CAREERS, COMMUNITIES, AND INDUSTRY EVOLUTION: LINKS TO COMPLEXITY THEORY

Michael B. Arthur (), Robert J. Defillippi () and Valerie J. Lindsay ()
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Michael B. Arthur: Sawyer School of Management, Suffolk University, 8 Ashburton Place, Boston, MA 02108, USA
Robert J. Defillippi: Sawyer School of Management, Suffolk University, 8 Ashburton Place, Boston, MA 02108, USA
Valerie J. Lindsay: Department of International Busines, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand

International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), 2001, vol. 05, issue 02, 239-255

Abstract: Traditional views of industry evolution focus on the company as their principal unit of analysis. We offer an alternative view that links between workers' careers and successive community, company and industry effects. We apply this view to evidence from independent film-making, and suggest a conception of the career, involving three "ways of knowing", to underlie these links. We next explore two more industry examples, the New Zealand boat building industry and the Linux operating system in the software industry, which provide further support for the alternative view proposed, as well as extending it to consider the influence of the World Wide Web. We see all three industry examples as illustrating a range of ideas in complexity theory. We propose that a career-centric view provides a useful basis for the further exploration and application of complexity theory to industrial life.

Keywords: clusters; career; knowledge; complex systems; communities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
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DOI: 10.1142/S1363919601000361

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