Imposed leadership in UK funded theatre and the implications for risk and innovation

Abstract

Using the theory of stakeholder salience and stakeholder discourse, this article questions the effect of arts policy bodies on the way the cultural sector assigns leadership. It argues that in satisfying the demands of risk-averse public management, arts policy bodies implicitly and explicitly impose the role of sectoral leader on the heads of largest best-funded cultural organisations. As a result, opportunities for alternate forms of leadership to emerge outside organisations are restricted. It renders organisational leaders in conflicting obligations to multiple stakeholders - their funders, their organisations and their sector - and exposes implicit perceptions of value. Finally, in reinforcing existing organisational structures, imposed leadership inhibits the risk-taking and innovation these same arts policy bodies promote in their strategies. This prevents the emergence of more transgressive forms of leadership and innovative cultural production and affects the ability of artists to be perceived as leaders. Consequently, artists' sectoral and policy influence is diminished and their precarity and inequality reinforced at a structural level. While focused on subsidised theatre in the UK, this research offers wider implications for how we understand policy influence on ethical leadership behaviours in the cultural sector.

Making it up: Adaptive approaches to bringing freelance cultural work to a cultural ecologies discourse

“…Banks and Hesmondhalgh (2009) propose that the absence of artists in policy is a policy failure: its inability to incorporate the unpredictability and informality of creative economy working practices. This leads to artists’ marginalisation in policy, in turn inhibiting risk-taking and devaluing their expertise (FitzGibbon, 2019a). This would suggest more might be learned from artists in their response to the effects of COVID-19.…”

“…Although we as researchers were able to ‘feed in to’ aspects of policy, our artist partners had little engagement with cultural recovery planning. Formal Taskforces in the United Kingdom have predominantly engaged with ‘leaders’ representing institutions or businesses, missing the opportunity to draw on freelancers’ lived knowledge (repeating the closed networks of influence identified by Comunian and Conor, 2017; FitzGibbon, 2019a; Nisbett and Walmsley, 2016). More generally, we can see that this persistent failure to include artists in formal policy discourses is influenced by differing levels of hostility on the part of political parties as well as an embedded apathy to understand artists’ circumstances and the nature of cultural work and ecologies.…”

Non‐profit theatre managers as multi‐stakeholder managers: The plate‐spinning of accountability

“…Such ideals are promoted as a solution to concerns of sustainability, resilience and advocacy (Hewison, Holden, & Jones, 2010;Nisbett & Walmsley, 2016). This has increased a dominant perception that NPTOs and their 'leaders' have civic responsibilities, with sector development and advocacy obligations 'beyond' their organisations (Doeser & Vona, 2016;FitzGibbon, 2019a). Relatively little is understood about how NPTO managers understand and negotiate these expectations.…”

Performing Arts Organizations as Hybrid Organizations: Tensions and Responses to Competing Logics

“…In a sector linked so intimately with, and dependent on politics, understanding how public sector reforms affect individual organizations is vital (FITZGIBBON 2019;LABARONNE/TRÖNDLE 2020;LINDQVIST 2012). Competing logics due to public sector reforms could leave PAOs in a 'lose-lose' situation.…”