Managing music organizations. Understanding the economics of aesthetic choices

The extension of the managerial logic to music organizations often generates deep conflicts and lack of understanding between management practitioners and artistic directors. This paper suggests that there is not a one-best way to manage efficiently music programs and organizations. Rather it seems that different alternatives of labour organizations and cost management should be taken into account in order to better handle the trade-off between efficiency and effectiveness in managing sets of music shows. The paper focuses on a wide variety of music programs, without any aspiration to thoroughly describe the continuum along which real-world music programs typically fall but rather synthesizing their variety in a typology of music shows useful in addressing the attention of management on the relevant issues they could face and in identifying the potential economic implications of their choices. This typology is based on a three dimensional theoretical framework in which the issues of managing 1) the Time to Premiere, 2) the individual performances after the Premiere and 3) the portfolio of shows, are recognized as crucial elements in order to derive valuable managerial implications