Research Seminar
[Brown Bag] “I Hold On”: How Country Music Songwriters Cope with the Precarity of Craft Work by Prof. Pursey Heugens, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University
| Abstract: | Abstract: Careers in the creative crafts are precarious: workers face constant rejection and the pay they receive is always erratic and often low. Yet some creative craft workers handle these challenges better than others, precarity sometimes subsides as careers progress, and the core-periphery structure that typifies creative craft production systems is navigable. This raises the question of how some creative craft workers cope productively with the precarity of craft work. We study a prominent creative craft workers’ collective: country music songwriters. Our study captures the voices of 90 creative craft workers, drawing on secondary interviews with 66 songwriters operating at the core of the highly ‘corporatized’ country music production system and 24 residing at its social and spatial periphery. We find that the key to coping with precarity lies in achieving supportive patterns of social embeddedness by investing in primary craft skills, advancing higher-order vocational skills, and navigating the core-periphery structure of the creative craft production system. As apprentice songwriters practice their craft and learn how to organize their songwriting routines, they become increasingly vested in the system. Once they become master songwriters, they broaden their networks by liaising more with other industry stakeholders and engaging with the system more reflexively to ensure their continued relevance. Peripheral workers engage in ‘allyship’ by developing ties with workers positioned at the system’s core. We incorporate these elements in a grounded theoretical model capturing how songwriters cope with precarity. |
| Date: | Mar 27 (Thu), 2025 10:30 am - 12:00 noon |
| Time: | 10:30AM - 12:00PM |
| Venue: | 7-207, Level 7, Lau Ming Wai Academic Building (LAU) |
| Details: | Speaker bio: Prof. Pursey Heugens (PhD 2001, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University) is a Professor of Organization Theory at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. He is interested in the strategy and governance of organizational forms like state-owned enterprises, family firms, professional partnerships, business groups, and social entrepreneurial ventures. He enjoys quantitative work and meta-analyses, but is also deeply committed to qualitative methods and interpretative epistemologies. His work has appeared in top-tier management outlets like Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, and the Journal of International Business Studies. He previously served as Associate Editor of the Academy of Management Journal and the Journal of Management, and is currently serving as Associate Editor of the Academy of Management Annals and the Academy of Management Perspectives. He strongly believes in the generative and motivating force of passion in research, and is therefore exceptionally glad to have been able to turn his long-term interests in craft beer, malt whisky, and country music into research projects. In a similar vein, he would love to try his luck studying the history and diffusion of gourmet home cooking and the rekindling and reinvention of regional barbecue traditions. |
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