Transformations  in
Business & Economics

THE RELEVANCE OF LEADERSHIP IN CULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS: THE KAUNAS BIENNIAL
Gintare Dudenaite, Donatas Pilinkus, Reda Nausedaite

ABSTRACT. The phenomenon of leadership has been widely debated in scientific literature. Most of the academicians and practitioners assent to the idea that the effectiveness and efficient managing of a company significantly depends on the leader's character. Good management strengthened by the charismatic leader secures order and consistency in daily activities of an organization and motivates employees to strive for the best possible result. It is interesting to distinguish that the personnel employed in the cultural organization are as well propelled by the content of actions that sometimes hardly fits in the traditional management theories. In the cultural organization, the traditional management processes are enriched by the cultural and art processes including inspiration, concept purification, elevating performances etc. Therefore, the main objective of the article is to disclose the relevance of leadership in the cultural organization. In order to reach the objective, the following tasks have been set out: firstly, to analyse the leadership phenomenon in general; secondly, to set a special focus on the cultural organization; thirdly, to research a case of Kaunas Biennial by disclosing the relevance of leadership in different management levels. The case study of the Kaunas Biennial clearly unveils the relevance of leader's characteristics managing the cultural organization, since the managers of such type of organizations quite often do not have any financial instruments to motivate their team members. The leader is obligated to possess characteristics of self-sacrifice and self-devotion in order to make people invest in one another and share all their best, i.e., competence, knowledge, experience, skills, visions, etc. Since teams may be created for a limited period of time in the cultural organization, i.e., until a particular project is implemented, the leader should serve as a catalyst promoting healthy, goal-oriented internal communication as an ongoing process .

KEYWORDS: leadership, leader, cultural organization, Kaunas Biennial.

JEL classification: Z10, Z11.