Cultural Management as a Research Area : Challenges

Abstract

The management science is a young research domain, which emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century. Firstly, management concepts were developed and applied into for-profit oriented organizations, but then they were selectively adjusted also to non-for-profit organizations and other aspects of human life. Management concepts were also applied into organizations in cultural industries and it seems that cultural management is the emerging new research area. There are books focused on cultural management, journals specialized in cultural management and some prestigious periodicals have published papers in the field of cultural management. Universities around the world have introduced academic programs in cultural management. Thus, cultural management has been attracting the attention of scholar around the world; however, it is still a very young research area. Firstly, the paper aims to verify the thesis that cultural management as a research area has been in a period of “emerging excitement” in the process of the emergence of new fields. Secondly, the aim of the paper is to identify key challenges faced by researchers in the field. The conducted research enabled to identify six challenges faced by people interested in cultural management. These are: (1) the development of the concept of cultural and creative industries; (2) organizations in cultural industries have to be managed; (3) educational problems; (4) local embeddedness of culture; (5) interdisciplinarity of cultural management; and (6) changing landscape of cultural industries.