Creative Work Beyond the Creative Industries: An Introduction

Creative occupations exist across the entire economy. The creative worker’s habitus cannot be discovered by looking only in film studios, games companies or artist’s garrets. Work practices, evolved through the traditions of the creative and performing arts, are now deployed to create new services and products across all sectors, to develop process innovations, and to change the distribution thereof. Yet the bulk of academic study of creative work (both functionalist and critical), as well as the content of higher/further professional education programs and everyday understanding of creative workers, focuses on one subset of the Creative Industries: those involved in the production of cultural goods or services (film, television, music etc.) for consumption by the general public. And further, the bulk of existing academic work focuses on those creative workers employed in cultural production industries. However, as recent work has shown, this focus misses both the large (and increasing) number of creative workers embedded in industries beyond the core Creative Industries (for example, manufacturing, banking, mining) and those creative workers and firms that supply services to business as well as to the general public, such as architects, technical writers, and graphic designers (see Cunningham 2013; Potts and Cunningham 2008; Potts, Cunningham, Hartley and Omerod 2008). This book focuses on this subset of very important, and yet under-recognized creative workers: embedded creative workers and providers of creative services into other sectors of the economy, as indicated in the following taxonomy (Figure 1.1), which juxtaposes occupation and industry sector...

Preparation, characterization of surfactants modified clay minerals and nitrate adsorption

Organic surfactants modified clay minerals are usually used as adsorbents for hydrophobic organic contaminants remediation; this work however has shown organoclays can also work as adsorbents for hydrophilic anionic contaminant immobilization. Organoclays were prepared based on halloysite, kaolinite and bentonite and used for nitrate adsorption, which are significant for providing mechanism for the adsorption of anionic contaminants from waste water. XRD was used to characterize unmodified and surfactants modified clay minerals. Thermogravimetric analysis (TG) was used to determine the thermal stability and actual loading of surfactant molecules. Ion chromatography (IC) was used to determine changes of nitrate concentration before and after adsorption by these organoclays. These organoclays showed different removal capacities for anionic ions from water and adsorption mechanism was investigated.

Which industry is greener? An empirical study of nine industries in OECD countries

This study analyzed the relationship between the CO2 emissions of different industries and economic growth in OECD countries from 1970 to 2005. We tested an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis and found that total CO2 emissions from nine industries show an N-shaped trend instead of an inverted U or monotonic increasing trend with increasing income. The EKC hypothesis for sector-level CO2 emissions was supported in the (1) paper, pulp, and printing industry; (2) wood and wood products industry; and (3) construction industry. We also found that emissions from coal and oil increase with economic growth in the steel and construction industries. In addition, the non-metallic minerals, machinery, and transport equipment industries tend to have increased emissions from oil and electricity with economic growth. Finally, the EKC turning point and the relationship between GDP per capita and sectoral CO2 emissions differ among industries according to the fuel type used. Therefore, environmental policies for CO2 reduction must consider these differences in industrial characteristics. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

What do young Australian engineers want? Strategies to attract this talent to less glamorous industries

Chapters in Book 1 of this two-volume set explored literature pertaining to the shortage of engineers in Australia, the ageing engineering workforce, issues of skilled migration, and career development and pathways. The companion chapter to this one in Book 1 explored attraction and image issues of certain industries that required a pipeline of engineers. This chapter will reflect on our research with final-year engineering students in Australian universities and TAFE colleges regarding their career aspirations, industries and/or organisations that they identify as attractive employers, and their perceptions of a low-profile industry, namely the Australian rail industry. This chapter will also discuss specific, evidence-based strategies and activities to enhance the image and attraction of low-profile industries.

Profiling contextual factors which influence safety in heavy vehicle industries

A significant proportion of worker fatalities within Australia result from truck-related incidents. Truck drivers face a number of health and safety concerns. Safety culture, viewed here as the beliefs, attitudes and values shared by an organisation’s workers, which interact with their surrounding context to influence behaviour, may provide a valuable lens for exploring safety-related behaviours in heavy vehicle operations. To date no major research has examined safety culture within heavy vehicle industries. As safety culture provides a means to interpret experiences and generate behaviour, safety culture research should be conducted with an awareness of the context surrounding safety. The current research sought to examine previous health and safety research regarding heavy vehicle operations to profile contextual factors which influence health and safety. A review of 104 peer-reviewed papers was conducted. Findings of these papers were then thematically analysed. A number of behaviours and scenarios linked with crashes and non-crash injuries were identified, along with a selection of health outcomes. Contextual factors which were found to influence these outcomes were explored. These factors were found to originate from government departments, transport organisations, customers and the road and work environment. The identified factors may provide points of interaction, whereby culture may influence health and safety outcomes.

Informal Sectors and New Industries: The Complexities of Regulating Occupational Health and Safety in Developing Countries

Focusing on paid work that blurs traditional legal boundaries and the challenge this poses to traditional forms of labour regulation, this collection of original case studies illustrates the wide range of different forms of regulation designed to provide decent work. The original case studies cover a diversity of workers from across developed and developing countries, the formal and informal economies and public and private work spaces. Each deals with the failings of traditional labour law, and several explore the capacity of different forms of regulatory techniques, such as commercial law, corporate codes of conduct, or supply chain regulation, to protect workers.

International Perspectives on Business Innovation and Disruption in the Creative Industries : Film, Video and Photography

This volume examines how disruptive innovations are reshaping industry boundaries and challenging conventional business models and practices in the industries for film, video and photography. The thirteen chapters provide a rich and diverse account of these processes from a wide range of country contexts. The book fills the gap between the study of disruption by innovation scholars in business schools and the recognition of disruption by academics and practitioners from non-business school disciplines and contexts, including the broader social sciences.

Industry-government collaboration : Queensland's IT&T Strategy and the Information Industries Board

This paper presents a field study of the Queensland Information Technology and Telecommunications Industry Strategy (QITIS), and of the Information Industries Board (IIB), a joint industry-state government body established in 1992 to oversee the implementation of that strategy for the development of the IT&T Industry in Queensland. The aim of the study was to analyse differing stakeholder perspectives on the strategy and on its implementation by the IIB. The study forms part of a longer-term review which aims to develop methodologies for the selection of appropriate strategies for the IT&T Industry, and for the evaluation of outcomes of strategy.

Creative graduate pathways within and beyond the creative industries

This special issue explores the nuances of graduate creative work, the kinds of value that creative graduates add through work of various types, graduate employability issues for creative graduates, emerging and developing creative career identities and the implications for educators who are tasked with developing a capable creative workforce. Extent literature tends to characterise creative careers as either ‘precarious’ and insecure, or as the engine room of the creative economy. However, in actuality, the creative workforce is far more heterogeneous than either of these positions suggest, and creative careers are far more complex and diverse than previously thought. The task of creative educators is also much more challenging than previously supposed. In this introductory article, we commence by providing a brief overview of the creative labour debates, and the evidence for each position. We present the latest literature in this area that starts to speak to how diverse and complex the landscape of creative work actually is. We then introduce each of the articles in this special issue and indicate how they contribute to a more multi-faceted picture of creative activity, and the lives and career trajectories of graduates from creative degrees.

Data as an asset: what the oil and gas sector can learn from other industries about “Big Data”

The upstream oil and gas industry has been contending with massive data sets and monolithic files for many years, but “Big Data” is a relatively new concept that has the potential to significantly re-shape the industry. Despite the impressive amount of value that is being realized by Big Data technologies in other parts of the marketplace, however, much of the data collected within the oil and gas sector tends to be discarded, ignored, or analyzed in a very cursory way. This viewpoint examines existing data management practices in the upstream oil and gas industry, and compares them to practices and philosophies that have emerged in organizations that are leading the way in Big Data. The comparison shows that, in companies that are widely considered to be leaders in Big Data analytics, data is regarded as a valuable asset—but this is usually not true within the oil and gas industry insofar as data is frequently regarded there as descriptive information about a physical asset rather than something that is valuable in and of itself. The paper then discusses how the industry could potentially extract more value from data, and concludes with a series of policy-related questions to this end.

China’s creative industries: Challenges matched by opportunities

Report for the German Chamber of Commerce in China. "China’s growing economic, political, and military capacity is the most geopolitically significant development of the 21st century, which is already being branded ‘the Asian Century.’ Certainly the economic decline of the US and Europe has played directly into the hands of China’s nationalists, who yearn for a return to past glory and who seek symbolic retribution for almost two centuries of foreign oppression and humiliation...."--publisher website

Developing creative services industries in Hangzhou, China

Creativity is changing the People’s Republic of China according to Li Wuwei (2011), a leading Chinese economist and policy advisor. The nation is learning to embrace a “third industrial revolution” (Rifkin, 2011) while banking the economic capital of the carbon-dependent manufacturing economy. Urbanisation is also driving change and consumer culture (Gerth, 2010). Most of China’s high-value creative service industries are found in the large urban centres of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the coastal provinces. China’s second-tier cities, including Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, are also seeking to make capital out of culture, albeit with different strategies than the coastal hubs. The Hangzhou metropolitan area is the fourth largest in China, with 8.8 million residents. Zhejiang province was once known as the “land of rice and fish.” However, with the increased emphasis on productivity in China’s economic reforms since 1978, the province became an economic heavyweight, characterised by small and medium-sized enterprises often working together to produce complementary products...

Creative industries and the wider economy

Researchers have argued that the creative industries have significant effects on the wider economy, with early agendas focused on urban regeneration, job creation, and economic value-added. Later work extended to new firm creation, the growth of new markets, and regional clustering and development. This chapter reviews the evolution of thinking on classifying the creative industries as a ‘sector’, or group of sectors, and outlines contributions on economic ‘spillovers’ regarding knowledge, innovation, and graduate talent. Work on creative clusters has highlighted the widespread adoption of forms of organization and contracting developed in such clusters. Later work by the authors has contributed a ‘creative trident’ model, and shifted focus to employment and the position of creative workers in the economy, showing that there are more creatives working outside the creative industries than within them. The chapter reflects on the specific role of design and the relationship between the creative industries and innovation.