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

Abstract

Performing arts organizations (PAOs) need to manage their artistic ambitions in the face of public sector reforms that promote cultural entrepreneurship, the commercializing, and marketization of art. This study uses an institutional logics lens to examine the tensions PAOs experience resulting from this need and their responses to and management of the complexities in their environment. This study draws on a qualitative analysis of nine PAOs in the Netherlands and finds that the main tensions experienced by PAOs stem mainly from stakeholder plurality and the identity of the individual organization. PAOs primarily employ the coping strategies of acquiescence, avoidance, and compromise, which they prioritize over stronger forms of resistance such as defiance and manipulation, and maintain separate logics of operation rather than working towards their synthesis. This leads to a dynamic process model which identifies both a vicious and a virtuous approach to managing tensions.