Call for articles - JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR Special Issue -
Manuscripts must be received by July 1, 2005
PARADOXES OF CREATIVITY:
MANAGERIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHALLENGES IN THE CULTURAL ECONOMY
Special Issue Co-Editors: Robert DeFillippi, Suffolk University, Gernot
Grabher, University of Bonn; and Candace Jones, Boston College
With the shift towards knowledge-based societies, the creation of new ideas
has become an even more crucial parameter of economic success. Creativity,
as Florida (2002: 4) boldly claims,
is now the decisive source of
competitive advantage. The challenge of a relentless creation of new
genres, formats, and products presumably is most clearly pronounced in the
cultural economy. The cultural economy, in fact, has come to be seen as a
major forerunner and experimental site for managerial practices of the
permanently innovating organization (Caves, 2000; Teece, 2003). Hollywood,
in other words, is not only a major hub of movie production; it is also a
production model (DeFillippi and Arthur, 1998).
The cultural economy includes the artistic core sectors of cultural
industries such as art, theatre, film, publishing, music, photography,
fashion as well as services like design, advertising, architecture and
design industries such as fine furniture, clothing or jewelry (Hirsch, 2000,
Scott, 1999). A common denominator of all these industries is that
aesthetic attributes are decisive elements of product and service
differentiation and value. Competition in these industries, broadly
speaking, shifts from the use-value of products to the sign-value of
brands and luxury goods (Lash and Urry 1994: 122; du Gay 1997).
We start from the assumption that creativity is a social process that is
stimulated, fostered, orchestrated or hampered by specific organizational
contexts (Amabile 1988; 1999). Our perspective provides a counterpoint to
the idea that creativity is the expression of individual attributes and can
be consigned to that mysterious primal moment of a transcendent personalized
impulse. Even in the most intimate moments of genesis, aesthetic practices
connect with concrete social and organizational conditions (Becker 1982;
Boden 1992; Bordieu 1983; White and White 1965).
This Special Issue explores the paradoxes caused by the challenge of
managing and organizing creativity in the cultural economy. Paradoxes
experienced by managers in cultural industries are also to be found in a
growing number of other industries where creativity and innovation are keys
to sustaining competitive advantage (Lampel, Lant and Shamsie 2000). These
paradoxes include the need to reconcile tensions between the work ethos and
human resource practices in creative and more routinized activities; and to
balance the advantages of flexible and temporary organization with the
advantages of tight integration. Some suggest that creative workers have a
distinctive set of individualistic work styles, meritocratic values, and
unconventional social behaviors which pose unique challenges to human
resource managers (Davis and Scase, 2000; Florida, 2002). Additionally, the
ambiguous and at time contentious nature of the creative work process itself
poses distinctive organizational challenges, as aptly illustrated by the
following quote: The music of the violin we get by friction (Ashcraft,
2002).
The following themes illustrate some of the paradoxes arising in the
cultural economy. We do not suggest these are the only such paradoxes, but
we encourage paper submitters to the special issue to consider whether their
theoretic and empirical findings might shed light on some facet of any of
the below themes. We encourage researchers from a diverse array of academic
disciplines, including organizational behavior, psychology, sociology,
anthropology, media studies and economic geography to submit papers to the
special issue. We are open to different types of theoretically grounded
empirical work based on qualitative and /or quantitative methods. We also
encourage manuscripts whose theoretic perspectives and empirical findings
apply to multiple industry contexts or compare practices across cultural
industries.
1. The Difference Paradox: Crafting or Standardizing Human Resource
Practices? A cornerstone of human resource practices is to establish a set
of standard practices and metrics to ensure comparability and equity among
employees to motivate workers and minimize legal challenges. Yet, recently
scholars studying creative workers and their human resource practices have
advocated making allowances for weird rules (Sutton, 2001). A challenge
for human resource managers in cultural industries is reconciling the
tensions inherent between equity and comparability versus distinctive HR
policies aimed at the specific needs of creative versus non-creative
categories of work. From a human resource perspective, how do companies in
cultural industries design and implement HR policies that are responsive to
the unique requirements of their most creative workers without alienating
their business operations oriented workers? Also, what are the distinctive
challenges of managing creative workers within organizations that also must
meet demands for predictable, stable operating processes?
2. The Distance Paradox: Coupling or de-coupling creative and routine work?
A possible organization design response to the difference paradox is the
practice of physically separating and distancing creative organizations and
creative work units (teams, departments) from more routine work units. On
the one hand, it might make sense to de-couple creative units and teams in
organizational, cultural and spatial terms from the rest of the
organization. Such de-coupling presumably favors lateral thinking outside
the box that is freed from the practices and conventions of the routine
work of the organization (Bilton and Leary 2002). On the other hand, a
managerial challenge arises when creative inputs and creative work practices
have to be (re) introduced into the rest of the organization. How do
cultural organizations reconcile the simultaneous need for separation and
integration, coupling and de-coupling of the creative and routine elements
of their organizations?
3. The Globalization Paradox: Reconciling local creativity with
transnational power? Quite typically, creative industries evolve in
bifurcated patterns of dense clusters of (mostly) smaller production
companies (the independents in media) and the global finance and
distribution networks of large conglomerates (the majors; see, for
example, Scott 1999; 2002). As much as movie production is Hollywood, it is
also Sony and TimeWarner. The localized production networks are driven by an
ethos of creativity and adhere to an artistic mode of production (Zukin,
1995) that often evolves into a distinctive style with regard to the
product as well as the production process (Molotch 1996). The large
companies, in contrast, embody the commercial imperatives of revenues and
global market share. How can large corporations take advantage of the
localized clusters without contaminating the creative atmosphere of the
latter (Grabher 2002)?
4 The Identity Paradox: Individual or Collective careers, identities
and reputations? A significant literature on careers in cultural industries
recognizes the role played by mavericks (e.g., Becker, 1982) and independent
creative artists (e.g., Caves, 2000). Yet, numerous studies show that
individual careers in creative industries are built through gatekeepers of
talent (agents) and reputation (critics) (Giuffre, 1999; Kapsis, 1989; Lang
and Lang, 1988) and the bottom line concerns of commercial distributors of
creative work (Zuckerman et al., 2003). How do cultural industry brokers
(e.g., talent agents) producers (e.g., publishers and studios), distributors
(e.g., wholesalers and exhibitors), and media outlets differentially
reinforce individual versus collective identities and reputations among
creative workers? How do industry, occupational and organizational
contextual factors influence the evolution of creative careers, identities
and reputations? (Faulkner, 1987; Jones, 1996; Jones & DeFillippi, 1996)
Manuscripts must be received by July 1, 2005. Authors should prepare
manuscripts in accordance with JOB guidelines, published at the back of
every issue or on the JOB website. All submissions will be blind-reviewed by
at least two reviewers. Please submit manuscripts in a Word-compatible
format electronically to Robert DeFillippi:
rdefilli@suffolk.edu Authors
without internet access may mail five hard copies to: Robert DeFillippi,
Sawyer School of Management, Suffolk University, 8 Ashburton Place, Boston,
MA 02108-2770 (Phone 1-617-573-8243 Fax: 1-617-573-8345)
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