Strategic decision making in the arts: topics and processes

Managers in arts organizations making strategic decisions face many of the same factors as their counterparts in other industries. Added to concerns about expenditures, personnel and performance, aesthetic concerns often play an important role in such decisions. In this paper we compare a strategic decision from each of four arts institutions with models of strategic decision making taken from the literature. While the decisions do, in general, conform to the theoretical models, aesthetic considerations do play an important role in both the content and process of strategic decisions.