Essay

Case Study: Cirque du Soleil

Authors DeLong, T.; Vijayaraghavan, V.

Publisher: Harvard Business Publishing (2002)

Version: 15 October 2002 (12 pages)

What are the specific human resource management problems which Cirque du Soleil must cope with in dealing with a culturally, ethnically and geographically dispersed creative workforce compared to a company which has only domestic workforce HR considerations to deal with.

Cirque du Soleil is a unique organization in terms of organizational behaviour and management. It is different in various terms and aspects: behaviours of the employees in the workplace, psychological contract, and cultural diversity of the workforce, compensation, organizational culture and commitment.

Cirque du Soleil is a world-famous entertainment organization that provides over fourteen different shows worldwide, brings entertainment and makes a change in the lives of its audience and enhances the creative skills of its artists. Moreover, the organization makes a profitable business out of every performance – no wonder its CEO and owner, Guy Laliberte is ranked 664 among world’s billionaires by Forbes, and has been recognized by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004. Guy Laliberte also received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for all three levels: Quebec, Canada and International in 2006.

According to the article on “Cirque du Soleil” written by Professor Thomas J. Delong and Research Associate Vineeta Vijayaraghavan, the people working in the Cirque have a different set of motivations that people working for any other organizations – this is caused by the specifics of its activities and performance. The factors affecting the behaviour compensation are obviously non-financial, for the starting pay is too low to awake the interest of a standard employee, as the researchers of the human resource market see him/her.

The authors of the article claim the managerial approach...