HIERARCHICAL WORKPLACE STATUS

CONSEQUENCES
ON
PRODUCTIVITY
An Ethnographic Study of Organization Culture in Media & Creative Industries

Prima Mustika
30th April, 2016
Introduction

‘Working in Advertising agency is fun, but it can be full of undesirable

surprises ’, Mr.Paul Sidharta says with a sigh, over a phone call. It is early March

2016 and he is somewhere in the office building in Singapore revising design

work from his staff. This is his usual routine of the creative production process

and one of many jobs performed by a mid-level director in an advertising

industry. Also known as a ‘creative director’ his main responsibility is to plan,

develop, and defend production budget, define work goals and tasks, improve

staff training which is necessary to provide a quality service to clients as well as

make a profit. In his late 40s, Mr. Sidharta has been working in the advertising

industry of Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore for over 22 years. However,

sometimes he sounds disappointed or even disillusioned about it, especially in

the region of Southeast Asian countries. Most of creative workers there are often

find themselves at the bottom level of the production process with some of the

worst hours and lowest pays in the industry. It is a typical deadlock in which they

are today. As a matter of fact, the situation is very similar to all branches of

creative industry of Postindustrial economies of Southeast Asian countries. Many

in these sectors struggle with excessively long work hours, very little

compensation and in addition their employment usually lacks long-term job

security. Furthermore, Mr. Sidharta mentioned that this industry needs people to

be motivated and inspired, so that they can come up with many unique and

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creative ideas. Lack of work-life balance and putting a lot of pressure from

superiors making this kind of job no longer attractive. There are many cases in

the business where employees resigning from creative agency just because of

non-conducive work experience. Other various reasons have been mentioned

too, including the limitations of self-development, particularly in terms of

creativity. Many employees also feel that the industry's upper management have

restricted their creative freedoms by setting up limiting standards to their design

process. This is sounds something like a cliché, because on the other hand the

role of the hierarchical structure and production control by the upper

management is very important in maintaining the productivity of the company.

People react differently to certain situations and organizational structures,

but it would be very important to identify if hierarchy makes people in this industry

less creative. A book by McKinlay 'Creative Labor: Working in The Creative

Industries' (2009) illustrates many problems faced by those who work in film,

television, theater and other media. He mentions that strict controls and newly

established hierarchical system does create conflict in the workplace, making the

environment less-conducive. Another research indicates that hierarchy and

bureaucratic processes in a media organization reduce ability to come up with

solutions to problems that arise in the workplace (Mannix, 2009). The report

continues to say that the low-status employees are less creative because of their

submissiveness to their superiors. However, The research paper by Vicki Mayer

titled “Production Studies, Cultural Studies of Media Industries” (2009) states that

organizations that have strict hierarchical structures tend to achieve their goals in

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a timely and an efficient manner. This is done mainly because hierarchy

optimizing and brings about an order to a media organization in such a way that

everyone knows exactly which tasks they are supposed to perform and when.

According to author, organizational hierarchy also tends to improve the

relationship among workers hence reducing interpersonal problems.

The workplace relation between managerial and creative staff is a key

vantage point from which to understand how such wider structural forces and

politics of labour actually play out and become evident in these industries. This

article aims to contribute to the understanding of the management creativity

relationship in the creative industries by focusing on the daily work experience of

a class of mid-level management workers, production operators, creators in two

Creative Production companies. Through ethnography, I show the differences on

how the everyday manager-creator relations in two places that practice opposing

managerial methods. The first one is conducted in JWT Singapore where they

practice Confucianism and hierarchical way of leadership and the second is in

Common Visions in the United States where they practice the egalitarian way of

leadership. Egalitarian mostly advocates for equality for all while hierarchical

demands the subordinates to be submissive to the superiors. While senior

managers did assume the upper hand over creators in the corporate decision-

making process, at the confucianism-practiced company, creators’ and directors’

capacity to create and manipulate creative design projects actually led to

domination over junior managers. Therefore, I argue that the structure of

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domination in commercial cultural production contradicts with dynamic and fluid

environment of creativity-based workplace.

CONFUCIANISM CULTURE IN CREATIVE

INDUSTRIES
Confucianism is a spiritual and a cultural product of sociopolitical and

educational developments of a various stages in Chinese history. It permeated to

a varying degree into many aspects of life in East Asian societies as well as in

China itself, along with its neighboring countries such as Vietnam, Korea,

Indonesia, Singapore, and so on. Despite political changes, globalization,

adoption of non-traditional systems of governance, all of them have retained

hierarchic models of communication (Hennig, 2010.) A proper hierarchy is

established between people, and when these relationships are disrupted society

descends into chaos.

I grew up in Indonesia with Confucianism and Indonesian culture in a

unity. In Confucian thought, 'filial piety' is the foundation of all wisdom and proper

living. Filial piety is the concept that the child (or subordinate) must remain in

submissive obedience to their parents (or authority) at all costs. It is simply not

possible to be wise if you disobey or disrespect your elders; likewise, respect

entails obedience. A proper hierarchy is established between people, and when

these relationships are disrupted society descends into chaos. For Confucianism,

service and obedience are necessary marks of virtue. Popular Confucianism,

however, refers to the everyday version of Confucian principles that has

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influenced society. Curiously enough, this can be found not only in Chinese-

Indonesian cultural fusion, but also in Indonesian culture itself. In education, for

example, a good student is not someone who critically questions what they are

taught but follows the teacher. The rigorous assessment of current beliefs is

rarely encouraged. The figure in authority—the teacher—cannot and should not

be corrected, and indeed are often regarded as above reproach. Instead, they

have authority intrinsically, because of their position or their age. This authority

generally cannot be challenged, and questioning it is seen as a form of undesired

rebellion. Unfortunately, this means that old status quo is difficult to change, and

often become static, inert because self-criticism is restricted. But the question is if

this influence of such a 'folk' Confucianism positive or harmful to creative media

industries? Will it possibly restrict one's freedom of artistic expression?

Before serving as Creative Director, Mr.Paul Sidharta worked as an art

director at the advertising agency called Mullen Lowe Lintas Group in Indonesia.

As an Art Director, he had obligations to report to the Creative Director before

executing the design project. He mentioned that for all their efficiencies,

hierarchies turn out to be remarkably inefficient when organizations are trying to

leverage creative ideas and increase their innovation approach. The problem is

that the chain of command works well for executing orders and making timely

decisions. It works so well that creative ideas stand little chance of being utilized

unless they’re being shared from the top downward. Creative ideas that come

from the middle or lower levels in a hierarchy have to work their way up through a

series of managers, each with the power to veto but each lacking the power to

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implement. Supervisors often reject some innovative ideas, however the

individuals who developed those ideas understand the novelty and applicability of

it better than supervisors. As an idea moves through the different levels, the

likelihood of rejection increases, hence many creative workers or subordinates

feel unappreciated, encourages them to leave the industry. Creative and media

industries demand autonomous and creative work, an impulse which is required

for high-skill, project-based tasks, but restricted and channelled at the same time

by newly established hierarchies and stricter controls. Hence, employees’ wishes

often collide with every-day work-experience, which may cause disappointment

as they ‘can no longer practise their hobby, which they turned into their job, as a

hobby in this job’ (McKinlay et al., 2009). These widespread frustration potentially

will just fuel more conflict and resistance at the workplace.

As he used to work in several Southeast Asian countries, often he found

the same Confucian pattern of working culture. Simply put, most of the

organizational structures in advertising agencies in those countries are

frameworks where they try to show the formal relationships within an

organization. Formalization deals with how structured things are within an

organization. Some people in the organization may report to more than one

person or the organization may have a very strict chain of command. Basically

formalization takes into account the degree to which an employee's tasks are

governed by rules and procedures, and often unwritten rules. These 'unwritten

rules' has been followed for generations, things such as don't go over your boss'

head and stay off the executive elevator. However, millennials, the generation

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currently entering the workforce in large numbers, are seriously upset with those

conventions. "The workforce of the future doesn't get the unwritten rules of

hierarchy, we have now a whole generation of youth teaching older generations

in this industry. But what older generations may see as impatience and even

impudence that comes out of their old belief is seen today more like young

generation is making a difference driven by a desire to be connected" He said.

Mr. Paul Sidharta disfavors the hierarchy system in most creative

industries in Southeast Asian countries. He considers it as a detrimental factor in

creativity. I found that his belief could be strengthened by some arguments from

many researchers and scholars. For example, several scholars have argued that

there are three reasons why creativity development of CHC (Confucian-Heritage-

Culture) workers is inhibited (Dineen & Niu, 2008; Ho & Ho, 2008; Kim et al.,

2011; Ng, 2003; Ng & Smith, 2004; Niu & Sternberg, 2003) First, collectivism, as

a reverse of individualism, emphasizes social order and harmony. Thus, this

social influence leads to an attitude of interdependence of each member. In a

sense, conformity developed by this group will place more weights on norms and

accept the status quo, which is believed to be detrimental to the generation of

new ideas. Second, the tight hierarchical relationship between the leader and the

subordinates gives the leader more authority. When a worker in such an

environment is not given the opportunity to question or challenge a leader’s

authority, the worker is unable to engage with the leader in a free exchange of

information and is discouraged from experiencing autonomy, independence,

exploration, curiosity, and risk-taking, all of which Western researchers believe to

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be conducive to creativity. Finally, teaching and learning approaches in

Confucian culture emphasize memorization and rote learning. The fundamental

method of learning is trial and error, as embraced by Confucian scholars. Thus,

the notion that continuous practice makes perfect is embedded in the framework

of the Confucian teaching philosophy. Scholars argue that this pedagogical

practice focuses on basic knowledge acquisition and analytical skills at the

expense of creativity, which leads students to miss the opportunity of exploratory

and experimental attitudes.

However, the distinction between “above-the-line” and “below-the-line”

labor is crucial to understand the nature of production, although it alienates

freedom (Mayer et al.,2009). Moreover, Mark Banks in his book “The Politics of

Cultural Works” explains that such relations reveal an overall process in which

the ‘corporate friendly forms of creativity are discursively constructed’, where

managers ‘play an important role in defining, managing and controlling creativity’

(2007: 73). These powerful ‘creative managers’ (cf. Bilton and Leary, 2002;

Jeffcutt and Pratt, 2002) are subsequently understood to discipline the actual

creators and keep them in check for the overall corporate goal of generating

profit. Furthermore, Mr.Paul Sidharta still affirms that the danger of not clearly

establishing structure in creative industries is that superiors can easily wind up in

situations where they need to pay someone for time in which they did no work or

did the same work that another person had already completed. Putting a solid

structure and having a clear workflow in place that shows how different tasks

pass through business processes are necessary for an agency to grow. He also

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mentions that there are several creative companies that have announced that

they employ a flat hierarchy where there are no bosses. I think it’s an appealing

option as well, but one that is particularly difficult to implement. Agencies need an

entire team of people who can handle working under their own direction and if

everyone could do that, they would all be freelancers.

Nevertheless, in a recent study, Richard Ronay, a postdoctoral scholar at

Columbia Business school, examined how teams of people with equal power

perform against more traditionally hierarchical teams. The result hierarchies

could help achieve collaborative tasks by creating defined roles. For tasks that

demand interdependence, such defined roles make performance much easier

(Burkus, 2012). With hierarchies, less time is spent figuring out how the team will

operate and more time spent on actually performing. It’s important to distinguish

between productivity-tasks, where the desired outcome is clearly known and

creativity-tasks, where such outcomes are less clear and demand a mix of

perspectives. Additionally, most of the internal hierarchy of creative and media

companies is far from uniformly egalitarian. Hierarchy system had enormous

impact on the internal distribution of power, as some employees were ascribed

authority over others (McKinlay et al., 2009). I agree with this statement because

at the same time, employees had to specialize in certain tasks, increasing their

routine and productivity. However, the concept of hierarchy might creates conflict

when some employees are promoted, other left behind, causing disappointment

and ambivalence as to ideal structure of work organization. Therefore, egalitarian

ideas still inspire employees’ claims for transparency and hierarchical command

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and control is rejected as being incompatible with the work required for them to

accomplish.

EGALITARIAN CULTURE IN CREATIVE

INDUSTRIES
It is very difficult to say if the Western is the most egalitarian society.

Southeast Asian countries usually are not very gender egalitarian. It usually male

dominant. For instance, the managers, directors, deans, are majority males.

However, western democratic societies share an egalitarian ideology which

maintains that a major goal of the state is to protect human rights and promote

equality and the structural inclusion of all racial, ethnic, and cultural groups into

the fabric of society (Banks et al., 1986).

When I worked as an intern in a health insurance company in Baltimore, I

was aware that my work environment has a lot of egalitarian features when the

management encourages employees to think independently but collaborate when

necessary. To analyze the egalitarian-culture style tendencies in the western

workplaces, I did an interview in a small creative-based media company called

“The Commonvision” located inside The University of Maryland Baltimore

County. I met with two members of the company, a graphic designer, Amy

Berbert and Katie Chrzanowski, the director of animation. Amy believes that

hierarchy culture does still exist to an extent at the commonvision. The structure

of hierarchy is clear, everyone has their position and certain jobs they have to do.

All the subordinates supposed to check with their superiors before making

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decisions and most of them do. She is comfortable with the structure as long as

it’s not abused. Katie as a director, she has a lot of decision making power. She

argues that instead of saying that The Commonvision adopted the hierarchical

system they are probably in the middle of somewhere. She explains that the work

environment is very collaborative where they ask for subordinates' input or

opinion which they often implement. She and the other two full time staff in the

office share ideas, providing suggestions, asking for individual inputs for projects

in order to help deliver a better product for the client.

Katie agrees that hierarchical system proven can reduce chaos in the

workplace, but in some cases it could create more. "At times when someone at a

lower level is waiting on someone a few levels up to make a decision it can

impede any work that needs to be done or work that needs to move forward. If

decisions are delayed it can create a lot of work in a short amount of time later

on" she explains. Also, after a week of office observation at the Commonvision. I

witnessed how the company dealing with the clients. The scenario Katie

described above typically does not come from within the company, but from

clients. It can take clients a while to review material or provide company which

creates the chaos. An example that could be applied to the Common Vision that

creates a 'chaos' situation would be if they needed to make a large purchase of

equipment or supplies but they would needed to be approved by a different

department and they would have a lengthy process to go through and were

delayed that affected the employees' work flow.

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 In egalitarian culture, meritocratic worlds where lack of application was the

only barrier to success and where tradition, especially in its classed, gendered

and ethnicized forms was meant to evaporate in the ardent heat of innovation

and personal expression. Moreover, creative people work for the love of a

challenge. They crave the feeling of accomplishment that comes from cracking a

riddle, be it technological, artistic, social, or logistical. They want to do good work.

Though all people chafe under what they see as bureaucratic obstructionism,

creative people actively hate it, viewing it not just as an impediment but as the

enemy of good work (Florida, 2005). In a way, small agencies such as the

Commonvision do act as one very large cohesive team, even though they seem

dysfunctional at times. At a small shop, everyone usually knows what's expected

of them, what the goals are, how to get the work done, where they want the

agency to go, and what they want from the experience. As success grows and

people began to fill up office space, the natural tendency is for the formalization

of all sorts of new rules, structures and roles. This is where many agencies

struggle to "get to the next level." Understandably, the small team-like feeling of

the agency will get fractured, and with the increase of work you can lose that

sense of shared goals and meanings. The first inclination, as an agency leader,

is to "fix" that fracturing by putting a lot of process in place. At this stage,

supervisors do caution everyone to look hard at what they are about to do.

Therefore certainly, companies need some structure and framework to exist and

for a creative agency to stay in business. However, it's important to build

flexibility into the process and rules and to maintain that philosophy where

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decision making and creativity can occur at all levels of the agency. To figure out

the inclination of the employees being in the hierarchical system, I conducted an

online survey with 50 participants both from JWT Singapore and VOA (Voice Of

America) Washington DC. Through the survey, I found out that 15% is

comfortable with the hierarchical system and the rest were uneasy with the

concept. The majority of respondents believed that the flat nature of the

organizational structures within the agencies is needed for effective

communication. In addition, it was suggested that internal competition for

resources was kept to a minimum, since the resources necessary to fulfill a task

is based on people, time skills and designated budgets, rather than being capital-

intensive. Mr.Paul Sidharta often considers advertising agencies to be ‘pretty

conservative organizations’. However, because of the nature of the business and

the structural makeup of the companies, it was apparent from the responses that

there was not a conservative culture within those agencies. The responses

indicated that rigid formal structures were not evident. On the contrary, like The

Common Vision that is quite un-hierarchical, quite meritocratic and sometimes

quite painfully democratic’. Several agencies suggested that this kind of structure

was part of the ‘roots’ of the company and if a power structure was introduced

within the agencies, ‘it would be very destabilizing and threatening’ to the

employees.

Although the organization of structure across creative industries varies, as

Hesmondhalgh ( Bilton, 2007:24) points out, a collective nature of these

industries matters. Focusing on the commonalities of these industries, several

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characteristics stand out: individual creativity and talent are the key resources,

intellectual property rights play a crucial role, workers are driven by intrinsic

motivation and the production of material outputs is overlaid by the production of

meaning (Bilton 2007, Caves 2000, Hesmondhalgh 2007). Therefore, creative

industries have to be flexible as possible: a flexible organization of production

reduces sunk costs and potential losses. Constituting a significant part of the

real-life context of management and creativity, the work and production context in

the creative industries is thus one of a flexible organization of production

(Rosamund, et al. 2013). I’m not saying that Egalitarian organization structure is

necessarily needed to enhance the creative industries’ productivity. But it seems

some form of a 'democratic socialism' is necessary. There is a strong case in

most of confucianism-culture-established countries for making some transitional

demands that show how the creative-based industries' organization structure

might be changed, improved, and it also demands to challenge the status quo.

TOWARDS THE NEW MANAGEMENT CULTURE

There was clear evidence that the pressures within the advertising

industry could be ‘immense’ and ‘pretty intense’ because of the fast pace of the

industry. How this pressure was handled varied from person to person and the

experience of the individual. Mr.Paul Sidharta's comment encapsulates the

increasing pace of the industry “what I used to do in the early days of my career,

I could do now in day. Then I have to do all in hours and what I did in hours, now

I have to do in minutes and I lean on my experience”. In addition, it was stated

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that workload pressures meant that time is precious and up to a point, it fosters

creativity and, beyond that point, it hinders creativity. Additionally, creative

industries are very likely to operate according to a networking logic, where loose

coordination, horizontal connections, and informal arrangements become the

norm. This is different from hierarchical models based on governance through

rigid rules that affect the process as well as outcomes, on the basis of vertical

‘chain of command’, and where formal lines of authority, decision making, and

appeal are the norm (Bilton, 2007 : Thompson, 2003: 28-52). Hence, creative

industries work environment should be at least liberating when compared to

hierarchical and bureaucratic models of work organization. No only can the job

be personally satisfying for the employees, as it enables the realization of

individual creativity, but non-hierarchical workplaces come to be seen as the

norm and the best way to align creative people to organizations. Chris Bilton

describes the new principles of creative management in the following terms :

“In pursuit of creativity, today's managers are encouraged to reject control and

hierarchy in favour of release and individualism. According to the new orthodoxy,

the role of management is to enable the individual autonomy and self-

actualization of the employee, not to control the workforce by setting limits and

deadlines. Hierarchies are flatter, organizational culture are self-consciously

'casual' and managers have removed their neckties. In this system of creative

management or 'soft control', managers seek to remove constraints in order to

free individual workers to express themselves, to take risks and to challenge

15
conventional thinking. Consequently, the employees will, of course, be more

productive and inventive”. (Bilton, 2007 : 66).

However, many employees' ambivalence towards hierarchies could not be

expressed more clearly: the management is accused of strict leadership which

conflicted with creative tasks, but it expected to effectively exert the leadership it

claims (McKinlay, 2009:224). Furthermore, hierarchical, paternalistic

management styles limit creativity, and inclusive ones that distribute creative

decision-making throughout the organization promote sustained creativity (Mauzy

and Harriman, 2003). As a result, the new hierarchy model needs to be

introduced. A mixture of egalitarian ideals, patriarchal managerial attitudes and a

wide range of informal as well as formal hierarchies would be effective I suppose.

Using a blend of egalitarian and hierarchical philosophies, effectively eliminating

boundaries altogether, a blended management style makes boundaries more

flexible. With flexible boundaries, employees know the tasks they must complete

but aren't restricted to performing only those tasks. Flexible boundaries also

allow employees more freedom to collaborate with coworkers and introduce their

own ideas while still remaining under the direction of a supervisor.

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Davies, Rosamund, and Gauti Sigthorsson. Introducing the creative industries: from theory to
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Florida, Richard, and Jim Goodnight. "Managing for creativity." Harvard business review 83.7
(2005): 124.

Hennig, Alecia. "Confucianism as Leadership Strategy?." China Business and Research 7 (2010):
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Mannix, Elizabeth A. "Organizations as resource dilemmas: The effects of power balance on

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