"Hope Is the Greatest Whore": Hope, Critique, and Management Studies in Irena Haiduk's Artwork: Unplugged – Voices

Research in management and organization may only gain by being inspired from arts, culture and humanities in order to rethink practices but also to nourish its own perspectives. Life in organizations is artificially separate from ordinary life: all of mundane objects are thus conducive to astonishment, inspiration, and even problematization. The unplugged subsection “voices” gives the opportunity to academics and non-academics to deliver an interpretation about an object from the cultural or artistic world. Interpreted objects are or not directly related to organizational life, resonate or not with the moment, but share some intriguing features. These interpretations suggest a patchwork of variations on the same object

‘Thriving instead of surviving’: A capability approach to geographical career transitions in the creative industries

This article examines career transitions in creative industries that involve geographical relocation from large metropolitan creative cities to small, remote and marginal urbanities. Drawing on 31 in-depth interviews with freelancers who have relocated to peripheral Southern European locales, the article explores the ways in which creative workers make sense of and justify their career transitions away from the metropolis, while reassessing reflexively over their lifespan the shifting meaning of their career success. We propose the adoption of Nussbaum’s capability approach in the study of such career transitions as a means of strengthening current theorizing about the role played by urban contexts in individual conceptualizations of career success and meaningful professional identities. Applying this analytical lens, we tease out the ways in which our informants perceived the influence exerted by different urban contexts on their capacity to enact a set of capabilities for the attainment of well-being and quality of life at different stages in their careers while striving to preserve a stable professional identity as creative workers. We argue that a good life evaluation, which includes a reflexive and comprehensive reassessment of the capabilities to live life well while pursuing a creative career, underlies creative workers’ shifting interpretations of geographical career transition that contravene conventional measures of career upward mobility, development and growth

Understanding creative enterprise creation, functionality and sustainability from the lenses of Ghanaian creative entrepreneurs

This paper explored the dynamics of the Ghanaian creative industry to understand creative entrepreneurs’ lived experiences in the process of turning their creativities into business ventures and the challenges they encounter in bids to sustain ventures. Guided by the business canvas model and a qualitative approach, data was collected from 40 creative entrepreneurs. Using both descriptive and thematic analysis, coupled with sense-making, it was established that creative entrepreneurship, as business practice was constrained by several phenomena, including the lack of governmental and investor support, high cost of creative productions, a dearth of practical teaching of creative skills and research in educational institutions, unfavourable regulatory policies for creative works, and a lack of appreciation for the Ghanaian culture. It is concluded that the constraints associated with the business dynamics of creative entrepreneurship could be used as innovative spaces for the derivation of plausible practices to enhance creative enterprise performance, in terms of future creative policy development and creation of viable business opportunities. This paper investigated the lived experiences of creative entrepreneurs in relation to how they turn their creativities into business enterprises, and the challenges that confronts them in managing and turning such enterprises into sustainable ventures. Based on interviews with creative entrepreneurs in Ghana, it was found that after forming their creative businesses, they found it too difficult to manage and sustain such enterprises. The reasons identified included the high cost of running their businesses, unfavourable regulatory policies for creative works, and the non-appreciation of their products, influenced by the Ghanaian culture. Additionally, they do not receive financial and/or technical support from the government or investors which could have helped them manage their business effectively to become sustainable. It is concluded that the identified difficulties experienced by the creative entrepreneurs could be used as innovative spaces to develop effective practices to enhance creative enterprise formation and management towards sustainable performance.</p