Utah Symphony and Utah Opera

Utah Symphony and Utah Opera: A Merger Proposal

Introduction

Not like main arts organizations in Canada and Europe that are deeply dependent on agencies of government for their financial support, opera and orchestras companies in the US function in accordance with a quite diverse fiscal form and make profits chiefly by personal donations (about 36%)and sales of ticket (about 46%) (Armenakis, 2002).

Discussion

Section A

Competing Values Approach

Leaders have to recognize the importance of meeting the increasing demands of the company's stakeholders and must apply specific roles as required indiscriminately (Gavin, 2005). For achieving a positive outcome to the merger, the two organizations must opt for an open systems model.

Figure 01: Competing Values Framework for the two organization

Here, the CVF culture must be sychronized with the structure of the two merged organizations. The left side describes solely the organizations internally where customers or competition are not important. The right side is the external environment when the organization considers it important to adhere to the demands of the customers and the competition. On the vertical side i.e. stability and flexibility determines who makes decisions. Here at the lower end, the management has the control and on the upper end, employees are involved in all the major decisions. The clan organizations are those which have supportive leaders and people. An adhocracy organization has innovative leaders who are focused on independence. The heirarchial organizations have leaders who supervise everything. Lastly, a market organization is one which is controlled and stable. Through evaluation, this has been identified that the Symphony is a hierarchial organization, whereas the Opera is a clan organization. Here the two newly merged organizations must have a determined approach to the merger and ensure that the two organizations are formed in a way that it contributes to strong market control, with a flexible and stable work environment.

The reason for identifying Symphony as a hierarchial organization is that Symphony leaders were trying to maintain internal control and stability and thereby ignored several external factors. They didn't provide the employees with flexibility and the decisions were mostly taken according to the old traditional format. Anne has been trying to convert this into a more flexible and market oriented organization, and this was nearly possible because by now the organization has established a strong internal focus and it shall now move onto considering the external factors with a flexible approach to business processes.

On the other hand, Opera has been considered as a clan organization. Same is the case with opera, but with time Opera has tried to gain a flexible approach to business processes which has helped it in improving its activities. Decisions are taken flexibly where the opinions of everyone is considered. Here, again the market factors are ignored which are to be pondered over in the new organization after merger.

Section A1

Organizational Structure

Mergers between symphony orchestras and major opera businesses in the USA are quite uncommon. The Madison Opera and the Madison Chorus & Symphony merged under an umbrella association branded ...