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Challenging Hierarchy in Arts and Cultural Organizations

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Challenging Hierarchy in Arts and Cultural Organizations MAKING THE CASE FOR CHANGE: CHALLENGING HIERARCHY IN ARTS AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS BY ROSE GINTHER Integrated Studies Project submitted to Dr. Collette Oseen in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts – Integrated Studies Athabasca, Alberta April, 2010 Art and organization: two words that some might say are disparate and perhaps even paradoxical, yet in western culture, organizing and the arts are frequently as bonded together as politics and government. But is the application of hierarchical organizing principles in the management of art production and distribution inevitable and most desirable? How has this evolved into accepted practice and what are the repercussions of this practice? Why, even into the new millennium, has organizing in the arts most often emulated business models rather than the messy, postmodern process of art making itself? And why does this model persist more strongly than others like collectives or artist cooperatives? While some artist collectives and artist-run centres exist in Canada and throughout the United States, many of these organizations are still run in a hierarchical fashion with a staff in place to complete administrative work like fundraising, marketing and to carry out the tasks necessary to produce or exhibit the work, and a board of directors that governs the organization. How well these organizations succeed in their work depends on a combination of factors including their ability to attract earned revenue through ticket sales or attendance, their ability to secure government or private sector funding and in the production of the art itself. Based on a corporate model but working in the non-profit sector, most groups, despite administrators best efforts (including the larger groups of symphony orchestras, and ballet and opera companies) are continually marginalized due to scarcity of resources, putting art and artists continually at risk. In the best scenario, small collectives and artist run centres include artists in the decision making. In the worst, in large hierarchical organizations, artists are on the fringes, at the mercy of a patriarchal board in charge of their art and their livelihood. 2 Recognizing the issue, in 2005 the Canada Council for the Arts commissioned a study to investigate alternatives to existing organizing practices. This study, entitled Flexible Management Models, sprang from the growing realization that arts organizing practices from the 1960s and 70s may no longer be appropriate and the Council set out to investigate alternative, flexible management models for artists, collectives and small arts organizations. One of the critical findings of the report was that “non-formal or alternative producing entities require new supporting administrative and management structures.” (Marsland, p. 4) Marsland also recommended that discipline specific funding programs that support these new management models be put into place, recognizing that without funding, change was unlikely to occur. (p. 5) Unfortunately, to date few funding programs exist that assist artists and arts managers with developing these new arts management models. In organizational theory, hierarchy in organizations is the grand narrative of management, thought to be beyond question and doubt. This paper questions this grand narrative of hierarchy in arts organizations by examining the historical connections to the corporate sector, by deconstructing the hierarchical ideas surrounding arts organizing and exploring alternative organizing strategies. Is Hierarchy Inevitable? The culture of any society exerts pressures toward eliciting types of behavior and ways of being seen as desirable, including our organizational structures. Mark Weinberg (1992) declared that 3 there is an expectation that every group will develop a hierarchy and that, citing Ridgeway (1983) hierarchy is “a pattern of power and deference relations among the members characterized by a series of ranks occupied by members who share different degrees of power and prestige.” (p. 9) These various patterns of power, support decision making and the distribution of rewards within an organization. Collectives, according to Weinberg, are organized to avoid them whenever possible and use them “only to support goals of equalization of influence and ability.” (p. 9) So why is hierarchy so well entrenched in arts organizing when the making of art is typically an individual or collective process and rarely a hierarchical process? A scan of the literature available on the topic reveals that accepted organizing practice has modeled the business sector. In his publication Management and the Arts, William J. Byrnes (2003) talks about the process of arts organizing and states that organizing is a process of “dividing work into manageable components”. (p. 7) Byrnes believes that ‘levels’ in management employed in organizing these components are essential in running an arts organization. He advocates for three levels: Upper (Strategic), Middle (Operational) and Lower (Daily Operations) Management and presents this model in the traditional, hierarchical, top- down fashion. (p. 7) This model clearly delineates Byrnes’ beliefs in the value of hierarchical organizing but he fails to provide rationale for these organizing principles. Why levels? Why is the management structure aligned so closely with organizing in the corporate sector? Where are the artists in this model? His only concession in terms of alternative strategies comes from a brief reference to horizontal coordination and that “a successful production, concert, or exhibition often 4 requires that different departments cooperate and communicate over an extended period of time.” (p. 124) The advent of hierarchy in arts organizing Is it the act of organizing or organizations themselves that we need to examine? It may be helpful to begin with an exploration of what is meant by the terms ‘organizing’ and ‘organization’. Joan Acker (1995) points out that organizing refers to how “organizations are continually constituted through practices and processes that occur through the actions of organizational participants.” (p. 137) Acker believes that these organizing processes and principles are grounded in “fundamental social arrangements and understandings” and are supported by powerful interest groups. “But they become nonexistent when no one carries them out, when people stop organizing.” (p. 137) In essence, an organization does not exist without the action of the people involved and without a purpose for its existence. If the people retreat or withdraw from the act of organizing and the reason for its existence wanes then the organization ceases to exist; the agency resides with the people not the organization itself. What’s interesting is that most research and writing on the topic refers to the organization far more than the act of organizing. In Acker’s view, this emphasis on the organization conceptualizes organizations in “abstract, gender-neutral terms” and “is consistent with the processes through which power is organized”. (p. 138) Who is best served by these organizing principles and who is not? Acker (1995) refers to the pressure for most organizations to conform to hierarchical organizing principles as “a gendered 5 logic of organization” that forms a sort of blueprint for how things “are to be arranged to produce an efficiently functioning whole…” (p. 139) In most cases, this efficient functioning relies on …”a gender neutral worker whose central commitment is to the organization and who has no competing time or emotional obligations…” (p. 139) According to Acker this organizational logic stems from the very nature of our industrial society where production is separated from the rest of human activity. “This division and the organizing practices that support it are deeply gendered, and include sets of taken-for granted organizational practices that assume a male participant.” (p. 139) Acker’s assertions shed an important light on what might be the most destructive element of hierarchical organizing in the arts: its relative inappropriateness for women working in the field. If work and life are typically bound separately from the family and home life obligations, how are women to participate fully? Lather (1991) explored the research surrounding this issue further and found that “A variety of incompatible directions are available in the culture of science, all competing for allegiance. …focus has shifted from “are the data biased?” to “Whose interests are served by the bias?” (p. 14) and “How do our very efforts to liberate perpetuate the relations of dominance?” (p. 16) Bolman and Deal (2008) cite Helgesen (1995) who agrees that the idea of hierarchy is primarily a male-driven depiction, quite different from the structures created by female executives. (p. 86) Women build integrated and organic organizations that emphasize open nurturing relationships that focus on communication, rather than the “the niceties of hierarchical rank”. (p. 86) Placing themselves at the centre, rather than at the top of the organization, Helgesen 6 asserts that this improves access, ease of organizational decision making and fosters a feeling of equality through forming a “web of inclusion”. (p. 86) This web of inclusion portrays an organic organizational form that appears more circular than hierarchical. “The web builds from the centre out. Its architect works much like a spider, spinning new threads of connection and reinforcing existing strands.” (p. 86) With the centre
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