The Good Manager in TV: Tales for the Twenty-first Century.

Abstract

The UK Creative Industries provide meaningful employment to more than two million people (Davie 2019) with opportunities for self-actualisation and satisfaction beyond what many jobs can provide. This is so particularly within the TV industry where new streaming services have massively expanded demand for content and consequently employment to in excess of 66,000. (Statista 2024). Such opportunities, however, have been heavily dependent upon an ‘invisible army’ of freelancers (Genders 2019) where work is often characterised by financial insecurity, poor work-life balance, and lack of coherent career structure or support, within a system that predicates against both a healthy work-life balance for individuals and diversity across the workforce. (van Raalte et al 2021; Carey et al 2023) There are a number of longstanding economic, cultural and structural factors implicated in the problematic working conditions that characterise the television industry, ranging from widespread precarity and project-based contracts (Eikhof and Warhurst 2013), to a highly competitive and largely unregulated labour market (Ursell 2000), and a myth of meritocracy that masks persistent tendencies toward elitism and nepotism (Lee 2011). One over-arching consideration, however - and one that has been largely neglected in academic literature focused on this industry - is the role of leadership and management. Indeed the skillset, structures and support required for effective leadership and management are routinely neglected by the industry itself, even in the context of initiatives focusing on issues ranging from mental health to equality of opportunity within UK television. Yet research in management studies and organisational psychology clearly suggest that leadership and management are key factors in job satisfaction and well-being for employees across myriad sectors (e.g. Agotnes et al 2012; Anderson et al 2017; Arnold 2017; Skogstad et al 2017; Einarsen et al 2018). This raises the central question we have set out to address in this article: what does it take to be a good manager in television? Indeed, is it even possible? The question is a serious and important one since many of the problematic structural and cultural factors that lead to poor working conditions in the first place, also militate against the kinds of good management and leadership that might help ameliorate those same factors. We draw principally upon the findings of our TV Leadership and Management Study: a series of twenty-two in-depth interviews undertaken with series producers, heads of production and other individuals working in unscripted television, who, in another context would be characterised as ‘middle managers’. We borrow our title from Berthold Brecht’s 1943 parable play, The Good Person of Szechwan, in which his eponymous heroine finds that ‘no one can be good for long if goodness is not in demand.’ We find parallels between her situation and that of those tasked with managing teams in television production, working within an organisational culture where the short-term nature of individual projects favours quick-fix solutions and muddling through – a context in which little consideration is given to the need for investment in the training and support of a good manager. This article will explore our findings and ask: What does it mean to be a good manager in the volatile, project based, context of TV production? What are the challenges faced by those who aspire to fill the role? How can such challenges be addressed across the UK TV industry? References Ågotnes, K.W., Skogstad, A., Hetland, J., Olsen, O.K., Espevik, R., Bakker, A.B. and Einarsen, S.V., 2021. Daily work pressure and exposure to bullying-related negative acts: The role of daily transformational and laissez-faire leadership. European Management Journal, 39(4), pp.423-433. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2020.09.011 Anderson, M. H., & Sun, P. Y. (2017). Reviewing leadership styles: Overlaps and the need for a new ‘full-range’ theory. International Journal of Management Reviews, 19(1), 76-96. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12082 Arnold, K. A. (2017). Transformational leadership and employee psychological wellbeing: A review and directions for future research. 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