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

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.