Managing and Evaluating the Performing Arts: Value Creation through Resource Transformation

Abstract

This article proposes a framework conceptualizing the artistic dimension of organizational performance in performing arts organizations that is grounded in empirical findings from case research in two world-renowned institutions. Thus, the framework is embedded in the specific artistic and institutional contexts it aims to represent, reflecting the real-life complexities of intertwined management and artistic practices. Using resource and competence thinking to analyze artistic processes in the performing arts, the framework captures how resources are deployed, developed and ultimately transformed to create and sustain artistic achievement. The concept entangles aspects of evaluation and strategic development, offering an alternative to mainstream management and evaluation approaches to arts management research that, by putting artistic work at the center of the inquiry, is informed by insights from the field.

Keywords:

• Arts management
• performing arts
• evaluation
• strategic development
• resources
• competences

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In this article, we do not lay out the methodological approach nor the empirical findings in detail; see Labaronne (2019).

2 Sensitizing concepts “give the user a general sense of reference and guidance in approaching empirical instances. Whereas definitive concepts provide prescriptions of what to see, sensitizing concepts merely suggest directions along which to look” (Blumer 1954, 7).

3 Strategic development is used as a broad term that has different meanings in different contexts. For instance, Weinstein, Paul and Williams (2007, 43) refer to it as an operational item of strategic planning. Poisson-de Haro and Menot (2009, 81) imply a rather conceptual approach that considers both internal and external issues such as artistic and audience development.