Beyond Networks and Hierarchies: Latent Organizations in the U.K. Television Industry

Since the mid 1980s, organization theorists have highlighted the emergence of the networked model of organization as a response to global competition and pressures for increased market flexibility. Cultural industries have not been immune from this development. In this paper, we examine the shift from hierarchy to network in the U.K. television industry. We argue that an important result of this disaggregation is the emergence of latent organization, groupings of individuals and teams of individuals that persist through time and are periodically drawn together for recurrent projects by network brokers who either buy in programmes for publisher-broadcasters or who draw together those artists and technicians who actually produce them. In conclusion, we note how latent organizations may become increasingly important for effective cultural industry production, and in particular how they may provide stable points of reference and recurring work projects for those many individuals now working outside of large, vertically integrated producer-broadcasters.