Managing Creativity: The Dynamics of Work and Organization

by Howard Davis, Richard Scase

The creative industries are a growing economic as well as cultural force. This book investigates their organizational dynamics and shows how companies structure their work processes to incorporate creative employees' needs for autonomy while at the same time controlling and coordinating their output. Research in television and radio broadcasting, publishing, advertising, the recorded music industry and the performing arts is used to show the variety of ways in which organizations respond to the creative imperative. The authors help to answer a larger question which has been neglected in theories of management and organizational behaviour, what should replace the management principles and practices inherited from industrial society in the types of organization which predominate in post-industrial society? The arguments and evidence are made accessible to a multidisciplinary audience of students and researchers with an interest in the study of organizations as well as to managers in the creative industries.

160 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2000

About the author

Howard Davis is an American writer and professor of architecture at the University of Oregon in Eugene. A native of New York City, he studied physics at Cooper Union and at Northwestern University and received a master's degree in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked with Christopher Alexander. He has worked on projects in the Pacific Northwest, India, England, Mexico, and Israel.

He is known for his research into vernacular architecture and building history, published in the book The Culture of Building (1999, reprinted in paperback 2006). He also collaborated with Christopher Alexander on The Production of Houses (1985), an account of an innovative housing project in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico. His current research is concerned with urban buildings that combine commercial and residential uses; museums and memorials to war; housing; and American architectural education. His latest book is Living Over the Store: Architecture and Local Urban Life. Davis was the founding co-editor of Buildings & Landscapes, the journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture honored Davis with the ACSA Distinguished Professor Award in 2009.
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