An Arabian Phoenix: Trust, Cooperation and Performance in the Italian Animated Cartoons Industry

23 Pages Posted: 22 Apr 2003

See all articles by Giuseppe Delmestri

Giuseppe Delmestri

University of Bocconi - Organization and Human Resources Management Department

Date Written: June 2002

Abstract

New industries emerge thanks to the joint entrepreneurial actions of social actors in developing both a new knowledge base and institutional legitimacy. Creative industries have to deal with the supplementary tension between the domains of art and business, which carry different expectations, identities, constraints and opportunities. Industries trapped in a failure path face additional problems: not only a new knowledge base has to be developed but it has also to be recombined with the old one, not only legitimacy has to be obtained in an institutional void but hindering traces of past institutionalisation have to be dismantled. The Italian animated cartoon industry did find itself in the middle of such divergent institutional requirements. Fifteen years of steep decline followed the golden seventies and only recently the knowledge base, the governance structure and the basis of legitimacy are in the process of being redefined. The analysis of this re-founding process is presented here. Different kinds of trust relationships developed in the industry based on artistic and technical competence: networks of reciprocal artistic respect coexist with networks based on complementarity. Network centrality reduced the need for capital and increased profitability but joint projects were developed mainly by technologically complementary firms and did not involve artistic cooperation. I state here the importance of considering conflicting institutional demands deriving from different domains like art and business or from the persistence of past legitimisation in explaining the re-foundation of an industry.

Keywords: Trust, creative industries, institutionalism, industry rebirth

JEL Classification: L2, M1, L82

Suggested Citation

Delmestri, Giuseppe, An Arabian Phoenix: Trust, Cooperation and Performance in the Italian Animated Cartoons Industry (June 2002). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=318902 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.318902

Giuseppe Delmestri (Contact Author)

University of Bocconi - Organization and Human Resources Management Department ( email )

Via Sarfatti 25
20136 Milan, MI 20136
Italy
0039-0258362613 (Phone)
0039-0258362634 (Fax)

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