Beschreibung:
<jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Purpose</jats:title><jats:p>The study aims to understand how practicing organizational performance evaluation (OPE) is related to the performance paradox (tensions between creative freedom and survival challenges) in “evaluation-hesitant” cultural and creative industries (CCI) organizations.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title><jats:p>Mixed methods research, consisting of moderation analyses and unstructured expert interviews.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Findings</jats:title><jats:p>A conceptual model is developed to explain how creative freedom and survival challenges affect OPE in “evaluation-hesitant” CCI organizations.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Originality/value</jats:title><jats:p>The authors bring a new understanding to the factors that contribute to evaluation-hesitance in CCI. The paper contributes to discussing both the theory of paradox and flow theory in explaining the relations between OPE, creative freedom and survival challenges.</jats:p></jats:sec>