(MMJOiUoO-X
$9.95
of the
Careers and opinions of senior administrators
of U.S. art museums, symphony orchestras,
resident theaters, and local arts agencies.
Paul DiMaggio
^0 J) Research Division Report #20
National Endowment for the Arts
Managers of the Arts
Managers
of the
Arts
Careers and opinions of senior administrators
of U.S. art museums, symphony orchestras,
resident theaters, and local arts agencies.
Paul DiMaggio
Research Division Report #20
National Endowment for the Arts
Seven Locks Press
Publishers
Washington, D.C. /Cabin John, Md.
Managers of the Arts is Report # 20 in a series on matters of interest to
the arts community commissioned by the Research Division of the Na-
tional Endowment for the Arts.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
DiMaggio, Paul.
Managers of the arts.
(Research Division report; no. 20)
"Published for the National Endowment for the Arts."
Includes index.
1. Arts administrators— United States. 2. Arts surveys— United States.
I. National Endowment for the Arts. II. Title. HI. Series: Research Division
report (National Endowment for the Arts. Research Division); 20.
NX765.D56 1987 700'.92'2 87-9719
ISBN 0-932020-50-X (pbk.)
Supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Research Division,
under Grant NEA-02^050-001.
Edited by Jane Gold
Designed by Dan Thomas
Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc., Dexter, Michigan
Manufactured in the United States of America
First edition, September 1987
Seven Locks Press
Publishers
P.O. Box 27
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Books of Seven Locks Press are distributed to the trade by
National Book Network Inc.
4720A Boston Way
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Contents
Introduction vii
Executive Summary 1
1. Backgrounds, Recruitment, and Careers 11
2. Rewards and Expectations 25
3. Training 41
4. Professional Participation and Attitudes Toward
Professionalism 52
5. Attitudes Toward Organizational Missions 69
Index 83
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2012 with funding from
LYRASIS Members and Sloan Foundation
http://archive.org/details/managersofartscaOOdima
Introduction
America's first arts organizations were founded in simpler times. When
Henry Lee Higginson established the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1881,
its business affairs could be handled by a single paid manager, amply ad-
vised by Higginson himself. Approximately one mile from the orchestra's
offices, the new Boston Museum of Fine Arts was also managed by a skeleton
crew, with trustees doing most of the work. Even in the 1950s, when the
resident theater movement began to grow, most theaters were administered
by their charismatic founders during moments stolen from artistic duties .
In all these settings, the key personnel were experts in the artistic work
at the core of their organizations' missions. For many years, conductors,
curators, and artistic directors were undisputedly the most visible and most
important members of the institutional art world.
During the last two decades, however, full-time administrative roles
have become more prominent in America's arts organizations, and their
functions have become more formalized. Two factors have led to this
development: the internal growth of the organization and the increased com-
plexity of its external environment.
It is a staple of management literature that growth leads to differentia-
tion, and differentiation increases the demands on administrators.1 As
organizations grow, they assume more tasks and need more employees to
perform the tasks they already have. As the numbers of tasks and employees
increase, functions that had been carried out by a single person are delegated
to additional personnel, who may eventually be designated as a discrete
department. (In theaters, for example, artistic directors begat managing direc-
tors who begat marketing, development, and public relations staffs.) The
more employees and departments, the harder to coordinate their activities.
(The artistic director of the 1950s may have had a difficult time handling
his theater's administrative chores, but at least his right hand knew what
his left hand was doing.) Consequently, management becomes more
essential.
VII
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
In addition, as the external environments of many arts organizations
become more complex, the amount and importance of managerial work also
increase.2 The museum director of the 1930s had only to manage his
curators and volunteers, pursue collectors, and, if the museum benefited
from municipal funds, court an occasional politician. The museum direc-
tor of the 1980s seeks support not just from private patrons, but from cor-
porations, private foundations, and the state and federal governments as
well. To maintain legitimacy in their eyes, the director must be more con-
cerned than ever before both with the museum's public image and success
in attracting visitors, and with its ability to produce reasonably complete
and auditable accounts that meet the requirements public and private agen-
cies impose. Consequently, museums today are more likely than those in
the past to have an assistant or associate director for administration, a con-
troller, and departments like marketing, public relations, development, and
government relations that concern themselves with the museum's relation-
ships with its environment; and museum directors today devote more time
to administration and public relations and less time to scholarship than did
their predecessors.
These changes have been widely acknowledged. Interviews with the
chief executive and operating officers of arts organizations suggest that most
arts organizations' boards have become increasingly concerned with the
quality of administration. Service organizations have established internships,
workshops, and other training programs to prepare and assist administrators.
The National Endowment for the Arts, through its "Services to the Field"
funding categories, has aided many efforts to improve administration, and
many state arts agencies sponsor extensive technical assistance programs.
Private foundations have supported workshops, conferences, and arts ad-
ministration degree programs, as well.
But despite this activity, we have known little about the individuals
who occupy the top administrative posts in our nation's arts organizations.
Until now, research in this area has been restricted primarily to salary studies.
Such research is valuable, of course, but it tells us little about either ex-
ecutive labor markets in the arts or the executives themselves— their
backgrounds and training, their careers, and their attitudes on management
and policy issues.
Methodology and Design
The research presented in this report was conducted to provide practitioners,
donors, and policymakers with information on the administrators of four
kinds of arts organizations: resident theaters, art museums, symphony or-
chestras, and community arts agencies (CAAs).3
VII
Introduction
In 1981, survey instruments were mailed to the chief operating officers
(identified by initial phone calls to the target organizations) of four popula-
tions of arts organizations, with requests that they be completed and returned.
These were followed by a second mailing, also including a survey form,
and, where necessary, by a follow-up postcard and by one or more telephone
calls. Each survey instrument was reviewed by at least one National En-
dowment for the Arts program staff member and at least one staff person
at the appropriate service organization.
Although we sought to survey top managers of the major organizations
in each of the fields studied, the population definition differed somewhat
among the four. The resident theater population consisted of managing direc-
tors of the 165 member resident theaters listed in Theatre Profiles 4 of the
Theatre Communications Group. Wherever a resident theater had both an
"executive producer" and a "general manager," the producer was
surveyed,4 as were several artistic directors who also acted as managing
directors for their theaters. In one case in which a theater was managed
collectively by its artistic personnel, no survey was administered.
The 165 theaters surveyed included all or almost all of the largest resi-
dent theaters in the United States, as well as most of the artistically promi-
nent ones, the membership of the League of Resident Theaters, and all 29
theaters listed as having staff on the National Endowment for the Arts'
Theater Policy and Grants panels from 1977 through 1979. In addition,
these theaters received approximately 80 percent of all Endowment grants
to theaters in 1979. Although one study of the nonprofit theater universe
counted 620 nonprofit theaters in the United States in 1980, only some were
resident theaters.5 Of those, the group surveyed was less likely to include
very new, very small, or very poor theaters, or theaters devoted largely
to social rather than to conventionally defined aesthetic goals.
In the case of orchestras, we surveyed all managers of U.S. member
organizations in the major, regional, and metropolitan categories of the
American Symphony Orchestra League (ASOL). Interviews indicated that
all orchestras in the "major" and "regional" categories and 95 of approx-
imately 105 orchestras in its "metropolitan" budget range were ASOL
members. (These three categories accounted for 156 organizations in
1979.)6
Because the American Association of Museums (AAM) does not publish
lists of art (as distinct from other) museums, identifying the largest art
museums was more complicated than identifying major resident theaters
and orchestras. From the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES)
1978 Museum Universe Survey7 we drew up an initial list of 137 art
museums with operating budgets of $120,000 or more, to which we added
art museums reporting either attendance of 60,000 or more, or a total budget
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
of $220,000 or more.8 This list was then checked against the Museum
Directory 1980 to screen out museums incorrectly classified as art
museums,9 and to the remaining 175 institutions we added 17 that were
not included in the NCES list: 13 art museums that reported budgets of
$500,000 or more in the 1978 American Art Directory, and 4 whose direc-
tors were members of the Association of Art Museum Directors
(AAMD).10 The total population of large art museums thus derived
numbered 192.
To develop a list of CAAs, we began with a survey made by the National
Assembly of Community Arts Agencies (NACAA)(now the National Assem-
bly of Local Arts Agencies) of their own membership. NACAA estimated
the universe of CAAs to number approximately 2000. Directors of all agen-
cies reporting a full-time professional administrator in response to the
NACAA inquiry were included in our study's population. Although we can-
not assess rigorously the extent to which the agencies in our population dif-
fered from those that were not NACAA members and/or those without full-
time paid administrators, our agencies were probably larger or wealthier
than most (because they could afford to employ full-time directors) and were
relatively cosmopolitan (because they participated in a national organiza-
tion). Nonetheless, our findings regarding CAA directors should be inter-
preted with caution since we know so little about the universe of agencies.
After we eliminated organizations that were defunct or that did not,
at the time of the survey, have full-time executives, we were left with
responses from 102 theater managing directors (a response rate of 68.67
percent), 113 orchestra managers (72.67 percent), 132 art museum direc-
tors (67.20 percent), and 171 CAA directors (86.54 percent).
Merging our data with information from Theatre Profiles 4 permitted
us to test the sample of resident theater managing directors on a variety
of factors for response bias. These tests revealed that respondents' and
nonrespondents' theaters were similar across a wide range of variables, in-
cluding region, house capacity and percentage of seats filled, percentage
of income earned, and mean income.
Among art museum directors, only museum region could be used to
test for response bias. Response was somewhat higher for directors from
the Great Lakes, Mid-South, and Gulf regions (74. 19 percent) than for direc-
tors from the Pacific, Northwest, Southwest, North Plains, and South Plains
regions (60.00), with the response rate of directors from New England,
the Middle Atlantic states, and New York close to the population mean.
Response rates of orchestra managers varied not by region but by ASOL
budget classification. Almost all of the regional managers responded to the
survey, compared with just under two thirds of the metropolitan managers.
Response from major managers was close to the population mean.
Introduction
Lastly, for CAA directors, our survey was merged with data from
NACAA's 1980 survey (from which our sample was derived), providing
several tests of sample bias. Response rates were very similar by region,
degree of urbanization of community served, and budget size; however,
directors of private, undesignated nonprofit agencies were less likely to re-
spond (78. 13 percent) than were directors of either publicly designated non-
profit agencies or public CAAs (90.32 percent and 92.11 percent,
respectively).
Because none of the surveys, then, appears to be flawed by dramatic
response bias, given the qualifications cited and the relatively high response
rates, analyses can, for the most part, be generalized to the populations
surveyed.
Still, certain caveats should be observed in interpreting the data presented
in the following chapters. First, the findings cannot be generalized beyond
the populations surveyed: in the case of the theaters, orchestras, and art
museums, they apply only to executives of the 150 to 200 major institu-
tions in each field; and, in the case of the CAAs, they apply only to those
NACAA members who indicated they had a full-time paid director. This
is not a major disability, however, because the organizations surveyed ac-
count for the great bulk of expenditures in their fields, and many smaller
organizations do not have full-time paid managers.
In a few cases, particularly in the survey of theater managing direc-
tors, substantial item nonresponse rendered interpretation of specific results
difficult. All tables indicate the number of respondents on which results
are based, and the most striking instances of item nonresponse are men-
tioned in text or notes. Other caveats apply only to specific chapters and
are described at length in the text.
The Report
This report first examines the backgrounds, schooling, and career ex-
periences of the senior administrators surveyed; the preparation they had
for their positions and their evaluations of it; and the rewards and satisfac-
tions they receive from their jobs and their expectations for future employ-
ment. It then addresses the extent of the administrators' participation in pro-
fessional activities outside their organizations, and lastly it reviews their
attitudes toward a range of policy and management issues, many of which
relate to their organizations' missions. In each chapter, we first compare
the responses of administrators from each field; and then, based on factors
such as cohort, organization size, and career experience, we look at notable
variation in responses within each field.
The material in this report represents the major findings of this study .
XI
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
For the sake of brevity, reports of many analyses have been omitted. A
much longer, more exhaustive report of our findings, including copies of
the survey instruments and of all tables for which statistics are cited, is
available for study at the offices of the National Endowment for the Arts'
Research Division. This report has been distributed by the Educational
Research Information Center (ERIC) to libraries and to "on-line" com-
mercial information services under the title The Careers and Opinions of
Administrators of U.S. Art Museums, Resident Theatres, Orchestras, and
Local Arts Agencies (ERIC No. ED 257 696).
The author is obliged to many people and organizations for help in
undertaking and completing this study. In addition to the Research Divi-
sion of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Yale University Program
on Non-Profit Organizations provided financial backing and a supportive
environment for this research, and data analyses were supported by Yale
University through the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, School of
Organization and Management, and Department of Sociology. I am par-
ticularly grateful to Prof. John G. Simon for his confidence in this work.
Time to revise the report for publication was provided by a sabbatical from
Yale, which was supported by grants from the Carnegie Corporation of
New York and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to the Yale Pro-
gram on Non-Profit Organizations; and by a grant to the Center for Ad-
vanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences from the Andrew W. Mellon Foun-
dation. The Center for Advanced Study provided expert clerical and com-
puter assistance and a nurturant atmosphere without parallel.
The largest debt of appreciation is owed to the many administrators
who took time from their usually oversaturated schedules, often with ex-
traordinary good humor, to complete the surveys. Many arts administrators,
service organization staff, and staff of public arts agencies, some of whom
would prefer to remain unnamed, provided invaluable critical reviews of
draft survey instruments. I am grateful for the help and cooperation of the
NACAA, and in particular, of its directors, Chick Dombach and Gretchen
Weist, who kindly made available to me results of their own survey of
NACAA' s membership. The good counsel and patience of Tom Bradshaw,
Harold Horowitz, and John Shaffer of the National Endowment for the Arts'
Research Division, is much appreciated, as is advice on survey drafting
from several present and former Yale colleagues, especially John Kimberly,
Walter Powell, and Janet Weiss. Mitchell Smith of the New York State
Council on the Arts offered helpful tips on surveying arts administrators.
Ella Sandor of the Yale Program on Non-Profit Organizations facilitated
the administration of the study throughout, and Barbara Mulligan and
Marilyn Mandell provided outstanding clerical (and, at time, more than
clerical) assistance during the survey phase. Thanks is due Caroline Watts,
XII
Introduction
Elizabeth Huntley, and Naomi Rutenberg for dedicated research assistance
in undertaking the survey; Frank P. Romo, for advice on data analysis;
and, especially, Kristen Stenberg, for superb assistance in data analysis and
for extraordinary feats of diligence, patience, and creativity in data
management.
Notes
1 . Peter M. Blau and Richard A. Schoenherr, The Structure of Organizations (New York:
Basic Books, 1971).
2. This argument is made most lucidly by Richard A. Peterson in "From Impresario
to Arts Administrator: Formal Accountability in Nonprofit Cultural Organizations,"
in Nonprofit Enterprise in the Arts: Studies in Mission and Constraint, ed. Paul
DiMaggio (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
3. When this research was undertaken, "community arts agencies" was the term com-
monly used for organizations that now refer to themselves as "local arts agencies."
The service organization for this field, the National Assembly of Local Arts Agen-
cies (NALAA), was then named the National Assembly of Community Arts Agen-
cies (NACAA). Throughout this report, the term "community arts agency" (CAA)
is used to refer to the agencies at the time of the survey, while "local arts agency"
is used as the generic or contemporary reference.
4. David J. Skal, ed., Theatre Profiles 4 (New York: Theatre Communications Group,
1979).
5. Mathtech, Inc., Conditions and Needs of the Professional American Theatre
(Washington, D.C.: National Endowment for the Arts, Research Division, 1980).
6. Resource Guide (Vienna, Va.: American Symphony Orchestra League, 1979).
7. See Macro Systems, Inc., Contractor's Report: Museum Program Survey, 1979
(Washington, D.C.: National Center for Educational Statistics, 1981).
8. Some responding museums provided only "total budget" figures rather than "operating
budget" information. Where attendance reports appeared inflated— i.e., where they
were inconsistent with data on budget and hours— museums were dropped.
9. American Association of Museums, The Official Museum Directory 1980 (Skokie,
HI.: National Register Publishing Co., Inc., 1979).
10. Jacques Cattell Press, American Art Directory (New York: Bowker 1980).
Executive Summary
This survey report examines the backgrounds and careers of senior ad-
ministrators of resident theaters, art museums, symphony orchestras, and
community arts agencies (CAAs); the rewards they receive from their work
and their expectations about future employment; the training they have had
and their evaluation of it; and their professional participation and attitudes
on a range of management and policy issues. Highlights of the study's find-
ings are summarized under three headings, each a topic of importance to
arts administrators and policymakers: recruitment and reward, training, and
professionalism.
Recruitment and Reward
The 1960s and 1970s were a time of expansion for the arts in two senses:
first, many arts organizations grew significantly in size during that period;
and second, the number of organizations in many fields grew substantially
as well. Growth of both kinds increased employment opportunities, attracted
potential managers into the labor market, and provided rapid advancement
for many of the people thus drawn in. But if growth slows down in the
years to come, arts organizations may find it more difficult to recruit
managers; and managers, once recruited, may find fewer opportunities for
career development than did their predecessors.
Indeed, in 1981, when these data were collected, the years in which
the managers surveyed had entered their fields tended to cluster for all
disciplines but orchestras. The greatest period of influx among art museum
directors was between 1966 and 1970; among theater managing directors,
between 1971 and 1975; and among CAA directors, between 1975 and 1979.
These periods occurred either during or immediately after expansionary eras.
1
Managers of the Arts
Most administrators came from relatively — but not extremely-
privileged social backgrounds. Their parents had more years of schooling
and better jobs than most Americans of their age. However, except perhaps
for those of the art museum directors, administrators' parents were not
predominantly college educated, professional, or upper managerial. Cohort
comparisons indicate that, among art museum and, to a lesser extent, theater
administrators, family backgrounds have become less high-status over time.
By contrast, the administrators themselves were notably well educated.
In every field, all but a few had college degrees and more than half pur-
sued their formal education beyond college. Greater educational attainment
over time was found among theater managing directors and art museum
directors, the latter of whom increasingly had earned Ph.D.s in art history;
and substantial percentages within both groups with college degrees had
earned them at very selective colleges and universities.
At the same time, women in all fields tended to have received fewer
years of education. They also managed smaller organizations. But although
all fields except the art museums had greater percentages of women among
more recent cohorts of administrators, we cannot assume their greater
representation indicates a long-term expansion of opportunities for women
administrators since the attrition of women managers may possibly be higher
than that of their male counterparts.
Administrators were initially recruited into their fields from various
sources. About 40 percent of the art museum directors and orchestra
managers entered their fields immediately after completing their formal
education. This proportion declined among theater managing directors and
was even smaller among CAA directors. However, only in the symphony
orchestra field were administrators frequently recruited from business
enterprises.
The first jobs many respondents held in their fields (as many as 80 per-
cent of CAA directors) were top administratorships. Smaller proportions
in each field entered into aesthetic positions first, from theater managing
directors and orchestra managers who began as actors or musicians, respec-
tively, to art museum directors who started in curatorial, registration, or
exhibition positions.
Nonetheless, many administrators did have firsthand familiarity with
the arts they managed. Approximately 20 percent of the orchestra
respondents had worked at some time as musicians; a similar percentage
of the CAA directors reported working as visual or performing artists; two
fifths of the theater managing directors had been actors or artistic directors
(not necessarily full time); and more than two fifths of the art museum direc-
tors had been curators. What is more, substantial percentages of top managers
in each field majored in a relevant artistic discipline in college.
Executive Summary
In the performing arts, however, our 1981 data show that the percen-
tage of administrators with artistic experience appears to have declined over
time: the most recent entrants into these fields were more likely to have
administrative experience and/or management degrees, and were less likely
to report artistic experience, than were more senior administrators. Similarly,
the percentage of art museum directors who had been curators declined with
time as the percentage of new recruits moving to directorships from academic
teaching jobs increased.
Arts administration careers lack the formal structure that educational
and internship requirements impose on the traditional professions and that
managers of the largest corporations receive from internal labor markets.
There are no formal ranks or systematic evaluations as there are in govern-
ment service to provide individuals with guides to their own progress. In-
deed, only in the art museums, where one career pattern (from curator to
director) was being preempted by another (from art history professor to
director) were there one or two modal career progressions. In the other
fields, and particularly in the community arts, careers were neither routinized
nor predictable.
Such unpredictable career structures are often stressful, and where
careers are sufficiently chaotic, retention of personnel may be difficult. To
some extent, expansion of members and size of organizations may have
softened the effects of a lack of routinization between 1960 and 1980, dur-
ing which time administrators in all four fields rose quickly to command-
ing positions. Median years to first top managership range from zero among
the community arts respondents (where most directors were hired into top
positions from outside the field) to about six years in the art museum field.
Most administrators attained their first chief executive positions while still
in their thirties. Contrary to popular belief, however, arts administrators
who remain in their fields do not appear to be job-hoppers: more than half
of those surveyed had worked for one or two organizations in their fields,
and only a small percentage had held jobs at more than four.
To the extent that the rate of growth of the field covered in the study
(and with it opportunities for career advancement) has declined during the
1980s, arts organizations may have trouble recruiting and, in particular,
keeping talented administrators. It is thus all the more important to under-
stand the rewards that keep administrators at their jobs.
Organizational budgets and salaries were highest for the art museums
and orchestras, and lowest for the resident theaters and CAAs. Art museum
directors and orchestra managers also reported somewhat higher levels of
satisfaction than did other administrators. By contrast, more CAA direc-
tors than other respondents considered it likely that they would accept a
job outside the arts, that they would work for public arts agencies other
Managers of the Arts
than CAAs, or that they would manage some other kind of arts organiza-
tion. These findings suggest that the lack of both resources and other more
subjective rewards may lead to attrition among CAA directors and perhaps
among administrators in other fields as well.
Holding other factors constant, seniority was related to the size of
organizational budget in all fields but the art museums; it also influenced
salaries in all fields but art museums. Thus women, who managed smaller
organizations, received lower pay than comparable male administrators in
every field. Finally, attendance at a private school or a prestigious college
was associated with organizational budget as well. Among art museum direc-
tors, the best predictor of the resources a director commanded was posses-
sion of a degree from a specific prestigious American university.
Factors that influenced expectations of leaving administrative positions
in the arts differed among the four fields. Women theater managing direc-
tors, for example, were more likely than their male counterparts to expect
to take jobs outside of the arts, as were art museum directors if, controlling
for other factors, they had a lot of museum experience for their age and
had worked as curators. Orchestra managers with business degrees were
less likely, other things equal, to anticipate working outside of the arts than
were those without them. And among CAA directors, intention to leave
the field was negatively associated with college selectivity and years of ex-
perience, and positively associated with parental education. Finally, for all
groups but art museum directors, administrators in the middle cohort were
most likely to consider their taking a job outside the arts, which perhaps
indicates frustration over career blockage among midcareer managers. It
is among these midcareer managers and, for the theaters, among female
administrators, that the dangers of significant attrition would appear greatest.
These findings suggest the importance of both rewards and relatively
stable career paths in recruiting and keeping talented administrators. Of
course, some administrators will always be attracted to the arts; those
surveyed reported deriving satisfaction from many aspects of their work.
Yet it will probably remain difficult— and, to the extent expansion slows,
become more difficult— to attract and retain committed and talented ad-
ministrators in all the fields discussed here, except perhaps art museums.
The danger of attrition appears greatest in community arts agencies, where
careers are most chaotic and salaries are lowest; conversely, it is least press-
ing among art museum directors, whose salaries are highest and whose career
patterns are most predictable. The data reported suggest that a program aimed
at attracting and keeping managers would have to accomplish three things:
1. Raise salaries in fields in which administrators are least well paid.
2 . Establish somewhat more predictable career paths that offer the prom-
Executive Summary
ise of further opportunities to administrators who reach the top of large
or medium-sized organizations relatively early in life.
3 . Offer more equal opportunities to women managers who pursue careers
in these fields.
Training
As the number and complexity of arts organizations have grown, so has
their need for skilled managers. Yet strikingly few of the administrators
surveyed reported being well prepared for managerial positions. CAA direc-
tors (who, on average, first became administrators at an older age than other
managers) were somewhat more likely to be prepared and art museum direc-
tors somewhat less likely— to assume many administrative duties at the time
they were appointed to their first top managership. In each field, as many
reported being poorly prepared for each function as being well prepared.
In short, administrators in all four fields believed their preparation, par-
ticularly in financial management and labor relations, could have been much
better. Additionally, theater managing directors felt they had been poorly
prepared for board relations while art museum directors specifically faulted
their preparation for government relations, marketing and public relations.
According to their responses in the survey, only the younger theater
managing directors had become better prepared for their positions than the
more senior managing directors. The more junior cohort among them were
more likely than any others to consider themselves well prepared at the start
for all functions but labor relations, and less likely to consider themselves
poorly prepared for every function but personnel management. By contrast,
the senior art museum directors and orchestra managers were more likely
to report themselves poorly prepared for everything but personnel manage-
ment than were directors in the middle cohorts of their fields.
Administrators in all fields responded that on-the-job training was the
principal means by which they had tried to master each of the management
functions about which they were questioned in the study. Many had used
professional workshops and seminars, and art museum and theater manag-
ing directors in particular had used consultants. A smaller minority of ad-
ministrators in each field had taken university arts administration and general
management courses— especially theater managing directors and orchestra
managers— most notably in the area of financial management; and atten-
dance at these courses, particularly among these groups, seemed to be rising.
General reputations of different training formats were surprisingly con-
sistent from field to field. Respondents in all fields ranked on-the-job train-
ing above all other forms, and internships were highly valued as well. By
contrast, management consultants were ranked very low in every field.
Managers of the Arts
Respondents were most polarized around university arts administration and
general management courses, and change in reputation by cohort appeared
only among the theater managing directors, where relative newcomers
favored university courses over workshops and seminars more than their
more senior colleagues did.
Yet when the question specified the management function for which
each training format was used and only those respondents who had actually
used the respective formats were asked to evaluate them, the responses were
quite different. Although the reputation of consultants among all ad-
ministrators was quite low, managers who had used them reported high
levels of satisfaction. Conversely, respondents who had used arts administra-
tion programs found them relatively unhelpful for most purposes, even
though their generalized reputation was rather high.
These findings reflect subjective appraisals and not objective measures
of the quality either of the preparation arts administrators received or of
the different kinds of training formats. They do, however, suggest several
points policymakers should bear in mind:
1 . Administrators in all these fields perceive their preparation for executive
positions to be inadequate.
2 . On-the-job training is still the most common and best appreciated kind
of training in every field for administrative skills.
3 . People who actually used different training methods for specific pur-
poses rated them differently than those who had not used them. To
the extent that the former's evaluations have a sounder basis, program
administrators should be cautious of making decisions about training
alternatives on those methods' general reputations. Agencies and foun-
dations that have supported the development of specific kinds of manage-
ment training should consider rigorously evaluating the effectiveness
of the programs they have aided before expending more funds for this
purpose.
Professionalism
The term professionalism is often used to connote competence, and a "pro-
fessional manager" is often seen as one who is knowledgeable and capable.
This usage, however, does not tell us how occupations that are regarded
as professions differ from those that are not. (There are, for example,
bricklayers, train conductors, and automotive mechanics who are both well
and poorly trained, both competent and incompetent; yet few people talk
about professionalism in those fields, and those who do are not taken very
seriously.)
Executive Summary
Instead, this report adheres to a definition of professionalism that is
based on a tradition of studies of professionals and professionalizing oc-
cupations. In this tradition, professions are described as occupations with
some or all of the following characteristics: a monopoly of at least somewhat
esoteric knowledge; a body of professional ethics or standards; professional
associations that enforce these standards, accredit training institutions, and
license practitioners; extensive collegial interaction among practitioners
employed in different organizations; a commitment to professional stan-
dards even when they conflict with organizational goals; and a claim to
altruism and disinterestedness in professional practice. Professionalism, as
used here, refers to the presence or absence of these factors, and not to
the competence or lack thereof of practitioners.
Administrators in all four fields participated in an extensive web of
local, state, and national professional activities, ranging from explicitly pro-
fessional societies like the Association of Art Museum Directors, to ser-
vice organizations that function in some ways like professional associations,
to peer review panels in state and federal arts and cultural agencies. Speeches
at association meetings and articles in field publications often refer to pro-
fessionalism as a goal or a reality.
Yet in none of these fields were managers regarded as professionals
as the term is used here. In no case, for example, were practitioners re-
quired to hold degrees in a particular management curriculum, nor were
they licensed by professional panels. Moreover, allegiance to values
associated with professionalism (mastery of a formal body of expertise, sup-
port for professional over organizational standards, licensing for practi-
tioners) was far from universal among the respondents.
Possibly these findings reflect processes of professionalization that are
still incomplete. Indeed, professionalism seems least advanced among the
CAA administrators, the newest managerial group, and most advanced
(although in its art-historical rather than administrative sense) among the
art museum directors, the arts' oldest administrative cadre. Our survey
reveals some evidence of managerial professionalization in the resident
theater, where younger managing directors were more likely to have for-
mal training beyond college, management degrees and management ex-
perience prior to assuming their first top administrative position, and in-
service training in university management programs. Attitudes of the more
recent theater administrators were also more akin, in some respects, to tradi-
tional professional values than were those of their more senior colleagues.
Nonetheless, even the most junior cohort of managing theater directors
showed divergence from the professional model, and experiences and at-
titudes of administrators in the other fields were even less typical of
professionalism.
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
Managerial professionalization in the arts is a movement fraught with
paradox. One paradox has to do with the nature of professional manage-
ment in any field. A tension exists between the emphasis in professional
ideology on peer control and the emphasis in management on the pursuit
of the organization's best interests. If the professional— by definition — must
evade organizational control to live up to the standards of the profession,
the manager— again, by definition— must exert control for the benefit of
the organization. If the professional's legitimacy comes from the impossibil-
ity of routinizing his or her work, the manager's derives from his or her
expertise at making organizational processes more routine. Managerial and
professional warrants for occupational authority are different and, to some
extent, inconsistent.
A second paradox has to do with tensions between managerial and
aesthetic orientation. Within the arts, even among administrators, there is
little consensus as to the kind of expertise that should be expected of
managers. In some organizations, the manager must master techniques of
budgeting, marketing, and public relations. In others, subordinates execute
these functions, and the manager is a catalyst and integrator of the work
of others. In still others, the administrator deals primarily with the organiza-
tion's environment, specializing in fund-raising and public relations. In the
absence of uniformity in arts organizations' needs, and thus of consensus
about what the expert manager should be expert at doing, it is difficult to
design a formal curriculum, much less to expect that arts organizations will
demand that administrative candidates hold a specific credential. Uncer-
tainty about the nature of managerial work is reflected in the emphasis on
hands-on experience that emerged in respondents' criteria for selecting direc-
tors and in their evaluation of training approaches.
This uncertainty is compounded by the belief of many (particularly older)
administrators in arts organizations that the chief executive should be some-
one with aesthetic as well as administrative expertise. Among the ad-
ministrators surveyed here, this was a minority view in all fields but the
art museums. Ironically, however, it is the art museum directorship that
has professionalized at a faster pace than any of the others. More than half
of the most recent cohort of art museum directors held a specialized ad-
vanced degree (the Ph.D. in art history) — education appears to have become
a more important determinant of success while family background has de-
clined in importance — and they were more likely than other respondents
to stress the importance of professional codes of ethics and even to enter-
tain the idea that professional associations should play a role in enforcing
such codes. Yet these directors were least likely to have management training
or to value a management background. Theirs is a professionalism in which
administrative expertise plays only a minor role.
8
Executive Summary
The third paradox involves the underlying structure of managerial
careers and the absence of a basis in the labor market for an arts manage-
ment profession. The labor markets for the fields investigated here (with
the important exception of the community arts organizations) appear highly
segmented. Few respondents in any field but the community arts had ever
been administrators in any other field or anticipated ever managing a dif-
ferent kind of arts organization. Very few art museum directors had ever
worked for any other kind of museum, and nearly as few expected ever
to work for one, much less to administer some other kind of arts organiza-
tion. Although many CAA directors had experience in the performing or
visual arts, the backgrounds of other administrators suggest that the road
from disciplinary organizations to the community arts organizations is a
one-way street. What is more, few administrators had degrees in arts ad-
ministration, and such degrees were not valued as highly as many other
kinds of preparation. Thus, it appears that arts administration is a term that
describes not a single profession but a family of occupations, each with
its own labor market.
The issue of professionalism should not, however, obscure the real need
of arts organizations for strong management in an increasingly complex
environment. Arts organizations in the fields studied here face challenges
in recruiting and retaining talented administrators, and in providing the train-
ing they need to do their jobs well. The growth in the arts during the 1960s
and 1970s may have softened the challenges of getting and keeping compe-
tent administrators at the same time that it made their jobs more complicated
than they had once been. Slower growth in the years to come could make
those challenges even more pressing and could jeopardize the gains in ad-
ministrative performance that have been achieved.
Policymakers concerned with the need in the future for strong arts
management should work toward a better resolution of three paradoxes:
1 . Managerial and professional warrants for occupational authority are
different and, to some extent, inconsistent.
2
. There is little consensus, even among administrators, as to the kind
of expertise that should be expected of arts managers.
. The underlying structure of managerial careers in the four fields studied
indicates a family of occupations, each with its own labor market, rather
than a single profession.
1
Backgrounds, Recruitment,
And Careers
Many of the most critical managerial problems facing American arts in-
stitutions concern the careers of the individuals who manage them. An artistic
discipline must induce capable managers to enter career paths that lead to
executive positions. It must provide these individuals with the experience
and knowledge they need to perform effectively as top executives. And it
must reward talented executives sufficiently so they will remain in the field.
In short, for a field to attract and retain talented managers, it must pro-
vide careers — sequences of jobs that lead to desired end points— to motivate
people to participate. Orderly careers allow individuals to compare their
progress with that of their peers, to seek proximate goals with some cer-
tainty that they will lead to valued long-range outcomes, and to work from
day to day with some confidence that competent performance will be re-
warded. In fields where careers are chaotic (the paths to higher positions
being irregular and unpredictable) or where opportunities are few, it is dif-
ficult to attract talented managers or to persuade those who are attracted
to stay.
Individuals and service organizations in all artistic disciplines are con-
cerned about administrative recruitment.1 But, as yet, we have known lit-
tle about who art managers are: their background, their education, their
preparation, and their success (or lack of success) in their chosen fields.2
Where concern is great and information meager, stereotypes abound.
Managerial careers in the arts are said to be characterized by instability
and job-hopping. Arts managers are sometimes portrayed as failed artists,
frustratedly accepting executive positions for which they are unqualified
11
Managers of the Arts
as substitutes for artistic roles they would rather play. Or, alternatively,
arts administrators are alleged to be "just" managers, knowledgeable about
accounting and marketing but insensitive to the particular needs and demands
of their artistic disciplines. The results of our research, however, suggest
that these stereotypes are not well-founded.
Educational and Social Backgrounds
Managers in each field were predominantly from upper middle-class
backgrounds. Museum and theater managing directors ranked slightly higher
on most measures of family status, followed by orchestra managers and
then CAA directors; more than one sixth of the CAA directors grew up
in blue-collar families, while fewer than one tenth of museum or orchestra
top executives did. Accordingly, museum directors were somewhat more
likely and CAA directors somewhat less likely than managers in the other
two fields to have college-educated fathers and to have attended private
schools.
Based on the Astin Index of "College Quality," which measures selec-
tivity as much as it does quality and is used widely by researchers in higher
education, museum directors attended more selective colleges and CAA
directors less selective colleges than did theater and orchestra managers.
Nonetheless, the vast majority of all managers earned a college degree, and
more than half in each field (and almost all art museum directors) sought
graduate degrees.
While in college, managers majored in artistic fields related to their
later employment (e.g., theater studies, art history, music, or visual arts)
to a striking extent (from 39 percent of CAA directors to 58 percent of
art museum directors), and over one quarter of those who did not chose
the humanities — including English literature, history, or foreign languages.
Although relatively few managers in any field majored in education, manage-
ment, or arts administration as undergraduates, a small minority did pur-
sue advanced degrees in management or arts administration. However, many
even in that minority hold B.A.s in their field's art form. These facts tend
to refute assertions that arts organizations have been taken over by artistically
unsophisticated professional managers, at least insofar as we define pro-
fessional in terms of academic credentials.
Differences Between Male and Female Managers
Across the four disciplines, the proportion of top managers who were men
varied widely, ranging from 45 percent in CAAs to 85 percent in art
museums, with about two thirds in theaters and orchestras. In every field
except art museums, however, women disproportionately had less senior-
12
Backgrounds, Recruitment, and Careers
ity (measured by the year in which they began their first full-time job in
the field), even though they were not necessarily younger. For example,
although male theater managers were more likely than their female counter-
parts to be over 40, the opposite was true in CAAs and art museums.
In all fields but theater, female managers tended to come from a higher-
status social background than did their male counterparts. Thus, they were
more likely to have had college-educated parents— especially mothers—
and fathers who were businessmen or professionals, and less likely to have
come from blue-collar homes. By contrast, again in every field but theater
(where there was little difference), male managers were more highly educated
than females, as evidenced by their much greater likelihood of having re-
ceived graduate training and/or degrees.
While in college, women orchestra and theater managers were from
two to four times as likely as men to have majored in the humanities; far
fewer women orchestra and CAA managers majored in the performing arts.
While female CAA managers who majored in education or the social sciences
outnumbered the males, no female theater managers majored in business
or arts management, whereas one in seven males did. Within each field,
the most striking difference was that women managers tended to administer
smaller organizations. For example, more than half of all women art museum
directors were in the smallest quarter of museums while just 1 8 percent
directed the largest, and 46 percent of female orchestra managers ad-
ministered the lowest budget quartile of orchestras while just 5 percent
managed the largest.
Differences by Budget Size
Each set of administrators was divided into four quartiles based on the dollar
operating budget of their institutions (see table 1-1). Not surprisingly,
managers of the largest institutions by and large had spent more years in
their fields than administrators of small organizations, which suggests that
Table 1-1
Budget Ranges by Category and Discipline
(in thousands of dollars)
Discipline
Lowest quartile 2nd quartile 3rd quartile Top quartile
Theaters
less than 260
260-500
501-1200
more than 1200
Orchestras
less than 320
320-700
701-1700
more than 1 700
Art Museums
less than 500
500-1000
1001-2000
more than 2000
CAAs
less than 50
50-100
101- 300
more than 300
13
Managers of the Arts
the latter group tends either to move to larger organizations or to leave the
field. Managers of wealthy institutions also tended to be slightly older than
managers of small organizations, especially in the case of the resident
theaters. Directors of the largest art museums were more likely than other
directors to have attended private secondary schools and colleges in the north-
east, and to have earned Ph.D.s; most striking was the finding that almost
40 percent of art museum directors from the largest museums and more
than 25 percent of those from the next largest hold undergraduate or graduate
degrees awarded by a specific American university, compared with just 5
percent of those from smaller museums.
Differences by Cohort
Assertions that administrators have changed in recent years can be evaluated
by looking at the differences between cohorts— that is, between managers
who began their careers in different eras. After dividing each managerial
population into three cohorts based on the year in which they took their
first full-time jobs in their fields (see table 1-2), we compared their ex-
periences to look at change over time.
For three reasons, however, such cohort data must be interpreted with
caution.3 First, we know that some individuals who entered the field along
with the oldest cohorts have now left it, and that some members of our
youngest cohorts will soon be gone. But our data cannot tell us whether
membership characteristics between cohorts differ because different sets
of managers were recruited at different times or because different kinds
of managers experience different rates of attrition.
Second, when we compare cohorts we cannot always distinguish period
effects (effects of the era in which a person entered the field) from aging
effects. For example, we have seen that, in all four fields, top executives
of wealthy institutions were older than top executives of small ones. A visitor
Table 1-2
Cohort Categories for Each Discipli
By First Year of First Job in Field
ine,
Discipline
Cohort 1
Cohort 2
Cohort 3
Theaters
Orchestras
Art Museums
CAAs*
Before 1967
Before 1964
Before 1963
Before 1976
1967-1974
1964-1973
1963-1968
1976-1978
After 1974
After 1973
After 1968
After 1978
* First full-time job in the arts.
14
Backgrounds, Recruitment, and Careers
from outer space might logically attribute this finding to a period effect,
concluding that people who went into the arts 20 years ago entered major
institutions while those entering arts management today prefer smaller ones.
But we are more likely to believe it reflects an aging effect: when managers
leave their mark on a field, they are offered jobs at larger and more
prestigious institutions that will not hire inexperienced managers. In
distinguishing true cohort effects from the effects of differential attrition
or aging, then, we must go beyond the data and draw on experience, intui-
tion, and common sense.
Finally, the reader should note that the years that define cohorts differ
from discipline to discipline, depending on the distribution of entry years
in each managerial group. Thus, a member of the most senior cohort of
CAA directors may have had fewer years of experience than a member of
the least senior cohort of art museum directors. In general, the brief time
span of most CAA directors' careers created a paucity of notable differences
among cohorts in that field.
Despite these caveats, some striking findings emerge from the analysis
of cohort variation among the four arts administrator populations. Not sur-
prisingly, managers with seniority were more likely to command the
largest— and less likely to command the smallest — organizations in each field
than were recent entrants. More notably, in each discipline, the percentage
of female administrators grew with each successive cohort. For example,
48 percent of orchestra managers entering the field since 1973 were women,
over three times as many as those taking their first orchestra job before
1964. Similarly, the percentage of women among senior resident theater
managers more than doubled among the "newcomer" cohort. But while
these findings are consistent with increased opportunities for women in arts
organization management, they are also consistent with greater attrition of
women managers over time. That is, the data would look the same whether
women were doing better (a cohort effect) or were simply dropping out
of these fields as they got older (an attrition effect).
Except in the orchestra field, the educational attainment of top managers
appeared to increase over time. While more than 25 percent of senior CAA
directors lacked the B.A., under 10 percent of the most recent entrants did.
And fewer than half of the most senior theater managers pursued their educa-
tion beyond the B.A., compared with approximately 60 percent of each
subsequent cohort. Finally, 55 percent of the newest art museum directors
earned Ph.D.s, over three times the proportion as in the most senior cohort.
Surprisingly, the dramatic increase in formal education among art
museum managers has been accompanied by a decline in measures of paren-
tal social status. Among those in the most recent cohort, fewer had par-
ents who were professionals or who owned or ran large businesses, and
15
Managers of the Arts
more came from blue-collar and middle-class business families. Moreover,
fewer had grandparents born in North America, and even fewer attended
private secondary schools. Thus, entry into the art museum field (and, to
a lesser extent, into the theater field as well) seems to have become less
strongly related to family background and more directly a product of educa-
tional accomplishment. (Note that these findings could have resulted from
attrition if directors from higher-status backgrounds stayed in the field longer
than those from more modest homes, but there is nothing to suggest this
was the case.)
Recruitment into Arts Administration
A crucial concept in thinking about careers is that of "entry portal."4 To
develop a career in a field, a person must first enter a career track. The
opportunities for entry will determine the kinds of individuals who build
careers there. Fields with many entry portals will recruit diverse men and
women into top positions, thus accumulating talent from a wide range of
sources. Fields with only one entry portal will tend to recruit persons with
similar backgrounds, socialization, and values into important jobs, thus in-
suring that such individuals will probably fit easily into the roles available
to them.
Each of our four artistic fields offered multiple entry portals and lacked
fixed credential requirements for employment. Before reviewing the dif-
ferent paths leading up to top administrative posts in each field, we should
first note that almost half of the art museum directors and orchestra managers
began their careers before 1965, whereas over half of the theater managing
directors entered theatrical work after 1971, and almost three quarters of
the CAA directors entered their field after 1975 (although many had worked
in the arts before then). Thus, the orchestra and art museum fields had a
larger core of veterans than did the other two.
Resident Theater Administrators
Almost half of all theater managing directors entered theater work directly
from formal schooling (usually college). This was more often true of older
rather than younger cohorts, however, the latter being almost three times
as likely to have apprenticed in other arts or communications fields (e.g.,
journalism or art- festival management). (Although this suggests that it may
have become more difficult to enter theatrical work directly from school,
it is also possible that staff entering from school were likely to stay in the
field longer than those with other backgrounds, in which case the data would
reflect differential attrition.) The third largest group of theater managers
(14 percent) first taught in primary or secondary schools before taking a
16
Backgrounds, Recruitment, and Careers
theater job, and about one in ten theater managers worked in business.
More than one third of all managing directors were hired directly into
top administrative positions, and almost half were promoted to such posi-
tions while still with their first employers. Almost half entered the field
in subordinate administrative posts (e.g., assistant managing director,
marketing director, public relations staff). Fewer than 10 percent, however,
began their careers as artistic directors or actors, while a similar propor-
tion entered in technical positions such as stage manager or set designer.
Those who did get their start in artistic or technical work were three times
more likely to be men (women tending more to be recruited into top manage-
ment as interns, administrative assistants, or other management staff), and
were less likely to manage the largest quartile of resident theaters.
Orchestra Managers
Orchestra managers were twice as likely as theater managing directors to
have entered their field from other artistic or communications fields (primar-
ily media or press, elementary or secondary music teaching, and other per-
forming arts management) or from a business career. Although overall they
were less likely than theater managing directors to have entered their field
directly from school, the opposite was true for members of the youngest
cohort of orchestra managers, a third of whom — in contrast to the youngest
cohort of theater managers— entered as soon as they completed their for-
mal education.
Almost half of all orchestra managers began as top managers, with 17
percent more attaining that position with their first employers; over a third
entered the field as interns or assistants, as marketing or developing direc-
tors, or in other managerial posts. Women were seven times more likely
than men to have entered as secretaries or special project staff. Orchestra
managers were less likely than theater managing directors to have entered
their field in artistic or technical positions (just 11 percent began as musi-
cians or conductors). Finally, managers of the largest two quartiles were
almost twice as likely as managers of smaller orchestras to have started
in the field as top managers.
Art Museum Directors
Of all the managers surveyed, art museum directors had the most regular
entry patterns, entering museum work through schooling (43 percent) or
after teaching art history in college (25 percent). Almost half of those
recruited from school went into curatorial positions (the starting point for
almost one third of the directors), whereas more than half of those recruited
from professorial positions were first hired as directors. Overall, almost
one quarter started off as directors, and almost one fifth began in such other
17
Managers of the Arts
administrative positions as assistant or associate director. Those recruited
from sources other than school or university teaching entered into a mix
of directorships, curatorial positions, educational jobs, and other ad-
ministrative posts.
Recruitment backgrounds of male and female art museum directors were
very similar, as they were for directors across the four budget quartiles ,
except that directors of the smallest museums were far less likely to have
gone directly from school into the art museum field.
Cohort data revealed that patterns of recruitment to the art museum
field changed over time. Recent entrants were less likely to have entered
museum work directly from school than were members of other cohorts,
the proportion declining over time from 61 percent of the most senior cohort
to 21 percent of the most junior. On the other hand, newcomers were more
likely to have been hired straight off as directors and were less likely to
have first served as curators.
These findings must be interpreted with caution. We would expect the
observed proportion of recent cohort members moving directly into direc-
torial jobs to be higher than the "true" percentage (i.e., the percentage
of all persons entering the field during the most recent period who will ever
be directors), because individuals who entered recently as curators have
had less time to move into the management ranks. Similarly, the apparent
change in recruitment patterns might be explained if persons entering
museum work directly from school take longer to become directors than
persons with professorial experience.
Still, two factors suggest that these findings were not entirely artifac-
tual. First, the trends toward both greater previous work experience and
a greater likelihood of entering the field as a director appeared between
the first and second cohorts as well as between the second and third. Second,
more directors in the current cohort have Ph.D.s and teaching experience
at the university level (53 percent compared with 31 percent in earlier
cohorts). Thus, it seems likely that, along with the trend toward higher educa-
tional attainments among museum directors, we are also witnessing a trend
toward more university teaching experience and shorter periods in the field
before appointment to a first directorship.
CAA Directors
Compared with those in other fields, preentry positions and entry portals
were most diverse among the CAA directors, with no evidence of routine
recruitment patterns. About one third of the CAA directors entered artistic
or arts administrative work directly from school; the only other source of
recruitment accounting for more than 10 percent of the respondents was
nonprofit management.
18
Backgrounds, Recruitment, and Careers
The first arts jobs of almost half the directors were in the community
arts fields, while just over 40 percent entered the field from other arts or
media organizations. The rest were scattered among a wide range of pur-
suits. Only 10 percent of the CAA directors, far fewer than the top managers
in other fields, went directly from school into their current field. Yet for
over 80 percent, their first job in the community arts was a directorship,
and nearly all became directors while still with their first community arts
employers.
Male directors were more likely than their female counterparts to have
entered the field directly after graduation and were almost twice as likely
to have been recruited from theater management. Women, on the other hand,
were about twice as likely to have worked in the press or media or to have
taught, and were about five times as likely to have held secretarial or clerical
jobs or to have served as volunteers.
Finally, managerial backgrounds differed neither by budget category
nor by cohort.
Thus, the artistic fields studied here tend to reflect the benefits of diverse
backgrounds rather than of consistent preparation and socialization. Each
field attracted many eventual managers directly from school and drew few
from business management. There is little evidence that arts managers are
either failed artists or, as a group, artistically naive. Although most ad-
ministrators went into management at an early stage of their careers, some
had brief artistic experience. Furthermore, substantial proportions in each
field had earned undergraduate degrees in the art forms they managed, and
those who had not were more likely to hold college degrees in the humanities
than in arts administration or general management.
Managerial Careers
In some fields (e.g., medicine, government service, university teaching)
recruits are aware of a number of conventional, sometimes mandatory, steps
that can lead to positions of power and prestige. In other fields, the paths
of achievement are less apparent. The career paths taken by arts ad-
ministrators once in their fields are as varied as those taken prior to
recruitment.
In each of the four fields, approximately 10 percent of the top executives
had worked for more than four employers during their careers (not count-
ing unrelated positions prior to entry); between one half and two thirds had
worked for only one or two. Art museun and theater managing directors
tended to have the longest spells of employment: 30 percent of the former
and more than one fifth of the latter had been with their current employers
for over 10 years. Orchestra managers were comparable to theater ad-
19
Managers of the Arts
ministrators in their tenure, while just 5 percent of CAA directors had worked
for more than 10 years for their current employers.
Most respondents were hired into their current administrative positions
from outside: only about one quarter of the theater, orchestra, and art
museum executives, and just 14 percent of the CAA directors, had been
promoted from within. Careers culminated in top managerial positions most
quickly among CAA directors, 82 percent of whom served no prior ap-
prenticeship in the field (although they tended to have longer work experience
outside the field), whereas almost half of the orchestra managers waited
longer than 5 years before reaching their positions, and almost one quarter
waited for more than 10 years.
Theater managing directors were promoted youngest, with 43 percent
becoming executives before age 30, and all but 10 percent in managerial
posts before turning 40. By contrast, orchestra managers and museum direc-
tors were far more likely to become executives after age 40.
Few managers in any field had held more than two executive positions,
suggesting that job-hopping is uncommon among those who have attained
top managerships. However, prior work experience among managers before
they attained their positions varied among and even within fields.
In theaters, for example, substantial minorities had worked as actors,
artistic directors, "teenies," commercial theater or summer stock ad-
ministrators, teachers or professors, or public arts agency employees. But
none of these categories included even one third of all managing directors
surveyed. Similarly, relatively few managing directors had direct experience
in theater marketing, development, and public relations, nor had many
managed other performing arts organizations or worked in non-arts
businesses.
Female managing directors had much more experience than their male
counterparts working in theater public relations, marketing or audience
development, and fund-raising or development; further, they were twice
as likely to have taught in primary or secondary school or to have worked
in commercial theater. By contrast, men were three times more likely to
have worked in a public arts agency.
Experience in theater public relations, marketing, or development was
far more prevalent among managing directors of the smallest quartile
organizations, who were also much more likely than managers of larger
ones to have worked as actors, directors, or technicians. On the other hand,
managers in the largest budget quartile were notably more likely than their
peers to have worked in public arts agencies and summer stock.
Analysis of intercohort variation suggests that managerial work ex-
perience changed strikingly over time. The percentage of managing direc-
tors with experience in public relations, development, or marketing — three
20
Backgrounds, Recruitment, and Careers
key management functions involving the theater's external environment-
increased steadily with each cohort (from 7 percent among the most senior
directors to 33 percent among the most junior). At the same time, the percen-
tage of those involved in artistic or production work declined modestly but
just as steadily, as did the percentage of those with backgrounds in com-
mercial theater, summer stock, and college teaching. It is possible, however,
that the latter declines represent age effects, since managing directors may
gain experience in these fields after they have already become involved with
the resident stage (whereas they are unlikely to become actors or develop-
ment directors after they have been managing directors).
The same diversity in experience is apparent among orchestra managers.
Although more than one fifth (mostly males) had worked as musicians,
almost the same number had experience in non-arts businesses. Still others
had worked as elementary or secondary school teachers, for artists' agen-
cies, or in other performing-arts management positions. Managers of the
largest budget quartile were only one third as likely as others to have taught
in elementary or secondary schools, and it was also rarer for them to have
worked as orchestra musicians. By contrast, the percentage of managers
having worked in opera, dance, or theater management— as well as of those
with experience in orchestra development, public relations, or marketing-
ascended with size, in both cases from 4 percent among managers of the
smallest orchestras to 22 percent among managers of the largest.
As with resident theater managers but to a less-marked degree, the trend
among orchestra managers, from the most senior cohort to the most junior,
appeared to lead away from prior artistic experience and toward business
and managerial experience. While the percentage of managers who had been
either orchestra musicians or music teachers has been gradually declining,
the percentage of those reporting experience in non-arts businesses, orchestra
public relations, development, or marketing has been on the increase.
Compared with theater and orchestra careers, those of art museum direc-
tors were relatively routine; yet even here, no kind of premanagerial work
experience was shared by even half the respondents. The most common
prior experience was curatorship, reported by nearly half the directors, while
almost as many had taught art at the college or university level. Smaller
groups had worked as associate or assistant directors, in art museum educa-
tion departments, or as elementary or secondary school teachers. Surpris-
ingly, fully 20 percent (mostly male) reported being employed at some point
during their work careers in a business unrelated to the arts.
The relatively few women art museum directors were only half as likely
as men to have worked in non-arts businesses, and they were more likely
to have worked for nonprofit organizations outside the arts, in clerical mu-
seum positions, or as elementary or high school teachers. Among directors
21
Managers of the arts
of the smallest museums, prior teaching experience was quite prevalent;
these persons were far more likely than directors of larger museums to have
served as professors before entering museum work, to have taught in elemen-
tary or secondary schools, or to have worked as museum educators.
University-level teaching was significantly more common in the prior
careers of the most junior cohort as compared with those of the most senior
(48 percent to 6 percent, respectively). Also notable was the decline in the
percentage of directors with curatorial experience (from 58 to 35 percent),
suggesting that a Ph.D. may be replacing curatorial service as preparation
for art museum directorships. Finally, in contrast with the findings for the
performing arts, the percentage of directors with business experience out-
side the arts appears to have declined.
The experiences of CAA directors were the most diverse of all. Because
most CAA directors took on directorships upon entry into the field, no in-
ternal position prepared them for their work. Nor, as we have seen, were
there regular recruitment channels. Prior experience included teaching (in
primary and secondary schools as well as in schools for the arts), univer-
sity arts management, arts service organization and secretarial/clerical
employment, theater or orchestra management, performing, employment
in a commercial venture, experience as a visual artist, work in an arts center,
or work in a non-arts business. Finally, no major differences based on
gender, budget category, or cohort were visible.
Conclusions
Although the careers described in this chapter were relatively unroutinized
and idiosyncratic, some general conclusions can be drawn. To begin with,
the managers of larger arts organizations were, as a group, men and women
from families of relatively high social status. Women were a significant
presence in every field but the art museums, but they were always more
likely than men to be directing smaller, less prestigious institutions.
Moreover, educational levels of these managers were high— more than
half have pursued their formal educations past college — and seemed to be
rising, dramatically among art museum directors and more gradually among
others. If formal educational credentials and prior work experience are a
guide, the managers' arts backgrounds were rather strong while their
management experience was meager. Nonetheless, there were numerous
exceptions to these assertions, along with some evidence that management
training and experience were becoming more common and artistic experience
somewhat rarer among performing arts managers, especially those in resi-
dent theaters.
Cohort analysis suggests that each field has been changing in distinc-
22
Backgrounds, Recruitment, and Careers
tive ways, with the exception of CAAs, the directors of which were usually
such recent entrants into the field that few conclusions could be drawn about
change.
Art museums have undergone professionalization, in the sense that their
directors— especially those of the largest institutions — have increasingly im-
pressive educational credentials and increasingly commonplace social
backgrounds. University teaching experience is more common in the re-
cent cohort than among previous entrants to the field, while curatorship
seems to have undergone a concomitant decline as a stepping-stone to the
directorship.
Among resident theaters (and orchestras, to a lesser extent), artistic
expertise has become somewhat less common and managerial training more
widespread.
Data from this study reveal that careers— i.e., ordered sequences of
jobs leading from conventional entry portals to predictable destinations-
did not exist in these fields. (Indeed, other research has demonstrated that
orderly careers are, in general, far less common than most people
believe.)5 Arts managers were recruited from many sources and brought
with them a panoply of experiences, and many entrants in all the fields moved
directly into top executive positions. Further, mobility within organizations
is limited by size: relatively few arts institutions have enough levels of
management to promote routinely all competent personnel. And movement
among organizations at the executive level appears to be less common than
widespread perceptions of job-hopping would suggest.
The disorderly nature of managerial careers in these artistic fields may
provide opportunities for organizations to hire talented individuals from
unusual backgrounds and for individuals willing to take risks to build suc-
cessful careers. But many people find it stressful to work in environments
in which promotion opportunities are few and career strategies obscure and
poorly understood. Such individuals, if they face career stagnation or uncer-
tainty, may choose to leave arts administration for other pursuits.
Notes
1 . See, e.g., Judith Kurz, "Meeting the Challenge: Management Fellows Train for the
Eighties and Beyond," Symphony (August/September 1982): 39-44; Theatre Com-
munications Group, "Institutionalization: Bane or Blessing to the Art of Theatre?"
in Report of the 1980 National Conference (New York: Theatre Communications
Group, 1980), 51-52; Alan Shestack, "The Director: Scholar and Businessman,
Educator and Lobbyist," Museum News 57 (November/December 1978): 27-31 ff.;
and Ralph Burgard, "The Elaborate Minuet and Other Hard Lessons," American Arts
(March 1980): 18-19.
23
Backgrounds, Recruitment, and Careers
2. For a notable exception, see Susan Stitt and Linda Stein, The Museum Labor Market:
A Survey of American Historical Agency Placement Opportunities (Sturbridge, Mass.:
Old Sturbridge Village, 1976).
3 . For a useful introduction, see Norman Ryder, "The Cohort as a Concept in the Study
of Social Change." American Sociological Review 30, 6 (1965): 843-861.
4. See Seymour Spilerman. '"Careers, Labor Market Structure, and Socioeconomic
Achievement," American Journal of Sociology 83, 3 (1977): 551-593.
5. Spilerman, "Careers. Labor Market Structure, and Socioeconomic Achievement."
24
2
Rewards and Expectations
An artistic discipline not only must induce capable managers to pursue
careers within the field and provide them with the needed experience and
knowledge to ensure that they will succeed. It must also compensate and
reward them sufficiently to ensure that they will remain.
While many of the rewards arts administrators receive from their jobs
are predictably economic ones, including salary and control over resources
(as measured by organizational budget), there is also a range of noneconomic
satisfactions. Such factors greatly influence administrators' expectations as
to whether they will continue to work in the arts.
Salary and Resources
Salary was related to the employing organization's operating budget in every
field, very highly in the performing arts and more modestly in art museums
and CAAs. The lower correlation of salary with budget size among art
museums was partly an artifact of the restricted upper category of the salary
scale on the survey (respondents were asked to check the range in which
their salary fell). It may also have resulted from the inclusion of university
art museum directors, some of whose salaries were tied to university teaching
scales. Similarly, the salaries of municipal CAA directors may have been
constrained by municipal salary scales.
Generally speaking, however, administrators of larger organizations
earned more generous salaries. Over half of the orchestra managers and
86 percent of the art museum directors earned more than $27,500, com-
25
Managers of the Arts
pared with fewer than one third of the theater managing directors and just
21 percent of the CAA directors (see table 2-1). At the same time, art
museum and orchestra administrators commanded more resources (mean
budgets of $1.9 and $1.8 million, respectively) than did theater managing
and CAA directors (mean budgets of $954,000 and $354,000, respectively).
(In all cases, means are inflated by the presence of a few atypical organiza-
tions with exceptionally high budgets.) Similarly, male managers, who ad-
ministered larger organizations in every field, were better paid than women
managers. Among the resident theater respondents, for example, 45 per-
cent of the men but just 3 percent of the women earned more than $27,500
annually; and distributions were analogous, although less extreme, in other
fields. Finally, managers in more senior cohorts directed larger organiza-
tions and so earned more than did more recent entrants in every field.
In addition, theater managing directors with degrees in management
and without experience in theater marketing, development, or public rela-
tions departments; art museum directors with Ph.D.s in art history and any
degree from one specific major American university; and CAA directors
with arts degrees and prior arts experience were also all better paid than
were their counterparts without these attributes.
Note that these observations describe associations, not causal relation-
ships, and they tell us nothing about how these associations might be altered.
Take, for example, the finding that women earned less money than men.
If this was because women managers were less well educated than men,
it could be changed by training female arts administrators. If it was because
women were less experienced, the difference would be expected to moderate
with time, at least if male and female recruits were equally likely to remain
in their fields. If the difference existed because women worked for
Table 2-1
Salary by Field
(percent)
Theaters
Orchestras
Art Museums
CAAs
$0-$1 0,000
12.74
2.78
1.63
4.58
$10,001 -$15,000
18.63
9.26
0.81
18.32
$15,001 -$20,000
14.71
10.19
2.44
29.77
$20,001 -$27,500
22.55
25.93
8.94
25.95
$27,501 -$35,000
10.78
19.44
14.63
12.98
$35,001 -$50,000
13.73
14.82
45.53
7.63
over $50,000
6.87
17.59
26.02
0.76
(Respondents)
(102)
(108)
(123)
(131)
26
Rewards and Expectations
smaller employers than did men, the problem would rest both in the
nature of women's careers and in large organizations' hiring patterns. If
similar organizations paid women less than they would have paid men with
the same talents and credentials, women would have recourse to legal
remedies.
To distinguish the causes of this observed variation, we used a statistical
technique known as multiple regression analysis. This technique allows one
to investigate the effects of each independent variable on an outcome while
simultaneously controlling for each one. For example, a multiple regres-
sion analysis of the impact of rainfall, sunshine, and fertilizer on the height
of tomato plants would permit us to estimate the effect of each factor alone,
irrespective of the others. Note that the term effect refers to statistical ef-
fect rather than to causality. Although such findings are consistent with the
existence of real effects, they do not in themselves prove that those effects
exist. For the sake of brevity, the phrases "other things equal," "net ef-
fects," and "controlling for other factors" will not be included in every
sentence in the report of regression results. The reader should note, however,
that unless otherwise indicated, descriptions of results all refer to net
associations— that is, controlling for the influences of other measured factors.
Let us first consider predictors of budget size. The budget a manager
commands is an important source of reward in its own right and is related
as well to salary, especially in the performing arts. In all but the art museum
field, and especially among resident theaters, being a woman was negatively
associated with budget size, even after controlling for family background,
education, and career experience.
The effects of family background were small in all fields, although
parents' educational attainment exerted a modest positive effect on budget
size for orchestra managers and a modest but surprising negative effect on
budgets commanded by art museum directors. Managers in all fields who
attended private secondary schools (a measure of family social status), as
well as orchestra managers who attended more selective colleges, ad-
ministered larger budgets, other things equal. By contrast, years of educa-
tion had a surprisingly negative impact on the budgets commanded by CAA
directors, even after controlling for years in the field. Notably, the major
influence on the budget size of art museum directors was attendance at a
specific major American university.
Aspects of age and seniority had strong positive net effects on budget
size in every field except the art museums. Years worked before entering
the field substantially influenced budgets administered by CAA directors,
as did years of work experience in the field, which was also a powerful
net predictor of organization budget for orchestra and theater administrators.
In our regression analyses of managerial salaries, budget size was by
27
Managers of the Arts
far the most important predictor of salary among the theater and orchestra
managers; additionally, it exerted an important influence on the salaries
of CAA directors and a more modest, but still notable, net effect on those
of art museum directors.
Salaries were also influenced by experience. Years of work experience
was a very powerful predictor of salary in the performing arts and, to a
slightly lesser degree, among the CAA directors, while a closely related
measure, years of experience in the arts, was an important predictor of art
museum directors' salaries. Surprisingly, holding experience constant,
managers of orchestras who reported long tenures with their current
employers earned substantially less than managers with briefer tenures. This
was not the case, however, in other fields.
The impact of educational experience on salary varied in importance
from the art museum field, where it was crucial, to the orchestra field, where
it was negligible. The salary of art museum directors was notably influenced
by attendance at a specific American university, although not as much as
it was by years of educational attainment. In the museum field, then, the
income determination process appeared to have components of both
meritocracy and old school ties.
Among CAA directors, educational attainment was as strong a predic-
tor of salary as was budget size and years of experience. Thus, its effects
for this group were mixed, given that its direct positive impact on salary
was countered by an indirect negative impact through its negative influence
on operating budget.
Finally, private secondary school attendance bore a moderately strong
relationship to the salaries of theater managing directors. Graduates of private
schools were doubly advantaged here: they were more likely to administer
large theaters (and thus to benefit from the strong effect of budget size on
earnings), and, holding budget constant, they still earned more money than
similar men and women who attended public schools.
Unless private school attendance is seen as a measure of social status,
family background had no direct effect on the incomes of theater managing
directors. Parental education, on the other hand, was negatively associated
with income among the orchestra managers, an impact that was balanced
by its positive influence on organizational size. And after controlling for
educational experiences, parental social class had a similarly negative im-
pact on income in the art museum field. These negative associations were
puzzling; perhaps individuals from humble backgrounds who attained ad-
vanced degrees, attended major universities, and became art museum direc-
tors or orchestra managers had unmeasured qualities that enabled them not
only to obtain what traditionally had been elite jobs but also to earn higher
salaries once they got them. Finally, CAA directors from top business or
28
Rewards and Expectations
professional families earned higher salaries than comparable directors from
more modest backgrounds.
One of the most striking similarities among the four fields was the in-
fluence of gender on managerial salaries. Although controlling for family
background, educational and career experience, and organizational budget
size reduced the negative impact of being female by one third for art museum
directors, one half for CAA chiefs, and almost two thirds for theater and
orchestra managing directors, the effects that remained were notable.
Because women also tended, other things equal, to direct smaller organiza-
tions, they were doubly disadvantaged. Unless male and female managers
in these fields differed on some unmeasured traits that were uncorrected
with the other variables (a possibility that seems unlikely), it is difficult
to escape the conclusion that women managers in these fields earned less
money than did comparable men.
Intrinsic Rewards: Work Satisfaction
If salary and command over resources were all that motivated people, we
would expect resident theaters and local arts agencies to have a harder time
attracting and retaining capable managers than orchestras and art museums.
But if managers compare their organizations and salaries chiefly to those
of peers in their fields rather than to those in the arts more generally, these
factors may be offset by other satisfactions intrinsic to the work of manag-
ing the arts.
To pursue this notion, we asked respondents to rate the satisfaction
they derived from various aspects of their work, including their salaries .
These ratings were made on a five-point scale, on which "5" represented
"a source of great satisfaction," "1" represented "a source of great
dissatisfaction," and "3" represented those factors that aroused apathy or
ambivalence. For each set of managers and each satisfaction they received,
table 2-2 indicates the mean, the rank of this mean (in parentheses) among
all factors for the group, the percentage indicating satisfaction ("4" or "5"),
the percentage indicating ^satisfaction ("1" or "2"), and the number of
respondents. Finally, the satisfactions themselves are ranked according to
average mean across all four fields, although this does not reflect the order
in which they were presented to respondents.
Overall, the four groups of administrators found more sources of
satisfaction than of dissatisfaction on the list. If we consider a mean of 3.51
or higher to indicate satisfaction and 2.49 or lower to indicate dissatisfac-
tion, none of the factors was, on balance, a source of real dissatisfaction,
and only contacts with donors (for CAA and theater managing directors),
salary (for all but art museum directors), and contact with government agen-
29
Table 2-2 Job Satisfactions, by
Field (percent)
Factors
Theaters Orchestras Art Museums
CAAs
Contacts with works of art
Mean (rank)
4.29(1)
4.38(1)
4.46 (1)
3.92 (6)
Satisfied
80.00
85.05
83.20
60.00
Dissatisfied
4.00
0.00
7.20
7.69
(Respondents)
(100)
(107)
(125)
(130)
Autonomy and authority
Mean (rank)
4.14 (4)
4.14 (4)
4.29 (2)
4.27 (2)
Satisfied
79.21
85.18
84.80
81.06
Dissatisfied
8.91
5.56
6.40
6.06
(Respondents)
(101)
(108)
(125)
(132)
Relations with colleagues
at other institutions
Mean (rank)
4.07 (5)
4.22 (2)
4.16 (3)
4.16(3)
Satisfied
75.25
80.37
82.93
79.54
Dissatisfied
4.95
0.00
2.44
4.55
(Respondents)
(101)
(107)
(123)
(132)
Role in community
Mean (rank)
3.88 (7)
4.17(3)
4.09 (4)
4.38 (1)
Satisfied
78.69
81.31
78.25
84.09 '
Dissatisfied
7.07
2.80
2.42
4.55
(Respondents)
(99)
(107)
(124)
(132)
Relations with subordinates
Mean (rank)
4.15(2)
4.08 (6)
4.08 (5)
4.14 (4)
Satisfied
84.00
72.64
78.22
81.53
Dissatisfied
6.00
2.83
5.65
7.69
(Respondents)
(100)
(106)
(124)
(130)
Contacts with artists
Mean (rank)
4.15(3)
4.12(5)
3.80 (9)
3.98 (5)
Satisfied
77.23
77.78
59.66
69.47
Dissatisfied
2.97
0.93
8.40
7.63
(Respondents)
(101)
(108)
(119)
(131)
Potential for career growth
Mean (rank)
3.96 (6)
4.00 (7)
3.85 (6)
3.58 (8)
Satisfied
68.63
74.04
66.67
57.58
Dissatisfied
7.84
5.77
7.69
18.18
(Respondents)
(102)
(104)
(117)
(132)
Contacts with board members
Mean (rank)
3.68 (8)
3.85 (8)
3.81 (8)
3.82 (7)
Satisfied
59.00
68.52
66.39
67.69
Dissatisfied
14.00
7.41
9.24
10.77
(Respondents)
(100)
(108)
(119)
(130)
Contacts with private donors
Mean (rank)
3.09 (10)
3.55 (9)
3.85 (7)
3.47 (9)
Satisfied
32.00
49.53
64.23
46.09
Dissatisfied
29.00
7.48
4.88
12.50
(Respondents)
(100)
(107)
(123)
(128)
Salary
Mean (rank)
3.00 (11)
3.46 (10)
3.62 (10)
3.20 (10)
Satisfied
31.37
50.93
56.20
37.12
Dissatisfied
28.43
11.11
7.44
19.70
(Respondents)
(102)
(108)
(121)
(132)
Contacts with govt, agencies
Mean (rank)
3.16 (9)
3.11 (11)
3.08 (11)
3.20 (10)
Satisfied
36.63
34.26
28.10
40.15
Dissatisfied
19.80
28.70
26.45
24.24
(Respondents)
(101)
(108)
(121)
(132)
NOTE: Factors are ranked from those yielding the greatest satisfaction to those yielding the least
satisfaction according to the average mean across all four fields.
Rewards and Expectations
cies (for all) were not cited as sources of satisfaction. Administrators in
all fields reported much satisfaction in their contact with works of art, their
autonomy and authority, their relationships with colleagues, and their rela-
tionships with subordinates; they reported relatively less satisfaction with
their salaries and with contacts with trustees, donors, and especially govern-
ment agencies. And although most felt relatively positive about opportunities
for career development, none included this factor among the top half of
all satisfactions. Thus, the satisfactions that keep managers in their fields
and the dissatisfactions that make their work less rewarding seem similar
for all disciplines.
A few differences were nevertheless apparent. Not surprisingly, the
better-paid orchestra and art museum administrators were more likely to
be satisfied with their salaries than were their counterparts in resident theaters
and CAAs. Further, managers in the performing arts found more satisfac-
tion in contacts with artists than those in museums and CAAs, probably
because they had more regular contact with them; by the same token, CAA
directors were less likely to report satisfaction in contacts with works of
art, probably because they had less contact.
One might consider troublesome those job attributes noted as sources
of dissatisfaction by 10 percent or more of the respondents in a field. While
all but art museum directors fell into this range in citing salary as a source
of dissatisfaction, more than one quarter of the theater managing directors
responded to that effect, and almost 30 percent of them rated contacts with
donors negatively. Contacts with government agencies and with board
members were also considered irritants in the resident theater field.
A similar pattern emerged from the responses of the CAA directors ,
almost one quarter of whom voiced dissatisfaction with contacts with govern-
ment agencies.1 And although some also viewed contacts with board
members and with donors as irritants, perhaps more significant were the
relatively high percentages dissatisfied with both their salaries and their
opportunities for career growth. Possibly the absence of conventional career
sequences in the community arts was, as suggested in chapter 1, a source
of anxiety to administrators in this field.
By comparison with the theater and CAA administrators, orchestra and
art museum directors appeared well satisfied. Their only frequent expres-
sions of dissatisfaction referred to their contacts with government agencies.
Variation Between Men and Women
Male and female theater managing directors responded similarly; however,
men were much more satisfied with their (higher) salaries and slightly more
satisfied with their community roles, while women were slightly more
satisfied with their opportunities for career development and more dissatisfied
31
Managers of the Arts
with their autonomy and authority. On the other hand, male and female
orchestra managers diverged in their responses: men reported more satisfac-
tion from their salaries, their autonomy and authority, their community roles,
and their contacts with works of art; women expressed more satisfaction
with their relationships with colleagues, their contacts with board members,
and their opportunities for career development.
Male and female art museum directors also had different responses to
these questions, although the small number of women in this field makes
generalization hazardous. Nevertheless, men were more likely to express
satisfaction with their salaries, while women reported greater satisfaction
with their contacts with artists, board members, donors, and government
agencies, and with their roles in the community. Women were less likely
than men to express dissatisfaction with their opportunities for career
development.
Finally, women CAA directors reported more satisfaction than their
male colleagues in each area in which differences emerged— namely, their
relations with colleagues in other institutions, their contacts with board
members, their community roles, and their contacts with works of art.
Similarly, they were less likely to find dissatisfaction in their contacts with
government agencies.
Variation by Cohort
Interpretation of cohort differences in attitudes is treacherous for several
reasons. For one thing, members of the most senior cohort in each field
are survivors; less-satisfied managers who entered their fields along with
them may have dropped out before reaching their level of seniority. Second,
some attitudes change with age and experience. If we were to survey in-
dividuals in the junior cohort in 15 years, those who remained might pro-
vide responses more similar to those of today's most experienced cohort.
Differences among cohorts, then, may result from the recruitment of in-
dividuals with stable attitudes into the field at different times; from dif-
ferences in age and experience that will moderate with time; or from the
winnowing out of less-satisfied members of more senior cohorts who have
left the field.
In general, newer entrants to all four fields expressed less satisfaction
than did the more senior cohorts. Where this lack of satisfaction was ex-
pressed with some frequency, we may expect that a substantial minority
of this younger cohort will not remain in the field until retirement. Where
contacts outside the employing organization were found to be more satisfy-
ing than those within, as seemed to be the case (relatively speaking) for
the most recent cohort of art museum directors and the middle cohort of
CAA directors, some administrators may begin to focus more on activities
32
Rewards and Expectations
in the profession than on local organizational dilemmas. Although satisfac-
tion with career development opportunities was never so low among
newcomers as to lead us to predict a mass exodus, the combination of
satisfactions and dissatisfactions in each field seemed likely to cause a minor-
ity of younger managers eventually to leave.
Variation by Organization Size
Organization budget size was positively associated with the expressed
satisfaction among theater managing directors, but this was not so for other
respondents. In the art museum field, directors of small institutions tended
to report the highest degree of satisfaction overall. Among orchestra
managers and CAA directors, the relationship between size and satisfac-
tion varied, depending upon the specific aspect of the job. In all fields but
the resident stage, managers of the largest institutions derived the least
satisfaction from contacts with artists. And in all fields but theater, but
especially in orchestras and the community arts, managers of the largest
organizations tended to be less satisfied than others with their opportunities
for career advancement. This last finding suggests that some managers who
had been very successful may have become frustrated once they reached
the top of their professions. These fields may thus find it difficult to retain
able administrators who attain top positions early in their careers.
Taken together, the results suggest that, outside of the theater at least,
intrinsic rewards may have compensated for income among managers in
the smaller organizations, while relatively high salaries may have induced
other individuals to manage the largest organizations, even though they found
the intrinsic qualities of these jobs to be less rewarding than did their smaller
budget peers.
Career Expectations
If arts organizations are to be well administered, it is not enough for them
to recruit talented individuals into administrative positions. The field as a
whole must retain these individuals as they become more experienced and
develop greater skills.
In our survey we queried managers about their expectations regarding
future career movement. Although people do not always do what they ex-
pect to do (unforeseen opportunities arise, attitudes change, plans undergo
sudden shifts), such questions provide a more direct measure than do satisfac-
tion reports of the directions in which administrators thought they were
heading.
Each set of managers was asked to indicate their likelihood of taking -
each of several kinds of jobs in the future. They did this by circling one I
33 I
Managers of the arts
number on a four-point scale in which "4" equaled "very likely" and "1"
equaled "very unlikely."2 The job alternatives varied for administrators
in each discipline, based on the nature of their work and experience. Table
2-3 shows the mean response in each field to each alternative posed (not
all alternatives were applicable to all fields), the percentage of administrators
who considered the alternative either "very likely" or "somewhat like-
ly," and the number of respondents. In analyzing the resultant data, we
paid particular attention to respondents' evaluations of the likelihood that
they would, first, take a job in a larger or more prestigious organization
in their field and, second, move to a position unrelated to the arts. The
former expectation was most consistent with both a commitment to one's
discipline and an optimistic view of one's opportunities in it. The latter was
most directly related to our concern about retention of managers in the arts.
Managers in all fields were remarkably similar in their future expecta-
tions. Just over half in each field expected to move to a similar organiza-
tion, and approximately two thirds expected to command a larger or more
prestigious organization in their field.
There was more variation, however, in the percentages of managers
who expected to leave the arts: half of the CAA directors considered this
to be likely, compared with approximately one third of the administrators
of theaters, orchestras, and art museums. There are several reasons why
the local arts agencies seemed more at risk than other fields of losing many
of their managers. First, CAA directors were newer to their fields than were
other arts administrators, and so they had had less time to build commit-
ment to the field. Second, careers in the community arts were even less
structured, and thus more uncertain, than those in the other fields considered
here. Third, CAA directors commanded smaller organizations than other
managers and earned relatively low salaries, as well. In the long run, the
development of a larger cadre of experienced managers and the routiniza-
tion of careers should moderate the difference between local arts agencies
and other kinds of arts organizations. In the short run, however, loss of
administrative talent promises to be a vexing problem for local arts agencies.
Managers can leave administrative positions in their fields without leav-
ing the arts altogether. Respondents were asked to estimate the probabilities
that they would administer other kinds of arts organizations, take jobs either
with public agencies concerned with the arts or with arts service organiza-
tions, assume positions in the commercial media, or work in the commer-
cial stage. Responses reflected the vulnerability of CAAs, whose directors
were considerably more likely than others to consider it probable that they
would pursue such alternatives. These jobs were much less attractive to
art museum directors and orchestra managers, whereas the responses of
managing directors of resident theaters formed an intermediate pattern.
34
Table 2-3
Likelihood of Future Job Alternatives,
by Field (percent)
Alternatives
Theaters
Orchestras Art Museums
CAAs
Same/similar position
as now at similar organization
Mean
2.64
2.49
2.68
2.53
Likely
58.00
52.78
62.09
55.38
(Respondents)
(100)
(108)
(124)
(130)
Same position as now at
larger or more prestigious
!
organization in same field
;
Mean
2.81
2.84
2.85
2.73
Likely
67.00
67.59
65.04
64.82
(Respondents)
(100)
(108)
(123)
(131)
Artistic position3
I
Mean
2.27
1.25
1.75
1.45
Likely
29.41
6.60
22.76
13.85
(Respondents)
(102)
(106)
(123)
(130)
Director or staff of a public
agency concerned with art form0
Mean
2.23
2.02
1.79
2.73
Likely
40.20
31.48
22.76
68.18 ,
(Respondents)
(102)
(108)
(123)
(132) |
Director or staff of an arts
service organization
Mean
2.21
1.54
Likely
39.22
NA
16.13
NA J
(Respondents)
(102)
(124)
Art administration
i
in another field0
I
Mean
1.94
1.48
2.44 I
Likely
22.55
NA
12.10
50.00
(Respondents)
(102)
(124)
(132)
Administrator or staff in a
|
commercial media concernd
I
Mean
2.19
1.90
1.41
2.06
Likely
32.00
29.91
9.68
33.59
(Respondents)
(100)
(107)
(124)
(131) I
Producer or administrator
I
in commercial stage
Mean
2.57
Likely
52.94
NA
NA
NA J
(Respondents)
(102)
I
Director of a social
service agency
1
Mean
1.61
Likely
NA
NA
NA
16.79 |
(Respondents)
(131)
Job unrelated to art form8
I
Mean
2.23
1.97
1.86
2.47 |
Likely
33.33
35.18
29.27
50.38 1
(Respondents)
(102)
(108)
(123)
(131)
NOTES: NA = not asked/not applicable.
For theaters, 'artistic director of a resident theater'; for orchestra, 'professional musician';
for museums, 'curator'; for CAAs, 'visual or performing artist.'
For theaters and orchestras, 'concerned with the performing arts'; for museums, 'con-
cerned with museums'; for CAAs, 'concerned with the arts (other than a CAA).'
For theaters, 'orchestra, opera, or dance company'; for museums, 'a museum that is not
an art museum'; for CAAs 'a performing arts organization or a museum.'
For art museums, 'director of a commercial gallery'; for other fields, as it reads.
For theaters and orchestras, 'unrelated to the performing arts'; for museums, 'unrelated
to museums or the visual arts'; for CAAs, 'unrelated to the arts.'
Managers of the Arts
Variation Between Men and Women
Women in all fields were somewhat less likely to anticipate moving to larger
or more prestigious organizations than were their male colleagues. For ex-
ample, among theater managing directors, three times as many men as
women (39 percent versus 13 percent) expected such a career move.
Moreover, 52 percent of the women— more than twice as many as the men-
expected to take jobs outside of the performing arts. Women theater manag-
ing directors were also much more likely to anticipate working in public
agencies concerned with the performing arts, arts service organizations,
and the commercial media. These findings suggest that the resident stage
may lose many women participants through attrition.
In the other fields, however, women appeared no more likely to leave
than men; in fact, the relatively few women art museum directors were 50
percent more likely than their male colleagues to report it "very unlikely"
that they would ever work outside of museums or the visual arts. And among
CAA directors, proportionately twice as many men as women anticipated
moving to an arts administrative position outside the community arts.
We should recall here that the more recent cohorts of managers in all
fields contain more women than do more senior cohorts. If expectations
are good guides to behavior, these gains by women should hold up in or-
chestras, art museums, and local arts agencies; they may be severely eroded,
however, by attrition of female managing directors in the resident stage.
Variation by Cohort
Members of the most junior cohorts in all fields had greater expectations
of managing larger or more prestigious organizations in their fields. The
middle cohorts were almost as optimistic among the orchestras and art
museums but less so among the theaters and CAAs. The lower expecta-
tions of more experienced administrators in the latter fields may have
reflected disillusionment, but they may also have represented a realistic reac-
tion to two facts: first, the more senior managers had less time left in which
to make any moves and, second, because they probably already commanded
larger and more prestigious institutions than their more junior peers, there
may have been little room left for improvement.
Cohorts also varied in their propensity to leave arts administration. The
commitment of art museum directors appeared to build with time: the longer
they had served in art museums, the less likely they were to contemplate
working outside museums or the visual arts. By contrast, commitment in
the other fields actually seemed to decline with experience. In both the or-
chestra and community arts fields, members of the most junior cohorts were
least likely to anticipate leaving the field, while administrators in the mid-
dle cohort were most likely to do so.
36
Rewards and Expectations
If arts management and museum administration were becoming pro-
fessions that span disciplines, we would expect that the newest recruits to
theater and CAA administration would have been more likely than the more
senior managers to anticipate taking jobs in other fields of arts manage-
ment; and that the more recent entrants to the art museum field would have
been more likely to see themselves directing museums other than art
museums. The data, however, provided meager support for this view. It
is true that, among the art museum directors, between 15 and 20 percent
of the youngest cohort expected to direct a non-art museum, while not a
single member of the most senior cohort did. But at the same time, the newest
recruits to theater management were less likely than their more senior col-
leagues to anticipate managing other kinds of performing arts organizations
(and fewer than one third of any cohort reported such expectations). Fur-
ther, although over half the CAA directors expected to move into other
kinds of arts management, no trend toward this view was discernible among
cohorts. Thus, at this point, different kinds of museums and, to a lesser
extent, different kinds of performing arts disciplines appear to constitute
separate labor markets.
Variation by Budget Size and Career Experience
Despite substantial variation in managers' expectations among budget quar-
tiles within each field, much of that variation was relatively unpatterned.
Directors of the smallest theaters and CAAs were, however, more likely
to anticipate working as artists than were administrators of larger
organizations.
Where opportunities are blocked for men and women who attain top
positions in their fields early in their careers, the discipline may lose the
services of its top executives. Indeed, almost half the managers of the largest
orchestras reported that they were likely to seek jobs outside the perform-
ing arts; and more than half the directors of the two largest quartiles of
CAAs (compared with 42 percent of the directors of smaller agencies) ex-
pected to leave arts work altogether. These managers were least apt of all
respondents to consider it likely that they would administer organizations
similar to their own. By contrast, managing directors of the largest theaters
were least likely to anticipate leaving their field.
Surprisingly, administrators with management degrees are not more
likely to look outside the arts to make their careers. Almost half of theater
managing directors with administration degrees reported that it was ' 'very
unlikely" that they would take jobs unrelated to the performing arts, as
compared with only 16 percent of their colleagues. In the other fields, in-
dividuals with and without management degrees were about equally as likely
to anticipate departure.
37
Managers of the Arts
Theater managing directors with prior acting or technical experience
appeared highly committed to the performing arts: proportionately just half
as many as those who lacked such experience expected to leave the field.
Similarly, orchestra managers with undergraduate or graduate degrees in
music, or with experience in the arts (as artists or managers) before enter-
ing the orchestra field, were less likely than others to anticipate taking posi-
tions outside the performing arts. Finally, art museum directors with Ph.D.s
were less likely than those without to expect to administer non-art museums,
whereas those who had been curators were less likely than those who had
not to anticipate accepting a position outside of museums or the visual arts.
In sum, these findings suggest that arts administrators with artistic
backgrounds were somewhat more likely to have positive career expecta-
tions and less likely to anticipate leaving the arts than were those without
such experiences. Nonetheless, there was no evidence that administrators
with management degrees were any less committed to their fields than were
those without such degrees, despite the fact that their opportunities outside
of the arts may be greater because of their training.
Multiple Regression Analyses of the Predictors
Of Expected Departure from Work in the Arts
To examine the net influence of the factors discussed thus far (and of addi-
tional aspects of background and attitudes) on administrators' expectations
of leaving the arts, we performed multiple regression analyses for each of
the four fields to examine how various factors influence the loss of
managerial talent while controlling for the effect of other variables.
Although age and seniority were largely unrelated to expectations of
leaving the performing arts, age was the most powerful net negative predictor
of expected departure for art museum directors, and years of experience
in the arts before CAA work accounted for a substantial disinclination among
CAA directors to leave the art field. Further, art museum directors who
worked in other fields before going into the arts and those who had been
curators were notably more likely than others to plan to take jobs outside
the arts. (The latter finding contrasts with the results of analyses without
controls.)
Career satisfaction, not surprisingly, strongly influenced responses for
every group but the orchestra managers. Satisfaction with contacts with artists
bore a notable negative relationship to expected exit among art museum
directors and a modest negative relationship for CAA directors. Oddly
enough, controlling for other sources of satisfaction, art museum directors
who enjoyed contact with their trustees were substantially more likely to
anticipate leaving the museum and visual arts worlds than those who did not.
Among resident theater managers only, women were substantially more
38
Rewards and Expectations
likely than men, other things equal, to anticipate leaving the performing
arts. (Recall that it was in the resident theater field that women were most
disadvantaged relative to men in their earning power.)
Controlling for other factors, theater and orchestra managers with
management degrees were less likely than others to expect to leave the per-
forming arts, whereas orchestra managers with highly educated parents,
music degrees, and high levels of educational attainment were somewhat
more likely than others to do so. Art museum directors who attended private
schools and held Ph.D.s in art history were notably less likely than other
directors to plan to work outside museums or the visual arts. And among
the CAA directors, educational attainment modestly increased expected
departure while college quality negatively affected it. Holding these and
other factors constant, CAA directors with highly educated parents were
less likely than others to expect to leave the arts, whereas those whose fathers
or principal guardians were professionals or owners or top executives of
major businesses were more likely to anticipate departure.
Conclusions
Insofar as managers' reports of their own satisfactions and expectations were
guides to the extent to which fields were likely to retain administrative talent,
none of these fields was in crisis, but, to varying degrees, each seemed
likely to face challenges in the years ahead. Resident theaters may find it
difficult to retain talented young men and, especially, women. Orchestras
may have a hard time providing satisfactions for young managers and of-
fering further career opportunities to successful managers of large institu-
tions. Art museums appeared to face the fewest difficulties, but even here
the most junior directors expressed less commitment than did more senior
ones. Finally, local arts agencies are likely to encounter the most severe
problems in attracting and retaining managerial talent: the most successful
LAA directors may lack necessary opportunities for career growth; and
members of the middle cohort appeared, from their responses, to be undergo-
ing a crisis of confidence, reporting relatively low levels of satisfaction and
high probabilities of leaving the arts.
39
Managers of the Arts
Notes
1 . Because of the special relationships between many local arts agency directors and
their municipal governments, the results are not completely comparable for CAA direc-
tors and other respondents. More generally, without comparable questions regarding
contacts with private foundations and corporations, it is difficult to interpret the rela-
tively negative response to government, particularly since it is unclear which agen-
cies (federal, state, local, or survey-toting recipients of federal grants like the author)
respondents had in mind.
2 . For the purpose of data analyses, the numbering of categories in the survey instruments,
in which "1" = "very likely" and "4" = "very unlikely," has been reversed.
40
3
Training
As the number of arts organizations has grown and their complexity has
risen, the need for skilled managers has become increasingly apparent. Many
universities have founded arts management programs that train and certify
administrators.1 Service organizations and public agencies have sponsored
internships and supported technical-assistance programs run by consulting
firms and active arts administrators. Almost all the major service organiza-
tions conduct workshops and seminars for in-service managers. Advocates
of different methods of management training have developed fervently argued
and often persuasive rationales in behalf of their favorite approaches.
This discussion and activity has proceeded in a knowledge vacuum.
Systematic information about how arts administrators learn their jobs, how
they evaluate different training techniques, and what their perceived needs
are — except for local-level needs-assessments and evaluations of specific
programs— has been unavailable. The following discussion represents the
first national study of the learning experiences of working arts administrators
that permits comparison among artistic disciplines and explicitly distinguishes
among several management functions in assessing the value of different train-
ing approaches.
None of these findings should be interpreted as reflecting definitively
on the objective quality of any training method. First, they are all based
on subjective opinions of arts administrators; thus, we cannot tell which
methods best enhance administrative effectiveness because we have no way
of knowing how effective these respondents are. Second, different organiza-
tions require their administrators to have different skills: financial manage-
41
MANAGERS OF THE ARTS
ment ability may be especially crucial, for example, to an art museum direc-
tor whose museum lacks a full-time assistant director for financial affairs.
Third, assessments of different learning methods cannot be generalized to
all sources of a given kind of training. There are good and bad consultants,
good and bad administration courses, and good and bad internships. Fi-
nally, our methodology did not lend itself to an investigation of the ways
in which administrators acquire, or fail to acquire, certain critical aspects
of arts-administrative competence: sensitivity to the needs of artists and to
the requirements of artistic work, and commitment to the core artistic mis-
sions of their organizations.
Levels of Preparation
Using a three-point scale ("1" = "good," "2" = "fair," and "3" =
"poor"), respondents were asked to evaluate their own level of prepara-
tion in each of seven management functions at the time they assumed their
first top administrative position (see table 3-1). Four of these functions (finan-
cial management, personnel management, board relations, and labor rela-
tions) are primarily internal. Three functions (planning and development,
marketing and public relations, and— for art museum and CAA directors-
government relations) concern management of the organization's external
environment.
Surprisingly, few managers felt they were well prepared to assume many
of these functions. For example, fewer than one third in any discipline be-
lieved their preparation in financial management was "good," whereas be-
tween one and two fifths in each field reported poor preparation. Indeed,
only among the CAA directors, and only for planning and development
and for marketing and public relations, did slightly more than half of the
respondents report being well prepared for any management function; usu-
ally, most respondents characterized their preparation as "fair." Only in
the field of labor relations (which may have been less important for ad-
ministrators of smaller organizations, especially museums and CAAs) did
more than two fifths of the administrators in each field regard their prepara-
tion as "poor."
What the data in this table suggest is that none of these artistic fields
prepared prospective administrators satisfactorily for their first executive
jobs. A substantial minority in each field felt inadequately prepared for one
or more important administrative tasks, and only a minority in any field
believed they were well prepared for many of their responsibilities. In par-
ticular, preparation for financial management and labor relations in each
field appears to have been problematic, while readiness for board relations
among theater managing directors, and for both government relations and
42
Training
Table 3-1
Self-Evaluation of Preparedness at the Time
Of First Top Managership, by Management Function
(percent)
Fiscal
Mgmt
Personnel
Mgmt
Board
Relations
Planning
and
Dvipmt
Marketing
and
Public
Relations
Labor
Relations
Govt
Relations
Theaters
Good preparation
27.45
42.57
30.69
37.62
39.60
20.00
NA
Poor preparation
25.49
13.86
29.70
23.76
16.83
45.26
(Respondents)
(102)
(101)
(101)
(101)
(101)
(95)
Art Museums
Good preparation
25.60
30.40
45.83
32.52
29.27
15.25
21.95
Poor preparation
40.80
24.00
14.17
23.58
30.89
55.00
43.09
(Respondents)
(125)
(125)
(120)
(123)
(123)
(118)
(123)
Orchestras
Good preparation
26.42
36.89
43.14
33.33
47.06
22.00
NA
Poor preparation
23.58
15.53
23.53
19.61
20.59
49.00
(Respondents)
(106)
(103)
(102)
(102)
(102)
(100)
CAAs
Good preparation
29.46
39.84
42.64
52.71
53.13
11.02
37.01
Poor preparation
20.16
13.28
17.83
14.73
11.72
50.85
25.20
(Respondents)
(129)
(128)
(129)
(129)
(128)
(118)
(127)
NOTE: NA = not asked/not applicable.
marketing and public relations among art museum directors, was reported
to be particularly low.
It is possible, of course, that some fields had already begun to address
the problems by the time these surveys were conducted. If so, we would
expect administrators in the most recent cohorts to have reported higher
levels of preparation than did members of more senior cohorts. Although
recollections are not always trustworthy — it would be better if someone had
undertaken a comparable survey 15 years before — such data can at least
provide some guide to changes over time.
The only discipline in which administrators reported becoming better
prepared for the management functions described here during the profes-
sional lifetimes of current managers was the resident stage. For all func-
tions but labor relations, the most recent entrants were more likely to report
having been well prepared than were members of the two more senior
cohorts. And for all functions but personnel management, they were less
likely to term their preparation "poor."
By contrast, the percentage of art museum directors reporting poor
preparation was higher for every function but personnel management among
43
Managers of the Arts
the most junior cohort than among the preceding one (although lower in
every case than the percentage for the most senior directors). Taken at face
value, this suggests that preparation of museum directors improved markedly
between the first and second cohorts but deteriorated somewhat among the
most recent entrants. When one recalls that the recent professionalization
occurring among art museum directors has had much more to do with art
history credentials than with administrative ones, this pattern is not
surprising.
If the younger cohort of theater managing directors felt better prepared
for their first administrative posts, the opposite was true for orchestra
managers: for every function but planning and development, the most re-
cent entrants into the field reported lower levels of preparation than either
of the preceding cohorts. By contrast, however, except for personnel
management and labor relations, fewer members of the most recent cohort
reported being poorly prepared than did members of the preceding cohorts.
Because most CAA directors were relatively new to their field, there
was less reason to expect intercohort change in that field than in others.
Yet members of the middle cohort reported better preparation in virtually
every respect than did the more senior directors, many of whom were
pioneers in agency management. And the most junior cohort felt better
prepared than their immediate predecessors in financial management and
in planning and development, but felt somewhat less well prepared in the
areas of marketing and public relations, labor relations, and government
relations.
These self-reports suggest that theater managing directors have become
better prepared for their first top administrative posts during the careers
of the survey respondents; art museum and CAA directors became better
prepared between the times that the most senior and middle cohorts assumed
top managerial posts, but readiness remained stable or declined thereafter;
and the subjective readiness of orchestra managers for their first top posi-
tions seems to have declined.
Neither budget size nor career experience was systematically associated
with managerial preparation in any of these four fields. Administrators with
higher degrees in artistic majors reported lower levels of preparation for
at least some functions in each field, but the differences were usually small.
The absence of association between budget size and reported preparation
in all fields but theater (where there was a negative association) is striking,
for it suggests that lack of prior management training or experience has
not been a serious impediment to administrative career success. Thus, it
is not surprising that, as we shall see below, most arts administrators placed
greater stock in on-the-job experience than in formal training, for the former
has generally been responsible for their own achievements.
44
Training
How Managers Learned
We did not ask administrators to assess their own current competence,
because their responses would have been influenced at least as much by
personality and expectations as by actual levels of skill. Still, it seems
reasonable to assume that during the course of their careers almost all
respondents learned something about each functional area. For each type
of managerial responsibility, respondents were asked to indicate if they had
used any of five training formats (on-the-job training, professional workshops
and seminars, university arts administration courses, university general
management courses, and consultants) to learn that function; and, if so,
to assess the value of their experiences. Table 3-2 below reveals the extent
to which top administrators in each field had used each training format to
learn each management function.2
On-the-job training was far more frequently cited than any other kind
in familiarizing arts administrators with the functions they performed. More
than 85 percent of each set of administrators reported receiving on-the-job
training for every skill about which they were asked. (The single exception-
labor relations for CAA directors — was a skill of little salience to most
respondents in this group.) Workshops and seminars were a distant second,
their use reported by more than 40 percent of all but the art museum direc-
tors for learning about personnel management, fiscal management, board
relations, planning and development, and marketing and public relations.
Some managers in all fields, but especially theater managing directors,
reported using consultants for a range of purposes, most frequently plan-
ning and development, and fiscal management.
Relatively small minorities in each field received training from university
arts administration and general management courses, especially in the area
of financial management. Performing arts administrators, above all orchestra
managers, were more likely than others to report attending arts administration
and general management courses, whereas local arts agency directors were
least likely to have sought instruction in such university programs.
Use of university arts administration and general management courses,
as well as attendance in workshops, increased markedly among the more
junior cohorts in each field but the art museums. Although even among
the newcomers only a minority received such training, if the trend were
to continue it would represent a significant change in the way arts ad-
ministrators learn their jobs.
Global Assessments of Selected Training Methods
Respondents were asked to indicate their "general assessment of the relative
value" of several forms of "management training" for administrators in
45
Managers of the Arts
Table 3-2
Use of Five Learning Methods by Function, by Field
(percent)
Discipline
Marketing
Planning and
Fiscal Personnel Board and Public Labor
Mgmt Mgmt Relations Dvlpmt Relations Relations
Govt
Relations
Theaters (102)*
On the job
Professional
workshops/seminars
University arts
administration courses
University general
management courses
Consultants
Art Museums (125)
On the job
Professional
workshops/seminars
University arts
administration courses
University general
management courses
Consultants
Orchestras (106)
On the job
Professional
workshops/seminars
University arts
administration courses
University general
management courses
Consultants
CAAs (129)
On the job
Professional
workshops/seminars
University arts
administration courses
University general
management courses
Consultants
96.08 97.06 99.02 96.08 95.10 91.18
49.02 28.43 46.08 53.92 55.88 17.65
23.53 15.69 14.71 17.65 18.63 14.71
18.60
NA
28.43 22.55 12.75 17.65
56.86 36.27 44.12 47.06
92.80 92.80 90.40 92.80
36.80 39.20 24.00 34.40
16.80 15.20 15.20 18.40
22.40 21.60 12.80 16.80
36.80 32.80 0.00 39.20
17.65 11.76
4.90 33.33
92.80 83.20
28.80 21.60
12.80 14.40
15.20 17.60
38.40 32.00
99.06 99.06 95.28 96.23 95.28 89.62
51.89 39.62 44.34 49.06 55.67 34.91
22.64 17.92 16.04 19.81 19.81 18.87
91.20
27.20
12.80
12.80
24.80
NA
33.02 17.92 14.15 22.64
36.79 23.58 26.42 38.68
24.53 19.81
36.79 33.02
89.15 92.25 93.02 89.15 88.37 65.12
45.74 31.78 44.96 58.91 57.36 14.73
9.30 10.85 15.50 12.40 6.20
25.58 16.28 7.75 21.71
27.91 16.28 22.48 42.64
18.60 8.53
31.01 10.85
86.82
24.03
10.85
8.53
17.05
NOTES: NA = not asked/not applicable.
* Figures in parentheses are the number of respondents for each group.
46
Training
their own field. The purpose of this question was not to assess the actual
value of these approaches to management training, since responses were
sought from individuals who had not experienced each approach firsthand,
and since meaningful evaluations require some specificity as to training goals.
(For example, a given format may be superb for learning financial manage-
ment but poor for learning how to use a board of trustees.) Rather, this
question was intended to tap the general reputation of each training method
among administrators in each field. We shall see in the next section that
reports of administrators who had used each training method diverged in
important ways from the reputations of these approaches among ad-
ministrators as a group.
The methods of training evaluated were university arts administration
training and university general management training undertaken prior to
first top administrative position; internships; university arts management
courses (or "theatre-management," as it read in the instrument sent to theater
managing directors) and university general management courses undertaken
in-service; professional workshops or seminars; consultancies by full-time
management consultants; consultancies by other top administrators in the
respondent's field; and "learning by doing on the job." In addition, a space
was left blank for respondents to add alternative approaches.
After each method was ranked on a scale of 1 to 10 (with "1" = "most
valuable"), the scale was collapsed into three categories, for which "1"
indicated a rank of 1 to 3, "2" indicated a rank of 4 to 6, and "3" in-
dicated a rank of 7 to 10. The percentage of administrators in each field
ranking each learning format in the top and bottom of the three collapsed
categories is reported in table 3-3.
Most striking about the data that emerged was the relative consensus
among managers in these fields about the general value of these
approaches.3 On-the-job training and internships were valued very highly,
as were workshops to a lesser extent. Apparently, in these fields, lack of
formal training has been no obstacle to success. Whereas peer consultants
and arts administration courses had both proponents and detractors, general
management training met with much skepticism, and consultancies by
management consultants were accorded the least stature as a management
training tool.
There were few differences by cohort among administrators of art
museums, orchestras, and CAAs; however, the most junior cohort of theater
managing directors reported more positive evaluations of arts administra-
tion training programs, and of preservice general management training in
particular. Whereas the most senior cohort in this field ranked the latter
below even management consultants, 40 percent of the most recent entrants
rated such training among the top three. By contrast, the reputation of
471
Managers of the Arts
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48
Training
workshops seemed to be experiencing a concomitant decline, with more
than one third of the most recent entrants to the field, compared with just
14 percent of the more senior managing directors, rating workshops and
seminars in the bottom categories. Moreover, the most junior managing
directors also held peer consultancies in lower esteem than did members
of the most senior cohort. Thus, consistent with the increased use of academic
administration training among theater managing directors is an improved
reputation for such training programs and a devaluation of peer instruction
through workshops and consultancies.
Evaluation of Learning Methods by Managers Who Had Used Them
We now consider the utility of specific training formats for learning about
selected management functions, as evaluated by administrators who had in
fact used them themselves for these purposes. Even with this added specific-
ity, however, these evaluations must be interpreted with caution. First,
characterizations of training methods are broad and include many diverse
programs. If, for example, one set of administrators reports finding a con-
sultant more useful for learning about labor relations than does another set,
it may be that the more positive respondents used superior consultants. Sec-
ond, many of these findings are based on assessments by very small sets
of experienced managers.
Respondents were asked, for each of seven management functions, to
rate any of five training formats they had actually used as being "very
useful," "somewhat useful," or "not useful." The training formats were
on-the-job training, workshops and seminars, consultants, university arts
administration courses, and university general management courses. All
findings reflect only the responses of administrators who had actually used
the training format for the purpose at hand. Intrafield differences by cohort,
budget size, and experience are not reported here because the subgroups
generated by such distinctions were too small for results to be meaningful.
In general, administrators ranked on-the-job training particularly high
as preparation for financial management, personnel management, and board
relations, and relatively low as background for labor relations. Workshops
were reported to be relatively useful ways for learning about financial
management, planning and development, and marketing and public rela-
tions, but less useful for learning about board relations and labor relations.
Consultants were seen as very useful for training in planning and develop-
ment and in marketing and public relations; and less useful for learning
about labor relations and, especially, personnel management. Arts ad-
ministration and general management courses were both given moderate
marks on marketing and public relations and considered not very useful
49
Managers of the Arts
for training in labor relations or board relations. In general, respondents
had few positive evaluations about most methods for learning about labor
relations and board relations; and reported positive evaluations of a range
of sources of information about marketing and public relations, financial
management, and planning and development.
Administrators from different fields varied in their assessments of dif-
ferent learning methods. Art museum directors tended to be generally less
likely than members of other groups to rate experiences as very useful, while
CAA directors were somewhat more likely, other things equal, to express
positive sentiments. Orchestra managers were particularly positive, as a
group, in their evaluation of workshops, while CAA directors were unusually
positive in their assessment of general management and, particularly, arts
administration programs.
Conclusions
These specific evaluations by administrators who had experience with dif-
ferent forms of training differed from the global evaluations by all ad-
ministrators in two notable respects. Although the global reputation of con-
sultants among all administrators is quite low, those managers who actu-
ally used consultants for various purposes were quite satisfied. By contrast,
despite the relatively high ratings that arts administration programs were
given by administrators on the whole, actual users found them to be relatively
unhelpful for most purposes. (Paradoxically, the one exception to this, the
CAA directors, are in the field that, as a whole, gave arts administration
courses the lowest global evaluation.) These findings suggest that general-
ized reputations of training programs may be poor guides for decisions by
either policymakers planning programs or aspiring administrators seeking
instruction.
50
Training
Notes
1 . University of Wisconsin Center for Arts Administration, Survey of Arts Administra-
tion Training 1985-86 (New York: American Council for the Arts, 1984).
2. For each function, respondents were asked to indicate in one column which of the
five learning formats they had used, and to assess, in columns to the right, their ex-
periences for only those methods they had used themselves. However, most respondents
failed to use the first column to indicate explicitly the methods they had used, and
most simply circled assessments to the right of some of the learning formats. In coding
these responses, we assumed that, where only some assessments were circled, these
learning formats had been used, and that those formats for which no assessments were
offered had not been. Where all assessments were circled for all functions, we in-
ferred that the respondent had misunderstood the instructions, and we treated the
responses as missing data. In the few cases in which a respondent circled some of
the numbers next to training methods in the first column, but assessed each training
method in the columns to the right, only those assessments of formats for which use
was indicated in the first column were coded. In calculating the percentage of
respondents who had used a given learning format, the base used was the largest number
of respondents to any question in the first part of this section of the survey, which
requested information regarding level of preparation for each function.
3. For reasons that are not apparent, theater managing directors alone showed a high
degree of selective nonresponse to these questions. Consequently, data for these
respondents must be interpreted with caution.
51
4
Professional Participation
And Attitudes Toward
Professionalism
Sociologists define professionalism1 as a form of self-organization that
enables practitioners of an occupation to defend the importance of their con-
tribution and the legitimacy of their decisions. What Magali Sarfatti Larsen
has called "the professional project" involves several dimensions: the
development by practitioners of a cognitive basis for specialism that is seen
as unique and not easily learned; the development of university programs,
run by professionals, that control the certification of practitioners; the
emergence of professional associations and the consignment to peers of the
right to admit individuals to the practice of an occupation and to set and
enforce ethical standards; and the establishment of at least some autonomy
of professionals from the organizations in which they are employed.2
In this view, professionalism has two sides, one ideological and
cognitive, the other behavioral and organizational. The role of the first is
to establish the legitimacy of professional claims to authority, autonomy,
and expertise. The set of attitudes associated with this side of professionalism
usually includes
• Claims to authority based on knowledge and expertise;
• A commitment to the importance of university training programs that
provide needed credentials for entry into the field;
52
Attitudes Toward Professionalism
• The belief that the expertise needed for professional practice cannot
be acquired solely through formal means;
• The belief that professional standards can best be set and enforced by
other professionals;
• A commitment to these professional standards, extending to a will-
ingness to place the common good of the profession above the specific
good of the employing organization when these interests conflict; and
• A concurrent commitment to the community of professionals, involv-
ing orientations that are "cosmopolitan" rather than "local."3
The role of the second side— behavioral and organizational— is to pro-
vide a framework in which professionals can interact with their peers, learn
about new developments in their fields, develop reputations that can aid
them in seeking professional advancement, and contribute to the public ac-
ceptance of their professional claims to expertise and authority. Components
of this side include
• Participation in professional activities and organizations, particularly
on the regional and national level;
• Reading of periodicals and other materials about the profession and
professional practice;
• Acquisition of university training for professional practice;
• Attendance at professional conferences and similar gatherings; and
• Maintenance of strong ties and friendships with professionals employed
in organizations other than one's own.
Several sets of questions we posed to the arts administrators bear on
the issue of professionalism, as so defined. The questions, which differed
from field to field, were based on reports in professional periodicals and
discussions with managers, and were reviewed by administrators,
policymakers, and service organization staff. In several cases, opinion ques-
tions were modeled on standard items used in other research on
professionalism.4 The first part of this chapter is devoted to behavioral,
the second to attitudinal, professionalism.
Behavioral Professionalism
Participation in Professional Activities
Administrators in each field were asked whether or not they had participated
in a wide range of professional activities, including membership in service
and professional associations; service as officers, board members, or com-
mittee members in such associations; service on federal, state, and local
53
Managers of the Arts
government arts-related panels and commissions; attendance at professional
and service organization conferences; reading of periodicals related to their
work; and friendship with other professionals.
All administrators reported engaging in a wide range of professional
activities, although, as a group, art museum directors reported a somewhat
broader and orchestra managers a somewhat narrower range of activities
than did other administrators. In addition to their principal service organiza-
tions, almost half of the theater managing directors were members of the
League of Resident Theaters (LORT). Almost three quarters of the art
museum directors belonged to the Association of Art Museum Directors
(A AMD), and almost half belonged to the College Art Association. Among
community arts agency (CAA) directors, two thirds reported membership
in the American Council for the Arts (ACA) and one third were members
of the Association of College, University, and Community Arts Ad-
ministrators (ACUCAA).
Relatively few administrators in any field reported serving as officers
or as board or committee members of such organizations. Among art
museum directors, one in six had been AAMD officers and over half reported
AAMD committee membership. Among the other administrators, however,
board membership only ranged from 10 percent for theater and CAA direc-
tors (in LORT and the National Assembly of Community Arts Agencies
[NACAA], respectively) to 14 percent for orchestra managers (in the
American Symphony Orchestra League); and committee membership was
just a bit higher, averaging about one manager in five for each group. Some
managers in all fields also reported serving in state or regional service or
professional organizations.
All but the CAA directors were asked about participation on federal
grant-review panels. (At the time of the survey, no federal program was
explicitly aimed at supporting CAAs.) Almost 40 percent of the art museum
directors reported serving on panels of the National Endowment for the
Arts Museum Program during the previous five years, more than 25 per-
cent had served on other Arts Endowment panels, one third had served as
reviewers or panelists for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and
almost one quarter had reviewed for or advised the Institute for Museum
Services. By contrast, the percentage of orchestra or theater administrators
who reported having served on their respective discipline panels or on other
Arts Endowment panels was fewer than 10 percent for each. The reason
for this discrepancy between museum and performing arts administra-
tors would seem to be that art museum directors are the central actors in
their institutions, commanding (with only a few exceptions) primary respon-
sibility for both the aesthetic and administrative functions. By contrast,
although many theater and orchestra managers are experienced in drama
54
Attitudes Toward Professionalism
or music, artistic directors play the prime aesthetic roles in their orga-
nizations.
Nonetheless, performing arts managers are often present on peer-review
panels at the state level: almost one third of the theater managing directors
and over one fifth of the orchestra managers reported serving on state arts
agency (SAA) discipline panels. In addition, two fifths of the art museum
directors reported having served on SAA museum panels, and almost 50
percent of the CAA directors acknowledged serving on an SAA panel dur-
ing the past five years. CAA directors were also more likely than other
administrators to have served on some other state government panel, com-
mission, or committee concerned with the arts.
In summary, respondents worked in a wide variety of capacities that
took them beyond the bounds of their own institutions. Many of their ac-
tivities focused on the regional, national, or state level. Some involved
association with other professional arts administrators; others involved con-
tact with government agencies; and still others brought them into contact
with universities, community organizations, and the broader public. Panel
participation on the national level was most common for the art museum
directors, most of whom were art historians, and these administrators were
also more likely to lecture at universities, to advise businesses and founda-
tions about contributing to the arts, and to serve on professional associa-
tion committees. And while CAA directors reported being especially in-
volved at the local and state levels in both public-sector and private-sector
arts activities, all managers were active on SAA panels and in state and
regional professional associations, and all were substantially involved in
university and workshop lecturing, as well as in other activities.
Conference Attendance
Patterns of conference attendance varied from field to field, in part depend-
ing on the number and frequency of events. Most top administrators in all
fields had attended at least one meeting of their field's primary service
organization during the previous five years. Specifically, about two thirds
of the art museum directors reported attending meetings of the American
Association of Museums (AAM), an equal proportion of theater managing
directors reported attending national meetings of the Theatre Communica-
tions Group (TCG), and over three quarters of the CAA directors had been
to at least one NACAA national convocation. Finally, fully 89 percent of
the orchestra managers had attended one or more ASOL national con-
ferences, and over half reported having been to four or five between 1976
and 1980.
Other meetings also attracted respondents during the previous five years.
Among theater managing directors, more than half had attended conferences
55
Managers of the Arts
of the Foundation for the Extension and Development of the American Pro-
fessional Theatre (FED APT), almost half had attended an annual meeting
of LORT, and the same proportion had attended a state or regional theater
conference. Similarly, almost two thirds of the art museum directors reported
having attended one or more AAMD annual meetings, just over half had
attended a national conference of the College Art Association, and almost
half reported attending a convocation of a state or regional museum associa-
tion. More than half of the CAA directors had attended a conference of
the American Council for the Arts and a similar percentage had been to
at least one ACUCAA conference. Nearly three quarters of the orchestra
managers reported having attended one or more of ASOL's regional
workshops. In sum, although the fields varied in the extent to which con-
ference attendance was focused on a single national service association, arts
administrators actively attended conferences that enabled them to develop
their professional skills and extend their professional networks.
Periodical Reading
A more passive form of professional engagement is the reading of periodicals
that treat issues important to one's field. Respondents were asked whether
they read selected periodicals "never," "occasionally," or "regularly."
Those periodicals that were read regularly included some, like the newsletters
and magazines of the service organizations (e.g., NACAA and NASAA
newsletters), that carried articles about management, artistic ac-
complishments, and personnel movements within each field. Others (e.g.,
Theatre or Art Journal) emphasized artistic developments, whereas still
others {Cultural Post or Arts Reporting Service) focused on the relation-
ship between government and the arts. And a few provided general coverage
of the arts (e.g., Sunday New York Times Arts and Leisure Section).
Most administrators in every field reported reading regularly the publica-
tions of their primary service organization. These included the AAM's
Museum News, read by just over half of the art museum directors, and
ASOL's Symphony, read by nearly all of the orchestra managers. Managers
varied in the extent to which they read periodicals of largely aesthetic in-
terest: just 10 percent of the theater managing directors read Theatre regu-
larly, whereas over 25 percent of the art museum directors reported regular
readership of Art Bulletin.
Respondents also varied in the extent to which they read other materials
relevant to their fields or to the arts in general. For example, more than
one third of the theater managing directors reported reading the weekly edi-
tion Variety on a regular basis, compared with just a handful of the orchestra
managers (who were even less likely to read Billboard, which covers record-
ing industry news) . About half the CAA directors said they read American
56
Attitudes Toward Professionalism
Arts regularly, compared with just about one in eight administrators in the
other fields. Orchestra managers and CAA directors were most likely to
read Cultural Post and the Arts Reporting Service, while art museum direc-
tors were least likely to do so. And performing arts administrators con-
stituted the most devoted readership of the American Arts Alliance's
Legislative Reports.
Friendships
Professions are commonly believed to absorb more of an individual's time
and commitment than other occupations. Consequently, respondents were
asked, "Of your five closest friends, how many work in your own field?"
Administrators of the resident theaters were strikingly more likely than
managers in other fields to number colleagues among their closest friends:
over 40 percent reported that three to five of their closest friends worked
in their field, whereas only about 10 percent found none of their five closest
friends so involved. By contrast, only about 17 to 25 percent of all other
respondents said three to five of their closest friends were colleagues, while
30 to 40 percent found no colleagues among their five closest friends. Given
the high average levels of professional experience among the art museum
directors, their responses were somewhat surprising. The high degree of
intrafield friendship among the theater managing directors, however, may
be related to the greater geographical concentration of theater activity than
of activity in the others fields.
Variation by Cohort and Organization Size
In all four fields, the link between seniority and professional participation
was found to be inconsistent, although in general, it was strongest among
the orchestra managers and weakest among the art museum directors. In
all disciplines, the more senior managers were far more likely to report
participation as officers, board members, or committee members in national
service organizations or on national panels, whereas differences in participa-
tion by cohort were far smaller at the state and regional levels (although,
among orchestra managers, such differences remained notable). By con-
trast, local activities were sometimes favored by members of the more re-
cent cohorts.
More senior managers among the theater, museum, and CAA ad-
ministrators were also more likely to attend national conferences. At the
same time, the most junior cohorts of orchestra managers and CAA
directors — but not of theater managing directors — were somewhat less likely
to read many periodicals than were their more senior colleagues.
In the art museum field, however, junior cohort participation was far
greater than that in other fields, particularly with regard to invited or ap-
57
Managers of the Arts
pointive positions such as reviewer or adviser for the National Institute of
Museum Services. Yet these more junior directors were less likely than
others to attend AAM conferences and to read Museum News. Three reasons
may account for these differences. First, members of the junior cohort of
art museum directors had been top executives longer than had recent ad-
ministrators in any other field. Insofar as time (rather than position in a
queue) is related to participation, they would be expected to participate more.
Second, cohort was less closely related to organization size in the art museum
field than it was in any other; insofar as managers of larger organizations
participated more than those of smaller ones, we would expect the junior
cohort of art museum directors to have been less affected. Finally, the newest
art museum directors were more likely than their predecessors to hold Ph.D.s
and to have taught in universities; thus, their professional commitments may
have been directed more to the worlds of art history and art museums than
to the museum world in general.
Organization budget size appeared to bear a similar relationship to pro-
fessional participation as that of tenure in the field. Generally speaking,
the wider the geographic scope of an activity and the more participation
was invited rather than voluntary, the greater the tendency for managers
of larger organizations to participate more than those of smaller ones. This
tendency was exceptionally strong in the orchestra field, somewhat less so
among CAA directors, and weakest, although still notable, in the art
museums.
For example, managing directors of small theaters were no less likely
than were directors of larger theaters to participate in state, local, and
regional activities; to attend local or regional conferences; or to read widely
in professional periodicals. Art museum size was similarly unrelated to
whether a director participated in National Endowment for the Arts panels
other than those of the Museum Program, reviewed for the Humanities En-
dowment or the Museum Services Institute, or attended AAM meetings.
Indeed, directors of smaller museums were more likely than directors of
larger ones to be involved in many state and local activities (including
membership in SAA panels). Somewhat surprisingly, directors of the larger
museums tended to read less widely in their field's periodical literature and
to recruit fewer friends from the museum field than did their smaller budget
colleagues. It is possible that directors of large museums were so well in-
tegrated into the field that they did not need to read to keep up with events ;
but it is also possible that participation in the university-centered world of
art history has created stronger professional networks among directors of
small museums (many of which are university museums) than among those
of larger institutions.
By contrast, professional participation was strongly related to organiza-
58
Attitudes Toward Professionalism
tion size among CAA directors and orchestra managers. For the former,
it may have been that, in the absence of major variation in experience in
the field, organizational budgets were the principal axis of differentiation;
thus, directors of large CAAs were more active not only at the national
level but also in most state and local activities and more active not only
in invited participation but in voluntary conference attendance as well.
Among orchestra managers, those with the smallest orchestras were less
integrated into the field with respect to every measure of participation ex-
cept membership in SAA panels (other than orchestra panels) and certain
local activities. They were also less likely to attend national ASOL meetings
(but not ASOL regional workshops) , to read regularly most of the publica-
tions listed on the survey, and to have many close friendships with other
orchestra colleagues.
In summary, then, more experienced managers and administrators were
more active participants in professional activities in all fields, especially
when those activities were national in scope and were invited (or elective)
rather than voluntary. In most fields, younger managers and those of smaller
organizations appeared active in state and local affairs, suggesting an in-
formal apprenticeship system with interorganizational professional careers.
This system appeared strongest in the art museum field, where differences
in professional participation based on organization size and length of ex-
perience were weakest, and it appeared weakest in the orchestra field, where
such differences were strongest and where managers of the smallest organiza-
tions were also less integrated than others in terms of several informal and
voluntary forms of professional participation.5
Attitudinal Professionalism
Professional attitudes are characterized by adherence to claims about the
qualities of both individual practitioners and the occupational community
as a whole. With respect to the individual, professionalism includes an em-
phasis on expertise as the basis of authority; claims of altruism,
disinterestedness, or public spiritedness; and a view of career advancement
through professional practice in several organizations rather than through
promotion in a single organization. With respect to the community, pro-
fessionalism entails loyalty to the professional community and its standards
being placed above loyalty to one's employer; an emphasis on the collec-
tive action of professionals to enforce professional ethical standards; and
a commitment to use professional associations to increase the legitimacy
of professionals with the general public and with specific constituencies,
including government.
Three multifaceted questions tapped these individual and collective com-
59
Managers of the arts
ponents of professionalism. The first question asked managers to assess the
relative importance of several qualities or criteria that could be used to select
the chief administrator of an organization like their own. The second ques-
tion asked them to rate the relative importance of a number of functions
that service organizations might perform in their field. The third question —
actually, a set of several paired statements between which respondents had
to choose— was designed to tap their attitudes toward specific aspects of
the managerial role and organizational mission.
At the individual level, respondents' attitudes toward the importance
of managerial expertise were reflected in their ratings of management ex-
perience, formal training in administration, ability to prepare a budget,
marketing experience, grantsmanship ability, and private fund-raising ability
as managerial qualifications. Their attitudes were reflected as well in how
they rated the importance of keeping managers informed about new ad-
ministrative techniques and of providing training opportunities as functions
of service organizations. Two forced-choice pairs also addressed the issue
of managerial expertise: one asked respondents to assess the relative im-
portance of artistic and administrative experience as background for jobs
like their own; and one (addressed only to orchestra and CAA administrators)
asked about the relative utility of volunteers and trained paid employees .
(In such fields as social work, exponents of professionalism have opposed
the use of volunteers on the ground that they lack appropriate training and
expertise.) As for the other two characteristics of individual professionalism,
the emphasis on disinterestedness and altruism was tapped by a forced-choice
question asking respondents to assess the extent to which professional ad-
ministrators in their fields were motivated by extrinsic, as opposed to finan-
cial, rewards; and the focus on interorganizational careers was addressed
by asking respondents to assess the importance of enhancing career oppor-
tunities as a function of service organizations.
Several other items were used to assess the extent to which respondents
felt a strong commitment to their professional communities. They were asked
to rate the importance of a manager's "standing in the field" as a criterion
for selecting top executives for an organization like their own. In the forced-
choice format, they were asked to decide whether administrators like
themselves owe a responsibility to the field as a whole even when it runs
against the short-range interests of their own institutions. Willingness to
vest social control over the activities of individual managers in the profes-
sional community was tapped by respondents' assessments of the impor-
tance, as functions of service organizations, of establishing standards of
ethics for managers and of preventing unqualified persons from serving as
arts administrators. In addition, museum directors were asked, in forced-
choice format, about their attitudes toward museum accreditation and, in
60
Attitudes Toward Professionalism
a separate question, about the proper agency to enforce museum ethical
standards. Finally, their opinions about the use of service organizations to
represent their profession to those outside their field were tapped by the
importance they attributed to enhancing the public status of their organiza-
tions or professions, representing the field to public agencies, and advocating
legislation in the interests of the arts.
It should be noted that all these questions assessed attitudes only toward
managerial professionalism, and not toward artistic or scholarly profes-
sionalism, as might be espoused by theater artistic directors or academi-
cally oriented museum directors. This is yet another reason why profes-
sionalism, as defined here, must not be confused with either effectiveness
or virtue.
Criteria for Selecting Administrators
Respondents in each field were asked to rate criteria for selecting a chief
administrator for an organization like their own as "unimportant,"
"somewhat important," or "very important." Patterns of response were
quite similar from field to field (see table 4-1).
Given the diversity of organizational missions and structures among
the four fields, the degree of consensus on the question of what makes a
good manager was high. Administrators in all groups reported that they
would choose replacements for themselves who had management experience;
tact, refinement, and style; and the ability to prepare a budget; and who
appreciated the work of the artists or artistic experts whom they managed.
In none of these fields were respondents very concerned about the standing
of candidates in the field as a whole, whether they had received formal train-
ing in administration, or whether they had training or experience in educa-
tional work in their field.
Functions of Service Organizations
Respondents demonstrated similar consensus in assessing the importance
of 10 potential functions of service organizations in their fields (see table
4-2). On the whole, managers agreed strongly that service organizations
should take stands on legislation relevant to their fields and represent the
field to public agencies concerned with the arts. Over two thirds of the per-
forming arts administrators also considered status enhancement a ' 'very im-
portant" function. Also considered among the most important functions were
the need to keep members abreast of current management techniques, and
the provision of training opportunities for managers.
By contrast, relatively few respondents in any field considered it a "very
important' ' function of service organizations to prevent unqualified per-
sons from holding jobs (an important function in the classic professions of
61
Managers of the Arts
Table 4-1
Criteria Considered "Very Important" for Selecting
A Chief Administrator, by Field
(percent)
Criteria
Theaters
Art Museums
Orchestras
CAAs
Management experience
74.19
(103)*
85.61
(124)
85.85
(107)
92.23
(132)
Tact, refinement, style
81.55
(103)
88.71
(124)
90.57
(106)
75.76
(132)
Ability to prepare a budget
85.44
(103)
56.45
(124)
86.92
(107)
81.06
(132)
Appreciation3
83.50
(103)
64.23
(123)
82.24
(107)
67.42
(132)
Marketing
51.46
(103)
NA
60.75
(107)
NA
Private fund-raising ability
58.25
(103)
49.59
(123)
42.99
(107)
NA
Grantsmanship ability
61.17
(103)
28.46
(123)
46.73
(107)
56.06
(132)
Commitment to outreach
36.89
(103)
26.83
(123)
46.73
(107)
58.78
(131)
Knowledge13
24.27
(103)
45.16
(124)
44.86
(107)
32.06
(131)
Standing in the field
9.71
(103)
34.68
(124)
17.76
(107)
24.24
(132)
Formal training in
administration
14.71
(102)
8.87
(124)
15.89
(107)
18.94
(132)
Educational training0
3.88
(103)
12.20
(123)
8.49
(106)
9.85
(132)
NOTES: Criteria are ranked in order of importance according to the average percent of respondents
reporting "very important" across all four fields.
NA = Not asked/not applicable.
For theaters, 'appreciation of the dramatic art'; for museums, 'connoisseurship'; tor or-
chestras, 'appreciation of classical music'; for CAAs, 'appreciation of the arts.'
For theaters, 'knowledge of the dramatic literature'; for museums, 'scholarship'; for or-
chestras, 'knowledge of the symphonic repertoire'; for CAAs, 'familiarity with the community
arts scene nationally.'
For theaters, 'training or experience in theater education'; for museums, 'training or ex-
perience in museum education'; for orchestras, 'training or experience in music educa-
tion'; for CAAs, 'training or experience in arts education.'
* Figures in parentheses are the number of respondents for each item.
62
Attitudes Toward Professionalism
medicine and law), or, except in the case of CAA directors, to bring together
administrators and colleagues from similar fields into one professional
community .
If many art museum directors looked toward their service organiza-
tions to set ethical standards, fewer were willing to let such associations
enforce them. Almost half of the art museum directors reported that ethical
standards should be enforced by each museum's board of trustees. Slightly
fewer would have them enforced by either the A AM or the AAMD, while
fewer still suggested some other method of enforcement. None, however,
recommended that such standards be enforced by government agencies that
support museums.
Forced-Choice Responses
For each of the forced-choice questions, respondents were asked to choose
one of two conflicting statements and to indicate whether making the choice
was "very difficult," "somewhat difficult," or "easy." For each ques-
tion, combining the choice and the estimate of difficulty yielded a scale
ranging from "1" (easy choice of first alternative) to "6" (easy choice
of second alternative).
Respondents were asked to choose between two statements, one of which
asserted that "while business sense is useful, it is essential that" ad-
ministrators in the respondent's discipline "have strong artistic back-
grounds," while the other stressed the importance of "a strong background
in management. " From 70 to 80 percent of all groups but the art museum
directors strongly favored the management alternative, while the same pro-
portion of the art museum directors thought an artistic background was more
essential. This striking difference reflected the academic background of most
art museum directors, who appeared to offer their professional allegiance
more to art-historical than to administrative standards.
Asked to choose between one statement asserting that "nonmonetary
rewards make up for the low salaries" of managers in their fields and another
stating that "salaries are so low . . . that many dedicated managers are
leaving the field for more remunerative work," more than half of the (better-
paid) art museum and orchestra administrators chose the first option, com-
pared with about 40 percent of the theater managing directors and just over
one in five CAA directors. Respondents were also asked to choose between
one statement asserting that administrators of several kinds of arts organiza-
tions were members of the same profession and a second asserting that "I
find that I have little in common" with members of these other groups.
The reference group for theater and orchestra administrators was managers
in all the performing arts; for art museum directors, it was people in all
kinds of museums; and for the CAA directors, it included administrators
63
Managers of the Arts
Table 4-2
Service Organization Functions Considered "Very Important,"
by Field
(percent) ^^^^
Functions
Theaters
Art Museums
Orchestras
CAAs
Initiating or taking stands on
legislation in areas of
interest to the field
79.00
(100)
87.20
(125)
85.19
(108)
71.54
(130)
Representing the field to
state and federal agencies
concerned with the arts
72.78
(101)
75.20
(125)
83.18
(107)
78.29
(129)
Enhancing the status of the
field in the eyes of the
public
67.33
(101)
47.11
(121)
66.67
(108)
58.46
(130)
Keeping members/profes-
sionals abreast of current
management techniques
61.39
(101)
43.59
(117)
71.03
(107)
54.20
(131)
Providing training oppor-
tunities for administrators
53.47
(101)
30.77
(117)
65.74
(108)
67.42
(132)
Setting standards of profes-
sional or managerial ethics
45.54
(101)
86.29
(124)
45.37
(108)
38.93
(131)
Facilitating career develop-
ment through fostering
contacts with other
administrators in field
38.61
(101)
34.40
(125)
40.74
(108)
38.46
(130)
Exercising leadership to
make the field more relevant
and accessible to
disadvantaged groups
18.81
(101)
18.40
(125)
23.15
(108)
38.17
(131)
Bringing together admin-
istrators and colleagues
from similar fields into one
professional community
14.84
(101)
17.60
(125)
7.41
(108)
44.27
(131)
Preventing unqualified
persons from serving as
administrators
14.29
(98)
21.01
(119)
20.37
(108)
23.66
(131)
NOTES: Functions are ranked in order of importance according to the average percent of respondents
reporting "very important" across all four fields.
Figures in parentheses are the number of respondents for each item.
64
of all kinds of arts organizations. CAA directors and orchestra managers
were most inclusive, with more than 90 percent of each choosing the first
alternative, as did nearly as many theater administrators. By contrast, almost
half of the art museum directors reported having "little in common" with
directors of other kinds of museums.
In the fourth forced-choice question, respondents were asked to choose
between the statement that an administrator should always act in the best
interest of his or her organization, even when the action is not in the best
interest of the field as a whole; and a second statement asserting the reverse.
Only among the CAA directors did a majority of respondents choose the
second, more classically professional, alternative. Majorities of the other
respondents (from 58 percent of the art museum directors to over 75 per-
cent of the orchestra managers) opted for the well-being of their organiza-
tions. (Fewer respondents in any discipline reported making this choice
"easily" than any other forced-choice item described in this section.)
Finally, orchestra managers and CAA directors were asked to choose
between one statement asserting that volunteers are intrinsically valuable
and another suggesting that they are a necessary evil that should eventually
be replaced by paid staff; respondents in both fields favored the pro-volunteer
choice almost unanimously. Similarly, more than 90 percent of the art
museum directors chose a statement favoring museum accreditation over
one opposing it.
Variation by Cohort
Newcomers to the resident stage differed from more senior managers in
several respects. They were only one third as likely to consider knowledge
of the dramatic literature a very important qualification for their job, whereas
one in five of them, compared with no respondents among the most senior
cohort, considered formal training in administration to be very important.
The more junior managing directors also considered it somewhat more im-
portant than did their senior colleagues for service organizations to keep
managers abreast of recent management techniques and to provide training
opportunities. The percentage who deemed an artistic background more
essential than a management background also declined steadily with cohort:
from almost one third of the most senior managing directors to less than
a quarter of the middle cohort and just 13 percent of the newest entrants.
In short, these patterns seem to reflect a growing managerial orientation
on the part of more junior theater administrators, consistent with the changes
in training and background described in earlier chapters.
The responses among junior art museum directors reflected similar
changes in that field. The most recent entrants were less likely (just over
50 percent, compared with about two thirds in each earlier cohort) to con-
65
Managers of the Arts
sider connoisseurship a "very important" criterion for selecting a direc-
tor, whereas they, too, were considerably more likely (almost one quarter
compared with none) to rate formal training in administration as "very im-
portant." The importance accorded fund-raising and budgeting as managerial
qualifications also rose monotonically with cohort, and more than 50 per-
cent of the junior cohort— twice as many as in the most senior cohort and
five times those in the middle— included "commitment to outreach" among
the important criteria. The most junior directors were also twice as likely
to stress the value of service organizations in "keeping museum profes-
sionals abreast of current management techniques"; and just two thirds of
the two more recent cohorts, compared with more than 90 percent of the
most senior, placed more importance on scholarly and curatorial backgrounds
for directors than on managerial backgrounds.
Although the orientation of the less senior directors was more managerial
than that of their more senior colleagues, it was not more professional, in
the classical sense. The newer directors, for example, were less supportive
of the social control and representation functions of service organizations,
and fewer would have service organizations keep unqualified persons out
of museum jobs or represent the field to public arts agencies. Moreover,
they were substantially more likely to vest responsibility for enforcement
of ethical standards in each museum's board of trustees, while the most
senior directors preferred to vest it in the AAM. Finally, the most junior
directors also reported a somewhat greater tendency than the most senior
(two thirds compared with one half) to act in the interests of their institu-
tion when those interests conflicted with those of the museum field.
Has managerial professionalism been increasing in the art museum field?
Although a notable minority of more recent entrants were more oriented
toward the managerial aspect of their work, they were somewhat less likely
to provide traditionally professional responses to questions about collec-
tive control and responsibility. At least a minority of the less senior direc-
tors, but virtually none of the most senior, apparently held a view of their
job that was as similar to that held by performing arts administrators as
it was to traditional notions of museum professionalism.
The attitudes of orchestra managers varied less dramatically by cohort
than those of the two groups discussed above, but they still showed the same
increased tendency toward managerial orientation. Little systematic varia-
tion was apparent, however, among CAA directors, for whom each cohort
covered far fewer years.
66
Attitudes Toward Professionalism
Summary
Did the arts administrators display a "professional orientation" toward their
work as managers? The responses elude easy labels. In no field did
respondents as a group endorse all the traditional components of the pro-
fessional belief system. For example, most respondents (except art museum
directors) considered management training and education an important role
of service organizations, yet they rejected formal management training (and
its concomitant credentials) as an important criterion in selecting ad-
ministrators for jobs like their own. Further, again except for the art museum
directors, respondents expressed little interest in the potential of service
or professional organizations for collective social control. And, except for
the CAA directors, most would act in the best interests of their organiza-
tions when those interests conflicted with those of their field. On the other
hand, respondents seemed to appreciate the value of collective mobiliza-
tion to pursue broadly political ends: supporting legislation, negotiating with
government agencies, and enhancing public images. In short, the responses
of these administrators conformed to the professional model in some respects
and diverged sharply in others.
This combination of convergence and divergence was most striking
among the art museum directors, whose responses were least like those of
other administrators. They placed less stock in formal management train-
ing than any other group, both as a criterion for hiring directors and as
a function of service organizations, yet they were most supportive of the
role of service organizations in establishing (and, for a large minority, en-
forcing) professional ethical standards. Further, although members of dif-
ferent cohorts in the art museum, theater, and, to a lesser extent, orchestra
fields showed a trend toward increasing managerialism, this orientation was
reflected in the responses of only a minority of respondents. Among the
art museum directors, the increased managerialism was accompanied by
a modest decline in support for traditional tenets of professionalism.
Notes
1 . Professionalism, as it is used here, refers to a set of attitudes and behaviors associated
with a distinctive form of occupational organization. It has little in common with the
conventional, everyday use of the word as a synonym for competence or qualifica-
tion. Thus, whether professional participation and attitudes are associated, either
positively or negatively, with competence or effectiveness is an empirical question
quite beyond the scope of this study. When some administrators are described as hav-
ing a "professional orientation" to a greater degree than others, or as "participating
to a greater extent in professional activities," these are factual accounts of their self-
reported attitudes and behaviors, which should not be taken to reflect in any way their
effectiveness as administrators.
67
Managers of the Arts
2. Magali Sarfatti Larsen, The Rise of Professionalism (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1977).
3. Alvin W. Gouldner, "Cosmopolitans and Locals: Toward an Analysis of Latent Social
Roles I," Administrative Science Quarterly 2, 2 (1957): 281-306.
4. Richard H. Hall, "Professionalization and Bureaucratization," American Sociological
Review 33, 1 (1968): 92-104; William E. Snizek, "Hall's Professionalism Scale: An
Empirical Reassessment," American Sociological Review 37, 1 (1972): 109-114;
Harold L. Wilensky, "The Professionalization of Everyone?" American Journal of
Sociology 70, 5 (1964): 137-158.
5 . Indices of participation were summed to create a composite ' 'professional activism' '
scale and subjected to regression analysis to assess the relative impacts of several deter-
minants of participation net of one another. These analyses, which are reported in
full in the preliminary report of this study, revealed that three factors— operating
budget, years of experience, and salary— accounted for most of the explained varia-
tion in participation in every field.
68
5
Attitudes Toward
Organizational Missions
To examine administrators' attitudes toward the missions of their organiza-
tions and the role of management in accomplishing them, we analyzed data
from two sets of questions. Because an organization's board is responsible
for policy formation and decisions about goals both in nonprofit organiza-
tions and in many public art museums and CAAs, one set of questions asked
managers to evaluate the relative importance of 10 characteristics of board
members. To answer the question of "What business are we in?" the sec-
ond set required respondents to choose between pairs of statements reflect-
ing different attitudes toward organizational mission and strategy. Develop-
ment of questions was guided by ongoing debates within the fields surveyed,
and items were revised after review by arts managers, service organization
staff, and public arts agency staff.
Board Member Characteristics
Respondents were asked, "In your opinion, how important is the presence
of persons with each of the following characteristics to the effectiveness
of [your kind of arts organization's] board of trustees?" They were then
presented with 10 different items and asked to rank them in importance
(see table 5-1). Some items (ability and willingness to donate money; con-
nections with the wealthy, with business corporations, and with govern-
ment) had to do with ability to give or get resources. Others (willingness
to interact with staff, willingness to respect formal hierarchy, and legal or
management skills) concerned the board's internal function. Two items (com-
69
Managers of the Arts
mitment to education and outreach, and representativeness of the commu-
nity's racial and ethnic groups) reflected concern with pluralism and social
goals. And one (personal interest in the arts) was related to the aesthetic
mission.
Personal interest in the artistic substance of the organization's work
was rated among the top three criteria in all fields by almost two thirds
of the respondents. Also prized highly, especially among performing arts
administrators, were the ability and willingness to give money, and con-
tacts with business corporations and with the wealthy. Orchestra managers,
in fact, appeared to seek "donor" boards that give money and serve as
bridges to wealthy individuals and companies. Theater managing directors
also emphasized private-sector resource acquisition, albeit with less unanim-
ity. Although art museum directors valued these same income-generating
qualities, more than half of them also ranked willingness to respect the
museum's formal hierarchy of authority among the three most important
board-member attributes. By contrast, CAA directors were diverse in their
appraisals, stressing not only contacts with business but also skills, com-
mitment to education and outreach, and contacts with government.
Managers in all fields were much less likely to include among the top
three attributes willingness to interact with staff and representativeness of
the community's racial and ethnic groups. Similarly, only about one fifth
of the performing arts administrators ranked commitment to education and
outreach highly, although it did fare better among art museum and CAA
directors. And attitudes toward legal and management skills varied widely
by discipline, ranked highly by almost half the CAA directors but just one
in eight orchestra managers.
Forced-Choice Questions
Most of the forced-choice questions addressed debates or concerns about
the extent to which traditional aesthetic aims of arts organizations should
be supplemented by partial reorientations: first, toward the market and earned
income, and second, toward education and outreach objectives. We sought
here to document the administrator's attitudes on these issues, and to see
if such attitudes represented relatively coherent ideological positions. Finally,
we wanted to assess the relative impact of a manager's organization,
background, and career experience on these attitudes toward missions. Note
that there is no intention— nor could these data be used— to assess the validity
of the attitudes.
Respondents were asked to choose between two statements, each reflect-
ing a different position on a management or policy issue. Responses did
not necessarily indicate agreement with the statement chosen; respondents
70
Attitudes Toward Missions
Table 5-1
Three Most Important Characteristics of Board Members, by Field
(percent)
Item Theaters Art Museums Orchestras CAAs
Personal interest in the arts
Willingness and ability to
donate money
Connections with business
corporations
Connections with wealthy
individuals
Willingness to respect
formal hierarchy of
communications
Legal or management skills
Influence in government
circles
Commitment to education
and outreach
Representativeness
of community's racial and
ethnic groups
Willingness to interact
with staff at the depart-
mental level
65.35
65.00
65.09
59.54
(101)
(120)
(106)
(131)
63.73
70.83
80.19
34.35
(102)
(120)
(106)
(131)
58.82
53.33
69.81
58.02
(102)
(120)
(106)
(131)
53.06
39.17
53.77
33.08
(98)
(120)
(106)
(130)
44.44
56.30
25.71
27.91
(63)
(119)
(105)
(129)
30.69
37.50
12.26
46.56
(101)
(120)
(106)
(131)
32.56
33.33
20.00
39.69
(86)
(120)
(105)
(131)
20.43
32.50
19.05
40.31
(93)
(120)
(105)
(129)
17.20
19.17
14.29
29.01
(93)
(120)
(105)
•(131)
18.18
10.17
16.04
28.46
(98)
(118)
(106)
(130)
NOTES: Characteristics are ranked in order of importance according to the average percent of
respondents across all four fields naming each item among the top three in importance.
Figures in parentheses are the number of respondents for each item.
71
Managers of the Arts
may have agreed or disagreed partially with both options, and in many cases,
their personal views were undoubtedly more complex or sophisticated than
either one. The value of these questions is not so much in permitting
generalizations about what arts managers believed as in enabling us to com-
pare the positions of different managers on several dimensions. In design-
ing the forced-choice options, we tried to present each statement in a con-
tentious tone, as might an advocate of the position it embodied. Occasionally,
the tone was softened in an effort (not always successful) to phrase alter-
natives so as to elicit variation in response.
Most items were designed to counterpose two of three attitudinal
orientations— i.e., traditional aesthetic mission, managerialism (emphasis
on efficiency and earned income, and orientation to the private sector), and
social orientation (emphasis on education and outreach, and orientation
toward the public sector)— that were hypothesized to represent somewhat
coherent ideological positions. To avoid response-set bias, for those ques-
tions in which one statement favored and another opposed a position, ' 'pro' '
and "con" responses were alternated in the first and second positions from
question to question. Since wording of specific items differs from group
to group, responses are not completely comparable across disciplines. The
principal value of these data are, first, for description of respondents in
each field, and, second, for comparison of attitudes across groups within
each field. As previously described, responses to forced choices were merged
with those to related questions about the difficulty of each choice to yield
a six-point scale, ranging from "1" (easy choice of first option) to "6"
(easy choice of second option).
Resident Theater Managing Directors
Aesthetic vs. managerial orientation. When asked to choose between
a statement favoring efforts to increase earned income and one suggesting
that resident theaters are often too concerned with this goal, the vast major-
ity of theater managing directors (88 percent) chose the first. More than
half (6 1 percent) also selected a statement favoring institutionalization to
achieve professional excellence over one alleging that institutionalization
discourages creativity or innovation. And nearly all respondents (92 per-
cent) favored more businesslike management techniques over a warning
that such techniques are inappropriate for arts organizations.
Aesthetic vs. social orientation. More than two thirds agreed with a
statement that resident theaters have a responsibility to go beyond their
regular programming to educate their audience and potential audience rather
than with the opposing assertion that educational programs distract atten-
tion from the theater's central artistic task. In another forced choice, more
than three quarters of the respondents chose "excellence" over "access"
72
Attitudes Toward Missions
as a guide to public subsidy. And almost the same proportion selected a
statement indicating that resident theaters could expand their audiences to
include many more poor, minority, and working people over an assertion
that the theater's audience will always be limited to individuals who can
really understand and appreciate the dramatic art.
Managerial vs. social orientation. By a strong majority (88 percent),
theater administrators favored a statement indicating that resident theaters
should look toward business (rather than toward government) for an in-
creasing share of revenues in the coming years. (Shortly before the survey
was fielded, the national administration proposed dramatic cuts in the federal
arts budget. The salience of this development undoubtedly affected the pat-
tern of response to this question.)
Nonclassified attitudinal orientation. Almost half the respondents
favored coordination in planning and programming among arts organiza-
tions over a statement stressing the danger to an organization's autonomy
of involvement in coordinative efforts.
Art Museum Directors
Aesthetic vs. managerial orientation. Just over half of the art museum
directors selected the statement that "art museums have become too con-
cerned with maximizing earned income by mounting popular exhibits of
dubious scholarly or artistic value' ' over one praising art museums for learn-
ing to boost earned income by designing exhibits with popular appeal.
Approximately 40 percent agreed that museums should use cost-benefit
measures in order to be taken seriously by potential patrons, while 60 per-
cent believed such efforts to measure museums' efficiency reflected "a pro-
found misunderstanding" of museum work and goals. Two fifths of the
museum directors chose a warning that efforts to use auxiliary activities
(e.g., gift shops, restaurants) to increase earned income risk subordinating
the museum's artistic goals to commercial ones, while three fifths agreed
that museums have a responsibility to exploit commercial opportunities to
increase earned income.
Aesthetic vs. social orientation. Almost two thirds of the respondents
agreed that art museums should provide thorough interpretation of exhibited
works rather than that extensive interpretation interferes with the relation-
ship between the viewer and the work of art. In the forced choice between
excellence and access as a criterion for public subsidy, 70 percent of the
museum directors opted for the former. And just over half selected the state-
ment that art museums can attract many more poor, minority, and working
people over the assertion that museum visitors will always be "the minor-
ity of individuals who can really understand and appreciate art."
Managerial vs. social orientation. Fully 86 percent of the directors
73
Managers of the Arts
agreed that art museums should look to business to provide an increasing
share of their revenues in coming years, over an alternative saying the same
of government.
Nonclassified attitudinal orientation. More than 60 percent of the art
museum directors favored coordination of planning and programming among
museums over the warning that such coordination would threaten museum
autonomy .
Orchestra Managers
Aesthetic vs. managerial orientation. In response to the assertion that
orchestras worry too much about earned income and too little about challeng-
ing and innovative programming, 83 percent of the orchestra managers chose
a statement praising orchestras for using marketing and programming to
boost earned income. And the same proportion favored use of commercial
administrative practices, rejecting the notion that efficiency is not what per-
forming arts organizations are all about.
Aesthetic vs. social orientation. The vast majority of orchestra managers
(90 percent) selected the statement that "the orchestra must go beyond its
regular programming to educate its audience and potential audience" over
the assertion that educational programs divert attention from artistic goals.
Two thirds of them also chose excellence over access as a basis for public
support for the arts. And 57 percent believed that orchestras can increase
markedly the number of poor, minority, and working people in their audi-
ences, whereas 43 percent believed that the orchestra's audience will always
be limited to the few "individuals who can really understand and appreciate
music."
Managerial vs. social orientation. Almost all (95 percent) orchestra
managers chose to look to business rather than government for increased
revenues in the future.
Nonclassified attitudinal orientation. More than 60 percent agreed that
coordination of planning and programming with other arts organizations
represents a threat to autonomy, rather than that such coordination is in-
creasingly necessary in the current fiscal environment.
CAA Directors
Aesthetic vs. managerial orientation. Almost two thirds of the CAA
directors chose a statement indicating that CAAs should develop more effi-
cient administrative techniques similar to those of the better-run social
service agencies over an alternative statement indicating that arts agencies
cannot be run like social service agencies and warning against bureaucrati-
zation.
Aesthetic vs. social orientation. Almost four fifths of the respondents
74
Attitudes Toward Missions
agreed that "CAAs should go beyond the traditional arts to support and
encourage" minority and neighborhood arts groups rather than concentrate
on the most important and highest quality organizations within their com-
munities. In keeping with this view, almost 75 percent chose access over
excellence as a criterion for public support, and almost 90 percent chose
the assertion that traditional arts organizations could expand their audiences
to include far more poor, minority, and working people over the statement
that the audiences for art museums and symphony orchestras will always
be limited to the minority who can appreciate great art and music.
Managerial vs. social orientation. The CAA directors were almost as
unanimous as orchestra managers (92 percent) in choosing business over
government as a future source of increased revenues. Further, more than
70 percent of the CAA directors selected the assertion that CAAs worry
too much about getting grants and too little about earning income over the
statement that CAAs should provide services to individuals and organiza-
tions that are too poor to pay for them.
Nonclassified attitudinal orientation. Again, more than 70 percent sup-
ported rather than opposed regional coordination of the planning and pro-
gramming among CAAs, and more than 85 percent believed CAAs should
provide artistic programming that is otherwise unavailable rather than limit
themselves to providing support services to other arts organizations.
Summary
Although responses to most items are not comparable across disciplines
because of variation in item wording, we can make some rough generaliza-
tions. Respondents in all fields overwhelmingly favored statements that future
revenues should be sought from business rather than from government. Fur-
ther, majorities (albeit sometimes small ones) in each field voiced sympathy
with the goals of education and outreach, and majorities in all fields except
art museums tended to agree with statements supporting improved ad-
ministrative techniques. The most obvious deviations occurred among art
museum directors, who were more likely to choose statements expressing
skepticism about or distaste for earned income-producing schemes, and
among CAA directors, who alone supported the statement endorsing the
principal of access over excellence. Enough variation in response appears,
however, that no group's orientation can be characterized as being over-
whelmingly aesthetic, social, or managerial.
Variation by Cohort
No major variations by cohort appeared regarding the most desirable qualities
for board members, but more differences did emerge in response to
statements reflecting attitudes toward organization mission and strategy.
75
Managers of the Arts
The most senior cohort of theater administrators were somewhat more
likely than the most junior cohort (86 to 67 percent) to emphasize excellence
over access as a criterion for public support, and they were only about half
as likely to choose with ease the statement that resident theaters could greatly
expand the number of poor, working, and minority people in their audiences.
They were also substantially less likely than other groups (one quarter, com-
pared with almost 40 percent in the middle cohort and two thirds of the
newest) to favor coordination of planning and programming among perform-
ing arts organizations. As a group, then, the more senior managing direc-
tors expressed a somewhat greater commitment to aesthetic values, par-
ticularly over social ones, than did their more junior colleagues. But the
differences were relatively small.
The more junior art museum directors were approximately twice as
likely as their colleagues to endorse the use of exhibits with broad-based
appeal to raise earned income rather than deplore such income-earning ex-
hibitions. Similarly, they were considerably less likely (one third of the
most junior cohort compared with more than half of the most senior) to
choose the statement questioning the use of museum shops and similar means
of generating earned income. Support for excellence over access was
monotonically related to seniority: more than 80 percent of the most ex-
perienced directors, compared with almost half of the least experienced,
favored the former. Also monotonically related to seniority were attitudes
toward coordination, with just over half of the most experienced cohort—
twice as many as the most junior— choosing the statement opposing it. Thus
among art museum directors, seniority was associated with favoring an
aesthetic over a social and, to a lesser extent, managerial orientation.
For orchestra managers, too, aesthetic views found more favor within
the senior cohort than within the junior ones. Nearly one quarter of the
most senior managers (compared with just 9 percent of the most junior)
agreed that orchestras are often too concerned with maximizing earned in-
come at the expense of the quality of their musical programming. And nearly
one third of them (compared with 15 percent of the middle cohort and just
1 of 31 less-experienced managers) agreed that efforts to measure the effi-
ciency of symphony orchestras are inappropriate.
Senior orchestra managers also held aesthetic values over social ones.
More than one fifth of them (compared with just 3 of 65 other respondents)
endorsed a statement that "educational programs can deflect energy" from
the orchestra's central artistic goals, and 85 percent chose excellence over
access, compared with fewer than 60 percent of the two more junior cohorts.
Like the most senior managers in other fields, those in the orchestra field
were also less likely to favor the coordination alternative (just one in four
among them, compared with three fifths of the most junior managers). Thus,
76
Attitudes Toward Missions
in the orchestra field as elsewhere, seniority was associated with support
for traditional aesthetic values. In each case, however, it is unclear whether
variation by cohort represented a decline in traditional aesthetic concerns
over time, a filtering process that screened out administrators with less
aesthetic orientations over the course of their careers, or attitude changes
associated with movement to larger or more prestigious organizations.
Because of the briefer cohort spans among the community arts
respondents, cohort variation in their field was far less marked. Like their
peers in the other disciplines, however, the more senior CAA directors were
more likely to choose excellence over access than were less experienced
CAA directors (more than one third, compared with just over one quarter
of the middle cohort and fewer than one fifth of the most junior).
Administrative Orientations and Their Determinants
Although the previous sections described the responses of administrators
to individual items and examined how those responses varied among
managers of differing levels of seniority, they did not enable us to assess
the extent to which the responses cohered into the posited dimensions of
administrative ideology (managerial, aesthetic, and social). Nor did they
describe the determinants of variation in administrative orientations by ex-
amining the net effects of such factors as seniority, organizational budget,
experience, and professional participation, controlling for all simultaneously.
Our next tasks, then, are to see whether responses to attitude questions cluster
in a manner that permits us to identify managerial, aesthetic, or social orien-
tations within the fields surveyed; and, if so, to determine what predicts
the extent to which administrators hold such orientations.
Patterns of Administrative Orientation
To pursue the first task, we undertook for each field factor analyses of
responses to questions about director attributes, board member
characteristics, the "increase relevance and accessibility" function of ser-
vice organizations, and attitudes regarding organization mission and strategy,
as well as to a series of questions about the desirability of different forms
of revenues. In the last, respondents were asked to rank in order of desira-
bility 10 sources of income: endowment; admissions; membership; other
earned income; private philanthropy; corporate philanthropy; foundation
grants; and federal, state, and municipal support. This last set of questions
was included because it was hypothesized that a managerial orientation would
be disposed toward earned income and corporate aid, while a social orien-
tation would favor public subsidy. As expected, factor analyses yielded
meaningful "managerialism" and "social orientation" clusters for every
77
Managers of the Arts
field. (In part because of the wording of forced-choice questions, aesthetic
orientation did not emerge as a third factor.)
Managerialism. The managerialism factor, for all fields, included sup-
port for a management rather than arts background for administrators; and
for three of the four fields it included both positive evaluations of managerial
experience, grantsmanship ability, and ability to prepare a budget as criteria
for selecting top administrators, and the forced-choice alternative that favored
businesslike and efficient administrative techniques.
In the performing arts, directors' fund-raising ability and marketing
experience, in addition to those skills listed above, loaded heavily onto the
managerial factor. Among the theater managing directors, desirability of
admission revenue loaded positively and desirability of municipal revenue
loaded negatively onto managerialism. Among directors of orchestras and
art museums, forced-choice preference for business support in the long term
loaded on managerialism, as did desirability of membership revenue among
orchestra managers and forced-choice support for income-earning exhibi-
tions and ancillary activities among art museum directors. Federal support,
on the other hand, bore a negative relationship to managerialism among
the art museum directors.
Among the orchestra managers, three director attributes loaded nega-
tively on the managerial factor: knowledge of classical music, commitment
to education and outreach, and standing in the field. Thus, this factor
represents not just support for efficiency but also some opposition to aesthetic
or social goals. By contrast, for the CAA directors, the managerial factor
was associated with a rejection of earned income, particularly endowment
and other earned income, as revenue sources.
Social orientation. For each field, the social orientation factor included
high rankings of educational experience and of commitment to outreach
as criteria for selecting top administrators; of commitment to education and
outreach as a desirable attribute of board members; and of increasing
relevance and accessibility as a function of service organizations. For three
of the four fields, grantsmanship as a criterion for selecting a top manager
and support for access over excellence loaded on this factor as well. The
social orientation factor was most similar for theater managing and art
museum directors: for each group, it included (in addition to the variables
shared with other fields) agreement that the minority, poor, and blue-collar
audience could be greatly expanded, and a preference for federal, state,
and municipal support. For art museum directors alone, it was associated
with relatively low ratings for endowment income; and for theater ad-
ministrators alone, it included a preference for foundation assistance.
Among orchestra managers, social orientation was associated with high
ratings for fund-raising ability and standing in the field as director-selection
78
Attitudes Toward Missions
criteria, in addition to the common variables mentioned above. Among CAA
directors, it was associated positively with appreciation of the arts as a
criterion for choosing executives, support for grants to neighborhood and
minority arts organizations, and support for artistic programming by CAAs.
(The two latter measures are from forced-choice items asked only of CAA
directors.)
Among the art museum and CAA directors, two other interpretable
factors emerged. For the former, the third dimension represented a kind
of private-sector market orientation reflecting opposition to conventional
aesthetic values. For the latter, the third factor represented an extreme public-
sector orientation, involving a strong rejection of the market and of earned
income.
Predictors of Administrative Orientations
To examine the net effects of background, career experience, and other
factors on the extent to which administrators expressed managerial or social,
rather than more conventionally aesthetic, orientations in their responses,
we used regression analysis. Scales were developed for both managerial
and social orientations by standardizing and summing respondents' scores
on each variable that loaded on the relevant factor at .30 or above. The
models reported here include those independent variables that had a notable
impact on orientations, or the omission of which altered the coefficients
of other predictors. In addition, budget size and a measure of seniority were
included in all regression equations as independent variables.
Managerialism. The regression models predicting the degree of
managerialism were quite successful (given the subjective nature of the
measures on which the dependent variable was based) in all but the com-
munity arts field, explaining between 34 and 44 percent of the variation
in managerialism among theater, art museum, and orchestra administrators.
Among both art museum directors and the orchestra managers,
managerialism was strongly and negatively related to seniority, controlling
for other predictors. Among the former, budget size also had a notable
negative effect, whereas among the latter, women were, other things equal,
more managerial in orientation than men.
Managerialism was negatively related to measures of family background
and educational experience among the art museum directors and orchestra
managers, and positively related among the CAA directors. Parents' educa-
tional attainment was a strong negative predictor of managerialism for the
art museum directors, while the quality (Astin score) of the college from
which a manager graduated had a similar impact among orchestra managers.
By contrast, having attended a private school was the strongest predictor
of managerialism among the CAA directors.
79
Managers of the Arts
Among theater administrators, a high degree of managerial orienta-
tion was predicted by three variables: a degree in business or management;
prior work experience in resident theater marketing, development, or public
relations; and no prior work experience as artistic directors, actors, or techni-
cians. Career-experience variables were also strong, albeit negative predic-
tors of managerialism among art museum directors, who were far less likely,
other things equal, to score high on managerialism if they had earned a
Ph.D. in art history or had ever held a professorial appointment. By con-
trast, career experience had no important effect on the scores of orchestra
managers or CAA directors.
Controlling for other factors, professional participation (based on the
number of professional activities in which a respondent reported taking part)
had a strikingly positive impact on managerialism in every field but the
community arts. This was true even among art museum directors and or-
chestra managers, for whom the simple correlations between managerialism
and participation were close to zero. What these findings mean is that the
factors that predicted participation were different from and to some extent
opposite to those that predicted managerialism; but that if one controls for
these factors, directors who are more active in their professional field are
more likely to express managerial views than would be less active managers
with similar backgrounds and experiences.
Social orientation. Among theater managing directors, social orienta-
tion was positively related to seniority, negatively related to private school
enrollment and parents' social class, and very negatively related to organiza-
tion budget.
By contrast, the social orientation scores of art museum directors were
unrelated to museum budget size and were negatively related to seniority .
As in the case of the theater managing directors, however, having attended
a private school and, to a lesser extent, parental social class and educa-
tional attainment, again were negative predictors. Finally, the most impor-
tant negative predictors of social orientation among art museum directors
were a Ph.D. in art history and experience as a professor, two factors that
also exerted a strong negative effect on managerialism and would seem to
be associated with a strongly aesthetic conception of the museum's role.
On the other hand, the strongest and most significant positive predictor of
social orientation among this group was participation in professional
activities.
The social orientation scores of orchestra managers were predicted
largely by just three variables: holding other factors constant, social orien-
tation was stronger among women than among men and, to a lesser extent,
among managers with many years of experience in the orchestra field, and
it was weaker for managers with prior arts experience.
80
Attitudes Toward Missions
The social orientation of CAA directors was unrelated to their organiza-
tions' budgets and to their seniority. Indeed, the only important predictor
was their college's quality score: directors who had attended selective col-
leges were less likely, other things equal, to score high on this scale than
others. By contrast, women directors had higher social orientation scores,
other things equal, than men.
It should be noted that variation in scores on the managerialism dimen-
sion were explained largely by adult educational and career experiences ,
whereas scores on the social dimension were largely influenced by family
background or gender in every field.
Conclusion
Administrators' responses to attitude questions about management and
priorities of arts organizations clustered together in groups that reflected
managerial and social orientations. The former emphasized efficiency and
market standards in the governance of arts organizations; the latter empha-
sized education, outreach, and public-sector responsibility. Each orienta-
tion opposed, to some degree, more traditional aesthetic views, which stress
both the role of arts organizations in supporting scholarship, preservation,
and opportunities for innovation; and the importance of maintaining the
autonomy of the arts from the demands of the market for efficiency on the
one side, and of the public for relevance or service, on the other.
In all fields but the community arts, the analyses indicated that this
aesthetic perspective was more closely held by senior administrators, while
younger managers were more likely to express social or managerial views.
If this finding reflects stable differences among cohorts (as opposed to the
effects of aging on attitudes), managerialism will probably increase in the
performing arts and museums in the coming years. For the theater manag-
ing directors, for example, managerialism was negatively associated with
having production experience, which fewer managing directors now possess.
By the same token, it was positively associated with holding a business degree
and having prior experience in marketing, public relations, or
development— both of which are apparently becoming more common. And
it was also positively associated with professional participation, which sug-
gests that, other things equal, administrators with managerial perspectives
are likely to play influential roles in their fields as a whole.
Similarly, among the art museum directors, managerialism was
negatively associated with years of experience but positively associated with
participation. To the extent that young directors with managerial perspec-
tives are more active in the art museum community, their orientations are
likely to spread. Nonetheless, the increased percentage of directors with
81
Managers of the Arts
Ph.D.s and professorial experience— both powerful negative predictors of
managerial perspectives— may represent a strong countervailing force in
this field.
By contrast, the regression analyses provided little reason to expect
change in the social orientation of performing arts administrators. Yet among
art museum directors, professional participation exerted such a strong
positive effect in this regard that we might expect orientation to the museum's
educational mission to increase over time. Again, however, the strongly
negative effects of a Ph.D. in art history and professorial experience could
exercise a countervailing force. Indeed, if the museum's historical alterna-
tion between education and connoisseurship is any guide, we can expect
aesthetic and social orientations to continue to coexist in American art
museums for many years.
82
Index
Administrative assistants, women as, 17
Administrative orientations, 75, 77-81
Administrators, age of at first executive
position, 3; appreciation of art or artists
managed, 61; attrition of, 4, 7, 37;
autonomy as source of satisfaction for,
31; certification of, 41; college
background of, 2; and contact with
works of art, 8, 31; criteria for selec-
tion of, 61; education of, 2; and jobs
outside the arts, 4; qualities of, 61
recruiting of and stable career paths, 4
salaries in arts organizations, viii
sources of satisfaction for, 29-31
Aesthetic aims of organizations, and
market concerns, 70
America, first art organization in, ix
American Art Directory, ix, x
American Arts, 56-57
American Association of Museums
(A AM), ix-x, 63; ethical standards of,
66; meetings of, 54, 55, 56, 58
American Council for the Arts, 54, 56
American Symphony Orchestra League
(ASOL), ix, 54, 55, 56, 59
Art Bulletin, 56
Art Journal, 56
Art museum directors, 12; and accredita-
tion for museums, 65; and administra-
tive programs, opinions on, 50; ad-
ministrative training for, viii, 66, 75;
aesthetic vs. managerial or social orien-
tation, 73; age at becoming executive,
20; age cohorts, 5, 16, 37; age and
leaving field, 38; age of women as, 13;
apprenticeship for, 59; associate direc-
tor for administration, viii; attrition
among, 4; budget correlated with
university attended, 27; business rather
than government help sought by, 74;
cohort differences among, 66; con-
noisseurship and contact with trustees,
36, 38; and contact with artists and
works of art, 3 1 ; coordination of plan-
ning and programming among mu-
seums, 74; dissatisfaction with contacts
with government agencies, 31; effect of
education on salary for, 8, 28; entry
pattern for, 1, 2, 3, 17-18; ethical stan-
dards of, 63; and formal education, 2,
15; and government relations, 5, 31;
and jobs outside the arts, 38, 43-44; and
management training for, 21, 43-44,
67; managerial vs. social orientation,
73-74; more satisfaction in smaller in-
stitutions for, 33; and need for artistic
background, 63; and non-art business,
21; noneconomic career rewards, 25;
on-the-job training, 44-45; and
organizational budgets, 3, 27; parents
of, 15, 16, 27, 28; periodical reading
by, 58; preparation of, 5, 42-44; private
secondary school attended, 14, 39; pro-
fessionalization of, 23; public relations
for, 5; salaries, 25, 28; scholarship in-
terests of, vii; selective college attend-
ance by, 12; of small museums, 58;
today vs. the 1930s, viii; training for
senior cohort, 5; and university
teaching salaries, 25; unprepared for
83
Managers of the Arts
management, 43-44; unqualified per-
sons restricted by, 60; who they are,
11; women as, 2-11, 32, 36
Art museums, accreditation of, 60-61; per-
sonnel employed by, vii, viii; public im-
age of, viii; success in attracting
visitors, viii
Art organizations, boards concerned with
administrative quality, viii; employment
opportunities in, 1; few art museum
directors served as officers in, 54; full-
time administrative roles, vii; internal
growth of, vii
Art world, institutionalization of, in early
times, vii
Artistic director of the 1950s, vii
Arts administration, definition of, 9;
degree programs in, viii; learning the
jobs, 41 . See also Art museum directors
Arts-related panels of government, service
on, 53-54
Arts Reporting Service, 56, 57
Association of Art Museum Directors
(AAMD), ix, x, 7, 54, 56, 63
Association of College, University, and
Community Arts Administrators
(ACUCAA), 54, 56
Astin Index of "College Quality," 12, 79
Attitudinal professionalism, 59-66
Attrition, 37
B
Behavioral professionalism, 53-59
Billboard, 56
Board members, characteristics of, 69-70
Board relations, 42-43, 49, 50
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, vii
Boston Symphony Orchestra, establish-
ment of, vii
Budget preparation, as administrative duty,
61
Budget Ranges by Category and
Discipline, Table 1-1, 13
Budget size, by age and seniority, 27; and
career experience, 37-38; predictors of,
27-28
CAA (Community Arts Agencies), and
American Council for the Arts, 54, 56;
entry from community arts fields, 19;
full-time director of, xi; women direc-
tors of, 12
CAA directors, 18-19; aesthetic vs.
managerial orientation, 74; age cohort
of, 16; age of women as, 13; and art
management careers, 11; as artists, 2;
attrition of, 4, 22, 36, 38; and board
membership requirements, 70; and
budget organization, 27, 28, 59;
business vs. government as source of
increased revenues, 75; and career
issues definition, 23, 31, 33-39; and
career paths and retention, 4-5; career
satisfaction of, 32, 38; college selectiv-
ity of, 4, 12; and contacts with govern-
ment agencies, 31; and contacts with
works of art, 3 1 ; and dissatisfactions of,
31; and donor contacts, 29; educational
attainment and salary of, 27-28; entry
patterns for, 1, 18; and family back-
ground of, 12, 28-29, 39; and financial
management strength, 44; and formal
education, 15; and job outside arts, 3,
36; and labor relations training, 45;
likelihood of leaving the field, 34, 36,
38, 39; management courses evaluated
by, 50; managerial backgrounds of, 19,
44; marketing and public relations
preparation for, 44; and NACAA
meetings, 55; and organizational budget
and professional involvement, 59; and
organizational size and professional
participation, 58-59; and organization
size and satisfaction, 33; and organiza-
tional well-being, 65; and parental
education, 4; preference for access over
excellence, 75; preference for ex-
cellence over access in senior cohort of,
77; professional activities, 33, 55,
58-59; professionalism, lacking in, 7;
recruitment of, 2, 18; and regional
planning and coordination, 75; salaries
of, 3-4, 26, 28, 34; and small organiza-
tions, 34, 38; social orientation vs.
84
Index
aesthetic for, 74-75; and top manage-
ment at early stage, 20; and years of
education's effect on budget, 27
Careers, in art management, 11; in com-
munity arts, unstructured, 34; expecta-
tions of, 4-5, 33-39; satisfactions in, 31,
38
Carnegie Corporation of New York, xii
Center for Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences, xii
Cohort Categories for Each Discipline, by
First Year of First Job in Field, Table
1-2, 14
Cohorts, by discipline, 15
College Art Association, 54, 56
College degrees, among managers, 12
College, prestigious effect of, 4
Commitment, and experience, 36, 60
Consultants, 5, 45, 49, 50
Criteria Considered "Very Important" for
Selecting A Chief Administrator, by
Field, Table 4-1, 62
Cultural Post, 56, 57
Curatorial positions, of art museum direc-
tors, 17
Ethical standards, for board of trustees, 66;
for managers, 60
Evaluation of Learning Methods, by Field,
Table 3-3, 48
Evaluation of learning methods by
managers who used them, 49-50
Executive Summary, 1-9
Family background, effects of, 2, 27
Federal grant-review panels, 54
Female administrators, increasing with
each cohort, 15
Financial management, preparation in, 5,
42, 49, 50
Flora Hewlett foundation, xii
Foundation for the Extension and Develop-
ment of the American Professional
Theatre (FED APT), 56
Foundations and administrative training,
viii
Friendship with other professionals, 54, 57
D
Development, training in, 49, 50
Development of the American Professional
theater, 56
Directors, attracting and keeping of, 4-5,
and budget size, 13-14. See also
Administrators
Dombach, Chick, xii
Donor boards, 70
Grantsmanship ability, 60
H
Higginson, Henry Lee, vii
Horowitz, Harold, xii
Huntley, Elizabeth, xiii
Education, commitment and board
membership, 70; and outreach, 75;
managers, 15; and salary, 27-28
Employment opportunities, in 1960s and
1970s, 1
Equal opportunities, for women managers,
5
I
Institution for Social and Policy Studies,
School of Organization and Man, xii
Internships, 5, 17, 41, 47
Interorganizational career enhancement,
60
85
Managers of the Arts
I
Job Satisfactions, by Field, Table 2-2, 30
Job stability among managers, 20
Kimberly, John, xii
Labor relations, preparation for, 5, 42, 49,
50
Larsen, Magali Sarfatti, 52
League of Resident Theaters (LORT), ix,
54, 56
Legislative Reports (American Arts
Alliance), 57
Legislative stand, by service organization,
61
Likelihood of Future Job Alternatives, by
Field, Table 2-3, 35
M
Management and aesthetic tension, 8
Management consultants, rating of, 47
Management courses, value of, 5-6
Management degrees, relation to salary, 26
Management experience, 60, 61
Management skills, and board member-
ship, 70
Management training, value of various
forms of, 45-49, 60, 61, 67
Managerial careers in arts, 19-22
Managerial cohorts, 14-16
Managerial expertise, attitudes toward im-
portance of, 60, 65
Managerial preparation, not associated
with budget size, 44; not associated
with career experience, 44
Managerial professionalism, 61
Managerial salaries, effect of gender on,
29
Managerial work experience, over time,
20-21
Managerialism, 78; and family
background, 79; women emphasize
more, 79
Managers, and attrition in the art field, 34;
differences between male and female,
12-13, 79; educational and social
backgrounds of, 12-16, 22; future ex-
pectations of, 34; of largest arts
organizations, 15, 22; learning of, 45;
in senior cohorts and larger organiza-
tions, 26
Managing directors, hired into top post,
17; of largest art organizations, 15, 22;
learning of, 45; with management
degrees, 26
Mandell, Marilyn, xii
Marketing, wide range of ways to learn,
49, 50, 60
Mellon, Andrew W., Foundation, xii
Money giving, and board membership, 70
Mulligan, Barbara, xii
Museum director, and contacts with artists,
3 1 ; income determined by meritocracy
and school, 28; of larger institutions and
periodical reading, 58; scholarship in-
terests of, viii; and selective colleges at-
tended by, 12; of small museums, 58;
social background of, 12; today vs. the
1930s, viii
Museum Directory, 1980, ix, x
Museum News, 56, 58
N
National activities, for older cohorts, 57
National Assembly of Community Arts
Agencies (NACAA), x, 54, 55, 56. See
also National Assembly of Local Arts
Agencies
National Assembly of Local Arts Agen-
cies, x, 56;
National Center for Educational Statistics
(NCES), ix; 7975 Museum Universe
Survey, ix
A
J
*
86
INDEX
National Endowment for the Arts, viii;
Museum Program, 54, 58; Theater
Policy and Grant panels, ix
National Endowment for the Humanities,
54, 58
National Institute of Museum Services,
54, 58
New York State Council on the Arts, xii
New York Times Arts and Leisure (Sun-
day), 56
o
On-the-job training, 5, 45, 47, 49
Orchestra managers and directors, 17;
aesthetic issues of, 74, 76; age at
becoming executive, 20; age cohort,
16; and American Symphony Orchestra
League, 54, 55; attrition of, 36;
background as musician, 2; with degree
in management, 4, 34; with degree in
music, 38; effect of education on salary,
28; entry patterns for, 17; evaluated
workshops highly, 50; experience in
field and budget size, 27; family
background of, 12, 27, 39; jobs of
leavers of field, 21, 39; managerial vs.
social orientation, 74; new cohorts un-
prepared in management, 44; organiza-
tional budget, 3, 28, 59; and organiza-
tion size, 33; preference for excellence
over access, 76-77; professional ac-
tivities of, 54, 59; recruitment into
field, 2; rejection of coordination in
planning and programming, 74; salary
of, 3, 25-26, 28; and selective college
attendance effect on budget, 27; tenure
and salary, 28 training of, 5; variation
between men and women's satisfaction,
32; women as, 12, 15, 17
Organization, mission and strategy, 75-76;
attitudes toward, 69-81; size of, 23, 26
Organizational budget, and salary, 3, 4, 28
Outreach, 70, 78
Parents' education, 79
Performing arts directors. See Theater
directors
Periodical reading, 54, 55-56
Personnel management, training for, 49
Ph.D. versus curatorial service back-
ground, 22
Planning, ranges of ways to learn, 49-50
Powell, Walter, xii
Preventing unqualified people from
holding jobs, 61
Private secondary school attendance, 4,
27, 28, 79
Profession, definition of, 7
Professional activism, 53-55, 58; scale,
68 f.5
Professional associations, membership in,
53, 59
Professional disinterestedness and
altruism, 60
Professional participation, and profes-
sionalism, 52-68
"Professional project," 52
Professional workshops, 45
Professionalism, definition of, 6-7, 52-53,
67 f.l
Public relations, range of ways to learn,
49, 50, 61
R
Racial and ethnic representativeness of
boards, 70
Recruitment and reward, 1-5, 11
Resident theaters. See Theater administra-
tors
Revenue sources, from business rather
than government, 75
Rewards and expectations, 11, 25-40
Romo, Frank P., xiii
Rutenberg, Naomi, xiii
Salaries, and budget size, 25, 27-28; retain
87
Managers of the arts
directors with, 4; versus intrinsic
satisfactions in smaller organizations,
31, 33; and years of experience, 28
Salary by Field, Table 2-1, 26
Sandor, Ella, xii
Self-Evaluation of Preparedness at the
Time of First Managership, by
Management Function, Table 3-1, 43
Seminars, 45
Senior administrators, attitudes toward
policy and management issues, xi-xii;
and aesthetics, 76; backgrounds of, xi;
career experiences of, xi; evaluation of
their preparation for position, xi; and
national conference attendance, 57;
satisfaction of, 32; and size of organiza*-
tional budget, 4;
Service organizations, functions of, 54, 61 ,
63, 67
Service Organization Functions Con-
sidered "Very Important," by Field,
Table 4-2, 64
Shaffer, John, xii
Simon, John G., xii
Smith, Mitchell, xii
Social background, of managers, 2, 12, 22
State and local activities, for more recent
cohorts, 57
State arts agencies (SAA) and discipline
panels, 55, 58, 59; sponsor of technical
assistance program, viii;
Stenberg, Kristen, xiii
Survey, methodology and design, ix-xi
Symphony, 56
cies, 31, 43; educational attainment of,
2; entry patterns for, 1, 16-17; and
family background, 28; knowledge of
dramatic literature, 65; and manage-
ment training, 47; and managerial
orientation, 80; members of League of
Resident Theaters, 54; and organization
budget size and satisfaction, 33; person-
nel of, ix, 26, 43; prior artistic ex-
perience, 21; variation between men
and women's satisfaction, 31-32;
women and budget size, 15, 27, 38-39;
youngest cohort versus oldest, 5, 37, 38
Theatre Communications Group meetings,
55
Theatre, 56
Theatre Journal, 56
Theatre Profiles, ix, x, 4
Three Most Important Characteristics of
Board Members, by Field, Table 5-1,
71
Top executive, selection of, 60
Training, 5-6, 41-51, 60
u
University arts administration courses,
5-6, 45
University general management courses,
45
University-level teaching, and youngest
cohort, 22
Use of Five Learning Methods by Func-
tion, by Field, Table 3-2, 46
Technological-assistance programs, run by
consulting firms, 41
Theater administrators, acting experience
of, 2, 3, 20; administrative experience
of, 3, 65, 76; aesthetics vs. manage-
ment, 72; and age of women as, 13; at-
trition of, 36, 37, 38-39; and budget
size, 27-28; and contacts with board
members, 31; and contacts with donors,
29; and contacts with government agen-
Variety, 56
Volunteers, 60, 65
w
Watts, Caroline, xii
Wealthy institutions, directors of, 14
Weiss, Janet, xii
Weist, Gretchen, xii
88
Index
Women, as administrative assistants, 17;
as administrators, 2; attrition of, 4, 15,
36, 39; college majors of, 13; as direc-
tors, 4, 12-13, 22; earnings of, 4,
26-27, 29; education of, 13; equal op-
portunities for, 5; as interns, 17;
unlikelihood of moving to a larger
organization, 36
Work satisfaction, 29-33
Workshop, as source of information, viii,
41, 47, 49
Yale University Program on Non-Profit
Organizations, xii
Younger managers, and state and local in-
volvement, 59
89
Paul DiMaggio is executive director of the Yale Program
on Non-Profit Organizations and also associate professor in the
Department of Sociology, in the School of Organization and
Management, and in the Institution for Social and Policy Studies
at Yale University. He has written widely about arts organiza-
tion and cultural policy and is editor of Nonprofit Enterprise in
the Arts: Studies in Mission and Constraint. He is currently writing
a book on the social organization of the arts in the United States
from the Civil War to the present.
I
I
Managers of the Arts
Who are they ? Where do they come from ?
How knowledgeable are they about the arts they manage ?
What do they think about their responsibilities ,
their training, and their futures?
Why are some satisfied with their jobs and some are not?
How well do their salaries and benefits compare
with those of administrators in other fields?
A survey report by
Paul DiMaggio
Yale University
(( W^ )) Research Division Report #20
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