- Browse Repository
- Weatherhead School of Management
- Student Scholarship
- Business planning (x)
- 2002-10 (x)
- Weatherhead Doctor of Management Programs
Weatherhead Doctor of Management Programs
Show more“Leaders are like conductors.” Peruse a half dozen management journals, and it is likely that the analogy “leaders are like conductors” will show up at least once, frequently citing the same Peter Drucker quote. Correspondingly, music journals are as likely to proclaim “conductors are like great leaders” (Armstrong, 1996). As intuitively true as this may seem, little research has been done to study the leadership characteristics of conductors. Instead, the study of conductors has focused primarily on their artistic abilities. This study was aimed at filling that gap. Most conductors perform globally, and thus the analogy of conductor to leader is particularly apropos in an era of emphasis on global leadership in organizations. One interesting aspect of the job of a conductor is that conductors perform in both their home symphony (if they have one) and as guest conductors anywhere in the world. They spend a relatively short period of time (usually less than two weeks) rehearsing with an orchestra before a performance series. Yet published reviews of guest conductors can describe performances as “inspiring” or “nothing short of extraordinary. My fundamental research question was “How do conductors inspire performance from musicians?” I was particularly interested in how the vision for the performance was developed and communicated, as I saw this as analogous to an organizational leader communicating his or her vision. As the study evolved, I became more interested in how conductors and musicians collaborate to create a vision for their music. Little research has been conducted in how groups express voice with leaders (Conger, 2001). This study looks at the interaction between musicians and conductors in creating a vision, in order to offer some parallel lessons to leaders in other organizations. Specifically, the musicians in this study have a highly developed group voice, as will be shown, and their expression of that voice with three different conductors will be shown to be a significant, if not primary factor in developing the vision for the musical performance. The conductor Leopold Stokowski once said to an audience to encourage an appropriate atmosphere: “A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint pictures on silence.” The challenge to the conductors and the musicians is to create an extraordinary performance painted upon that silence. This study looks at the interaction between the conductors and the musicians as they worked together to overcome the silence and describe a world in “beautiful abstraction,” as described by the poet William Mathews. The challenge to an ethnographer is to capture how the “leavened heart travel(s) by information” in a musical and artistic setting, while noticing how human behaviors contribute to those travels. It feels somehow appropriate to insert some poetry into this ethnographic record as a way to honor some of that artistic context in which the culture reflected here resides, since the music itself is not heard in this recording. Unrelenting Flood Black key. White key. No, that’s wrong. It’s all tactile; it’s not the information of each struck key we love, but how the mind and leavened heart travel by information. Think how blind and nearblind pianists range along their keyboards by clambering over notes a sighted man would notice to leave out, by stringing it all on one longing, the way bee-fingered blind, mountainous Art Tatum did, the way we like joy to arrive: in such unrelenting flood the only way we can describe it is by music or another beautiful abstraction, like the ray of sunlight in a child’s drawing running straight to a pig’s ear, tethering us all to our star. William Matthews (Berg, 2000) CONTEXT: Emic to Etic There are several categories of relevant research and/or publications that exist in relationship to this study. Since conductors perform in a public setting, there is an abundance of available publications that include documented interviews or critiques of the symphony or conductor. On-line archives of two local newspapers have provided numerous interviews with the resident music director, as well as over 50 published columns written by the music director, typically in question and answer format. Some of these are directly relevant to leadership, eg., is it necessary for musicians to like the conductor? These columns and interviews, however, must be viewed as carefully meditated public relations documents, which may or may not be indicative of the inner workings of the symphony. Akin to Chris Argyris’s description of espoused theories and theories in use, I was more interested with theories in work - those observed during rehearsals and performances. Nonetheless, some quotations from the guest conductors and from the music director are included in this ethnography. A second body of relevant research concerns the practice of being a conductor, and management of a symphony orchestra. There are numerous interviews with conductors and biographies/autobiographies of conductors (Wagar, 1991; Schuller, 1997, etc). Some qualitative studies have looked at the organizational dynamics of symphonies, including the effects of changing environments (Allmendinger, 1996) and organizational identity conflict (Glynn, 2000). Mintzberg observed a symphony conductor for one day and then published an article in Harvard Business Review on the covert aspects of leadership. (Mintzberg, 1998) However, I was unable to find any published qualitative studies aimed at studying the leadership actions of conductors. Related to this second body of research is the field of ethnomusicology, described by Barz and Cooley (1997) as a five-century tradition crossing the fields of anthropology and musicology. Although I reviewed several guidebooks and essays on this field, which were helpful in shaping methods, I was unable to find any modern work on the role of the Western conductor. Additionally, all of the authors of ethnomusicology essays I reviewed had some musical expertise, and used that expertise in the analysis of the musical cultures they were studying. Since I am an outsider to the musical world, I was unable to bring this expertise to bear in my observation and analysis. The third body of research is that on leadership. Conductors typically prepare for a score 12-18 months in advance of a performance, frequently memorizing the score. (Wagar, 1991) When interviewed, they describe having a clear picture of how they want a piece to be performed. Videotapes of conductors providing commentary on their own performance reinforce this view. However, in my observations, I noticed much more of a dynamic process in defining the vision, with interplays between the musicians themselves, assistant conductors, and in one case, the composer. Rather than a single voice of the conductor setting the vision, many voices combined to create a vision for the final performance. This led me to be interested in a leader’s vision as a “by-product of multiple decision makers and influences” (Bennis & Nanus, 1985; Conger, 1989). The leadership field of literature has focused largely on the behavior of the individual leader, rather than looking at the total context and at the behavior of followers. (Conger & Kanungo, 1998) A final field of literature that is relevant to this study as it evolved is the concept of voice, or the “attempt to change... rather than to escape,” as described by Hirschman. (1970) As discussed in these findings, the total context for the development of the vision for the performances involved not only the vision of the conductor, but the vision, collaboration, and communication by the musicians to the conductor and to each other. The concept of voice, and the musician’s loyalty to performance excellence, helps to understand how vision was developed in the orchestra.
Doctorate of Management Programs
Show less