Book Review: The Oxford Handbook of Creative Industries

Candace Jones, Mark Lorenzen, Jonathan Sapsed , eds.: The Oxford Handbook of Creative Industries. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 576 pp. $170.00, hardcover.

Santi Furnari of City University London recently published a book review for The Oxford Handbook of Creative Industries in Administrative Science Quarterly. An excerpt from the review:

The Oxford Handbook of Creative Industries is a comprehensive compendium of up-to-date scholarly works on the formation, dynamics, and outcomes of creative industries. Two distinctive strengths of this handbook are the breadth of topics covered and the diversity of disciplinary perspectives brought to bear to examine such topics. The volume puts together a unique collection of leading scholars from different disciplines (management, sociology, economics, law, psychology, urban planning, and public policy) covering the complete range of theoretical and practical issues that characterize the study of creative industries today…

These diverse contributions are elegantly framed by the editors’ introduction to the volume, which not only works well in setting the stage for the other chapters but also provides a useful theoretical framework to organize the arguments and evidence presented in them. This framework identifies two conceptual dimensions of a creative product: semiotic codes (i.e., the relations among the symbolic elements embedded in a creative product) and the material base (i.e., the technologies and materials giving form to a creative product). Each of these dimensions may undergo change, either slow or fast, depending on four change drivers: demand, technology, policy, and globalization. The result of this conceptualization is a two-by-two typology classifying four types of change in the creative industries depending on the pace (fast vs. slow) and locus (semiotic codes vs. material bases) of change.

You can read the full book review from Administrative Science Quarterly free for the next two weeks by clicking here. Want to know about all the latest research from Administrative Science Quarterly? Click here to sign up for e-alerts!