The founding of new firms and efficient decision-making structures in localized production networks. The example of television production in the Cologne media cluster (Germany)

Much literature often discusses localized production networks as possible engines of prosperous regional development. In this literature, vertical disintegration and corresponding further specialization of individual firms within a commodity chain is seen as an essential factor in the success of such localized production networks. Additionally, this literature emphasizes the importance of information intensive economic transactions and the resulting interdependence between complementary firms in the production network. In turn, this type of interdependence makes the specific, specialized competencies of a single firm available to other firms in the commodity chain. Furthermore, such a production system is regarded as highly flexible. Firstly, thanks to their specialization in a small subset of the production chain, the single enterprises are in a position to develop a wide range of special solutions in their field of production. As a result, they are able to react very quickly to changing and unstable market conditions. Secondly, there is an enormous flexibility and adaptability because of the production chain's frequent renewal. In extreme cases, a new chain is built specifically to meet the demands of a specific project and is dissolved after the project is completed. Thus, production could take place with almost completely new partners (i.e., firms) from one project to the next. The numerous interactions required to sustain the reorganization of production for each new project in turn depend on spatial proximity, trust and embeddedness within a common socio-institutional context. In turn, these features are further reasons for the success of such a production network. These regionally-anchored, flexibly-specialized networks are often called "industrial districts". These networks not only operate in small niches of certain industries, but are also found in some parts of the sevice sector. The proposed presentation analyses the decision structures operating inside the production network of TV-programs in Cologne´s TV-production dominated Media-cluster. This research empirically confirms that competencies for decision-making are very unevenly distributed among the single units of the production chain. The research goes on to argue that the co-ordination of a highly disintegrated production network is possible only with a clear and plain hierarchy for decision making, execution and control processes. For this reason the network producing a TV-program is mainly designed and steered by only a handful actors. Although the competencies for decision-making are distributed unevenly through the production network, selection of subordinate partners by dominant firms is shaped by strong socio-institutional relations like trust based on previous positive working relations as well as common conventions, rules and routines. The final goal of the actual (December 2001) empirical research in Cologne is to analyse the decision-making structures affiliated with specific TV programs. This leads to a deeper understanding of how localized networks with uneven power structures work. In this context the question arises of how spatial concentration determines the respective decision-making process. At the same time there are still some indications that - besides some evolutionary factors - these special decision-making processes are a crucial factor in explaining the spatial concentration of TV-production in Cologne´s Media Cluster.

Critique of Creativity: Precarity, Subjectivity and Resistance in the ‘Creative Industries’

234 p. : il., Tablas.Libro ElectrónicoLa creatividad siempre está en movimiento: surge, se establece en el ente colectivo, palidece y desaparece a veces en el olvido; renace, vuelve con innovaciones, se reformula y resurge iniciando de nuevo el ciclo. Los viejos mitos de la creación y los creadores, los trabajos consagrados y los organismos privilegiados de los demiurgos están de nuevo en marcha, produciendo nuevos cambios. Los ensayos recogidos en este libro analizan ese resurgimiento complejo del mito de la creación y proponen una crítica contemporánea de la creatividad.Creativity is astir: reborn, re-conjured, re-branded, resurgent. The old myths of creation and creators – the hallowed labors and privileged agencies of demiurges and prime movers, of Biblical world-makers and self-fashioning artist-geniuses – are back underway, producing effects, circulating appeals. Much as the Catholic Church dresses the old creationism in the new gowns of ‘intelligent design’, the Creative Industries sound the clarion call to the Cultural Entrepreneurs. In the hype of the ‘creative class’ and the high flights of the digital bohemians, the renaissance of ‘the creatives’ is visibly enacted. The essays collected in this book analyze this complex resurgence of creation myths and formulate a contemporary critique of creativity.Contents vii Contributors ix Acknowledgements xv Introduction: On the Strange Case of ‘Creativity’ and its Troubled Resurrection 1 PART ONE: CREATIVITY 7 1 Immanent Effects: Notes on Cre-activity 9 2 The Geopolitics of Pimping 23 3 The Misfortunes of the ‘Artistic Critique’ and of Cultural Employment 41 4 ‘Creativity and Innovation’ in the Nineteenth Century: Harrison C. White and the Impressionist Revolution Reconsidered 57 PART TWO: PRECARIZATION 77 5 Virtuosos of Freedom: On the Implosion of Political Virtuosity and Productive Labour 79 6 Experiences Without Me, or, the Uncanny Grin of Precarity 91 7 Wit and Innovation 101 PART THREE: CREATIVITY INDUSTRIES 107 8 GovernCreativity, or, Creative Industries Austrian Style 109 9 The Los Angelesation of London: Three Short Waves of Young People’s Micro-Economies of Culture and Creativity in the UK 119 10 Unpredictable Outcomes / Unpredictable Outcasts: On Recent Debates over Creativity and the Creative Industries 133 11 Chanting the Creative Mantra: The Accelerating Economization of EU Cultural Policy 147 PART FOUR: CULTURE INDUSTRY 165 12 Culture Industry and the Administration of Terror 167 13 Add Value to Contents: The Valorization of Culture Today 183 14 Creative Industries as Mass Deception 191 Bibliography 20

Open educational resources : conversations in cyberspace

172 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.Libro ElectrónicoEducation systems today face two major challenges: expanding the reach of education and improving its quality. Traditional solutions will not suffice, especially in the context of today's knowledge-intensive societies. The Open Educational Resources movement offers one solution for extending the reach of education and expanding learning opportunities. The goal of the movement is to equalize access to knowledge worldwide through openly and freely available online high-quality content. Over the course of two years, the international community came together in a series of online discussion forums to discuss the concept of Open Educational Resources and its potential. This publication makes the background papers and reports from those discussions available in print.--Publisher's description.A first forum : presenting the open educational resources (OER) movement. Open educational resources : an introductory note / Sally Johnstone -- Providing OER and related issues : an introductory note / Anne Margulies, ... [et al.] -- Using OER and related issues : in introductory note / Mohammed-Nabil Sabry, ... [et al.] -- Discussion highlights / Paul Albright -- Ongoing discussion. A research agenda for OER : discussion highlights / Kim Tucker and Peter Bateman -- A 'do-it-yourself' resource for OER : discussion highlights / Boris Vukovic -- Free and open source software (FOSS) and OER -- A second forum : discussing the OECD study of OER. Mapping procedures and users / Jan Hylén -- Why individuals and institutions share and use OER / Jan Hylén -- Discussion highlights / Alexa Joyce -- Priorities for action. Open educational resources : the way forward / Susan D'Antoni

The paradox of high R&D input and low innovation output: Sweden

This chapter takes its point of departure in the so-called Swedish paradox, according to which the Swedish NSI is plagued by low pay-off in relation to very high investments in R&D and innovation efforts. Using new data, we show that this paradox is still in operation, i.e. the productivity or efficiency of the Swedish NSI remains low. We also specify the paradox in several respects. By focussing upon nine activities in the NSI, we attempt to explain why and how the paradox operates. The paradox is also related to the moderate growth of labour productivity in Sweden. Further, we show that the paradox is linked to globalization: internationalization of production by Swedish firms has proceeded further than the internationalization of R&D. On the basis of this analysis, we identify strengths and weaknesses of the Swedish NSI – many of which are related to the Swedish paradox. We take account of the history of innovation policy in Sweden and – on the basis of the analysis as a whole -- we identify future policy initiatives that might help to mitigate the Swedish paradox.Innovation; innovation system; Swedish national system of innovation; Swedish paradox

Screenwriting

Screenwriting: Creative Labor and Professional Practice analyses the histories, practices, identities and subject which form and shape the daily working lives of screenwriters. Author Bridget Conor considers the ways in which contemporary screenwriters navigates and make sense of the labor markets in which they are immersed. Chapters explore areas including screenwriting as creative labor, screenwriters' working lives, the how-to genre, screenwriting inequalities, and myths of the profession

Managing creativity in magazine publishing: the 4Ps of creativity

With deep historical roots in culture and even myth, ‘creativity’ travels from its first formal English dictionary entry at the end of 19th Century (Kaufman & Glaveneau 2019) to becoming central in the re-branding of cultural industries as creative (Hesmondhalgh & Baker 2011) in the proceeding century. However, despite being studied with academic rigour since the 1950s (Sawyer 2012), there is no agreed theory of creativity (Sternberg & Lubart 1999, Hennessey & Amabile 2010). Given this epic rise in its cultural and industrial importance, there have been many attempts in recent decades at explaining the nature of creativity, including whether it can be aided or even managed from an economic perspective. This thesis aims to join this this specific and on-going challenge by looking at creativity in the industrial context of magazine publishing: an established cultural industry and one on the cusp of what could be called ‘digital change’ in the last decade. In an attempt at adding to the definitional and methodological understanding of creativity in media, this thesis adopts a componential or holistic ‘4 Ps’ conceptualisation (first discussed by Mel Rhodes, 1961), by considering creativity in People, Process, Place and Products. A key element of this work, the ‘4Ps’ model developed is used to interpret a theorised relationship between four variables by way of proximal ‘measures’ – ones instrumentalised by reviewing cultural theory (such as genius and ‘Big C’ creativity of Weisburg 1993 and Csikszentmihaly 1988) and the social psychology confluence theories of ‘Small C’, everyday creativity (Sternberg & Lubart 1991, Amabile 1983, 1996). Through qualitative research methods, individual and group interviews, as well as organisational autoethnographic accounts from magazine publishers, editors, entrepreneurs and employees (including two ‘historical’ magazines cases), nine case study findings have been used to form structured qualitative datasets, aiding interpretation of interrelatedness of the ‘4 Ps of creativity’. A primary contribution of the thesis is therefore located within the ontological contention of empirical ‘measurement’ – and its approach to creativity judgement in the fields of cultural studies, the emerging field of media management (Malmelin & Virta, 2016, Virta & Malmelin 2017) and creative industries study (Kung 2008a, 2008b). In addition to the research’s approach, the creativity and media management insights aim to shine a light on an industry facing an existential threat from the digital shift. Where magazines today are shown to perhaps need less ‘heroic’ personality-defined People creativity (unlike the 1990s), creativity in the digital era is important in other ways. In nuancing different types of ‘Big C’ and ‘Small C’ creativity in contemporary magazine work, the study makes a case for adapting creativity management models such as Amabile’s (1996 and Amabile & Pratt 2016) and Tan (1998) by focusing on Process aspects of skills and knowledge development, aided through differentiated environmental Place culture factors suited to magazine genres, clients and audiences in changing fields with new domains of knowledge

Creative industries policy in Taiwan: the effects of neoliberal reform

Since 2002 Taiwan has transformed its cultural policy, following the lead of the UK's creative industry discourse in particular and neoliberal policy regimes in general. This thesis investigates the processes through which neoliberal thinking shaped changing cultural policy and the impact this has had on cultural workers and practices in Taiwan s cultural landscape. I examined policy making documents and interviewed a range of involved actors, including government officials and cultural workers to learn more about the policy process and its impact. The research argues that the creative economy has heavily influenced the development of cultural policy discourse and generally failed to promote the public interest in Taiwan. The results of neoliberalisation have been embodied in several salient characteristics such as the privatisation of public space, marketisation of public subsidy and investment, commercialisation of higher education, and flexibilisation of cultural labour market. I argue that cultural policy needs to be reshaped to represent the public interests and diversity of our cultural landscape

The price of freedom: the opportunities and constraints of freelance employment for older workers : a study of media professionals

The UK's population is ageing at a time when its oldest workers are leaving the labour market at progressively younger ages. This paradox - of declining economic activity rates among the 50 plus age group and rising longevity - has led to widespread concern over the social and economic consequences . Meanwhile, flexible work has grown in the UK economy and has been promoted as a promising solution to 'the problem' of older workers. Portfolio-type work in particular has been presented as a liberating option for the over 50s. Working for a range of clients, so the argument goes, would allow older workers to bypass barriers to employment in later life (such as company-specific early exit programmes), and would also allow them to negotiate their own transition into retirement. Yet there is a lack of research that examines the realities of portfolio working and its sustainability for people wishing or needing to remain economically active in later life. This study of freelancing among older workers was located in a sector where portfolio-type work was well-established: the media industry. It relied on in-depth, face-to-face interviews with 51 people who were actively engaged in freelance work as employers, individual freelancers and industry experts. The aim was to understand the conflicts, barriers and opportunities to freelance employment for those aged 50 years and over, using two contrasting perspectives, one provided by Nikolas Rose in his 'powers of freedom' thesis and the other by Margaret Archer in her 'morphogenetic' approach to realist social theory. The study found that freelancing did extend working lives and permit a degree of freedom and control in later life. However, it was a form of employment which was insecure, volatile and largely unregulated. The oldest freelancers were vulnerable to diminishing rewards, dwindling networks, dated skills and ageist attitudes. Age was found to be an important mediating factor in the experience of risk in the freelance labour market

Transit: An analysis of networked criminal groups and criminal opportunities at transit ports

Like the path of many contraband commodities, trafficked cultural objects cross countless legal borders and intersect with the legitimate market world at a number of critical transit junctures, which supports the concept of a single “grey” market. These transit settings, where different elements of trafficking networks must converge, are sites of vulnerability for criminals and opportunity for law enforcement intervention. For this discussion, the case study of Subhash Kapoor’s trafficking network will be used as a frame of reference throughout the essay to support the idea that a port, as an interface in the global supply chain, is a critical site for analysis and understanding of international trafficking in cultural objects. What follows is a discussion of conceptualisations of organised crime in late modernity, a spatial analysis of the global cultural heritage trade, and an overview of the securitisation and role of sea ports in trade

Economic Growth, Innovation, Cultural Diversity. What Are We All Talking About? A Critical Survey of the State-of-the-art

This report constitutes the first deliverable of the project ENGIME – Economic Growth and Innovation in Multicultural Environments, financed by the European Commission – FP5 – Key Action: Improving socio-economic knowledge base. Contract HPSE-CT2001-50007Multiculturalism, Diversity, Economic Growth