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Line-item budgeting and film-production: Exploring some benefits of budget constraints on creativity

Ivar Friis (Department of Operations Management, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark)
Allan Hansen (Department of Operations Management, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark)

Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management

ISSN: 1176-6093

Article publication date: 12 October 2015

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the role of line-item budgeting in film production in an effort to illustrate the positive effects that budgetary constraints can have on creativity.

Design/methodology/approach

Using Elster’s (2000) constraint theory as a basis for the research, this paper conducted a case study on the making of a Danish adventure film and analysed the role budgeting plays from the film director’s point of view.

Findings

This paper suggests that the constraints of the line-item budget imposed on the director had positive effects in terms of the pre-commitments entailed, which aided in protecting the director against the negative aspects of passion (e.g. distorted thought processes, myopia and weakness of will) in the creative process and in terms of the ability of the constraints to channel creativity in certain directions, thus preventing the availability of too many options from hampering the creative process.

Originality/value

The paper contributes to management control research in two ways. By addressing calls to provide more insight into the positive effects management control constraints might have on creativity, this study explores somewhat ignored aspects of line-item budgeting, adding greater insight into the interrelations between creativity and control. By exploring the ways in which line-item budgeting might take on the role of pre-commitment advice and devices in the creative process, this paper further exposes the links between accounting constraints and self-control.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the insightful comments and editorial guidance from John Burns and the two anonymous reviewers. Also, the authors thank Mads Fredskilde for the inspiration and valuable insight that his master thesis and the discussions with him gave the authors about the film-making process and budgeting. Finally, the authors appreciate the contributions and comments that Chris Chapman, Aldonio Ferreira, Thomas Frandsen, Markus Granlund and Kari Lukka made to earlier drafts of the paper.

Citation

Friis, I. and Hansen, A. (2015), "Line-item budgeting and film-production: Exploring some benefits of budget constraints on creativity", Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, Vol. 12 No. 4, pp. 321-345. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRAM-01-2015-0016

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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