Project management in the culture industry: balancing structure and creativity

Alexander Styhre and Sofia Borjesson

International Journal of Project Organisation and Management, 2011, vol. 3, issue 1, 22-35

Abstract: The paper presents a study of the Swedish culture industry and emphasises the ability to structure the projects yet enabling openness for emergent properties in project work in the culture industry. While project management in conventional industry risks being routinised or even bureaucratised, the culture industry is demonstrating a persistent ability to navigate between complementary qualities, thereby maintaining a dynamic project management practice. This virtue is captured by the concept of play, based on the duality of rule-adherence and individual and collective creativity. In the culture industry, structured around a series of temporal 'productions' (e.g., a play, a series of concerts, etc.), uncertainty, complexity, and temporality are factors that influence the work. However, the ideology of the culture industry emphasising expression of ideas and creativity enables a project management practice affirmative of emergent conditions. Thus, the work never ossifies into being merely rule-governed procedures but is balancing the two qualities innate to all play.

Keywords: culture; cultural industries; plays; Sweden; openness; emergent properties; routines; bureaucracy; complementary qualities; duality; rule-adherence; collective creativity; individual creativity; rules; temporal productions; concerts; drama; uncertainty; complexity; temporality; arts; ideologies; ideas; emergent conditions; play; rule-governed procedures; project organisation; project management. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=38862 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijpoma:v:3:y:2011:i:1:p:22-35

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Project Organisation and Management from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().