Exploring the Role of Professional Associations in Collective Learning in London and New York's Advertising and Law Professional-Service-Firm Clusters

Abstract

The value of regional economies for collective learning has been reported by numerous scholars. However, often their work has been criticised for lacking analytical clarity and failing to explore the architectures of collective learning and the role of the knowledge produced in making firms in a cluster economy successful. In this paper I engage with these problematics and investigate how collective learning is facilitated in the advertising and law professional-service-firm clusters in London and New York. I explore the role of professional associations and investigate how they mediate a collective-learning process in each city. I argue that professional associations seed urban communities of practice that emerge outside of the formal activities of professional associations. In these communities individuals with shared interests in advertising and law learn from one another and are therefore able to adapt and evolve one-another's approaches to common industry challenges. I suggest this is another form of the variation Marshall highlighted in relation to cluster-based collective learning. I also show how the collective-learning process is affected by the presence, absence, and strength of an institutional thickness. I therefore argue that a richer understanding of institutional effects is needed in relation to collective learning.