7.2: Localized Learning in Global Production Networks
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- Petr Szczepanik
- University of California Press
Recent discussion of international production is dominated by neo-Marxist criticism of the New International Division of Cultural Labor (NICL). This approach sees the globalization of film production as a means for Hollywood to strengthen its international hegemony. It is said that Hollywood achieved this powerful position in several ways, including sidestepping U.S. labor unions, disempowering and deskilling the global workforce, and fostering levels of uncertainty that destabilize local producers. NICL, it is argued, transforms locations into industrial sites for service providers, making them prone to dependency, underdevelopment, and disinvestment. 3
Although it has broadened our understanding of the global political economy, neo-Marxist analysis of this kind can be criticized for its U.S.-centricism. By largely duplicating positions advanced by American screen unions, this approach arguably paints a somewhat unbalanced picture of power relations between U.S. companies and their overseas suppliers. Such an approach could also be accused, on the one hand, of focusing on the short-term project-based thinking of incoming producers, such as choosing between different levels of incentives, labor costs, and production services offered in competing locations. On the other hand, it could be accused of disregarding the long-term “location interests” that have led local companies and policymakers to embrace international production, including development of studios and film services, branding, and knowledge transfer. 4 My interview subjects tended to demand a more measured perspective on the effects of international production on creative labor. They did not lament the exploitation spotlighted by neo-Marxists. Rather than denounce overseas producers when confronted with the precariousness of their working lives, these workers spotlighted difficulties caused by local policies, coworkers, and intermediary service companies. They also compared their working lives to schooling, inasmuch as their work afforded opportunities to learn American-style practices without leaving their hometowns. They invoked a postsocialist imaginary derived from their mediated experiences of foreign production practices, restricted mobility, and limited career prospects.
From the perspective of a regional postsocialist production center, these location interests can be illuminated by the work of the Manchester School of Economic Geography. 5 Its theory of global production networks (GPNs) considers how opportunities for knowledge diffusion are opened by two parallel processes: the dispersion of the value chain across corporations and national boundaries, and integration across hierarchical layers of network participants. In contrast to neo-Marxism, this position considers local workers to be social actors rather than victims. It emphasizes the multiactor and multiscalar characteristics of transnational production, alongside societal and territorial embeddedness. Within GPNs, “global network flagships” source specialized capabilities from outside the company itself; 6 however, knowledge transfer does not guarantee effective knowledge diffusion. Rather, knowledge must be internalized and translated into capabilities, because local suppliers learn by converting explicit into tacit knowledge. Qualitative data garnered from my interviewees suggests that mutual learning, social networks, and cultural mediators play key roles in the lives of Prague’s filmmakers.
In contrast to the permanent positions, standardized careers, and formalized training procedures that were central to the pre-1991 Czech production scene, today’s interfirm, “boundaryless” careers demand that workers adapt rapidly to complex new tasks 7 and a shared industrial culture, which helps them rapidly form new teams with strangers. Central to the formation of these informal, variable social networks are horizontal flows of information and tacit organizational knowledge. American heads of departments, line producers, and above-the-line talent work directly with local crews, integrating them into production teams and exposing them to tacit knowledge.
Processes of externalization and internalization are particularly intense when lengthy location shoots expose crews to foreign working practices. Economic geography has shown us that learning through offshoring depends on face-to-face contact between incoming and local actors. Malmberg and Maskell identified three dimensions of “localized learning.” First, a “vertical” dimension involves interaction between business partners, input/output relations, and their distinct yet complementary activities. Second, the “horizontal” dimension involves observation, benchmarking, and imitating similar activities. A third, “social” dimension involves everyday exposure to shared industry “buzz” or interpretative schemes. The long-term success of these processes is dependent on additional factors, including the degree of trust or quality of network relations that exists among interacting sites and between the initial local knowledge base and its institutional setup. 8
Accordingly, I would like to propose three provisional hypotheses linking globalization of production with creative labor and localized learning in the postsocialist work world of Prague. First, the city’s position in global production networks suggests a multidirectional version of globalization, wherein local agents react to global forces, and “location interests” and “localized learning” are preconditioned by historical and environmental specificities. Intermediaries play a key role in translocal transactions—in Prague’s case, usually production services. Second, the “postsocialist precarity” of creative workers results more from an internal than international division of labor. Prague is compartmentalized due to a fragmented production sector, a lack of strong workers’ organizations, and the selective involvement of the state. Politicians have focused on separating the constituent sectors of the screen media industry into an indigenously produced “national culture,” which it feels needs state support, production services (perceived as a pure business), and the traditionally strong public service media that typically attracts their attention. Third, although it has improved the local infrastructure, the globalization of media production has failed to improve the quality of locally produced screen media due to barriers continuing to hamper transnational learning and career development. Innovative, internationally successful, and critically applauded works are more likely to come either from smaller production companies deeply rooted in the local environment, who are able to combine original content with smaller-scale international services, or from multinational companies like HBO, who nurture long-term relationships with local talent and understand the local market, than directly from workers and companies servicing Hollywood’s big-budget runaway productions.