It isn’t unusual for a music director search to last more than a year but eyebrows ascend when it takes that long to find a new CEO. No, there’s no double standard going on here and the reality is that it is much easier for a professional orchestra to appoint interim artistic leadership that can maintain or even improve an ensemble’s artistic standard (think Chicago and Haitink) as compared to installing interim executive leadership capable of the same feats for the administrative side of the coin. Recently, Peter Dobrin examined this very issue at his Arts Watch blog…
Philadelphia Orchestra
A Cultural Military-Industrial Complex?
The 7/23/2008 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer published an article by the ever sharp Peter Dobrin which revealed that former Philadelphia Orchestra President, Joe Kluger, continued to receive compensation from the organization after his departure. Although deferred compensation and severance pay are nothing new, Dobin noted that Kluger’s compensation focused more on consulting fees… “After stepping down as president on Aug. 31, 2005, Kluger continued to draw a salary from the …
There Goes Joe
The Philadelphia Inquirer published an article by Peter Dobrin yesterday which reports that Philadelphia Orchestra president, Joe Kluger, will be resigning his position as of August 31st, 2005.
Peter’s article goes on to report that Joe will be assuming a consulting role with AEA Consulting, an arts consulting firm headed up by managing principal, Adrian Ellis. I published a few articles about some of Adrian’s views about the industry being overbuilt back in October, 2004.
How Vs. Why
How important is process an organization uses to achieve a goal? I’ve been putting some extra thought into this question lately because an increasing number of nonprofit organizations have been doing one of two things: improving the internal relationship between constituents via an inclusive shared process or damaging those relationships with a faulty process.
Pension Plans And Negotiations Part 2
To continue where Part 1 left off, we’ll examine how some of the pension issues related to the Philadelphia Orchestra situation have influenced the course of negotiations. The Philadelphia Orchestra Association (POA) utilizes a defined benefits pension plan. This means the POA and not the individual players assume the risk to ensure that the pension plan has enough funds to make the required payments to retired employees. The POA expands on …