Managing the ABC

This chapter explores the management and institutional leadership of the ABC. It will contextualise examples of management decision-taking and policy-making within the methodological framework of Institutional Logics and Bourdieusian theories. It will examine select examples of the role of ABC leadership and the changes wrought by digitisation and the complexities of Institutional Logics in running the public service organisation. The ABC’s early leadership was very much about cultivating the élite, privileged field but this has shifted since the 1980s with pressure on the ABC to meet efficiencies, key performance indicators (KPIs), best practice, strategic management, knowledge management, economies of scale and the rise of managerialism. For example, this has played out in criticism that contemporary ABC leadership operates in a “cone of silence” with limited public attempts to assert the ABC’s independence while demonstrating a remote public attitude to editorial control. The chapter will begin with an overview of more recent management and leadership and how editorial matters have placed ABC actors in a highly contested and problematic field. It will explore how past leaders cultivated the ABC’s educated and cultural capital through the high culture of orchestras and broadcast music as well as education, sport and women’s interests. Now managers must address staff capture while managing pressures to commercialise a public outfit.