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This longitudinal research examines US symphony orchestra sector organizations to determine individual efficiencies in allocating resources (donations, governmental/private funding, etc.) for desirable outputs (concerts, educational programs, community outreach). It provides researchers and managers with a tool for identifying, assessing and mitigating organizational inefficiencies.

This study assesses relative efficiencies in performing arts organizations using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a widely-used nonparametric data-intensive benchmarking technique that determines an optimal “production frontier” of best-practice organizations among their peers and assesses their abilities to turn multivariate inputs into multivariate desired outputs.

This analysis highlights efficiency differences in a wide range of orchestras in converting available resources into performance-related outputs. It provides individual arts organizations with useful results for developing practical benchmarks to achieve organizational efficiency improvement.

This study provides constructive benchmarking guidance for improving efficiencies of relatively-inefficient organizations. Future analysis can expand the scope to utilize a two-stage DEA model to provide more specific guidance to arts organizations.

This pragmatic analysis enables arts/culture institutions to assess their organizational efficiencies and identify opportunities to optimize resources in producing social outputs for their target markets.

Efficiency improvements enable performing arts organizations to provide additional artistic/social services, with fewer resources, to larger audiences.

This research demonstrates the abilities of DEA analysis to assess both a sector and its individual organizations to determine efficiencies, identify sources of inefficiencies and assess longitudinal efficiency trends.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how intellectual capital (IC) is enacted and used in non‐profit symphony orchestras from an organisational behaviour perspective.

The paper is a nine‐month case study on two community‐based non‐profit orchestras. The method uses field observations, interviews, factor analysis, and visual models in explaining how IC is connected to organisational practices.

IC is perhaps best understood in its context to specific organisations rather than as discrete items that are allocated.

The case study is limited to non‐profit orchestras based on an organisational behaviour perspective. The results, however, invite further research into how IC is used as a resource towards strategic planning.

The study results point towards managing IC resources, given that they are grounded in actions and practices of the organisation. Questions of “how” (how is IC used?) drive the study versus questions of “what” (identification of IC).

Understanding IC as context‐dependent provides management guidance to NPO orchestras for improving volunteer participation, motivation, and meeting personal goals. It also informs boards of possible outcomes in implementing organisational change.

The purpose of this paper is to add to our understanding of how external factors such as funding and external accountabilities affect the organisational inner workings, especially identity issues.

The paper is based on a comparative case study of two professional chamber orchestras, one in Sweden and one in the UK. The two orchestras had significantly different funding conditions and had different relations with funders and were thus exposed to different kinds of accountability dilemmas. The two organisations were studied using and ethnographically inspired approach. The developments of various parts of the organisations were studied, such as funding, management, strategy, management control and identity issues.

The paper illustrates how the solution to accountability dilemmas in an organisation can, over time, result in the protection or the dilution of a perceived organisational core and thus in an identity struggle. Especially, management has to deal with the balance between financial and operational accountability, where organisational members could perceive the decisions to be confirming or rejecting what they perceived as being the higher purpose of their work.

This paper may help managers become more aware of the long ranging consequences of managerial decisions and how such decisions may affect the identity orientation of organisational members.

The paper combines the concept of identity with the concept of accountability, something that has not been done to a large extent in previous research.

The purpose of this paper is to go beyond the leader-centric approach to highlight the shared leadership phenomena happening in organizations where there is no head leader. Seeing interactions between the orchestra members through the lens of aesthetics is a useful way of understanding leadership phenomena.

The different approaches used are interviews, participant observation, analysis of video, photo materials and journalist review.

The managerial evidence says that without a head leader nothing is possible in organizations with a high level of complexity is not proved in a conductorless orchestra. The orchestra without a conductor shows that leadership is an aesthetic phenomenon. The conductorless orchestra is enhancing the sensitivity of organizational practices in a situation where beauty is a common goal to achieve. Studying leadership through the aesthetic lens is very relevant to understand this phenomenon, and shows that leadership is a co-construction between leaders and followers (and therefore negotiated).

It has to be compared to a non “amateur” orchestra where power struggles are maybe more visible.

No study has been done on aesthetics and the no-conductor orchestra.

The aim of the study is to examine the development of four not-for-profit Chinese orchestras in Hong Kong, aiming to identify their key characteristics in management and operational practices, and highlight a probable proposal on how the concept of cultural entrepreneurship could be brought about for the growth of an orchestra.

This study looks into the cases of the development of four not-for-profit community Chinese orchestras in Hong Kong in accordance to the theoretical framework built on the reviewed literature. A self-assessment questionnaire survey was conducted among the key leaders in the orchestras, asking them to evaluate themselves about their features as a cultural entrepreneur, and the extent of the development of the orchestras towards entrepreneurship. The survey serves as preliminary reference data for follow-up phone interviews, with questions asked in accordance to the results of the survey.

The study shows that the four leaders of the Chinese orchestras have different qualities of a cultural entrepreneur. The four orchestras use different strategies to promote Chinese music, and adopt diversified approaches to survive. Four models of community orchestra having different features are identified, namely new generation model, affiliation-based model, mentor-mentee model, and developmental model. The findings suggest that community orchestras have limitations to the development of cultural entrepreneurship in Hong Kong, and they need the support of the right person and policy to grow and foster.

The results inform and give insights to cultural entrepreneur-to-bes and practitioners in the cultural industries as well as policy makers on some of the probable innovations employed by not-for-profit community performing groups.

The original purpose of this study was not to focus on job satisfaction, but rather to conduct an exploratory investigation of how symphony orchestra players cope with the frustrations and disappointments of orchestra life. Symphony orchestra players report surprisingly low levels of job satisfaction given the perception held by many that life and work in symphony orchestras is glamorous and rewarding.

Job satisfaction data were collected in the form of interviews and surveys from 66 musicians in an élite, major orchestra and a non‐élite, regional orchestra.

Players in both orchestras were similarly satisfied with co‐worker relationships and experienced similar levels of intrinsic work motivation and job involvement. Despite better financial resources in the major orchestra, satisfaction with opportunities for growth and opportunities to exert influence increased with tenure in the regional orchestra, whereas the opposite was true for major players.

The article discusses context‐driven job satisfaction tradeoffs associated with careers in élite versus non‐élite organizations and the role organizations may play in facilitating or impeding workers’ participation in valued activities. It emphasizes the importance of participation in valued activities as a key driver of job satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute with knowledge about how resistance to the neo-liberal agenda is made possible, especially through renewal and reproduction of collective communities.

Using two ethnographical studies, one of a chamber orchestra and one of a shipping company for illustrating resistance.

It is resistance through distancing and creation of a “hidden script” that prevents the collective community from be broken down by individualization. However, resistance through distancing needs to be combined with resistance through persistence in order to become intelligent.

The paper makes use of ethnographic studies to investigate possibilities of resistance. The study has also found it fruitful to combine James Scott's (1990) notion of collectively created hidden scripts with Collinson's (1992, 1994) notion of resistance through distancing and persistence.

The ability to successfully direct and inspire 90 to 100 talented musicians to perform as one unit is often attributed to the conductor′s charismatic powers. The influence of the player as part of an interactive process is generally neglected. Examines these assumptions both by reference to the literature and from interviews with both conductors and musicians. Discusses leadership theories appropriate to the orchestral setting including a distinction between socialized and personalized charismatic leadership. The leadership‐followership process in the orchestra is seen as having three distinct phases; the testing phase, the working stage and the inspirational stage. Suggests implications for leadership in more generalized management settings.

Benjamin Zander, founder and conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, made a significant discovery when he realized that the conductor of an orchestra does not make a sound. Zander believes that a conductor’s power is his or her ability to make others powerful. He said of the experience: “Something shifted in me so profound that members of the orchestra came up to ask what had happened. The shift of emphasis was from pulling power in ‐ to giving it away.” As a speaker at the 1996 International Strategic Management Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, Zander shares some of his thoughts about leadership.

One of the standard practices of Communist Parties around the world is to employ art, including music, as a channel to spread political ideologies. This study aims to scrutinize the reception of Beethoven's music, particularly from a political viewpoint, by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the People's Republic of China (PRC) during the early years of its rule, i.e. from 1949–1959. The ambiguity of Beethoven's own political outlook may have provided an opportunity for the CCP to choose the composer and his music in support of its aims.

To understand why and how the CCP could exploit Beethoven and his music to support its political ideologies, a series of Chinese writings on Beethoven between 1949 and 1959 have been studied. Those literatures not only helped the composer gain reputation and popularity in the PRC, but also provided a platform for the CCP to manipulate such candidate and his music. Finally, the reception of the performances of the Ninth Symphony in 1959 in the PRC is singled out for close examination.

During the first ten years of the establishment of the PRC, the quantity and quality of the articles on Beethoven expanded considerably. These writings continued to reflect the reception of Beethoven and his music with the addition of political nuances that could be interpreted in the CCP's favour.

This paper seeks to examine the PRC's artistic policies, with a particular emphasis on the reception of Beethoven and western classical music.