The challenges and potential of an ethics of arts and cultural industries management

Argument:
Although varying in interpretation, ethical concerns of equality, social justice and sustainability are increasingly present across discourses: leadership, business ethics, public/corporate policymaking, labour, sustainability studies (Bardy, 2018, Hörisch et al., 2020, Todnem By, 2021). However, more reflexive and informed understanding is needed of how ethical interpretation in decision-making changes based on individual managers, their contexts and organisational cultures (Carroll et al., 2020, Schreiber and Rieple, 2018).
Within arts and cultural industries, multiple responses to perceived ethical problems are proposed. These range from an ethics of care approach, to artist-centred processes, failure-informed approaches and attention to cultural governance (Belfiore, 2021, Campbell, 2021, Yan and Liu, 2023, FitzGibbon and Tsioulakis, 2022, Cartiere and Schrag, 2023, Jancovich and Stevenson, 2023, Ebewo and Sirayi, 2009). Yet little agreement exists on what an ethics of management might be (notwithstanding its global variations). It can be hard to see where responsibilities ‘fit’ within everyday management practices (Hazlett et al., 2007); or how theory can translate to (increasingly turbulent) everyday practices (Saintilan and Schreiber, 2023). This paper reports our exploration of these challenges in the study of arts and cultural industries management.
Existing research identifies ethical concerns of arts and cultural industries: climate emergency and turns to ‘responsible’ production; redress of historic inequities in workforce, value systems, cultural rights and the global cultural economy (De Beukelaer and Spence, 2019); the dilemmas prompted by increasing platformisation and rapidly evolving technologies (e.g., AI) (Murphy and Villaespesa, 2021); concerns about workplace behaviour, exploitation, abuses of power (Baltà Portolés and Bashiron Mendolicchio, 2021, Banks and O’Connor, 2020, Gu, 2022). Culture is proposed as a ‘fourth pillar of sustainability’ (Cvejić, 2015), yet UN Sustainable Development Goals lack tangible goals for ‘creative industries’ (Demartini et al., 2021). Meanwhile managerial responses to inequality are challenged as performative (Heidelberg, 2022). Although pre-existing, these issues are amplified post-COVID19 and better understanding of management responses to ‘extreme context’ are needed (Brammer et al., 2023, FitzGibbon, 2022).
These discourses lack direct attention to how managers negotiate and perceive ethical discharge of competing responsibilities in such turbulent times. We found many industry reports and toolkits on ethical concerns in different contexts, but few addressed the multi-level multi-issue multi-stakeholder context of professional arts and cultural managers. Ethical considerations need responses sensitive to ‘cultural’ challenges and the context-specific nature of cultural economy (Price, 2022, Duxbury et al., 2017). Culture (as a broad term) is often mobilised as a ‘messenger’ of social justice and sustainability (Freeman et al., 2015, Edeh et al., 2022) rather than examining its own failings. Managers are critiqued based on ego, self-protection and use of artistic practice as a proxy for ethicality (and moral freedom) (Johanson and Lindström Sol, 2021, Nisbett and Walmsley, 2016, Hernandez and Ortega, 2019). Yet they also make decisions in an increasingly complex mesh of competing agendas and interdependencies (FitzGibbon, 2021) amidst neoliberalising corporatism and technologizing approaches to sustainability (Banks, 2020). Given managers’ significance in deciding what arts and culture gets made and the nature and norms of cultural work, this project focuses its attention on how they derive their perceived responsibilities and decision-making behaviours.
Methodology:
This paper outlines the preliminary stages of collaborative work to inform an ‘ethics of management’ (focused on arts and cultural industries); highlighting theoretical challenges drawn from an interdisciplinary collaborative workshop at the 18th Corporate Responsibility conference 2022. It articulates the preliminary results of an exploratory literature review and draws from a first series of interviews exploring responsibility and obligation among arts managers in Northern Ireland.
Results:
Preliminary findings show that while extensive business ethics research exists, little has investigated how managers make ethical decisions and little has explored the ethical frames of arts and cultural industries. By contrast, arts and cultural industries research has widely explored ethical dilemmas facing the field; yet few propose practice-oriented solutions or guidance.
Notwithstanding the challenges we report, an ethics of arts and cultural industries management is needed for both future theory and practice. This has an implied proposition for a wider ethics of management situated in business ethics and its convergences with leadership, management and strategic management.