Negotiations and lovesongs: A theory of nexus work in market-based cultural industry projects (Tennessee)

In this dissertation I qualitatively examine the practice of Nashville producers to understand how they manage the creation of music projects in a market context. Producers face a non-routinizable process for securing resources from market resource gatekeepers, and a quality aesthetic emerging through interaction among occupational specialists. In response to these challenges, actors central to the cultural production process engage in nexus work: the active management and integration of the relationships, resources and perspectives of actors engaged in market-based projects. More specifically, I inductively identify and define a repertoire of nexus work practices used by nexus actors. Producers mobilize these practices as resources in varying ways to respond to the demands of their nexus work. In particular, I propose that how nexus work is enacted is shaped by the opportunity and ambiguity structures of nexus actors' project and market segment contexts. While the opportunity and ambiguity structures shape the need for nexus practices, not all nexus actors use the same nexus work practices in response to the same demands, or in the same ways, or in ways that guarantee the project's success or a successful role performance. Nexus actors' role enactments are shaped by their situated context, but not determined by it.; Nexus work copes with three tensions that are increasingly present in organizing efforts. Nexus work involves creating a project's interface with the market, and managing the permeability of the project's interface. Nexus actors respond to the constraints arising from the permeability of a project's interface as well as utilize that permeability to their advantage. Second, nexus work manages the inextricably intertwined processes of not only nurturing and eliciting creative potential, but also winnowing and integrating that potential. Nexus actors must guide an emergent aesthetic while simultaneously preserving the potential to nurture future possibilities. Finally, nexus work manages the negotiation of not only an emergent aesthetic but also the nuances of ambiguous occupational jurisdictions.