• Home
  • About
    • For What it’s Worth
    • Michael Rushton
    • Contact
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

For What It's Worth

Michael Rushton on pricing the arts

Strategic Planning and Muddling Through

March 31, 2020 by Michael Rushton Leave a Comment

Out in the woods for today’s video, on Charles Lindblom’s classic essay “The science of ‘muddling through'”. When an arts organization sets out to form a strategic plan, what exactly is it doing? Is a so-called ‘logic model’, that carefully sets out desired outcomes, and then works backwards through the most effective outputs and actions, the way we actually conceive of the problem? Or in fact is what we do in practice much more modest, taking existing activities as more-or-less given, and looking to a few changes at the margin that ought to be prioritized. Can an arts organization really distinguish between ‘means’ and ‘ends’? When a community orchestra puts on a season, which is it?

Lindblom’s article is here:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/973677?seq=1

Share:

  • Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Share on X (Opens in new window) X
  • Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Print (Opens in new window) Print

Related

Filed Under: issues

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Michael Rushton

Michael Rushton taught in the Arts Administration programs at Indiana University, and lives in Bloomington. An economist by training, he has published widely on such topics as public funding of the … MORE

About For What It’s Worth

What’s the price? Everything has one; admission, subscriptions, memberships, special exhibitions, box seats, refreshments, souvenirs, and on and on – a full menu. What the price is matters. Generally, nonprofit arts organizations in the US receive about half of their revenue as “earned income,” and … [Read More...]

Archives

Recent Comments

  • Jeff Woodruff on Reading James Marriott’s The New Dark Ages: “You referred to “the great centuries – 1750 – 1950.” I think there’s a lot of evidence that the whole…” Oct 18, 09:24
  • Mark Z Alpert on Reading James Marriott’s The New Dark Ages: “Leonard Bernstein’s “Young People’s Concerts” was perhaps, the most promising hope, along with “Omnibus”, that television would herald a most…” Oct 15, 12:33
  • Michael Rushton on Reading James Marriott’s The New Dark Ages: “Recordings and radio offered people different ways to experience music, and brought it to wider audiences than would have been…” Oct 8, 14:44
  • Richard Voorhaar on Reading James Marriott’s The New Dark Ages: “,Just as recordings and radio was the death of traditional folk music, non-western music, jazz and classical music. ,” Oct 8, 13:35
  • Michael Rushton on We cannot quantify the richness of a nation’s literary life: “I try to make a point of not being a part of the “we” you describe.” Sep 9, 07:45
Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2026 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in