IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v48y2016i7p1428-1446.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Transnational freelancing: Ephemeral creative projects and mobility in the music recording industry

Author

Listed:
  • Allan Watson
  • Jonathan V Beaverstock

Abstract

Drawing on Gernot Grabher’s work on projects and project ecologies, there has developed a significant literature concerned with project-based organisations, recognising the fluid, transient, skills-based and localised nature of such forms. Yet, despite the inherent need within projects to draw on highly skilled labour, such literature has tended to overlook the importance of freelance, mobile labour within project ecologies, instead focusing on localised labour pools. In this paper, through a unique case study of transnational freelancing in the music recording industry, we provide a critique and development of Grabher’s conceptualisation of projects. Specifically, we focus on freelance labour to reveal the ways in which transnational mobility can reproduce social processes that have assumed to be localised, and thus the ways in which project work can stimulate mobility. Emphasising the very high degrees of ephemerality and latency with social networks, we argue that the social context in which projects operates needs to be considered well beyond local geographical contexts, with mobility acting to bridge extended periods of latency and reproduce project networks. Further, we extend the notion of social proximity within projects by considering how new ecologies of physical and virtual mobility are redefining freelance labour in the music recording industry.

Suggested Citation

  • Allan Watson & Jonathan V Beaverstock, 2016. "Transnational freelancing: Ephemeral creative projects and mobility in the music recording industry," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 48(7), pages 1428-1446, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:48:y:2016:i:7:p:1428-1446
    DOI: 10.1177/0308518X16641412
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0308518X16641412
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0308518X16641412?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Storper & Anthony J. Venables, 2004. "Buzz: face-to-face contact and the urban economy," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 4(4), pages 351-370, August.
    2. Gernot Grabher, 2002. "The Project Ecology of Advertising: Tasks, Talents and Teams," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(3), pages 245-262.
    3. Oli Mould & Tim Vorley & Kai Liu, 2014. "Invisible Creativity? Highlighting the Hidden Impact of Freelancing in London's Creative Industries," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(12), pages 2436-2455, December.
    4. Peter Maskell, 2001. "The Firm in Economic Geography," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 77(4), pages 329-344, October.
    5. Gernot Grabher, 2002. "Cool Projects, Boring Institutions: Temporary Collaboration in Social Context," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(3), pages 205-214.
    6. Anne Aguilera, 2008. "Business travel and mobile workers," Post-Print halshs-00489821, HAL.
    7. Meric S. Gertler, 2003. "Tacit knowledge and the economic geography of context, or The undefinable tacitness of being (there)," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(1), pages 75-99, January.
    8. Tim Vorley & Oli Mould & Richard Courtney, 2012. "My Networking Is Not Working! Conceptualizing the Latent and Dysfunctional Dimensions of the Network Paradigm," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 88(1), pages 77-96, January.
    9. Aguilera, Anne, 2008. "Business travel and mobile workers," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 42(8), pages 1109-1116, October.
    10. Dominic Power & Daniel Hallencreutz, 2002. "Profiting from Creativity? The Music Industry in Stockholm, Sweden and Kingston, Jamaica," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 34(10), pages 1833-1854, October.
    11. P. Du Gay & G. Salaman & B. Rees, 1996. "The Conduct of Management and the Management of Conduct: Contemporary Managerial Discourse and the Constitution of the ‘Competent’ Manager," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 263-282, May.
    12. Tim Vorley & Oli Mould & Richard Courtney, 2012. "My Networking Is Not Working! Conceptualizing the Latent and Dysfunctional Dimensions of the Network Paradigm," Economic Geography, Clark University, vol. 88(1), pages 77-96, January.
    13. Meric S. Gertler, 2001. "Best practice? Geography, learning and the institutional limits to strong convergence," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 1(1), pages 5-26, January.
    14. Leyshon, Andrew, 2014. "Reformatted: Code, Networks, and the Transformation of the Music Industry," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199572410.
    15. Michael Taylor & Bjørn Asheim, 2001. "The Concept of the Firm in Economic Geography," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 77(4), pages 315-328, October.
    16. Gary A S Cook & Naresh R Pandit & Jonathan V Beaverstock, 2011. "Cultural and Economic Complementarities of Spatial Agglomeration in the British Television Broadcasting Industry: Some Explorations," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 43(12), pages 2918-2933, December.
    17. Lundin, Rolf A. & Söderholm, Anders, 1995. "A theory of the temporary organization," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 437-455, December.
    18. Andrew Leyshon, 2009. "The Software Slump?: Digital Music, the Democratisation of Technology, and the Decline of the Recording Studio Sector within the Musical Economy," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 41(6), pages 1309-1331, June.
    19. Nancy Ettlinger, 2003. "Cultural economic geography and a relational and microspace approach to trusts, rationalities, networks, and change in collaborative workplaces," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 145-171, April.
    20. Allan Watson & Jenna Ward, 2013. "Creating the Right ‘Vibe’: Emotional Labour and Musical Performance in the Recording Studio," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(12), pages 2904-2918, December.
    21. Gann, David M. & Salter, Ammon J., 2000. "Innovation in project-based, service-enhanced firms: the construction of complex products and systems," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(7-8), pages 955-972, August.
    22. Ash Amin & Patrick Cohendet, 2000. "Organisational Learning and Governance Through Embedded Practices," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 4(1), pages 93-116, March.
    23. Tara Vinodrai, 2006. "Reproducing Toronto’s Design Ecology: Career Paths, Intermediaries, and Local Labor Markets," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 82(3), pages 237-263, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gernot Grabher, 2002. "The Project Ecology of Advertising: Tasks, Talents and Teams," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(3), pages 245-262.
    2. Peter B. Doeringer & Pacey Foster & Stephan Manning & David Terkla, 2013. "Project-based industries and craft-like production: structure, location and performance," Chapters, in: Frank Giarratani & Geoffrey J.D. Hewings & Philip McCann (ed.), Handbook of Industry Studies and Economic Geography, chapter 4, pages 99-151, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Max-Peter Menzel, 2008. "Dynamic Proximities – Changing Relations by Creating and Bridging Distances," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 0816, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Oct 2008.
    4. Lars Frederiksen & Silvia Rita Sedita, 2005. "Embodied Knowledge Transfer Comparing inter-firm labor mobility in the music industry and manufacturing industries," DRUID Working Papers 05-14, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    5. Harald Bathelt & Johannes Glückler, 2005. "Resources in Economic Geography: From Substantive Concepts towards a Relational Perspective," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 37(9), pages 1545-1563, September.
    6. Peter Maskell & Harald Bathelt & Anders Malmberg, 2005. "Building Global Knowledge Pipelines The Role of Temporary Clusters," DRUID Working Papers 05-20, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    7. Christine Benna Skytt-Larsen & Lars Winther, 2015. "Knowledge Production, Urban Locations and the Importance of Local Networks," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(9), pages 1895-1917, September.
    8. Ibert, Oliver, 2004. "Projects and firms as discordant complements: organisational learning in the Munich software ecology," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(10), pages 1529-1546, December.
    9. G Grabher, 2002. "Fragile Sector, Robust Practice: Project Ecologies in New Media," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 34(11), pages 1911-1926, November.
    10. Mark Lorenzen & Lars Frederiksen, 2005. "On the Economics of Innovation Projects Product Experimentation in the Music Industry," DRUID Working Papers 05-23, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    11. Anders Malmberg & Peter Maskell, 2010. "An Evolutionary Approach to Localized Learning and Spatial Clustering," Chapters, in: Ron Boschma & Ron Martin (ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Economic Geography, chapter 18, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Manning, Stephan, 2017. "The rise of project network organizations: Building core teams and flexible partner pools for interorganizational projects," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(8), pages 1399-1415.
    13. Aspers, Patrik & Kohl, Sebastian & Power, Dominic, 2008. "Economic sociology discovering economic geography," economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, vol. 9(3), pages 3-16.
    14. Gordon L Clark & Ashby H B Monk, 2013. "Financial Institutions, Information, and Investing-At-A-Distance," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(6), pages 1318-1336, June.
    15. Martin M�ller & Allison Stewart, 2016. "Does Temporary Geographical Proximity Predict Learning? Knowledge Dynamics in the Olympic Games," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(3), pages 377-390, March.
    16. Glückler Johannes & Panitz Robert & Hammer Ingmar, 2020. "SONA: A relational methodology to identify structure in networks," ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography, De Gruyter, vol. 64(3), pages 121-133, November.
    17. Feldman, Maryann P. & Kogler, Dieter F., 2010. "Stylized Facts in the Geography of Innovation," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 381-410, Elsevier.
    18. Cheng-Yi Lin, 2014. "The Evolution of Taipei’s Music Industry: Cluster and Network Dynamics in the Innovation Practices of the Music Industry," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(2), pages 335-354, February.
    19. Allan Watson & Jonathan V. Beaverstock, 2014. "World City Network Research at a Theoretical Impasse: On the Need to Re-Establish Qualitative Approaches to Understanding Agency in World City Networks," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 105(4), pages 412-426, September.
    20. Julien de Benedittis, 2019. "Transition between temporary organizations: Dimensions enabling economies of recombination," Post-Print emse-02267574, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:48:y:2016:i:7:p:1428-1446. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.