ARTS MANAGEMENT AS A MODEL FOR THE "NEW ECONOMY"

Transcription

1 ARTS MANAGEMENT AS A MODEL FOR THE "NEW ECONOMY" Yves Evrard 1 1, rue de la Libération Jouy en Josas Cedex, France Tel : + 33 (1) evrard@hec.fr 1 Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales HEC School of Management Department Marketing Jouy en Josas Cedex, France INTRODUCTION The last decade has witnessed the progressive emergence of a new academic and managerial discipline : "Arts Management" (Evrard and Colbert, 2000). This emergence may be linked to the growing economic importance of art and culture in post-modern societies. It has to be underlined that cultural activities are no more limited to traditional art forms, but now include the products of cultural industries and the services of new communication vehicles. The technological movement of digitalization create links between preceedingly separated fields. In that direction, it is highly meaningful to observe that the first big economic event of the new millenium was the "megafusion" between Time-Warner and AOL (i.e. between traditional cultural context such as music or books and a new mode of diffusion, Internet). This is a complete rupture with an old vision of arts as a highly subsidized public sector, which is still predominant in some European countries. The application of knowledge developed by research in arts management is not limited to the cultural fields but may also contribute to neighbour fields such as tourism, sport and communication, and more generally new economic sectors where innovation is a leading force. Arts management, far from being a new area of application of traditional managerial knowledge, may contribute to the evolution of this knowledge. In the next section, we will try to identify some of these contributions. SOME CONTRIBUTIONS OF ART MANAGEMENT TO GENERAL MANAGEMENT It is sometimes, or even frequently, considered, especially in the management field, that art management is mainly a new domain of diffusion of managerial thought. In this REAd Edição 15 Vol. 6 No. 3, mai-jun 2000

2 Arts management as a model for the "new economy" perspective, arts are seen as a managerially underdeveloped area, which would benefit from being fertilized (some would even say normalized ) by importing managerial knowledge and techniques. This perspective is evidently questioning the specificity of art management and casting doubt on the academic legitimacy of research in this field. On the other side, people from the artworld have rather often reactions of rejection of managerial approaches (Chiapello, 1998). This attitude leads to another type of difficulty to legitimize art management, this time on an ethical or ideological basis. Thus, the emergence of art management as a discipline is confronted to a double deficit of legitimacy, squeezed between opposite types of objections, coming either from art or from management. This situation may induce art management scholars to try to legitimate or justify their activities by adopting a defensive stance. But, on the other hand, an examination of research works in art management may lead to a more offensive posture by identifying several contributions of art management to general management, showing that the exchanges between these areas are not only one-way. 1 We will now identify a few of these contributions, pertaining to several subdisciplines of management. a) Strategic management : In the area of strategic management, two main lines of contributions may be identified : project management; management of innovation. The art world is used to managing discontinuity : many artistic activities are based on project development (production of a show or a movie for instance). This is an essential topic in an era of flexibility, when the dominant form of activity of a firm is no more managing a continuous flow of existing products. Most of artistic activities are prototypical. The analysis of such innovation processes is a contribution to an economy led by technological change. b) Human resources management : In the area of human resources management, dealing with intermittent workers is another facet of the management of discontinuity/flexibility, mentioned in the preceeding section. 1 (See for instance, the analysis of the links of aesthetics with organization, Ramirez, 1991, or with management, Guillet de Monthoux, 1998); for a general review of art management, cf Evrard (1993). REAd Edição 15 Vol. 6 No. 3, mai-jun

3 Yves Evrard Another area of contribution is leadership, (Mintzberg, 1998). Many artistic organizations have developed charismatic modes of leadership which generate specific styles of motivation, which may be generalized to other sectors where creative work (on knowledge for instance) is an important dimension of the activity. In these sectors, dual management (which is a common problem in the art sectors with the combination, synergistic or conflictual, of artistic and managerial competences) is also a frequently encountered problem. The resolution of this complexity problem may lead to dual solutions applied in several business firms either at an individual (for instance two persons managing a firm with a task specialization, one dealing mainly with internal problems, and the other with external topics such as communication) or at an organizational level (for instance, separation of roles between a directoire and a conseil de surveillance ). c) Finance and accounting Two characteristics of artistic products are sources of specificity for accounting and financial analysis in the cultural sector : immateriality and patrimoniality. Problems linked with immateriality are not unique to the cultural sector (cf Goldfinger, 1994), but combined with patrimonial properties (the value of an artistic good may fluctuate over time with the evolution of public s tastes), it raises specific difficulties for the evaluation of the assets (portfolio of rights, ) of firms in this sector (cf Vogel, 1998, Turbide and Huskin, 1999). d) Marketing and consumer behaviour Marketing and consumer behaviour have been evidenced as the most productive research areas of art management (cf. Evrard and Colbert, op.cit.) Contributions of art management to general knowledge may be identified in both areas. 2 Although often rejecting the word marketing, the cultural field has for a long time developed practices pertaining to supply side marketing. In that perspective, definition of the offer preceeds demands s existence or consciousness, and guides the market. The role of marketing is then more proactive and could even be qualified as proselytism. This perspective may be considered as symetrical to the traditional one where the role of marketing is defined on answering consumers needs and desires. Another specificity of marketing in the cultural field is that, mainly due to strong REAd Edição 15 Vol. 6 No. 3, mai-jun

4 Arts management as a model for the "new economy" limitations in communication budgets, but also to consumers involvement generating word of mouth communication, the marketing has developed practices based on direct communication and interpersonal exchanges such as street marketing or buzz marketing. The supply-side marketing approach perspective does not mean that there is no need to analyze the market. There is a need to identify prospect consumers and to understand social integration (usages sociaux) of new products, i.e. to optimize reception of the offer. In the area of consumer behaviour, two main contributions of research in art management may be identified : immaterial value : in the art sector, value is not restricted to utilitarian components, it includes several immaterial dimensions (hedonic, symbolic,.), consumption does not destroy the value of the good 3 ; it may on the contrary increase its symbolic value with the aura of success ; as mentioned before, the so-called consumer may contribute to the definition of art itself ; the identification of various dimensions of the interaction between art and consumers may be a contribution to the understanding of this relationship (Evrard and Aurier, 1996). experiential paradigm : the development of the experiential paradigm (cf Holbrook and Hirschmann, 1982; Bourgeon and Filser, 1995) which includes affective and emotional factors as well as intrinsic motivation has been largely based on analysis of cultural consumption ; this paradigm constitutes an alternative to the previously dominant one of information processing grounded on cognitive factors and an utilitarian perspective. CONCLUSION The new millenium will propel the economy into a new cycle (some even call it a "new economy") based on innovation and information technology, whereas the 20 th century was caracterized by an economy of continuity based on mass production. This new economy may call for a new type of management. In this context, arts management's potential contribution 2 Specific textbooks have also been published in this area (cf Colbert, 1993, Kotler and Scheff, 1997). 3 Let us recall that destruction is the semantic origin of the world consumption ; that is why the word consumer is etymologically inappropriate in the art sector. REAd Edição 15 Vol. 6 No. 3, mai-jun

5 Yves Evrard appears even more significant. Indeed, it could play a major role in the edification of a new managerial paradigm adapted to the new economic age, particularly in light of the fact that the arts and culture have always dealt with innovation, information, symbols and discontinuity. REFERENCES Bourgeon, S. and M. Filser, Les apports du modèle de recherche d expériences à l analyse du comportement dans le domaine culturel : une exploration conceptuelle et méthodologique, Recherche et applications en Marketing, Vol. 10, n 4, 1995, pp 5-25 Chiapello, E., Artistes versus managers, Editions Metailié, 1998 Colbert, F., Marketing culture and arts, Morin, 1993 Evrard, Y., and P. Aurier, Identification and validation of the components of the personobject relationship, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 37, 1996, pp Evrard, Y., Coord., Le Management des entreprises artistiques et culturelles, Economica, 1993 Evrard, Y., and F. Colbert, Arts management : a new discipline entering the Millennium?, International Journal of Arts Management, Vol. 2, n 2, Winter 2000 Goldfinger, C., L utile et le futile. L économie de l immatériel, Editions Odile Jacob, 1994 Guillet de Monthoux, P., Esthétique du management, L Harmattan, 1998 Holbroock, M.B., and E.C. Hirschmann, The experiential aspects of consumption : consumer fantasies, feelings and fun, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 9, September 1982, pp Kotler, P. and J. Scheff, Standing room only, Harvard Business School Press, 1997 REAd Edição 15 Vol. 6 No. 3, mai-jun

6 Arts management as a model for the "new economy" Mintzberg, H., Covert leadership : notes on managing professionals, Harvard Business Review, November-December 1998, pp Ramirez, R., The beauty of social organization, Accedo, 1991 Turbide, J. and K. Huskin, Managing non-profit arts organizations through management accounting systems : mission possible? International Journal of Arts Management, Vol. 1, n 2, winter 1999, pp Vogel, H.L., Entertainment industry economics, a guide for financial analysis, Cambridge University Press, 4 th edition, 1998 REAd Edição 15 Vol. 6 No. 3, mai-jun