Exploring the Role of Professional Associations in Collective Learning in London and New York's Advertising and Law Professional-Service-Firm Clusters

James R Faulconbridge
Additional contact information
James R Faulconbridge: Department of Geography, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YW, England

Environment and Planning A, 2007, vol. 39, issue 4, 965-984

Abstract: The value of regional economies for collective learning has been reported by numerous scholars. However, often their work has been criticised for lacking analytical clarity and failing to explore the architectures of collective learning and the role of the knowledge produced in making firms in a cluster economy successful. In this paper I engage with these problematics and investigate how collective learning is facilitated in the advertising and law professional-service-firm clusters in London and New York. I explore the role of professional associations and investigate how they mediate a collective-learning process in each city. I argue that professional associations seed urban communities of practice that emerge outside of the formal activities of professional associations. In these communities individuals with shared interests in advertising and law learn from one another and are therefore able to adapt and evolve one-another's approaches to common industry challenges. I suggest this is another form of the variation Marshall highlighted in relation to cluster-based collective learning. I also show how the collective-learning process is affected by the presence, absence, and strength of an institutional thickness. I therefore argue that a richer understanding of institutional effects is needed in relation to collective learning.

Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a38190 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:39:y:2007:i:4:p:965-984

DOI: 10.1068/a38190

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().