Career Paths for Managers in the Arts

Abstract

In this article we examine the career paths of top-level managers in the arts. By analysing the training and work history of 23 managers in a variety of arts organisations we evaluate the utility of several existing theories for understanding careers that are characterised by low levels of initial knowledge, the absence of a clear method of entry and the influence of a central interest in artistic activity. Our findings show that while both boundaryless and protean models shed some light on the career trajectories of arts managers, theories based on personality and identity have a large part to play in explaining their choices. The factors describing patterns of movement exhibited by arts managers are likely to be applicable to other groups emerging into a less structured, rapidly changing employment context.

Breaking through the glass ceiling, but at what cost? From transitions between hierarchical levels to the diversity of ascending, lateral, or descending career paths of women executives

“…Failing to see the importance of these interactions in the field of vocational psychology could limit the opportunity to gain a holistic insight into people's lives (Jung & O'Brien, 2019). Lastly, another limitation noted in current scholarship concerns the makeup of the executive group itself implicitly understood to be male owing to the absence of gender-related dimensions (e.g., the work of Inglis and Cray, 2012).…”

“…During the 1990s, however, researchers noted the decline of this trajectory and the emergence of a new career conceptualized as “boundaryless” (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996). Executives nowadays move from one organization to the next to acquire the necessary skills and experience to advance their careers (Bozionelos & Baruch, 2016; Inglis & Cray, 2012; Powell et al, 2019). The contributions of this research notwithstanding, the myriad specificities of today's management careers, and the models that characterize them remain largely unexplored.…”