Essay Example: Creative Industries and Meritocracy

There exists a general concern that the present creative industries have become increasingly meritocratic. The creative class remains a theorized socioeconomic class. According to some critics, innovative workers have continued to drive the creative economy in most post-industrial towns. The creative class consists of two categories of workers, namely the super-creative group and the creative professionals (Littler, 2017). The super-creative workers contain several occupations, such as research, science, computer science, engineering, and education. Besides, this category comprises professions like design, arts, and media, among others. The group does many innovations, like developing business products.

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Creative professionals refer to knowledge-based employees, such as those employed in the healthcare, financial sector, education, and legal sector. The emerging creative class consisting of intellectuals, skilled workers, and different kinds of artists who continues to enhance the creative industry may indicate a general change away from conventional agriculture, industry-based markets, or a typical transformation into more sophisticated economic orders (Batabyal & Yoo, 2018). Most urban centers have displayed such a shift in trend hosting a vast creative workers populace. The creative class can enhance regional economic development through the implementation of innovative ideas (Littler, 2017). The innovative workers' roles entail thinking and developing new strategies for global challenges.

However, some researchers have disagreed with Florida's theory. These scholars argue that the innovative class assertion, and the related creative urban policy recommendation, has worsened the socioeconomic biasness in most cities across the globe (Gong & Hassink, 2017). The creative class approach provides no casual method and lacks circular rationality. Some scholars argue that Florida's theory requires analytical precision. In contrast, others have asserted that indices employed by Florida do not contain statistical evidence that urban centers with a higher population of creative class employees developed more than those with less creative economies (Batabyal & Yoo, 2018).

Besides, economists argue that financial and real estate employees cannot get included in the creative class (Littler, 2017). They assert that financial and real estate workers cannot contribute to sustainable cities and regional economic development. Besides, commercial and real estate sectors depend on capital inflows generated from productive ventures from other places that ensure their economic significance. Furthermore, critics of the theory argue that politicians mostly contribute to unstable cities, corruption, and regional instability (Gong & Hassink, 2017). Some of the critics also noted that the theory largely depends on educational achievement as its foundation in classifying the creative class.

Besides, they stressed that human creativity could not entirely rely on education since individuals at various stages of schooling show a significant degree of resourcefulness. To emphasize their critics of the theory, researchers argue that economic development results from the incorporation of creative workers who possess scientific (technologic) and artistic knowledge in the model (Littler, 2017). However, they note that such macro-level deduction need not rely on Florida's theory of creative class since it only validates the modern class relationships. Other critics argue that the definition of 'creativity' remains narrow and only exist as a possibility for economic and financial development.

Rather than confirm Florida's unexpected theory that argues that enticing the creative class will result in economic development, empirical studies indicate that prosperous regions attract and sustain human resources (Batabyal & Yoo, 2018). Most people accepted Florida's statement since he argued that any urban centre could prosper with the deployment of the correct infrastructure funding, policies, and consulting services. From these arguments, Richard Florida's statement that the creative economy relies on meritocracy remains a thesis that requires further research.

Equality and Diversity in the Creative Economy

There exists a lack of equality and diversity in the creative economy. Lack of equality and diversity refers to the unequal treatment of people based on gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality, among others. Research findings have indicated that white males dominate the creative industry, while a small percentage of women have employment in the creative economy (Mehta et al., 2018). Gender inequality matter remains a global challenge, especially in the creative economy in which there exist disparities in wages, long hours of work, and issues of childcare. Discrimination by gender in the creative economy remains high, hence the cause for several discrepancies and differences among men and women of equitable credentials and skills.

Industries like IT, engineering, commercial film production, and science, among others, have remained considerably male-dominated, while galleries, museums, publishing, and libraries, among others, remain significantly female-dominated (Littler, 2017). The creative economy also exhibits a lack of cultural diversities and equality regarding employment, leadership, and professional growth, among others.

There exist systematized processes that cause a lack of equality and diversity in creative industries. Most inequality happens due to implied prejudice. Employment in the creative industry and the benefits associated with such work, for most women, come after their family life. Since most women had to raise children, taking a full-time job became a challenge since they had little time and flexibility (Mehta et al., 2018). They thus opted for part-time work.

Besides, global outsourcing of skilled workers to drive the creative economy has also resulted in a reduction of job opportunities, especially those from poor urban communities. As the creative industries grow and the demand for more skilled employees has also contributed to the preference for competent individuals (Littler, 2017). The advancement of technology requires the hiring of highly skilled employees resulting in a lack of diversity in the creative economy. It becomes difficult for people of low socioeconomic status to acquire such training and education and by far employment and income.

Racial discrimination has also remained a global challenge due to stereotyping and historical injustices in which whites viewed blacks as inferior. Stereotyping also causes gender inequality in creative industries as men see women as less superior beings. The minority group and the disabled also suffer from stereotyping hence making them unable to secure jobs in the creative industries (Mehta et al., 2018). Lack of equality and diversity in the creative economy between diverse groups in society results from variations in a skill that begins during early learning.

Conclusion

The creative economy has no clear definition since it continues to evolve and build on the interaction between human creativity and technology, information, and intellectual property. Creative industries remain a vital aspect of economic and cultural value. Creative industries exist as the most dynamic industry in the global economy, offering new possibilities for developing nations and emerging markets to advance into evolving high-growth regions of the international marketplace.

References

Gong, H., & Hassink, R. (2017). Exploring the clustering of creative industries. European Planning Studies, 25(4), 583-600. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09654313.2017.1289154

Littler, J. (2017). Against meritocracy. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2017. Routledge. www.oapen.org/download?type=document&docid=1004179

Mehta, G., Yam, V. W., Krief, A., Hopf, H., & Matlin, S. A. (2018). The chemical sciences and equality, diversity, and inclusion. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 57(45), 14690-14698. www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/anie.201802038