{"word_count": 612, "character_count": 4218}
Anke Schad (2019)In: Constance DeVereaux (ed.), Arts and Cultural Management. Sense and Sensibilities in the State of the Field. New York: Routledge, Chapter 4.Abstract. Cultural management differs from other fields of management as it embraces both decision-making aimed at success in managerial terms (revenue, efficiency, and accountability) as well as being targeted towards a positive outcome for the sake of culture as a res publica, a public good. These two general orientations generate an inherent tension between culture and management, in other words they highlight the challenge for arranging an economic orientation within a normative orientation. Whether decisions are actually legitimate and, according to which principles, conventions, or “Orders of Worth” (Boltanski &#38; Thévenot 2006 ), their legitimacy can only be assessed in relation to the contingency of a specific situation , the available alternatives, the instantaneous preferences, and the normative criteria (…). How does this tension between culture and management and other conflicts arising from different alternatives, preferences, and criteria affect practices in decision making in specific situations, such as negotiations about funding for culture, conflicts about the replacement of leadership positions in cultural organizations, and contests between different political parties and their allies that are played out on the board of cultural organizations and the like? These are questions that are rarely posed. One reason for this might be a concern with methodology-how to access, analyze, and interpret conflicting situations? This chapter outlines a methodological approach to look at complex decision-making situations involving individual and collective actors such as politicians, cultural administrators and managers, and artists and cultural workers.About the book. Arts and Cultural Management: Sense and Sensibilities in the State of the Field opens a conversation that is much needed for anyone identifying arts management or cultural management as primary areas of research, teaching, or practice. In the evolution of any field arises the need for scrutiny, reflection, and critique, as well as to display the advancements and diversity in approaches and thinking that contribute to a discipline’s forward progression. While no one volume could encompass all that a discipline is or should be, a representational snapshot serves as a valuable benchmark.Excerpt of the Introduction of the book (Constance DeVereaux, 2019): "Anke Schad’s “Situating Cultural Management” examines the field from a “situational, relational, and interpretive perspective,” drawing on the work of Adele Clark’s Situational Analysis and Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot’s Orders of Worth Framework to examine the case of funding cuts to cultural organizations in Linz, Austria, in 2014. Questions about legitimacy in decision-making under conditions of conflict (conflicting principles and conventions, for example) lead Schad to ask how decisions and actions come about. “Decisions are made and justified by means of implicit and explicit measurement instruments, legitimate tests, and principles of order,” Schad states. But conflicts produce dilemmas, not only between technical and financial constraints, but also as products of normative-political requests, individual passion, avant-garde aesthetic aspiration, and common habit. Schad’s study is fitting for this section because it addresses challenges inherent in the field. A criticism of management sciences, proper, is that the ethos of managerialism is pervasive across cultures. Do we wish the same for cultural management? That is an open question that research and ongoing conjecture about the origins of the field may be able to answer. Fang and Dubois/Lepaux suggest where we have been and what may be missing in the training of future practitioners in the field. Schad invites us to consider the influences on practice (and challenges) that arise through the interplay of multiple perspectives, suggesting that what a cultural manager needs to know far exceeds the seemingly mundane activities of fundraising, budgeting, and the like." (p. xxiii-xxiv)Link to the chapter