Managing Creativity in Distress: Elaborating on the Resilience of Temporary Organisations based on the Film Industry's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Due to the ever-increasing uncertainty and volatility in the general business environment, the focus on how organisations can prepare for and deal with potential disruptions has been growing accordingly. Most recently, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has exemplified that such disturbances are often of unsuspected nature. Therewith, it is implied that organisations can neither anticipate, nor fully prepare for such manifestations of the unexpected. Consequently, it is rather unsurprising that the focus on how organisations can achieve resilience to not only cope with these incidents effectively, but to also do it in a way that potentially fosters future success and improves business performance, has become a focal point of organisation studies.
This thesis embraces the unfortunate disruption caused by the pandemic, to elaborate on the understanding of resilience in the context of temporary organisations. In order to do that, the analysis focuses on how the film industry, a paradigmatic case of temporary organisation, responded to COVID-19-realted issues and how resilience became manifest in this example. In doing so, it can not only be highlighted that impromptu trade-offs between creative and economic concerns are an integral part in achieving resilience in creative and cultural production, but it can also be emphasised how the social and contextual embeddedness of temporary organisations gives rise to an understanding of resilience that accounts for the necessity of collaborative action with system-external stakeholders. As a result, this thesis suggests a theorisation of resilience on a micro-level and on a macro-level depending on the nature of the disruption.
To achieve such an understanding, the analysis centred around twelve semi-structured interviews with various producers, executives and directors who experienced the problems and coping mechanisms first-hand. The result of such a focus is that the thesis’ understanding of the themes that typified resilience in the industry’s crisis response is inherently relevant to the study of temporary organisations and creative work, without being imposed from a potentially biased academic standpoint.