Publications

Summary

Research on creative organizations generally focuses on large organizations and little attention is paid to small organizations. This research proposes a contribution to the field of management of creative organizations by pursuing the following objective: to understand how creative work is organized in small creative organizations. We uncover two ways in which these organizations structure creative work, distinguishing them from large creative organizations. To address the research objective, we conducted 11 case studies of small advertising agencies in which 35 semi-structured interviews were conducted with creative workers and managers. Three of the agencies studied adopt what we call flexible work organization, which involves creative workers taking on both project management and creative tasks. The other eight agencies studied structure creative work in a specialized work organization. In these agencies, project managers manage projects and creative workers perform only creative work. This second model is similar to the structure found in large creative organizations, but the mechanisms within the organizations themselves are different. While large organizations rely on communities of practice, small organizations focus on individualized management of workers.