On the Project Level: the Self-organizing Project Network for CIN development

The examination at the individual-level has helped us identify that the Producer responds to the CIN with a self-driven motivation and openness. However, as the case firm embodies a flexible, yet fragile organization, lacking specialized personnel and organization structures, there are questions that deserve further examination. Firstly, in what ‘flexible’ ways does the case organization cope with the increasing complexity and manage to facilitate the development of CIN? Secondly, how is decision-making achieved when balancing trade-offs in network dealings? In this regard, the self-organizing theory advanced by Kauffman offers conceptual insight into the related issues of spontaneous and inherent properties, such as the diversity, flexibility and specialized processing within the organization. In other words, while external forces seem to dominate the fragile organization of the project, the project-level analysis aims to understand how the internal dynamics of the project organization are generated in a CIN way. This analysis is achieved from the point of view of key internal agents, including not only the Producer but also the Director and the PR officer.

Producer, the PR and the Director in internal terms, and the Producer indicating that ‘we did do some research on who could be the potential businesses partners by searching the internet, asking friends and making cold-calling strangers’ (Interview III/ A8). However, when I inquired into their practices and experiences in terms of how they explore and initiate networks, it is easy to find that the CIN of the project are fundamentally shaped by their personal networks, which has become inherent diversity and assets of the project organization towards a broader network.

According to the data collected from both sides of the CIN, the network relationships with the music recording, the book publishing and the new media companies are all built based on personal friendships, and their collaborations are achieved with ease at an earlier stage of the process. Meanwhile, a degree of randomness and informality in such friendship-based interactions can also be found in the case data. An example of this is the Producer, who commented on the deal with the music producer:

Because we are good and old friends, that helps a lot, basically our discussion is done via chatting on MSN messenger or just a call, so it saves me a lot of paper work, and if we want to , we can sign the memo deal or contract for the collaboration on the soundtrack at any time. (Interview IV/ A17)

In addition, it has been found that internal network agents have taken their personal networks as advantages in terms of achieving creative collaborations, in producing by-products. The comments from the Producer when reviewing the relationship with the music producer can illustrate this point.

Well, in fact we did not have the money to pay for the music producer fees, and we only got a tiny amount of money for him to make the soundtrack. But because we are good friends, so he will do what he thinks the best for the film and for me, he won’t do it just based on the budget he got. He has been giving us many ideas, and together we are creating something different! So our friendship does help in this respect, I feel I am taking advantage of him (laugh). (Interview V/A16)

Secondly, according to my interview data, the idea of ‘learning’ is frequently brought up by the agents while talking about their experiences of interacting with other businesses during interviews. Any specific route they took to build up the relationship, no matter how formal or informal, with new or their existing acquaintance, provides opportunities for them to learn. The experience of their learning, both creatively and operationally, can be illustrated by the following extracts:

Coming from a music marketing background, it’s been a learning process for me to collaborate on the script novel with the book publisher, although the chief editor and I are old friends. He gave me a lot of ideas in terms of the content and marketing of the novel, they were lovely surprises which gave me different feelings of the novel from what we originally thought. We basically took all his suggestions on board, because he is the one knowing their kind of market. (PR / Interview IV/ A 21)

There were quite a few regrets that we did not team up with some mobile or game businesses. I just learned that some of them would like to join us, but when we approached them, the timing was just too late for them to allocate any of their yearly budget, or it would take them a long time, as they are not in control of decision-making as a regional office of a global brand. (Interview III/ A30)

Because the telecom company is so big, and I just learned that they are also under government regulations in terms of what content they can acquire and the ways they can make use of it, and their decision-making has to cross many departments, this is why the contract between us took months to settle, and there are lots of boring and technical details involved, it’s been a tedious process but I did learn a lot during our interactions. (Interview III/A13)

We don’t have any strategy for developing the CIN, but what I learned from

meeting those related businesses is that I have to see things from others’ point of views and not just keep talking about our film. Because no matter how great our film is, if we can’t make it relevant to them, it’s still useless. Also, I think we have to use different ways to interact with different businesses, because what they want from us is different. (Interview III/A 36)

The above evidence shows that as the Film-T operates in a flat company context, without structures, and the agents extend immediately and enthusiastically to the outside, without much constraint. They learn directly from those they make connections with. This kind of learning is based on the individual agent’s own reflections, and is a result of their self-driven practices. Such a learning process is similar to Kauffman’s idea of adaptive learning through flexible structures. However, my empirical data shows that there is relatively little learning between the network agents which can be seen from the fact that the interviewees seldom spontaneously refer to or comment on the interactions among them as they are busy engaging in attending the network relationships that they themselves are in charge of.

Thirdly, task-sharing between network agents reflects a two-side problem of the Film-T in terms of functional differentiation and integration. For the former, it is found that the key network agents (the Producer and the PR officer) share similar roles in terms of their network developing tasks as their comments centre on either the operational progress or the creative output on those by-products. On the other, due to such break-down of work, both of them show signs of unfamiliarity in terms of the substance of the relationships which they are not directly involved in, just as the following replies suggest:

Oh yes, we chatted about what we could do with the book publisher, but she (the PR) knows the editor well, so she is fully responsible for maintaining that connection, and developing the product, (and then the Producer suddenly shouted out loud to the PR who was sitting downstairs and asked when and whether the by-product script-novel could be on the market as scheduled). Well anyway I just love the design of the book, it looks very exciting! (Interview V/A22)

I am only in charge of the relationships with the book publisher and the new media. As for the others, I don’t know much about the details, you have to ask the Producer, as he is in charge of other business relationships. (Interview IV/ A5)

In fact, I found that the differentiation functions required in solving issues involved in the CIN are largely left unfulfilled in the project organization, such as commercial and legal issues. Such a reality is also frequently indicated by the interviewees as their fundamental weakness in dealing with the CIN. As a result, their internal integration process, and the processing of the CIN, can be seen as fragmented, relying on either their own personal experiences or external resources to deal with commercial and legality issues.

However, decision-making to commission functional jobs outside the firm is not an easy one for the Producer, who is also the Managing Director of the company. In fact, it took him a long period of consultation and hesitating struggles before he finally made up his mind to commission the domestic distribution to an independent distributor and another freelance broker, who is a friend of the Director, to deal with overseas sales. As for legal matters, the Producer was referred to by a close friend of his to commission it to a lawyer, who is also new to the film business. The lack of functional integration in processing the network affairs was also visible, owing to the separation of the functions; as a consequence, the project organization becomes stretched, without interconnections across

functions. The issues can be seen from the Producer’s comments on the legal services.

The lawyer can only help us with fine-tuning the wordings of the contracts, it’s all very technical, she couldn’t help us with negotiating the commercial terms of content-licensing or revenue-sharing, and we still depend on our limited experience and knowledge… (Interview V/A27)

The lack of coordinating and balancing agency inevitably means that their decision-making tends to be random and arbitrary. To take the commissioning relationship with the freelance broker for international sales, for example, the comments of the Producer in his early and later interviews vividly illustrate this point:

We did shop around for possible distribution brokers, but some of them were just too arrogant so we just walked away from them, as the Director always said ‘why should we bother listening to them!’. So we just decided to work with the freelance broker, because she is acquaintance of the Director. I believe this will make things easier in terms of communication. Although she is new to the business, I can see her passion for this project. (Interview 4/A7)

However, nine months after the fourth interview, and after the first round of international sales, in reviewing the relationship, the Producer reflected, in the eighth interview, that:

It’s one of the biggest mistakes I ever made for the production, to commission the job to her, she doesn’t even have the vocabulary to handle the deals, so in the end, she couldn’t do much sales for us. We shouldn’t rely on her simply because she is a friend of the Director; we are too naïve, the international film distribution is such a specialized and tricky game! (Interview VIII/ A17)

integration as being that of control of the CIN of the case production. It is found that the Producer is constantly confronting a dilemma of control in project organization: inwardly, he shares the control of decision-making with the Director, who also plays a key role in the final decision; outwardly, the network picture becomes even more unclear, as the Producer is required to acquire functional services to fulfill the specialization gaps in the project organization, yet those functions are disconnected, in terms of decision-making for the network, which in turn reinforces the pressure and control of the Producer and the Director. Such circumstances are frequently revealed as the Producer becoming increasingly aware of the complexity of the tasks and trade-offs involved in the CIN. It is also manifest through the agents’ struggles and failures to follow through their personal contacts, and embed them into more formal contracts between firms which highlight their individually initiated and informal, instead of formal ways of networking. Overall the agents’ accounts of their experiences can be regarded as a reflection on their roles, and the overall development of the project organization.