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In this article, the authors argue for more theoretical discussion and empirical research into the organizational and managerial dynamics of commercial cultural production. Their concern grows out of their observation that management research is neglecting cultural production as a serious object of investigation despite its economic, social, and political significance. Moreover, even when management researchers have studied cultural production, the distinctive characteristics and dynamics of cultural industries have largely eluded the traditional research approaches adopted. As a result, the unique dynamics of cultural production remain largely uninvestigated.
We believe that management researchers must begin to take the commercial production of culture more seriously-theoretically, methodologically, and empirically. Despite the size and growing societal importance of cultural industries, management research continues to focus primarily on traditional industrial companies and the problems of managing the production of traditional goods and the provision of traditional services.1 Although this focus has produced a large body of useful theory, it is a theory of management and organization that is of limited use in understanding the very different problems of managing the commercial production of cultural products. If management researchers continue to fail to include the commercial production of culture as an important research area, we run the risk of becoming irrelevant to a large and growing segment of the business community.
But simply changing the focus of management research to include companies involved in cultural production is not enough. To adequately understand the distinctive characteristics of these industries, management researchers must consider a set of problems that are unique to cultural production and expand research approaches to include theory and methods that can address these problems. In this article, we discuss the unique nature of cultural products and industries and outline the issues that arise when organization and management researchers take cultural production seriously.
Although developing a theory of management that is sensitive to the dynamics of cultural production is no simple task, we believe it will have a number of benefits for management theory. First, despite commercial cultural production being an important and rapidly growing segment of the economy, current organization and management research has little to say regarding the distinctive issues facing management in these industries. Developing a theory of cultural industries will provide...