The cultural industries consist of those organizations that design, produce, and distribute products that appeal to aesthetic or expressive tastes more than to the utilitarian aspects of customer needs such as films, books, building designs, fashion, and music (Peterson & Berger, 1975, 1996; Hirsch, 1972, 2000; Lampel, Lant, & Shamsie, 2000). Less widely acknowledged, but as critical, cultural industries also create products that serve important symbolic functions such as capturing, refracting, and legitimating societal knowledge and values. For example, educational publishers influence what concepts and theories are promoted to students by the books they publish. Architects shape the sensibilities of interactions at work, home, and play by their choice of technologies, space design, and material resources. Music producers discover and promote vocal artists whose lyrics shape our understandings of age, gender, and ethnicity. Because of the societal impact of these symbolic functions, cultural industries have continued to interest both popular writers and sociologists alike. However, to a large degree the cultural industries have been considered unique and out of the mainstream, not a subject for developing general theory, and therefore relatively understudied by scholars of organizations. We argue it is no longer the case that cultural industries are so unique - representing small markets and industries of little matter to research in the sociology of organizations. Cultural industries are now one of the fastest growing and most vital sectors in the US and global economies (United States Census Reports, 2000). This growth is fueled in a large part by the nature of the knowledge, creative, and symbolic assets of cultural industries. These assets are increasingly the key underlying drivers of innovation and competitiveness in both national and global economies (Florida, 2002). In this volume we attempt to recognize that the functions of the symbolic, creative, and knowledge-based assets of cultural industries are also characteristic of the professional services industries as well, for example as design services, advertising, and even the more mundane services of auditing. Design services, one of the fastest growing areas in the US economy (United States Census Reports, 2000), employs symbolic, knowledge and creative assets to create desirable products for clients and consumers. Brand and product marketing has shifted from its primary focus on price and location to aesthetics, identity, and image management (Schmitt & Simonson, 1997). Even audit practices involve not only knowledge of standard accounting procedures, but more importantly the creative interpretation of complex tax codes, and the creation of symbols of public confidence in corporate practices. Yet few scholars have explored how cultural, professional services, and other industries illuminate one other. While a large part of our research and knowledge in the field of sociology stems from the study of the decreasing returns industries based in the economic traditions of land, labor, financial capital, and the industrial corporation (Chandler, 1962; Arthur, 1996; Fligstein, 1990), the US Census data reveal that these industries in all likelihood will not be the key drivers of the economy in the future. Instead, increasingly, those industries driven by creative workers and the professions - with organizing principles based in knowledge and aesthetics - combined in novel ways with the institutional logics of the market and the corporation - will be the industries to shape the new views of organizations and our understandings of institutional and organizational change. To date, we have a few descriptive and conceptual pieces with initial explorations such as Hirsch's (1975) comparison of the record and pharmaceutical industries, Powell's (1990) discussion of the convergence of biotech, high tech, film, music, and book publishing as network organizations, and Jones, Hesterly, & Borgatti (1997) examination of similarities among semiconductors, auto manufacturing, airplane outsourcing, and film for the application of network governance. We believe that scholarly work, however, has not yet cultivated insights from these cross connections to help us to understand institutional and organizational change. Indeed, in this volume our journey into the realm of cultural industries produces insights that would not be revealed in a Chandlerian (Chandler, 1962,1977) or Fligsteinian (Fligstein, 1990, 1996) world of organizations. By examining the ways in which participants of cultural industries organize and accomplish their goals, our attention is focused on fresh sociological insights and new challenges in the study of organizations. Given these transformational changes, the manuscripts in this volume illustrate how the boundaries become blurred between cultural and other related industries that also rest upon the endeavors of creative workers. In particular, we see these blending processes in the chapters that examine cell phones, television critics, accounting, and architecture. These dynamic interactions in the commercial landscape between the cultural and professional service industries provide a richer context for the authors in this volume to examine changes in a specific market or industry, and also to advance more generally our knowledge of the latest theoretical and methodological tools sociologists have to offer in understanding the institutional transformation of organizations. We are delighted to present these studies to you. Djelic and Ainamo (2005) explore the transpositions in institutional logics from the realm of aesthetic fashion to that of high technology in the context of the market for the emergent technology of cell phones. One of their findings points to the need for scope conditions on one of the key umbrella concepts of contemporary organization theory. Djelic and Ainamo show that the distinction between technical and in
