Balancing art and commerce: How creative businesses use routines to navigate the paradox of artistic autonomy and commercial control
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2025-06-19
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en
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This study explores how creative businesses use their routines to navigate the persistently conflicting tensions between artistic autonomy and commercial control. These conflicting tensions often coexist in creative businesses, yet little is known about how routines are used to navigate them. By combining routine dynamics theory and paradox theory, the research investigates how routines are adapted and performed in response to the conflicting goals. Through thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with twelve creative workers from various companies, industries and roles, both self-employed and employed within larger businesses, five different strategies are observed: co-creation, selectivity, expertise, side-projects and coordination. These strategies differ in their understanding of the routines (ostensive aspect) and their performances (performative aspect), which highlights the dynamic and contextual nature of routines. The findings show that routines are not only sources of stability, but also sources of change as they are used to navigate the paradox. This research contributes to our knowledge of routines and paradoxes by uncovering their interaction in the navigation of the paradox of artistic autonomy and commercial control.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen