JBR-08569; No of Pages 7

Journal of Business Research xxx (2015) xxx–xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Business Research

Creative industries as hubs of new organizational and business practices☆

Joseph Lampel a,⁎, Olivier Germain b,1
a
Manchester Business School, Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom
b
Université du Québec à Montréal, Département de management et technologie & EM Normandie, 315, rue Sainte-Catherine Est, Montréal H2X 3X2, Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Firms and governments increasingly see creative industries as hubs of managerial innovation and experimenta-
Received 1 June 2014 tion. The opening essay to this special issue examines the role of creative industries as pioneers and highly visible
Received in revised form 1 March 2015 adopters of new organizational and business practices. The paper next focuses on four themes that are especially
Accepted 1 August 2015
salient to this process. The first theme looks at creative industries as celebrity industries that popularize and le-
Available online xxxx
gitimize organizational and business practices. The second theme examines the lessons that relatively low levels
Keywords:
of value chain integration have for other industries that are in the process of value chain transformation. The third
Creative industries theme looks at the creative industries and the rise of the experience economy. The fourth theme argues that his-
Celebrity industries torical patterns of employment and self-employment in the creative industries foreshadow many of the issues
Value chain disintegration that are experienced by the wider economy. A discussion of the seven papers appearing this special section con-
Experience economy cludes this introduction.
The enterprising of self © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Florida (2004, p. 3), nicely summarizes the prevailing view, “In today's
economy, creativity and competitiveness go hand in hand.”
Creative industries are strategically significant engines of economic Different ways are available for examining the influences of creative
growth, job creation, and social cohesion (Pratt & Jeffcutt, 2009). industries (Lampel, Lant, & Shamsie, 2000). One can look at creative in-
But creative industries are also attracting increasing attention as hubs dustries as pioneers of managerial and organizational practices. One can
of managerial innovation and experimentation. Take for example also look at creative industries as areas of business that are not necessar-
the Hollywood film industry. When the Hollywood film industry ily the first to introduce managerial innovations, but are responsible
transitioned from a vertically integrated studio system to flexible spe- for further development and diffusion of innovations that first arise
cialization in the late 1950s the managerial practices that emerged elsewhere. Finally, one can look at creative industries as industries
were seen as anomalies in an era when commentators and practitioners that play a central role in shaping the future of management, much
alike considered the management of large hierarchical corporations to as manufacturing industries shaped managerial mind sets in the 19th
be the epitome of ‘best’ practice (Lampel & Shamsie, 2003). Today one century, and science-based industries in the 20th century.
is more likely to see large hierarchical corporations as bastions of man- The papers in this special issue explore creative industries with these
agerial conservatism, and firms in creative industries such as film, three perspectives in mind. All of the papers were first presented at the
music, interactive software, and design as pioneers of new organization- 3rd INTERREG conference in Deauville (7 & 8 November 2013) organized
al forms. The discourse of creativity that was at one point associated by partners EM Normandie and University of Southampton, supported by
with impractical risk is now seen as key to economic success. This rever- the European Regional Development Fund. More papers were submitted
sal in where managers look for when it comes to best practices means in response to our special issue call. The papers that appear here were se-
that creative industries are more likely than ever before to exercise in- lected following a review process that emphasized their contribution to
fluence on management thinking across a wide range of industries. As the understanding of creative industries in particular, and the lessons
that creative industries can have for managerial practice in general.
During the conference, and subsequently in the papers that were
submitted, the impact of creative industries on other industries, wheth-
☆ The conference, in which the papers were first presented, was part of the INBS project
(EM Normandie and University of Southampton). We wish to thank for its support the er by example, imitation, or direct transfer of practices, was often raised
European Regional Development Fund which co-funded this project, selected under the and discussed. Discussing in depth all these issues is beyond the scope of
European Cross-border Cooperation Programme INTERREG IVA France (Manche this introduction. So instead this paper focuses on four key themes that
Channel), England. emerged which are particularly salient to our understanding of how
⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 161 275 7371; fax: +44 161 275 0923.
E-mail addresses: Joseph.lampel@mbs.ac.uk (J. Lampel), germain.olivier@uqam.ca
creative industries influence practice in other industries. Following a
(O. Germain). discussion of these themes, there is a summary of each of the papers
1
Tel.: +1 514 987 3000x2614; fax: +1 514 987 3060.. in this special issue.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.10.001
0148-2963/© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Lampel, J., & Germain, O., Creative industries as hubs of new organizational and business practices, Journal of Business
Research (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.10.001
2

2. Creative industries as celebrity industries What distinguishes these creative industries from their engineering
and manufacturing predecessors is the mystique that surrounds their
The social theorist, Daniel J. Boorstin (1997), argues that the perva- core processes. Whereas engineering and manufacturing celebrity in-
siveness of mass media in the 20th century has given rise to a celebrity dustries relied on technical skills that could be taught to potential re-
culture. There is a tendency to think of celebrities as individuals, whose cruits, and processes that could be explained to the wider public,
name, in the words of Rein, Kottler, and Stoller (1987) “has attention- creative industries rely on creative individuals that are often considered
getting, interest-riveting and profit generating value.” Rindova, to have unique talent, and creative processes that are mysterious if
Pollock, and Hayward (2006) argue that much as individuals can attain not inexplicable to outsiders. These qualities shape the relationship
a celebrity status, so can firms. They define ‘celebrity firms’ as those between these industries and their stakeholders. In particular, the mys-
firms that attract a high level of public attention and generate positive tique of creative industries means that investments are often dispropor-
emotional responses from stakeholder audiences (p. 51). tionately influenced by hope and credulity, rather than financial criteria
Our contemporary celebrity culture owes much to the creative in- that are more compelling when celebrity status is absent. In this respect,
dustries, not only because a disproportionate number of celebrities are creative industries set the pattern for other industries where technical
singers, actors, authors, and designers, but also because so many of the and business creativity is closely identified with individuals who are
organizations in these industries have achieved celebrity status. Organi- considered to be exceptionally talented. This happened this during the
zations such as the Metropolitan Opera, Disney, the Bolshoi Ballet, and dot.com bubble of the 1990s when investors bought into the celebrity
the Cannes Film Festival, attract high level of public attention, and status of high tech start-ups, ignoring actual performance in favor
generate positive response from stakeholder audiences. In part this is of projected earnings that were based more on hype than on reality
because there is often a close relationship between celebrities and (Vallier & Peterson, 2004). Today it is possible to see the same in the
celebrity organizations. In the case of the Hollywood film industry, venture capital industry. The industry's star firms and star investors
one can trace the emergence of the Hollywood studio system in the confer star status on the firms they back using processes that are myste-
1920s directly to audience fascination with film actors such as Florence rious to outsiders, and arguably even to themselves (Friend, 2015).
Lawrence and Mary Pickford. Once the box office power of stars was
incontrovertible, studios spent lavishly on finding and creating stars 3. Value chain transformation in the creative industries
(McDonald, 2000; Basinger, 2009). The studios also invested heavily
in ‘publicity departments’ whose main task was to ensure that actors' When Stephen Elop assumed the position of CEO at Nokia in 2010,
lives off the screen attracted as much, if not more, attention as their he attributed much of Nokia's tribulations to a fundamental shift in
roles on the screen (Davis, 1993). By the 1930s the ability of studios to the industry. As he notes in an interview several months later, competi-
put celebrity actors on their payroll became part of their own corporate tion in the mobile phone industry is “no longer a battle of devices, it is a
narrative. MGM, by far the largest and most glamorous studio in Holly- war of ecosystem” (Wall Street Journal, 2011). The mobile phone indus-
wood, billed itself as having “more stars than there are in heaven” try had evolved from vertically integrated firms that fought for market
(Carey, 1982). Consciously, MGM worked to set itself apart from other share based on price and quality of their devices, to one where the
Hollywood studios, eventually becoming what Rindova, Pollock, and groups or alliances of firms competed with each other. Nokia gained
Hayward (2006) refer to as “celebrity firm”. market leadership as a vertically integrated company, but was slow to
Mindful of the power of stars, the moguls that controlled the studios adapt to a new business environment.
went to great length to persuade actors that their celebrity status was The view that industries across the board are transitioning from
entirely the product of their management and support. Many actors, vertical integration to an era of value chain fragmentation was popular-
and for that matter other talent, such as directors and writers, disagreed. ized by Michael Piore and Charles Sabel (1984) in their book The Second
They argued that stardom was the product of their creative labor, which Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity. The central thesis of the
once established was a resource that they were entitled to nurture and book, that vertically integrated large corporations that manufacture
control. In 1919, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and and deliver standardized goods to consumers whose needs are relative-
D.W. Griffith formed United Artists, showing that if studios can create ly undifferentiated, are giving way to flexible production and mass cus-
stars, stars can also create studios (Balio, 1987; Basinger, 2009). In the tomization was widely perceived as a rejection of the long-standing
years that followed, celebrity talent in film, music, design, and other cre- belief that firms should couple growth with value chain integration.
ative industries, sought to combine the creative and managerial roles, The belief owed much to Henry Ford who created the most celebrated
with mixed results. In haute couture Coco Chanel successfully combined model of scale and vertical integration that was emulated both in the
her role as creator and manager, lending celebrity status not only to the United States, and around the world. The celebrity status of Ford and
product but also to the corporate entity as a business firm (De la Haye, the Ford motor company were such that the Ford model became
2011). Martha Stewart, a life style guru, whose talents ranged widely, known as “Fordism”, and the decline of the Ford model not unexpected-
also gave her name and celebrity to the organization she created and ly is often referred to as “Post Fordism”.
managed, but in her case personal scandal severely damaged the busi- Ford's status as a celebrity and the celebrity status of the company he
ness as well as her personal reputation (Wallace, 2011). created may have accounted for the attention his model attracted, but it
Rindova, Pollock, and Hayward (2006) focus their attention on the was underpinned by economic argument that at the time seemed irre-
power of celebrity firms, without taking account of the reputation futable. Many years later, Oliver Williamson (1971) used transaction
and visibility of the industries in which these organizations operate. costs theory to explain the power of the Foridst model, but he also point-
But taking their thesis further it can be argued that some industries ed out its limitations. Thus, the cost of writing multi-contingency con-
(e.g., Hollywood or haute couture) attain the status of “celebrity indus- tracts that specify deliverables and protect firms against opportunistic
try”. One can go as far back as the industrial revolution to find examples behavior motivates vertical integration. Integration is further reinforced
of celebrity industries. In their time, industries such as railways, electri- by managerial innovations that increase the efficiency of internal organi-
cal power generation, aviation, and automobiles achieved a celebrity zational coordination. But there are diminishing returns to the advan-
status. Most of these celebrity industries owed their status to engineer- tages of internal coordination. Thus, disintegration will occur when the
ing and manufacturing achievements that transformed how people live costs of internal coordination exceed external transaction costs. This
and work. By the second half of the 20th century the list of celebrity will tend to happen as market institutions evolve and mature industries
industries changed dramatically, with the film industry, music industry, find it easier to specify and enforce contracts (Jacobides & Winter,
videogames, and other creative industries occupying many of the top 2005; Langlois, 2003). Transaction costs will then decline, and with it,
positions. there will be a corresponding incentive to outsource internal activities.

Please cite this article as: Lampel, J., & Germain, O., Creative industries as hubs of new organizational and business practices, Journal of Business
Research (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.10.001
 3

The difficulty, as many firms, including the Ford motor company found our traditional ideas of how consumers evaluate products. An example
out, is making the transition from vertical integration to flexible produc- for the personal computer industry illustrated this transformation.
tion (Halberstam, 1986). Industry observers of the personal computer industry in the mid-
Generally speaking, Fordism never took hold in the creative indus- 1990s were almost unanimous in regarding Apple as a company that
tries. One can point to Hollywood in the 1920s and 1930s as the most misunderstood the personal computer market. The personal computer,
significant exception, but even here the attempt to vertically integrate they pointed out, was a machine designed to service specific needs such
operations ran into difficulties and was eventually abandoned. The key as word processing, spreadsheet analysis, or power point presentation.
challenge in creative industries is recruiting creative resources, and Microsoft operating system, and applications program, performed
then coordinating these resources into products that generate super- these tasks proficiently. Mass production of hardware was relentlessly
normal rents (Lampel & Shamsie, 2003). The value of creative resources, driving down hardware costs. The result was a PC that delivered in-
however, is uncertain because the relationship between creative skill creasingly powerful functionalities at progressively lower prices. In con-
and market performance is weakly correlated. Thus, managers in crea- trast, Apple relied on design and software engineering that emphasized
tive industries take higher than normal risks when recruiting creative users' experience, and charged much higher prices for its products. For
talent based on track record. This is not only because past experience industry analysts it was clear that in terms of best value consumers in
does not necessarily produce the skills that matter in future success, the long run were bound to prefer the PC to Apple machines.
but also because firms that rely on track record to integrate creative But history did not turn out this way. Already in the 1990s, students
resources into their operations quickly run into escalating costs. Talent of consumer behavior noted that consumers were increasingly moving
may not be able to replicate past success, but it usually uses past success from a focus on price and product functionalities, to valuation that in-
to demand higher prices for its services, while at the same time cluded non-utilitarian aspects of the product. The esthetic, tactile, and
displacing the financial risks to employers and investors. social experience of using and owning a product, even a functional
In many industries the difficulties of efficiently contracting key re- product such as the personal computer, increasingly played a decisive
source inputs lead to backward vertical integration. Firms in the creative role in consumer choice. Steve Jobs understood this shift, and used it
industries are generally reluctant to pursue backward vertical integra- to his advantage (Isaacson, 2011). Starting with the iMac in 1998, Jobs
tion, largely because they find it very difficult to write enforceable con- went on to introduce products that were designed around experience
tracts with talent. Instead, they have pioneered contractual modes rather than technical specifications.
when recruiting creative resources that foreshadowed the practices In 1999, just after Apple launched the iMac, Joseph Pine II and
that are increasingly common today. Broadly speaking, research sug- James Gilmore published a Harvard Business Review article entitled,
gests that firms that forgo vertical integration have essentially two ‘The Experience Economy’, which expressed this shift in more detail.
choices when it comes to governing interaction with resource providers. Our economy, argued Pine and Gilmore, has entered a stage of economic
First, they can rely on ‘transactional governance’, drafting contracts that development where experience increasingly dominates consumption.
set objectives, and pre-specify in detail the interaction process (Mayer & Implicitly, this means that the utilitarian, or use value, of a product
Argyres, 2004). Second, they can develop ‘relational governance’ which plays a decreasing role in competition, and creating experience is
relies on trust and mutual understanding that is reinforced by repeated becoming progressively more important. This in turn reduces the
interaction (Das & Teng, 1998). Relational governance was, and is, sharp demarcation that has traditionally existed between utilitarian
pervasive in the creative industries because transactional governance and non-utilitarian products. Products that were bought to perform
which requires contracts that specify and price deliverables in advance, functions were no longer as easy to distinguish from products that
is ill suited to innovation. Furthermore, innovation is often co-created were purchased for enjoyment.
between organizations. Trust and open communication facilitates co- The rise of the experience economy also changed the understanding
creation of innovation, pointing to relational governance as the better of what constitutes a “product”. Previously, producers and consumers in
mode of interaction. Ultimately, relational governance is more powerful most consumer and industrial markets tended to see products as
in creative industries because firms seek to maximize transaction discrete with clearly marked boundaries. Creative industries were an
value—that is, the generation of value through interdependent exception. In these industries product boundaries are far more fluid.
complementarities—more than minimizing transaction costs (Zajac & The distinction between a television drama and a film, or between an
Olsen, 1993). opera and a musical, is not based on physical or technical boundaries.
Relational governance can be very effective when it works, but data Instead, the boundaries are defined by an interaction between content
from the creative industries suggest that it requires considerable skill and format. A television drama may be released as film, that is, the
and experience to set it up. Much of these data has focused on the prob- same content in a different format, and a film may be televised as a
lems of recruiting stars, and managing talent. Considerable attention drama. A game show is a format, but what constitutes a ‘game’ can
has also been paid to the importance of networks as crucial background vary greatly. By the same token, the content of creative products is
linkages to relational governance (Rowley, Behrens, & Krackhardt, fungible: A play can become the basis for a film, and a film can become
2000). Current thinking about relational governance tends to empha- the basis for a videogame.
size bilateral interaction. But the experience from the creative indus- The blurring of the distinctions between products categories grows
tries, and recent research, including articles in this special issue, stronger as the experience economy migrates to online platforms
suggests that networks among actors that precede and are reinforced where the relationship between consumers and creative products is in-
by project interaction are essential to the stability and effectiveness of creasingly shaped by aggregators such as YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify
relational governance (Foster, Borgatti, & Jones, 2011). (Hagiu & Yoffie, 2013). These aggregators do not only use powerful dig-
ital technologies to amass large libraries, but they also curate. Curation
4. Creative industries and the experience economy which once was associated with museums and art galleries, or with
music stations playlists, is now becoming an activity in many other cre-
Creative industries exercise influence on other industries not only ative industries. This activity may not originate creative products, but is
because their organizations and modes of operation provide models creative by virtue of the knowledge and imagination required to select
that have certain advantages, but also because the relationship they de- what the curator considers to be of value (Higgins, 2011). Online aggre-
velop with customers suggest new patterns of consumption. One of the gation of digital content has expanded the scope of this role over a wide
reasons for the increasing influence that creative industries exercise on range of creative industries. Increasingly, curation has become a vital in-
managerial thinking is the rise of the so called ‘experience economy’ termediate link between consumers and their product experience
(Pine & Gilmore, 1999). The experience economy upended many of (Hagiu & Yoffie, 2013; Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004).

Please cite this article as: Lampel, J., & Germain, O., Creative industries as hubs of new organizational and business practices, Journal of Business
Research (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.10.001
4

5. Creative industries and the enterprising of self the indeterminacy of many activities in organizations that turns each in-
dividual into a kind of entrepreneurial venture. The structural and strate-
Anyone who studies creative industries cannot fail to notice the ex- gic context might support all individual initiatives, but attaining creative
tent to which rules of thumb that govern risk taking in most industries consciousness in organization is also a question of ‘performing the self’ in
are all too often suspended by managers and investors (Finney, 1996). this context by merging the organizational discourse of entrepreneurship
The same may be said of the labor market in these industries. Generally and initiative with the individual's ‘inner self’.
speaking, individuals who seek to sell their services, in particular their
talent and ideas in creative industries, exhibit a willingness to accept 6. Summary of special issue articles
far lower entry salaries than is the case in most industries. Their willing-
ness to forego adequate remuneration is in part due to the intrinsic re- The papers that comprise this special issue reflect the broad themes
wards of creative work, and to some extent it is due to optimism that are discussed above. When summarizing these papers an effort was
based on the highly publicized instances where new entrants achieve made to convey their main points, while at the same linking key issues
high position and exceptional pay packets. Media attention tends to they raise to current research on creative industries.
focus on these individuals, which in turn has a distorting impact on The first paper by Grégoire Croidieu, Charles-Clemens Rüling Ruling,
the market for creative talent. Long before Steven Hankin of McKinsey and Amélie Boutinot, “How Do Creative Genres Emerge? The Case of the
coined the phrase ‘war for talent’, creative industries were busy Australian Wine Industry” is an innovative approach to seeing the wine
searching, and furiously bidding, for talent (Michaels, Handfield-Jones, industry through the lens of the creative industries, rather than as an in-
& Axelrod, 2001: x). But the search for the few exceptional individuals dustry that caters to our taste for fermented beverages. To do this, the
that could deliver success, then as now, skews rewards towards a authors reframe standard notions of quality. In most industries quality
small minority (Isaac, 2015). The rest soldier on, even when increased standards emerge from an interaction between utility and technical
earnings fail to materialize. performance. In creative industries, however, quality standards are con-
The war for talent became a permanent feature of creative industries structed through a complex interaction between consumer cognition
before it spread to other industries. Similarly, the phenomenon of that is experiential, and usually tacit, and the views of journalists, critics,
casualization of labor that is increasingly pervasive today is of long- and professional associations, with additional impact exercised by
standing in the creative industries (Marchington, Grimshaw, Rubery, events such as award ceremonies that single out certain products as de-
& Willmott, 2005; Pink, 2001). Arguably, it is the dark side of what has serving of special recognition. As more and more industries become
come to be called the ‘boundaryless career’ (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996; ‘creative’, not only in terms of operations, but also in relation to consum-
Bart & Carroll, 1994). To considerable extent the boundaryless career er perception of their products, the construction of quality is increasing-
in creative industries is the result of project-based organizing which ly decoupled from technical consideration. The wine industry is a good
has long been prevalent in many creative industries where actors, mu- example of how this takes place. On the one hand, the production of
sicians, writers, designers are employed on a project-by-project basis. wine is a technical process that is carefully managed. But on the other,
For the most part these individuals are in a weak bargaining position as is usually the case in creative industries, the quality judgment of
vis-à-vis investors and managers. The rare occasions that see creative wine is the culmination of processes that are distinct, and often unrelat-
individuals achieving star power and with it stronger bargaining posi- ed, to this technical process.
tion only reinforces the determination of others in the creative indus- Croidieu et al. analyze these quality producing processes using the
tries to press ahead with the hope of achieving the same status. concept of genre as an analogy. They apply this analogy to the emer-
This persistence against long odds suggests that creative individuals gence of the Australian wine industry as a distinct high-quality category.
in the creative industries are taking on many of the characteristics In their paper, they argue that boundary formation is the critical condi-
usually associated with entrepreneurs rather than employees. Taken tion for the emergence of a new genre. To achieve boundary formation,
to its logical conclusion this means that they are more likely to develop it is necessary for four interrelated problems to be solved: commensura-
an entrepreneurial mindset which involves risk taking, and requires a tion, authenticity, status ordering, and comprehensibility. Based on their
willingness to brand the self as the inevitable price that has to be paid analysis of the evolution of the Australian wine industry they show that
to achieve market success (Lovink & Rossiter, 2007). One can therefore four mechanisms address the problems of boundary formation: ‘shifting
witness an entrepreneurial mindset by individuals who essentially act and layering of metrics’, ‘analogies with established creative industries
as micro-firms, fundamentally challenging the traditional economic and practices’, ‘resonance with society-level logics’, and ‘personification’.
view of labor markets. Thus, in the world of creative industries, the pre- The second paper by Amira Laïfi and Emmanuel Josserand titled,
diction by economic theory that the prospect of unemployment de- “Legitimation in Practice: A New Digital Publishing Business Model”,
presses wages, and following from this, that depressed wages will looks at the crucial role that legitimacy plays in new venture creation
reduce the supply labor, is not born out. Instead of withdrawing from — both in the creative industries, and other industries as well. Legitima-
the labor market, creative labor becomes more flexible—willing to ac- cy, these authors argue, “is at least as important for an organization as
cept less, and do more, as a price of staying in the industry other resources such as capital, technology, staff, customer satisfaction
(Leadbeater, 2000). Nor do adverse employment conditions affect and networks.” Lack of legitimacy is clearly a problem for new ventures
recruiting of new labor. Indeed, the supply of labor often increases in any industry. In the creative industries legitimacy is even harder to
even as the prospect of secure employment diminishes. acquire. To begin with, from a consumer perspective the value of offer-
Remarking on employment in the arts, the French sociologist Pierre- ings is subject to a wide range of interpretation. In addition, the 'nobody
Michel Menger (1999, p. 541) likewise observes that “… artistic labor knows anything' dictum that dominates the attitude of stakeholders—in
markets are puzzling ones. Employment as well as unemployment are in- particular of artists and providers of venture capital—puts greater bur-
creasing simultaneously.” This contradictory dynamics has much to do den on new entrants to show that they are legitimate enterprises. In
with a change in how creative work is seen by large sections of the pop- their study Laïfi and Josserand examine how innovative actors develop
ulation. Creative work is increasingly presented as a desirable and flexible legitimation strategies. Their case study is ‘Cyberlibris’, a digital library
alternative to work in traditional organizations. The creative individual, that offers a catalog of more than 12,000 management digital books
economically precarious but emotionally autonomous, therefore be- and collections mainly to libraries. Cyberlibris is an aggregator, a busi-
comes a powerful symbol of entrepreneurial identity, reinforcing the ness model that has gained in importance with the rise of the internet.
increasingly popular attempts by many organizations to construct ideol- In the publishing industry, however, aggregation has encountered con-
ogies that emphasize commitment and innovative behaviors within un- siderable resistance. Laïfi and Josserand examine how Cyberlibris works
stable contexts. The figure of the creative entrepreneur characterizes to overcome this resistance by building sufficient legitimacy. To do this,

Please cite this article as: Lampel, J., & Germain, O., Creative industries as hubs of new organizational and business practices, Journal of Business
Research (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.10.001
 5

they look closely at the process of legitimacy creation generally, stereotypes, and stereotypes become stronger and more deeply embed-
highlighting the ‘nature of the legitimation’, ‘aspects of practice’, ded the more they are used by creative industries.
‘context’, and ‘audience’. What they show is that these elements of the Gkritzali et al. explore this interaction by looking at the use of stereo-
legitimation process vary in strength during the history of Cyberlibris, type location images in Hollywood motion pictures. A location image is
and are emphasized by the key decision makers differently at different a stereotype that distills the “ideas, perceptions, feelings and general in-
times—sometimes with deliberate foresight, and sometimes opportu- formation that individuals hold regarding cognitive and affective com-
nistically with a considerable measure of improvisation. ponents of specific places”. Location images are routinely and fairly
The third paper by Nada Endrissat, Gazi Islam, and Claus Noppeney, unobtrusively used as incidental backdrop (e.g., a car chase in Chicago),
titled “Visual Organizing: Balancing Coordination and Creative Freedom but in some instances they become an integral and highly visible part of
via mood boards” looks at how mood boards, collages of visual materials the storyline. This is likely to occur when the public invests a distant lo-
such as images, texts, and fabrics are used to coordinate creative profes- cation with emotions and aspirations that are more projection than real-
sionals as they work together to produce innovative perfumes. The use ity. Gkritzali et al. focus on Paris, a city that perhaps more than many
of objects to coordinate the work of professionals in industrial organiza- other cities, has been used by film makes to take advantage of this projec-
tion is not new. Arguably, one of the central features of the transforma- tion by the public. They identify several Paris stereotypes using data de-
tion of craft industries into mass production is the increase use of rived from 24 major Hollywood motion pictures that were released
drawings, technical documentation, blueprints, Gant charts, and proto- between 1985 and 2011, and then use these stereotypes to develop a sur-
types. The main purpose of these objects in mass production industries vey instrument which they administer to American consumers that have
is to increase control at the project level, and to ensure consistency never directly experienced Paris themselves. Their results not only con-
across design, engineering, and manufacturing units. In creative indus- firm the stereotypes, but also points to a link between motion pictures
tries, however, control and consistency can be the enemy of creativity. and the image location of Paris in the American popular imagination.
Organizations that exercise too much control over their creative profes- The fifth paper by Rodolphe Durand and Allegre Hadida, “Logic Com-
sionals, and allow for little fluidity in coordination and as a result these bination and Performance Across Occupational Communities: The Case
organizations are often less likely to produce products that are innova- of French Film Directors,” looks at the repercussions of film directors
tive. At the same time, creative organizations have to exercise some venturing into the role of producers. In its early days the film industry,
guidance in order to ensure that creative professionals work together like other creative industries, separated artists from managers. In the
productively, especially when these professionals come from different case of Hollywood, managers had almost total power over the creative
fields, and are responsible for different aspects of the project. “Mood process, and they used that power to control script writing, cast selec-
boards”, argue Endrissat et al., serve this purpose. Mood boards balance tion cast, and final editing of the film. In this context, directors were es-
coordination with creative freedom. Mood boards help “narrow the sentially project managers with the responsibility of melding all the key
array of creative possibilities and align the sub-products while opening elements (i.e. script, actors, and locations) into a polished product. In
space for creative autonomy, flexibility, and self-expression.” The authors the French film industry, in contrast, directors enjoyed most of the
use a case study of perfume creation to examine the directing and coordi- power, and therefore made most of the key decisions. Managers were
nating role of mood boards. They explore the processes that are activated confined to ensuring that directors were properly supplied with re-
and moderated by the mood board in this particular case. In particular, sources, and were charged with administration of support activities
they show how the various creative professionals that are involved in cre- once the film project got under way. However, starting in the 1970s
ating the perfume, and its associated sub-products-packaging, photogra- there is an increasing blurring of boundaries between the role of direc-
phy, use the mood board as a point of reference that informs their tor and producer both in Hollywood and France. In Hollywood directors
thinking, while at the same time allowing them autonomy to come up increasingly demanded more control on decisions that previously were
with creative solutions to the problems posed by the project. the exclusive purview of producers, whereas in France many directors
The fourth paper by Alkmini Gkritzali, Joseph Lampel, and Caroline began to assume the role of producers. The development, however,
Wiertz, titled, “Blame it on Hollywood: The Influence of Films on Paris was viewed differently in the United States than in France. In Hollywood
as a Product Location”, looks at the relationship that creative industries this is seen favorably as directors ‘taking artistic control’ from producers
often construct between culture and markets. The culture that this who are excessively motivated by commercial consideration. In France,
paper looks at is the cumulative output of activities such as story- on the other hand, the tendency is criticized for contaminating the ‘pu-
telling, musical composition, and theater performance that reflect the rity’ of the artistic process. Using an ‘institutional logic’ framework,
themes that preoccupy people in a particular society. Creative industries Durand and Hadida look at whether the evaluation of films produced
usually start out by borrowing from pre-existing culture, but as they by directors who are also producers suffer as a result of this negative
gain in influence, they start to shape cultural activities, ultimately be- connotation. To put this differently, they ask whether combining direc-
coming the dominant cultural force. This dominance means that crea- tor and producer institutional logics results in loss of legitimacy that
tive industries are able to transform external cultural objects into lowers artistic recognition from peers. Given that peer judgment, espe-
product categories. For example, society's age old fascination with cially in France, can influence reviews and awards, the next question
crime and criminals has thus been transformed into a literary genre they look at is whether combining director and producer roles has an
such as the detective novel. The same process can be seen in the film in- impact on box office performance.
dustry. Practically since its inception the film industry has not only Durand and Hadida's exploration of these questions is relevant not
borrowed from popular crime stories, it has embellished and developed only to the film industry, but also applies in just about any creative in-
them further into a distinct genre. In both these cases, creative indus- dustries as individuals and teams increasingly demand greater influence
tries transform popular stories into genres, or product categories that over managerial decisions that affect their work and career prospects.
ensure focused consumer marketing. In many creative industries the Indeed, in the creative industries artistic and business competences
process is carried one step further, creating a link between popular that were traditionally viewed as incompatible are increasingly seen
culture and specific parts of the film. For example, popular conceptions as essential complements that are important not only to self-declared
of architecture (e.g. a medieval castle), or physical environment (e.g. a creatives, but also to managers who have to allocate resources and
jungle) provide film makers with stereotypes that they can use when make time critical decisions. As creative industries come to accept the
creating the backdrop to films, television programs, and video games. proposition that artistic and managerial competences can co-exist effec-
The use of these stereotypes by creative products sets up a powerful re- tively in the same individual, the same view is increasingly found in
ciprocal relationship between creative industries and popular culture: other industries. This acceptance is particularly the case in high technol-
The persuasiveness of creative products depends on effective use of ogy industries where scientific and engineering activities are no longer

Please cite this article as: Lampel, J., & Germain, O., Creative industries as hubs of new organizational and business practices, Journal of Business
Research (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.10.001
6

segregated in specialist department to be directed and managed by in- of areas such as cinema, media, publishing, video games, design, and in-
dividuals who may not fully understand the technology. teractive entertainment which did not fit easily into policies that were
The sixth paper by Francesca Vicentini and Paolo Boccardelli titled, developed to deal primarily with manufacturing and technology inten-
“Career Diversity and Project Performance in the Italian Television Indus- sive industries (Caves, 2000). The impetus for policy makers was the
try” uses the concept of “boundaryless career” (Arthur and Rousseau, economic potential of these industries. For management scholars, on
1996), to look at the relationship between past career patterns and cur- the other hand, creative industries are of considerable interest in part
rent performance. The authors note that many creative industries are because they embody many of the characteristics of post-industrial
project-based. Thus, unlike corporate employees in other industries economy: flexible organizing, advanced use of technologies in the pro-
who have open-ended contracts, employees in these firms are retained duction process, innovation that relies on questioning of established
on a project-by-project basis. The loss of employment security is balanced logics, and extensive employment of creative and technical talent. By
by greater control over career development. Individuals in project-based the same token, the dilemmas that creative industries have had to
creative industries develop their skills and reputation through a succes- deal with for many decades: the management of talent, the strategic
sion of projects across a variety of related industries (e.g., radio, television, use of intangibles, the balancing of idiosyncratic individuals with team
film). This leads Vicentini and Boccardelli to ask the following question, cohesion, and the reliance on networks, are now common in many in-
“What is the effect of the variety of experiences, skills, contacts, and dustries (Lampel et al., 2000).
knowledge accumulated by individuals within and across project-based The practices that creative industries developed to deal with these
industries on performance?” At first sight, experience across a variety of dilemmas also apply to many other industries where some, or all, of
industries should enrich creative professionals, and thereby enhance these conditions prevail. This special issue explores the following prac-
their subsequent project performance. Closer examination suggests that tices. How organizations develop practices that blend the utilitarian and
diversity of experience may inhibit the development of deep technical non-utilitarian aspects of consumption in the context of an experience
and market knowledge that is often needed to excel in a given industry. economy? How do creative organizations develop production systems
Vicentini and Boccardelli explore these issues in the context of the Italian that direct creativity without discouraging it? What are the repercus-
television industry, specifically in the production of TV drama series. The sions of talent mobility? How do the tensions between creative and
dynamics that they examine are of course not unique to the television in- managerial roles impact market performance? Not surprisingly, since
dustry where actors, directors, writers, and producers are often involved creativity is now central to the success of so many organizations in a
in projects in other industries such as theater and film. They can be found wide variety of industries, one can safely say that these practices are
in every creative industry that is project-based. Furthermore, the ‘bound- not unique to creative industries. Because these practices are widely
aryless career’ patterns that are pervasive today in creative project-based spread, research on creative industries is not only of interest to small
industries are becoming increasingly common in industries that are not community of scholars who find these industries particularly fascinat-
usually classified as creative. Outsourcing and offshoring, triggered by ing, but also of increasing value to researchers, and managers, who see
cost cutting, and reinforced by the rise of new communications technol- the practices of creative industries as precursors and useful examples
ogy, have moved the use of external temporary organizations from being to be studied and emulated.
a peripheral phenomenon to a mainstream strategy. However, what the
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Please cite this article as: Lampel, J., & Germain, O., Creative industries as hubs of new organizational and business practices, Journal of Business
Research (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.10.001