Enabling Creative Chaos

The Organization Behind the Burning Man Event

Enabling Creative Chaos (High Resolution)

Paper $33.00 ISBN: 9780226102382 Published September 2009

Cloth $94.00 ISBN: 9780226102375 Published September 2009

E-book $10.00 to $33.00 About E-books ISBN: 9780226102399 Published September 2009

In the summer of 2008, nearly fifty thousand people traveled to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to participate in the countercultural arts event Burning Man. Founded on a commitment to expression and community, the annual weeklong festival presents unique challenges to its organizers. Over four years Katherine K. Chen regularly participated in organizing efforts to safely and successfully create a temporary community in the middle of the desert under the hot August sun.

Enabling Creative Chaos tracks how a small, underfunded group of organizers transformed into an unconventional corporation with a ten-million-dollar budget and two thousand volunteers. Over the years, Burning Man’s organizers have experimented with different management models; learned how to recruit, motivate, and retain volunteers; and developed strategies to handle regulatory agencies and respond to media coverage. This remarkable evolution, Chen reveals, offers important lessons for managers in any organization, particularly in uncertain times.

Table of Contents

Contents
Review Quotes
Awards

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

1 Introduction: The Perils of Under- and Overorganizing

2 Context: The Development of the Burning Man Event and Organization

3 “Do-ocracy”: Acting on Suggestions and Criticisms

4 “Radical Inclusion”: Attracting and Placing Members

5 “No Spectators”: Motivating Members to Contribute

6 “Immerse Yourself”: Managing Relations in the Pursuit of Legitimacy

7 Conclusion: Sustaining Creative Chaos

Appendix 1. Ethnography and Qualitative Research

Appendix 2. Interview Protocols

Notes

Reference List

Index

Review Quotes

Walter W. Powell, Stanford University

“Katherine Chen immersed herself in the world of Burning Man, the fascinating community that gathers annually for a week-long arts celebration in the Nevada desert. Her marvelous portrait of this unusual collective provides a rich template for considering how organizations of all varieties strike a balance between flexibility and fairness and creativity and security. This is one of the best organizational ethnographies I've seen in many years.”

Rakesh Khurana, Harvard Business School

“From open source software to the 2008 election, organizational research has not yet come to terms with the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of these new organizational forms. Katherine Chen has succeeded in writing an engaging ethnography of Burning Man and skillfully developed its implications for organizational theory and managerial practice. Bravo.”

Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA): ARNOVA-Outstanding Book in Nonprofit & Voluntary Action Research
Won

ASA/Occupations & Organizations Section: ASA-Max Weber Award
Honorable Mention

View Recent Awards page for more award winning books.

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Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology

Art: American Art

Economics and Business: Business--Business Economics and Management Studies

Sociology: Collective Behavior, Mass Communication | Formal and Complex Organizations | Sociology of Arts--Leisure, Sports

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