social dynamics of organizational life – the intertwining of people's identities, relationships and practices. He is co-author (with Eugene McKenna) of The Essence of HRM (2008, 2nd edition).

Table of Contents

List of illustrations ix

Notes on contributors x

Acknowledgements xiii

Introduction 1

1 The discipline of creativity Barbara Townley Nic Beech 3

Part I Inherent unknowability 23

2 To draw thought - how can this be done differently? Aileen M. Stackhouse 31

3 Labour, work and action in the creative process Martin Dixon 47

4 Popular culture as carnaval: The Clash, play and transgression in the aesthetic economy Stephen Linstead 60

Part II Art for art's sake 81

5 Art for art's sake: was it ever thus? A historical perspective Julian M. Luxford 87

6 The logics of art: analysing theatre as a cultural field Doris Ruth Eikhof 106

7 Turning rebellion into money: The Clash, creativity and resistance to commodification Stephen Linstead 125

Part III Infinite variety 149

8 Communication, artists and the audience Christopher Randall 157

9 Art or honesty? Breaking the rules of the game with immersive museum theatre Paul Johnson 177

10 User-generated content and the participative market Gregor White 189

Part IV The motley crew 209

11 The missing middle: management in the creative industries Chris Warhurst 217

12 Playing the system: design consultancies, professionalization and value Guy Julier 237

13 Organising creativity in a music festival Jane Donald Louise Mitchell Nic Beech 260

Part V Ars longa 281

14 Juicy Salif as a cultish totem Laura Gonz?lez 287

15 'Time past': the value of remembrance in aesthetic experience Amy Parker 310

16 What is a creative field? Elizabeth Gulledge Barbara Townley 321

Managing Creativity: concluding thoughts 336

Index 340