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Success in Failure: The National Centre for Popular Music
JACQUELINE KAM.
Original Articles
Management Studies would much rather deal with success than failure. Its treatment of failure is consequently peremptory, defining failure in simple, financial terms. Yet, failure is complex. This paper looks in detail at the case of the National Centre for Popular Music in Sheffield, England. Though the Centre was an unmitigated disaster, individual managers were still able to interpret the part each played as successful. Why was the project outcome so much less than the sum of these individual parts? The dynamics of failure are intriguing. Understanding them would seem to be essential to understanding what brings about success.
