Jonathan Gander

Inter–organisational relationships in the worldwide popular recorded music industry

This paper analyses the worldwide popular recorded music industry and examines how product, firm and industry features result in key resources coagulating around the two firm types; the major and independent. We argue that these firm specific resources are complementary and participating firms would benefit from their union. However though complementary, they are inimical and close association risks damaging their value. Collaboration between the two firm types that hold these resources therefore needs to be designed not along traditional concerns of protection from opportunism, or the requirement to control key resources. Instead competitive advantage may be gained by designing and managing structural relationships that protect each partner’s resource set from the hostile elements of the others; a contamination rather than an appropriation focus.

Institutionalizing idealism: the adoption of CSR practices

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss the idiosyncratic features of the adoption and institutionalization of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices.Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual paper in which current theory on the institutionalization of practices within organizational fields is extended. This is achieved through considering how well established models of the institutionalization process accommodate the idiosyncrasies of CSR practices.Findings – Established models of the institutionalization process do not properly account for the patterns of CSR adoption that are identified. This is because CSR has some features that differentiates it from other organizational initiatives, including idealism, delayed discovery of instrumental benefits, public attention, and the tension between public and private logics.Research limitations/implications – This is a conceptual paper which now needs to be explored empirically, either at the level of the CSR practice or...

Designing scalable digital business models

Abstract Digital business models are often designed for rapid growth, and some relatively young companies have indeed achieved global scale. However, despite the visibility and importance of this phenomenon, analysis of scale and scalability remains underdeveloped in management literature. When it is addressed, analysis of this phenomenon is often over-influenced by arguments about economies of scale in production and distribution. To redress this omission, this paper draws on economic, organization, and technology management literature to provide a detailed examination of the sources of scaling in digital businesses. We propose three mechanisms by which digital business models attempt to gain scale: engaging both non-paying users and paying customers; organizing customer engagement to allow self-customization; and orchestrating networked value chains, such as platforms or multi-sided business models. Scaling conditions are discussed, and propositions developed and illustrated with examples of big data entrepreneurial firms.

Situating creative production: recording studios and the making of a pop song

Purpose – This paper explores the spatial and material context of a creative production project. Taking the music recording project as an empirical setting, it explores the creation of a pop song and reveals the highly situated character of its management and organization. Making a creative product such as a pop song is a complex endeavor, requiring a large number of decisions involving highly subjective and often contested and contestable judgments. The purpose of this paper is to understand how this is achieved. Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on observation of musicians and a music producer during the creation of a pop song in a mid-sized recording studio. Interviews were also conducted with the participant musicians and 24 music producers based in the UK. The resulting qualitative data were analyzed using a socio-material perspective to trace the spatial relationships and explore the material organization of the project. Findings – Producing musical product is achieved through establi...

Product development within a clustered environment: The case of apparel design firms

Abstract A great deal of recent academic attention has been paid to the role of location and proximity on the organizing of production. This body of work has identified the likely benefits to firms of co-locating, but despite this, there are gaps, especially in the treatment of creative clusters and the links between location and product creation processes. In this theoretical paper we discuss how clustered apparel designer firms interact with their environment, and how this geography impacts on their designing processes and the designs that emerge. We focus especially on how co-locating with other designers and creative organisations allows them to draw upon a multiplicity of intangible resources such as street scenes, social moods and atmosphere in order to create new designs. These factors are critical in the apparel design sector, but unlike factor inputs such as talent, materials or the financial and physical resources, have hardly been considered in academic writings.

Strategic analysis: a creative and cultural industries perspective

The book Strategic Analysis: A Creative and Cultural Industries Perspective by Jonathan Gander aims to demonstrate how the practice of strategic thinking and analysis can and should be applied by managers working in the Creative and Cultural Industries (CCI). Through a range of competitive scenarios and case studies in CCI, the book provides a clear series of steps through which to identify and tackle strategic issues facing an enterprise and the wider CCI sector.

UK Fashion Designers Working in Micro-sized Enterprises; Attitudes to Locational Resources, Their Peers and the Market

This paper contributes to an understanding of the importance of locally based resources and interactions in a globalised industry, fashion design. It examines the product design stage of the fashion production chain, rather than the manufacture and commercialisation of apparel products. We studied the use of their geographies by UK-based fashion designers working in micro-sized enterprises ( < 10 employees) especially because of their likely sensitivity to various aspects of proximity, including their dependence on external resources to supplement their own. Factor and cluster analysis identified four different types of designers, which differed in the manner in which they interacted with peers and markets, and accessed location-based resources. The paper advances explanations for the patterns of behaviour observed in the various clusters, and in making recommendations for further research predicts the types of design position each is likely to prefer.