Geoforum 38 (2007) 393–413 www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum
Everyday eVects, practices and causal mechanisms of ‘cultural embeddedness’: Learning from Utah’s high tech regional economy Al James Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Downing Place, Cambridge CB2 3EN, England, United Kingdom Received 2 June 2006; received in revised form 30 September 2006
Abstract In recent years, economic geographers have drawn extensively upon notions of ‘cultural embeddedness’ to explore how spatially variable sets of cultural conventions, norms, values and beliefs shape Wrms’ innovative performance in dynamic regional economies. However, our understanding of these causal links remains partial, reinforced by an ‘over-territorialised’ conception of cultural embeddedness which sidelines the role of institutional actors operating outside and across the boundaries of ‘the local’. So motivated, this paper oVers a theoretically-informed – and theoretically informing – empirical analysis of the high tech regional economy in Salt Lake City, Utah to explore the everyday causal mechanisms, practices and processes – both local and extra-local – through which Wrms’ cultural embedding within the region is manifested, performed and (un)intentionally (re)produced. In so doing, this paper aims to further our understanding of the constitutive entanglement and complex interweaving of cultural/economic practices, and to contribute to the development of an in-depth empirical corpus of work which compliments the exciting conceptual developments that have largely dominated cultural economic geography over the last decade. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Embeddedness; Innovation; Culture/economy; Region; Mechanisms; Salt Lake City
1. Introduction Received wisdom in economic geography has long held ‘economy’ and ‘culture’ as separate spheres, each with their own discrete set of institutions, rationalities and conditions of existence. However, since the early 1990s, economic geographers have increasingly rejected these economy ‘versus’ culture dualisms in favour of a range of more Xuid and hybrid conceptions that emphasize the mutual constitution of these two spheres (see e.g. Castree, 2004; Crang, 1997; Gibson-Graham, 1996; Lee and Wills, 1997; McDowell, 2000; Ray and Sayer, 1999). In so doing, scholars have brought to the centre of their analyses the so-called ‘soft’ sociocultural aspects of economic behaviour previously
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ignored in conventional economic analyses but which fundamentally organise the workings of the space economy (Wolfe and Gertler, 2001). This shift has been particularly apparent within the post-Fordist regional learning and innovation literature in economic geography. Here, scholars have drawn extensively upon the concept of ‘cultural embeddedness’ to explore how Wrms’ production processes operate within, and impact on, the spatially variable sets of social conventions, norms, attitudes, values and beliefs of the societies within which economic decisions and practices take place. Indeed there has now emerged a strong consensus that it is simply impossible to explain the continuing advantage of some regional economies over others if we fail to take into account the ways in which Wrms’ activities are culturally constituted (Storper, 1997; Saxenian, 1994). However, despite the widespread popularity of this concept, the economic consequences of cultural embeddedness,
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along with the causal mechanisms and practices through which Wrms come to be culturally embedded, remain poorly understood. The nature of this knowledge gap more broadly has been usefully summarised by Paivi Oinas: ‘We need to understand the various ways in which Wrms as collective actors and various individuals or groups of them are embedded, and the ways in which these diVerent embeddednesses are related to economic outcomes, both at the level of Wrms and their spatial environmentsƒ Empirical studies are needed, to open up the richness of “embeddedness” in comprehensive studies ƒ to reveal the processes through which economic action and outcomes are aVected by “embeddedness” ’ (1997, p. 30, emphases added). Taking up Oinas’s call, this paper aims to advance our understanding of ‘cultural embeddedness’ by means of a theoretically informed – and theoretically informing – empirical analysis of the regional high tech industrial agglomeration in Salt Lake City, Utah, a region widely recognized as the heartland of ‘Mormonism’, the distinctive culture associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (informally, the ‘Mormon Church’). Not only does this regional case study oVer a particularly visible (and hence measurable) instance of regional cultural economy, but in common with many other regions around the world, economic development oYcials in Utah have themselves increasingly recognised the fundamental role of cultural norms, values and conventions in shaping and conditioning regional economic competitiveness as they have sought to emulate Silicon Valley’s spectacular growth dynamic over the last three decades. The paper begins with a brief review of how diVerent notions of cultural embeddedness have been variously employed by economic geographers to understand uneven patterns of regional economic development, their conceptual divergence from Polanyi’s (1944) and Granovetter’s (1973, 1985) original formulations, and the ongoing limits to our understanding (Section 2). This is followed by an introduction to, and epistemic justiWcation of, the Salt Lake case study (Section 3). Section 4 summarises the main ways in which the behaviour of Utah’s high tech Wrms can be seen as constituted through, and diVerentially shaped by, the socially constructed norms, values and evaluative criteria within Mormonism, and also measures the consequences of that ‘cultural embedding’ for Wrms’ abilities to learn, innovate and compete (i.e. why cultural embeddedness matters). Section 5 then unpacks the multi-scaled set of ‘everyday’ practices, causal mechanisms and tangible agents through which Mormon cultural values come to deWne Wrms’ systems of organisational control, rule systems, decision-making processes, and observed behaviour – that is, it seeks to explain how cultural embeddedness is (re)constructed over time. Finally, Section 6 explores the wider signiWcance of this analysis in terms of its overcoming some persistent limitations within the regional learning and
innovation literature, and also identiWes some important directions for future research. 2. Connecting ‘cultural embeddedness’ to regional economic development Over the last two decades, in the context of the widely documented (although by no means uncontested) shift to a globalised post-Fordist knowledge economy, a major research agenda within economic geography has developed around the local determinants of entrepreneurship. Building on an earlier interest in agglomeration economies and ‘traded’ input–output linkages (e.g. Scott, 1986, 1988; Storper and Walker, 1989), scholars have broadened their analyses to examine how ‘untraded’ sociocultural, institutional and relational characteristics of regional industrial agglomerations foster and support conditions conducive to knowledge creation, inventiveness, information dissemination, and learning. The regional innovation and learning literature is now extensive (see MacKinnon et al., 2002 and Cumbers et al., 2003 for useful recent reviews), but at the broadest level the advantages of agglomeration are argued to emerge from: localised information Xows; technological spillovers; collective learning; and the creation of specialised pools of knowledge and skill premised on formal and informal networks of collaborative interaction between Wrms and their employees which aid the circulation of tacit knowledge within the region (Capello, 1999; Malmberg and Maskell, 1997, 2002). Crucially, scholars have also focused on the qualitative rules, conventions, and norms on which actors draw to combine varied skills, competencies and ideas to create new knowledge and so underpin innovation. Innovation is therefore increasingly regarded as a fundamentally interactive, and hence unavoidably socio-cultural, process (Asheim, 2001; Malecki and Oinas, 1999). One of the most common approaches within this regional learning and innovation literature has involved the geographical application and operationalisation of the concept of ‘embeddedness’ – although of course, the regional scale is by no means the only spatial logic of embeddedness! (see e.g. Coe et al., 2004; Hess, 2004; Lewis et al., 2002; Liu, 2000; Mol and Law, 1994). Embeddedness is broadly deWned as the set of social relationships between economic and non-economic actors (individuals as well as aggregate groups of individuals, i.e. organizations), which in turn create distinctive patterns of constraints and incentives for economic action and behaviour (see e.g. Hess, 2004; Jessop, 2001; Zukin and DiMaggio, 1990). The concept was Wrst put forward by Polanyi (1944) in his book ‘The Great Transformation’ which explicitly rejected the then dominant view of the economy as ‘natural’, pre-given, self-regulating and inevitable in form, instead arguing that markets are socially constructed and governed. Polanyi also distinguished between three types of economic exchange in society (reciprocal, redistributive and market) each characterised by a distinct form of embeddedness in social and
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cultural structures.1 Polanyi’s ideas were later reworked and reintroduced to social science in the mid-1980s by Marc Granovetter in reaction to: (i) an undersocialised view of economic action represented by neoclassical economics which ‘assumes rational self-interested behaviour minimally aVected by social relations’ (1985, p. 481); and (ii) an oversocialised view in modern sociology which conceives of ‘people as obedient to the dictates of consensually developed systems of norms and values, internalised through socialisation, so that obedience is not perceived as a burden’ (p. 483).2 Taking a route through the middle, Granovetter instead stressed the concrete and ongoing nature of the social relations in which economic actors are enmeshed, and outside of which it is impossible to understand fully their economic activities. In so doing, Granovetter shifted the analytical focus of embeddedness away from Polanyi’s earlier focus on abstract economies and societies onto individual people, groups, organisations and networks of interpersonal relationships (Emirbayer and Goodwin, 1994). These ideas were Wrst applied in economic geography in the early 1990s (see Dicken and Thrift, 1992), and have since given rise to an important research agenda within the sub-discipline. Regional economic geographical scholars have explored a number of diVerent dimensions of embeddedness, which can usefully be grouped together under three broad (albeit highly overlapping) headings, as recently typologised by Hess (2004, pp. 176–181). First, societal embeddedness refers to the ways in which the perceptions, strategies and actions of economic actors are inXuenced and shaped by their social, cultural and political backgrounds, both at the individual level and at the aggregate level of the Wrm (e.g. Dicken and Thrift, 1992; Harrison, 1992). Second, network embeddedness describes the composition, structure and architecture of formal and informal relationships among diVerent sets of individuals and organizations that a person or organisation is involved in, and how that in turn shapes their economic activities (e.g. Crewe, 1996; Park, 1996). Third, territorial embeddedness refers to the extent to which economic actors are ‘anchored’ in local territorial networks of institutions, and to how those actors are inXuenced by the economic activities and social dynamics that already exist in those places (e.g. Cooke, 2002; Markusen, 1996; Phelps et al., 1998; Scott, 1988; Tödtling, 1994; Turok, 1993). Arguably, it is Saxenian’s (1994) work on the divergent economic trajectories of Silicon Valley and Boston’s Route 128 through the 1980s is one of (if not the most!) widely
cited example of the ways in which embeddedness matters in a regional context. Controlling for industrial sector, products, historical period, business cycle position, political events, and nation-state, Saxenian highlighted the importance of local cultural societal determinants of industrial adaptation, their inXuence on interWrm networks of association, and their territorial manifestations. In Silicon Valley, Wrms’ embeddedness in a distinctive regional Californian counter culture characterized by a willingness to embrace risk, and loyalties to transcendent technologies over individual Wrms, underpinned a regional network-based industrial system based on blurred interWrm boundaries and Xexible adjustment among producers of complex related products.3 In contrast, Wrms’ embeddedness in a traditional conservative East Coast business culture in Route 128 is argued to have sustained relatively integrated corporations, lesser interaction, and lower rates of economic growth. Scholars have subsequently built upon Saxenian’s work to examine further how ‘cultural embeddedness’ shapes patterns of corporate behaviour, local production and employment relations, industrial adaptation and economic development in other regions4 (e.g. Amin and Thrift, 1994; Malecki, 1995; Morgan, 1997; Storper, 1995, 1997). However, while ‘cultural embeddedness’ has quickly become established as a conceptual lynchpin of the regional development literature, our understanding of the causal mechanisms and everyday practices through which spatially variable sets of socio-cultural conventions, norms, attitudes, values and beliefs shape and condition Wrms’ economic performance remains under-speciWed. Indeed, despite its popularity, even Saxenian’s (1994) study fails to outline fully the causal links between the competitive culture described in Silicon Valley and the success of this regional economy – and nor does Saxenian measure those causal links (Markusen, 1999). Additionally, regional learning accounts have tended to ‘dehumanise’ processes of cultural embedding, instead misrepresenting cultural embeddedness as something ethereal and eternal, divorced from everyday material practice, or else have misconstrued ‘it’ as a self-perpetuating inherited tradition that determines contemporary economic activities (see Gertler, 1997, 2004). Critics have also argued that these problems are compounded by a tendency within the regional learning literature to sideline the importance of wider extra-local structures (Lewis et al., 2002; MacKinnon et al., 2002; Markusen, 1999; Oinas, 2002), which reinforces a partial view of the structures and forces shaping processes of Wrms’ sociocultural embedding, based on a misplaced conception of regions as ‘closed systems’ or mere ‘containers
1 SpeciWcally, while non-market economies based on ‘reciprocal and redistributive exchange were constituted on the basis of shared values and norms that had their roots in social and cultural bonds rather than monetary goals, societies based on market exchange reXect only those underlying values and norms that consider price’ (Hess, 2004, p. 168). 2 In the undersocialised account, atomisation results from the utilitarian pursuit of self-interest; in the oversocialised account, it results from behaviour patterns having been internalised such that ongoing social relations have only a peripheral eVect on the behaviour of economic actors (p. 485).
3 Saxenian’s (1994) account has been contested by Florida and Kenney (1990). 4 Arguments have therefore aligned themselves with the earlier Xexible specialisation school accounts of successful industrial districts in NorthEastern Italy (e.g. Becattini, 1978; Brusco, 1982; Piore and Sabel, 1984), which placed heavy emphases on trust, cooperation, and artisanal production, to develop a theory of economic co-operation, where social ties and community relationships shape economic behaviour.
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of intangible assets and structures’ (Yeung, 2005, p. 47).5 Indeed, this restrictive focus on locally bounded economic activities means that our currently ‘over-territorialised’ notions of cultural embeddedness have lost sight of Polanyi’s original notions of ‘societal’ embeddedness (Hess, 2004, p. 173). In seeking to overcome these limitations, this paper explores the everyday mechanisms, practices and emergent eVects at the local and extra-local scales through which Wrms’ cultural embedding is manifest, performed and (un)unintentionally (re)produced.6 The paper also explores the interactions between diVerent mechanisms and practices of cultural embedding and their territorial manifestations. In so doing, the paper aims to further our understanding of the constitutive entanglement and interweaving of cultural/economic practices by grounding ‘cultural embeddedness’ in people’s everyday work-life experiences (following e.g. Dyck, 2005; Holloway and Hubbard, 2001; Smith, 2002). The next section introduces the Salt Lake City/Mormon case study and explains how – on the one hand – it oVers a particularly visible case for exploring these culture/economy issues, yet – on the other hand – it is by no means a unique case. 3. Case Study: Salt Lake City (high tech meets Mormonism) Salt Lake City is the main centre of population on Utah’s Wasatch Front, an urban corridor of four counties (Salt Lake, Weber, Davis and Utah) that runs north and south between the foot of the Wasatch Mountains to the east and Great Salt Lake to the west. High tech growth has occurred here in three waves: a defense industry build-up in the 1960s; growth of software and services in the 1980s (when many Silicon Valley Wrms began to move various functions to Utah); followed by a cascade of start-ups in the 1990s. This region is now home to over three quarters of Utah’s total population of 2.38 million (Table 1) with over 3400 high tech Wrms employing over 67,000 people across a range of subsectors (Utah Department of Workforce Services, 2004a; see also Table 2). ‘Computer software and systems design’ (formerly SIC 737) is Utah’s lead high tech subsector in terms of employment and number of establishments and therefore forms the focus of this analysis. SigniWcantly, the Wasatch Front is also the geographical heartland of Mormonism, the distinctive culture associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS 5 Arguably, this narrow approach results from a particular form of ‘closure by space’ (Massey, 1999, p. 263) in which case studies are delimited and deWned according to the same administrative boundaries within which highly accessible contextual data is initially available (typically at the county or Metropolitan Statistical Area level). Fundamentally, however, we cannot assume that the key processes that shape and condition our case studies similarly obey those same (often arbitrary) administrative boundaries. 6 Here I employ the language of Hudson (2005) whose work explores the production of ‘old industrial regions’ (through the case study of North East England).
Table 1 Utah and Wasatch Front populations and labourforce, 2003
Utah State Salt Lake City/Ogden MSA Salt Lake County Davis County Weber County Provo/Orem MSA Utah County
Population
Labourforce
2,378,696
1,184,385
924,826 255,343 205,802
512,293 124,837 109,497
422,409
181,832
Source: US Bureau of the Census (2004), Utah Department of Workforce Services (2004a,b).
Church). Mormons comprise over 75% of the state’s total population (LDS Church/Deseret News, 2000; Eliason, 2001), the same population from which Utah’s high tech workforce is drawn. Indeed, for its entire history as a political entity, Utah has been ‘Mormon Country’ (Poll, 2001, p. 164). Mormon culture is conservative by popular standards with strong family and community impulses (May, 2001). It includes prohibitions against alcohol and drug use, a commitment to fasting and prayer, modesty in dress, an emphasis on family and obedience to parents, and concerns for the elderly and the poor. The church also opposes abortion, divorce and premarital sex, whilst also emphasizing the Protestant ethics of diligence, education and the attainment of skills (Cornwall, 2001). Three key elements of Utah’s Mormon culture make it especially suited to this research. First, Mormonism is more than simply a creedal faith; it is a whole way of life requiring an almost total commitment in customs, values, and lifestyle (see Kotkin, 1993). Moreover, many commentators argue that Mormon culture is so strong that there also exists a Mormon ethnicity (Abramson, 1980; May, 2001; Mitchell, 2000). Second, the demographic dominance of Mormons in Utah creates a denomination-speciWc domination of Utah’s general culture7 – indeed, over 90% of all church members in Utah are LDS (Young, 1996). Third, Mormonism’s central tenets are easily articulated and well known, and its ideologies written 7 While I am aware of the dangers of essentialising Mormon cultural practices and playing down the role of non-Mormon sub-cultures within Utah, it is worth noting that the dominance of Mormon culture in Utah is manifest in a range of secondary data at the state level. First, Utah has been a Republican political stronghold since the 1960s, consistent with the time when LDS Church leaders began outspokenly to favour conservative positions on key social issues (Burbank et al. (2001)). Indeed, studies using public opinion data to summarise the ideological and partisan orientations of citizens by state have identiWed Utah as the most conservative and Republican state in the US on average (Erickson et al., 1993: 14–19; Wright et al., 2000: 41). Second, Utah’s fertility rate is approximately one third higher than the US national rate, a function of Utah having more babies per woman (c.f. US average) and a higher proportion of Utah’s female population being in child-bearing years compared with females nationally (Perlich, 1996). Both are consistent with Mormon family values which encourage marriage followed by childbearing (Cornwall, 1996; Smith and Shipman, 1996). Moreover, consistent with Mormonism’s discouragement of divorce and bearing children out of wedlock (Smith and Shipman, 1996), male and female Utahns alike are more likely to be married than individuals in the US at any age (ibid.).
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Table 2 Utah’s high tech subsectors, 2000 and 2003 NAICS
325413 333314 3341 3342 3344 3345 335991 3364 3391 5112 & 5415 51211 51219 5172 5174 5179 5181 54133 54138 54171
Description
In-vitro diagnostic substance manuf. Optical instrument and lens manuf. Computer and peripheral equipment manuf. Communications equipment manuf. Semiconductor and electronics manuf. Navigational, measuring & electromedical manuf. Carbon and graphite product manuf. Aerospace product and parts manuf. Medial equipment supplies manuf. Software and computer systems design Motion picture and video production Postproduction and related activities Wireless telecommunications carriers Satellite telecommunications Other telecommunications Internet service providers Engineering services Testing laboratories R&D in physical engineering and life sciences
TOT
Establishments
Employment
2000
2003
2000
2003
5 7 26 30 59 53 4 50 184 1512 185 15 87 11 5 250 583 107 227
5 7 23 29 51 58 2 44 185 1588 192 22 78 13 7 246 641 107 246
15 187 3942 2398 4618 3313 371 7472 7430 19,598 3003 45 1459 91 82 3779 5710 1187 3060
25 154 1158 2518 2970 3813 321 6302 7512 16,055 2322 20 719 87 53 3150 5975 1208 3722
3400
3544
67,715
57,354
Source: Utah Department of Workforce Services (2004a,b).
down and easily accessible. Moreover, the Utahn regional variant of Mormonism has been recognized as particularly visible, on the basis of the unique institutional history of this region (Salt Lake City was founded by the Mormons in 1847 and remains the worldwide administrative centre for the LDS Church) and the physical isolation of Salt Lake Valley itself (Poll, 2001). As such, Utah oVers a very visible case study to explore the everyday causal mechanisms and practices through which Wrms’ cultural embedding within regional economies is manifested, performed and (un)intentionally (re)produced, and hence through which we might further our understanding of the constitutive entanglement and complex interweaving of cultural/economic practices. Crucially however, while this is a very visible case study, it is by no means unique. Rather, there are thousands of regional economies worldwide similarly premised on strong cohesive regional cultures (be those based on gender, ethnicity, trade unions, or particular sectoral specializations for example) which unavoidably shape and condition local patterns of entrepreneurship and regional economic development trajectories. At the same time, some of the most celebrated examples of regional industrial economies in the geographical literature are themselves also based on religious regional cultures. These include Boston’s Route 128, embedded in New England’s Protestant culture which has been shown to sustain conservative business cultures in local large electronics Wrms (Saxenian, 1994); the ethnic immigrant networks in Silicon Valley premised on Buddhist, Hindu and Shintoist culture, which connect local Wrms to dynamic growth regions in South–East Asia (e.g. Saxenian, 1999; Saxenian et al., 2002); and the embeddedness of the military industrial complex in Colorado Springs
in a strong Christian Evangelical regional culture (Gray and Markusen, 1999). These religious cultural examples are linked by a high degree of visibility, which in turn has oVered scholars an important means of analysing culture– economy interactions feasibly, and hence facilitated the development of conceptual understandings which might then be applied to other regions with regional cultures that are less visible (and hence amenable to study) in the Wrst instance. Herein, therefore, lies the wider relevance of the Utah case to the established regional learning and innovation literature. 3.1. Methodology This research was carried out between 2000 and 2004. Initially, an industrial survey of the leading 105 computer software Wrms by 2000 revenue (10% sample) was conducted across the four counties of the Wasatch Front.8 Firms in the survey dataset employ 7585 people in Utah, and in 2000 generated a combined revenue of $1031 million from their Utah operations. SigniWcantly, almost threequarters (69%) of the Wrms in the survey sample are Mormon founded; 68% have a Mormon majority management team; and 58% are Mormon founded and managed. (Arguably, these Wgures represent the broadest indicator of Wrms’ 8 SpeciWcally, the survey focused on Wve key areas of the Wrm: (i) occupational structure and workforce composition; (ii) interWrm relationships and external orientation; (iii) Wnancing histories; (iv) Wrms’ in-house technological capabilities and innovative R&D processes (v) competitive ‘performance’ and growth. I achieved an overall response rate of just over 50%, and as such the survey dataset covers the top 20% of software Wrms on the Wasatch Front by 2000 revenue.
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cultural embedding in the region). Second, in-depth interviews and group discussions were conducted with employees in 20 case study Wrms, selected in order that these Wrms cover the spectrum of non/Mormon founding and management (Mormon majority, intermediate, and non-Mormon majority9), and be evenly split between Salt Lake County and Utah County to facilitate an exploration of the role of local demographic context in shaping Wrm behaviour: Utah County has the highest LDS population of all counties in Utah (90% LDS) in contrast to Salt Lake County which is locally regarded as the most cosmopolitan county (64% LDS). In the case study sample, the survey deWnition of ‘Mormon’ Wrms (Mormon founding and management) was expanded to include the proportion of Wrms’ total Utah employees that are active Mormons. Mormons comprise approximately 69% of Wrms’ total employees in the case study sample. In 2000 these Wrms employed 1009 people in Utah and their Utah operations generated a combined revenue of over $111.3 million, and all have 20–99 employees, the dominant size category in the survey sample. Qualitative data were generated for these Wrms through semi-structured interviews (following Schoenberger, 1991; Markusen, 1994), targeting employees in technical and non-technical positions in a range of job positions. A range of industry watchers and other government, church and economic development oYcials were also interviewed, giving a total of 100 interviews and over 130 hours of taped material upon which the analysis presented here is largely based.10 Each Wrm case study was further developed using a number of secondary data sources (annual reports, memos, etc.) as part of a source triangulation strategy. 4. Exploring how and why Wrms’ cultural embedding in the region matters The most striking manifestations of how the observed behaviour of Mormon founded and managed software Wrms in Utah’s high tech economy is constituted through and shaped by Mormon cultural conventions and norms include: management practices of praying over strategic corporate direction and fasting for the company; explicitly aligning software products with LDS Church teachings and needs (especially education, translation and internet privacy); turning down ‘immoral work’ in non-alignment with LDS teachings; and oVering pay and remuneration pack9 The case study sample of 20 Wrms was divided into four categories: 6 MORMON FIRMS (Mormon founded, Mormon managed and Mormon majority workforce); 6 NON-MORMON FIRMS (non-Mormon founded, non-Mormon managed and non-Mormon majority workforce (control); 4 INTERMEDIATE I FIRMS (Mormon founded and Mormon majority workforce but non-Mormon managed); and 4 INTERMEDIATE II FIRMS (non-Mormon founded but Mormon managed and Mormon majority workforce). 10 The sample of research participants interviewed comprised 75 males and 25 females (representative of the gender breakdown of Utah’s high tech workforce). The total sample of 100 research participants included 62 active Mormons, 5 inactive Mormons, and 21 non-Mormons.
ages explicitly designed to allow for the maintenance of traditional Mormon nuclear family units among employees (see James, 2003).11 However, the economic implications of this cultural embedding for Wrms’ competitive performance are best understood in terms of a series of sustained tensions, between self-identiWed Mormon cultural traits also manifest within local Wrms, versus key elements of corporate and industrial cultures that have been consistently shown in the regional learning literature as positively underpinning Wrms’ abilities to innovate. Previous work has explored some of these tensions, including Mormon Wrms’ lesser willingness to seek venture capital growth Wnance (within Utah and in other US states) relative to their nonMormon counterparts as a function of Mormon ethics of anti-debt and frugality (James, 2005) and reduced work hours relative to non-Mormon Wrms in respect of Mormon teachings on the primacy of family (James, 2006a). In contrast, this section focuses speciWcally on the consequences of this embedding for Wrms’ abilities to access external sources of knowledge and competencies, and to use new knowledge once it enters the Wrm. 4.1. Consequences for Wrms’ external relationships Over the last decade, scholars have shown that successful learning and innovation require that Wrms maintain local and extra-local networks of external association (see e.g. Camagni, 1991; Florida, 1995; Cooke and Morgan, 1998; Maillat, 1995; Oinas and Malecki, 2002; Gertler and Levitte, 2005). When individuals with partially overlapping knowledges come together and articulate their ideas collectively, they are forced to derive more adequate ideas about the technology they are trying to develop (Lawson and Lorenz, 1999, p. 312). Additionally, interaction also provides a basis for comparison of evolving ideas with other practices not internally generated. SigniWcantly, Mormonism is itself characterized by strong ethics of unity, reciprocity and mutual commitment which shape the nature of interaction among its members and are explicitly cultivated by the LDS Church leadership (Arrington and Bitton, 1992; Dunn, 1996).12 One way to examine the extent to which local Wrms exhibit these Mormon cultural traits is to track the extent to which Mormon ownership and manage11 Prevalence of prayer acknowledged as a valid basis for decision-making at the management level (in 5 Wrms in the case study sample, all 5 have majority Mormon workforces and Mormon management teams); fasting for the company (in 3 of the Mormon founded and managed case study Wrms); software products aligned explicitly with LDS Church teachings (in 2 of the 6 Mormon Wrms in the case study sample, no non-Mormon Wrms); pay packages explicitly designed to maintain traditional Mormon nuclear family units (in 4 of the 6 Mormon case study Wrms, but no non-Mormon Wrms). 12 This group spirit is induced not only by the belief that unity is a Christian virtue, but also by the trying times that the Mormon pioneers experienced (Arrington, 1992). The settlement of the barren, harsh desert environment of the Salt Lake Valley necessitated a co-operative irrigation eVort in an environment that would not have yielded to more individualistic eVorts (Toth, 1974).
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399
ment aVect Wrms’ choice of strategic partners. SigniWcantly, the Mormon founded and managed Wrms in the case study sample do have a higher proportion strategic partners within Utah who are similarly Mormon founded and managed (67.5%) than do their intermediate Mormon counterparts (57%) and non-Mormon counterparts (50%). Likewise, when we examine Wrms’ extra-local relationships with strategic partners beyond Utah,13 the Mormon founded and managed Wrms again have a higher proportion (13.5%) of partners who are similarly Mormon founded and managed than do their Mormon intermediate (8%) and non-Mormon (5%) counterparts.14 Subsequent interviews uncovered how Mormon customs, conventions and social norms generate a ‘cultural closeness’ between Wrms that aids working alliances (see James, 2006a). However, whilst this helps sustain interaction between like Wrms, it simultaneously excludes non-Mormon Wrms, constraining Mormon founded and managed Wrms’ abilities to learn from these non-like companies. Additionally, interWrm alliances allow Wrms to broaden their capacities more widely by combining their own competencies with those of a partner to create a competitive position that neither could have achieved alone. Thus, in the context of increased complexity and intersectoral nature of new technologies, and shortening product lifecycles, partnerships allow Wrms to speed the pace of product introduction, improve product quality, and move more quickly into new markets (Hutt et al., 2000). In contrast, Mormon culture is characterized by strong emphases on individual self-suYciency, independence and self-reliance (Ludlow, 1992), ethics rooted in the Mormon pioneer experience when Utah’s hostile physical environment forced Mormon families to hone the virtue of self-suYciency in order to survive (Young, 1996). Interview discussions uncovered how these Mormon traits often form the basis for management decisions within local Wrms: while Mormon Wrms have a higher propensity to interact with other Mormon Wrms, their overall levels of interWrm networking are reduced relative to non-Mormon Wrms. Strikingly, the Mormon founded and managed Wrms in the survey and case study samples have on average around half as many strategic partner Wrms as their non-Mormon counterparts in each Wrm size category. These patterns are apparent for Wrms’ Utahn partners, and when their extra-local relationships with partners outside Utah are included in the analy-
sis.15 Many research participants were aware of the limits of such an introverted approach, consistent with previous studies which have demonstrated that where Wrms rely mainly on internal resources their individual performance is weakened, along with that of the entire regional system (see e.g. MacPherson, 1992; Wiig and Wood, 1997). Rarely does a single Wrm have superior capabilities in all phases of the production process, and so it is imperative that they take advantage of the synergies that Xow from shared enterprise. As such, the introvertedness of particular Mormon founded and managed Wrms can be viewed as a second potential constraint on their innovative capacities.
13 Limits on the length of the survey instrument precluded a detailed analysis of the exact location of these partner Wrms, however, subsequent in-depth interviews with local industry watchers and other economic development oYcials suggested that the vast majority are US-based, with a particular dominance by California. 14 These patterns are also consistent with a lesser willingness among Mormon founded and managed software Wrms to seek early-stage Wnancing from sources outside Utah relative to their non-Mormon counterparts. This is true for all three Wrm size categories: (i) survey sample: Micro category: 38.9 c.f. 44.4%; Medium category: 57.1 c.f. 63.4%; (Medium-large category: 62.5 c.f. 100%); (ii) case study sample: 33.3 c.f. 50%.
15 Strategic partners deWned in terms joint product development and/or R&D, or other self-identiWed formal alliances as outlined on Wrms’ corporate websites and subsequently conWrmed by research participants working in Utah’s software industry. Utah only strategic partners for Mormon founded and managed Wrms compared with non-Mormon founded and managed Wrms: (i) survey sample: Micro category: 0.8 c.f. 1.5; Medium category: 1.4 c.f. 2.3; (Medium-large category: 0.7 c.f. 3.0); (ii) case study sample: 0.2 c.f. 0.8. All strategic partners (Utah and beyond) for Mormon founded and managed Wrms compared with non-Mormon founded and managed Wrms: (i) survey sample: Micro category: 4.1 c.f. 7.0; Medium category: 3.5 c.f. 7.1; (Mediumlarge category: 4.9 c.f. 12.0); (ii) case study sample: 4.2 c.f. 7.8.
4.2. Consequences for Wrms’ absorptive capacities Continuous technological learning and innovation are therefore highly dependent on Wrms’ abilities to access external sources of information and knowledge. Fundamentally however, they are also dependent on Wrms’ abilities to assimilate, reconWgure, transform and apply new information to commercial ends. DiVerent ‘absorptive capacities’ (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990) are not random. Rather, the ability to absorb new knowledge will always depend on socio-cultural constructions of what is acceptable and desirable (Schoenberger, 1997; Westwood and Low, 2003). The innovation and learning literature has consistently highlighted a set of cultural norms that, if widely shared by the members of a Wrm, actively promote the generation of new ideas and help in the implementation of new approaches. These include a climate of openness in which debate and conXict are encouraged; a willingness to break with convention; widespread support for trying new things; the right of employees to challenge the status quo; and multiple advocacy, that learning requires more than one ‘champion’ if it is to succeed (Deal and Kennedy, 2000; DiBella et al., 1996). Firms’ abilities to innovate therefore presume a necessary relationship between learning and active employee involvement at all levels; that all employees can act as independent agents, take responsibility, experiment, and make mistakes as they learn (Spender, 1996). However, these traits contrast with Mormonism in four ways. First, Mormon culture is characterized by cultural emphases on unity and individual sacriWce for the common good, which previous studies highlight as sustaining strong tendencies towards group conformity (Shupe, 1992). Second, these are reinforced by a pervasive respect for
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Table 3 Measuring the economic performance of Mormon versus non-Mormon founded and managed computer software Wrms on Utah’s Wasatch Front (from James, 2005) Metric of Wrm competitiveness
Survey sample (105 Wrms)
Case study sample (20 Wrms)
Micro (1–19 emp)
Medium (20–99 emp)
(20–99 emp)
Mormon
Mormon
Mormon
Non
Non
Non
(i) Revenue growth since start-up (a) Linear (2000 UT revenue/age) (b) Exponential (2000 UT revenue/Fage)
0.16 0.28
0.32 1.05
0.78 1.70
1.05 1.68
0.18 0.56
0.73 1.57
(ii) R&D intensity type I (R&D expend as % of sales revenue)
0.23
0.24
0.22
0.53
0.29
0.59
(iii) R&D intensity type II (R&D emp as % of total emp)
0.55
0.57
0.40
0.58
0.57
0.34
60.47
155.71
123.69
88.82
88.74
103.83
(iv) Productivity ($1000 revenue/employee)
established ideas and church operating procedures (Ostling and Ostling, 1999). Third, the LDS Church organizational system is also based on predominantly topdown Xows of information, in which leadership decision are never challenged, only supported by the wider Mormon populace – that ‘when the Prophet speaks the thinking has been done’ (Ludlow, 1992). Fourth, these cultural emphases of reverence for established ideas and leadership authority are in turn reinforced by wider Mormon emphases on being passive, non-confrontational and never demeaning another person. SigniWcantly, these distinctive Mormon cultural traits are also manifest in the Wrms in the case study sample. Approximately 40% of these Wrms are self-identiWed by the industry research participants as having corporate cultures that place a premium on unity within the Wrm, and a ‘follow thy leader’ mentality. This includes two thirds of the Mormon founded and managed Wrms, half of the Mormon intermediate Wrms, but only one of the non-Mormon Wrms. Indeed, over half of the non-Mormon industry research participants identiWed their Mormon colleagues and employees as generally less willing to question ideas and leadership authority. Additionally, almost one third of the (47) active Mormon industry research participants also identiWed this trend among their fellow Mormon employees and colleagues generally, arguing that Mormon managers and employees raised in the LDS Church simply ‘borrow’ from the models that are familiar to them. Research participants outlined multiple ways in which these Mormon-inXected corporate cultures are advantageous. First, they suggested that a common value base makes it easier for the Wrm to mesh as a team, consistent with norms highlighted in the innovation literature as promoting corporate implementation of new ideas, namely: teamwork, a shared vision and a common direction upon which Wrms can build consensus, mutual respect and trust (O’Reilly, 1989). Second, there was also widespread appreciation among Mormon and non-Mormon research participants alike of the more friendly and less stressful work environments that these Mormon-informed corporate cul-
tures sustain. However, research participants also identiWed a number of disadvantages of these same corporate cultures, in terms of Mormon cultural traits of respect for established ideas, unity and top-down leadership authority potentially undermining the processes of creative dissent, constant questioning and multi-directional knowledge Xows that underpin innovation in Wrms.16 Indeed many of the Mormon industry research participants were themselves aware of these limits (see James, 2006a). Overall therefore, while in some cases the Mormon cultural constitution of Wrms’ individual corporate cultures potentially enhances and reinforces their innovative capacities; in other cases it potentially constrains them. To get a handle on the overall meaning and implications of these tensions for Wrms’ economic performance, Wve metrics were employed:17 (i) linear revenue growth since start-up; (ii) assumed exponential revenue growth since start-up; (iii) R&D intensity I (R&D expenditure to annual revenue); (iv) R&D intensity II (R&D employment to total employment); and (v) productivity in terms of revenue per employee. The results are shown in Table 3. The data in Table 4 show that for four of the Wve metrics of Wrms’ economic performance, the non-Mormon Wrms outperform their Mormon counterparts (highlighted in bold). These diVerences are not likely to be a function of age (that the non-Mormon Wrms are simply older and more well established) because the age distributions of the Mormon and non-Mormon Wrms are almost identical for each of the employee size categories employed. Nor are these diVerences a function of Mormon and non-Mormon Wrms being in diVerent market niches: all Wrms are classiWed under the same NAICS code. While limits of space preclude
16 I am nevertheless aware of the debates surrounding the need for constructive confrontation in the Wrm, given the success of Japanese Wrms based on very non-confrontational work cultures (see e.g. Ouchi, 1981; Pascale and Athos, 1982; Suzuki et al., 2002). 17 Indicators used follow Gertler et al., 2000 and Williamson and Verdin (1992). Also see Williamson and Verdin (1992) for a discussion of the links between age, growth and experience as sources of business unit advantage.
A. James / Geoforum 38 (2007) 393–413
401
Table 4 Measuring the signiWcance of the ‘key individuals’ mechanism of cultural embedding
MORMON FIRMS MANIFESTATION OF EMBEDDING (SELF-IDENTIFIED)
(Mormon founders AND Mormon management) AN PQ IE QD EC JE
NON-MORMON FIRMS (Non-Mormon founders AND Non-Mormon management) UG LJ BW NN FN XH
BELIEF IN DIVINE INTERVENTION IN THE FIRM Praying Over Corporate Strategic Direction - Firm Level Fasting for the company – individual employees Seeking revelation at the Temple w.r.t. the company TURNING DOWN IMMORAL WORK Firms unwilling to work on unwholesome content Vocalised as Mormon cultural issue Firm as money-making entity < firm as vehicle for good MORMON ORIENTATED SOFTWARE PRODUCT As deliberate corporate strategy EXPLICIT FAMILY ORIENTATION Pay levels to maintain Mormon family units amongst employees Firms aware of competitors as people with families CO-OPERATION AND TRUST Mormon partners dominant SELF-SUFFICIENCY < half the mean total partners (UT and beyond) NO Utah partners RESPECT FOR ESTABLISHED IDEAS / AUTHORITY High value placed on unity over creative dissent in firm DEBT AVOIDANCE Internal financing strategy from start-up… …to make a MORAL decision Reservations wr.t. non-Mormon VCist on board FAMILY (THEN CHURCH) ABOVE ALL Short work weeks (less than half mean average) Above US average holiday lengths Sunday working totally restricted
% POSSIBLE CELLS FILLED
61
12
Note: The two letter abbreviations at the head of the second and third columns (e.g. AN, PQ, IE, etc.) are the anonymised labels assigned to each of the 20 case study Wrms.
a step-by-step analytical discussion here (see James, 2005) the most striking diVerences in economic performance at the survey level include: exponential growth rates, where the non-Mormon Wrms outperform their Mormon counterparts three times over (micro category); Type I R&D intensities (non-Mormon Wrms, medium size category, two times greater): and productivity (non-Mormon Wrms, micro size category, over two times greater). At the case study level,
the most striking diVerences include: linear growth rates, where the non-Mormon Wrms outperform their Mormon counterparts four times over; and exponential growth rates (non-Mormon Wrms three times greater). Thus while the results are not monolithic, they lend support to the thesis that the Mormon cultural inXection of the corporate cultures of the Mormon founded and managed computer software Wrms in the survey and case study samples (i.e. their
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A. James / Geoforum 38 (2007) 393–413
‘cultural embeddedness’) has a constraining eVect on local corporate economic performance, consistent with the constraints on Wrms’ innovative capacities outlined above.18 5. Unpacking the causal mechanisms and everyday practices of cultural embedding The cultural embedding of Mormon-founded and managed software Wrms on Utah’s Wasatch Front therefore has important consequences for local corporate forms, observed patterns of behaviour, innovation activities and, hence, competitive economic performance. In turn, this begs the question: what are the everyday causal mechanisms and practices through which Wrms’ cultural embedding within the region is manifested, performed and (un)intentionally (re)produced, and how are these locally instituted in Utah’s high tech regional economy? Importantly, this attribution of responsibility is necessary to avoid the perpetuation of ‘cultural embeddedness’ as a fuzzy concept (see Markusen, 1999). Five major mechanisms are identiWable in the Utah case and these are detailed below. 5.1. Corporate decision makers and opinion leaders The major mechanism through which Wrms’ behaviour is constituted through, and unavoidably shaped by, socially constructed cultural norms, values and evaluative criteria centres on members of a particular regional culture who also occupy positions of power within local Wrms. Scholars have traditionally focused on Wrms’ founders in this context who have clear vision of how the Wrm should operate, and how their personal values, priorities, ideas and values are readily transmitted to new employees, becoming accepted within the Wrm and often persisting over time (Deal and Kennedy, 2000; Schein, 1992). However, the Utah case also highlights a range of other everyday ‘opinion leaders’ and ‘culture carriers’ including Mormon managers, lead software engineers and other personnel who by virtue of their strong personality or previous achievements have signiWcant inXuence on the opinions and behaviour of others. Fundamentally, because what the Wrm understands itself to be is produced through the actions of its employees, the cultural identities and commitments of these key individuals are closely entwined with (although not identical to) corporate identities and commitments (Schoenberger, 1994, 1997). As such, Mormon cultural values and conventions inform decision-making processes, corporate strategy and 18
These results for the computer software sector are consistent with concerns raised by several local industry commentators at interview regarding the (under)performance of Utah’s high tech economy more generally over the last decade. However, the metrics used in the analysis presented here are based on a narrow economic deWnition of competitiveness. In contrast, increasingly workers and families are being challenged in new ways to combine the activities of production and reproduction, in an attempt to achieve what has become known as ‘work/life balance’. As such, future analyses might usefully include metrics on the social sustainability of culturally-informed work practices.
observed behaviour, through deWnitions of what has value and what does not. The importance of this ‘key individuals’ mechanism of embedding is shown in Table 4. This matrix shows how the various manifestations of Wrms’ embedding in Mormonism – whose consequences for Wrms’ economic performance were discussed in Section 4 – are mutually reinforcing among the case study sample of Wrms. Not unsurprisingly, the Wrms with Mormon founders, managers, and CEOs exhibited a higher degree of cultural embedding than their Non-Mormon founded and managed counterparts, as measured in terms of the proportion of possible matrix cells Wlled for each type of Wrm (61% for the Mormon Wrms; versus 26% for the Intermediate Mormon Wrms; versus 12% for the Non-Mormon Wrms). The signiWcance of this mechanism was also conWrmed in the interviews, the majority of research participants Wnding it impossible to draw a line between their cultural identity and their work, instead outlining how Mormonism provides them with a strong core of values upon which they draw in the workplace: ‘We try to build the company on what we feel are good values of the [Mormon] church, because it’s only natural that the lifestyles that our key employees are accustomed to inXuence the way we do business, you can’t just leave them on the doorstep. Work is an opportunity for people to see you as an example of what you believe in’. CEO and Co-Founder, active Mormon male Moreover, for the majority of research participants, the application of their religious values within the workplace was not only regarded as acceptable, but also a ‘natural’ thing for them to do, consistent with previous studies (e.g. Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 1997) which have documented how individuals setting up an organization typically borrow from models or ideals that are familiar to them: ‘While it’s not been a passive thing, it’s not been an active decision to keep the company’s culture in line with Mormon values either. It’s like no-one in England starts a company and say’s everyone’s gonna be a little reserved and stiV upper-lipped. It’s just the English way of doing things. This is just the Mormon way of doing things’. Director of Brand Management and User Experience, active Mormon male Thus, to understand how and why Wrms’ organisational structures, workplace norms, decision making processes and observed patterns of behaviour come to be constituted through, and diVerentially shaped by, the socially constructed norms, values and evaluative criteria within a particular regional culture, we need to engage with the scientists, engineers, programmers and other professionals whose personal values and commitments become transformed over time into deeply-held, implicit shared values, norms and assumptions within the Wrm concerning appro-
A. James / Geoforum 38 (2007) 393–413
priate behaviour and ways of thinking (Schoenberger, 1997). 5.2. Strength in numbers (intra- and inter-Wrm) In addition to key individuals and opinion leaders, a second major mechanism through which Wrms come to be culturally embedded in the region – as evidenced in the Utah case – centres on a workforce majority who share similar cultural values to the Wrm’s opinion leaders. Research participants highlighted three everyday workplace practices which can be grouped together as a ‘strength-in-numbers’ mechanism. The Wrst involves conformity to group norms through daily associations with others, whose attitudes and behaviour patterns either reinforce or proscribe (‘punish’) one’s own. On one level, conWdence in one’s own attitudes and beliefs is bolstered when others share the same perspectives (Bahr, 1994). At the same time, if we want to be accepted at work we try to live up the expectations of our colleagues, pay attention to their actions and take them as our cue when we are uncertain of what to do (O’Reilly, 1989). The greater the proportion of a workforce who share a set of cultural values, the greater the likelihood that those values become the norm that newcomers take as their cue, and hence that these values become dominant in the Wrm. Second, this is reinforced by observation in the workplace by other members of one’s own culture. Control comes from the knowledge that someone who matters to us is paying close attention to what we are doing and will tell us if our behaviour is appropriate or inappropriate (O’Reilly and Chatman, 1996, p. 161). The more members of a particular culture in a Wrm’s workforce therefore, the greater that control. A third practice involves the group ratiWcation of culturally informed corporate decisions. Because culture is Wrst and foremost a group property (Stark, 1996), what counts in terms of particular cultural values conditioning Wrm behaviour, is not only whether the Wrm’s decisionmakers embody those values, but also whether those values are ratiWed by the wider work group as a valid basis for action. If most of the Wrm’s employees do not share those values, even if individuals do bring particular cultural considerations into corporate decision-making processes, these will rarely strike a responsive chord in most of the others and instead be smothered by group indiVerence. Research participants in Utah conWrmed the importance of this tripartite ‘strength in numbers’ mechanism of embedding, but also stressed the constraints upon its functioning: ‘We [Mormons] are always taught that it is an ethical system we are learning, not just a Sunday morning procedure. At the same time, the people you see on Sunday are a lot like the people you see at work, so it’s easier to carry over that value system into the workplace’. Lead Programmer, active Mormon male ‘With the majority sharing the same culture, it allows us to base some of our company decisions on Mormon values. And the decisions are pretty easy because
403
we are all on the same page religiously. But just a couple of key personnel who aren’t Mormon would be enough to swing the pendulum’. Director of Technology and Co-Founder, active Mormon male Additionally, this tri-partite ‘strength-in-numbers’ mechanism also operates at the inter-Wrm level, as shown in Table 5. This matrix compares the incidence of the various manifestations of Wrms’ embedding in Mormonism discussed in Section 4 for case study Wrms in two diVerent counties. SigniWcantly, the Mormon founded and managed Wrms in Utah County exhibit a higher degree of cultural embedding than do their Salt Lake County counterparts (Table 5 right hand side), with Mormon Wrms in the former Wlling 72% of the embeddedness matrix cells, compared with 49% for their Salt Lake County counterparts. In Utah County, Mormons comprise 89% of the general population and average 82% of Wrms’ total workforces, compared with Salt Lake County equivalent Wgures of 65% and 52% (James, 2003). As such, there is a higher chance that a Mormon Wrm in Utah County will be surrounded by other similarly Mormon founded and managed Wrms from whom its employees might receive peer support and group ratiWcation of their culturally-inXected business patterns, than might a Mormon Wrm in Salt Lake County, along with inter-Wrm practices of mutual observation and social control: ‘You see the same people turning up all over. So it would be awfully strange for me to act totally diVerent in business than I do at Church – that visibility factor is an accountability factor; if you’re Mormon then you’d better behave!’ Director of Technology and Co-Founder, active Mormon male These data also show a similar pattern for the non-Mormon Wrms (see Table 5 left-hand-side), with non-Mormon Wrms in Utah County evidencing a higher degree of embedding (19% of embeddedness matrix cells Wlled) than their Salt Lake County counterparts (5% of embeddedness matrix cells Wlled). The pattern for the Mormon Intermediate Wrms reaYrms the signiWcance of the strength-in-numbers mechanism of embedding, with Intermediate Wrms in Utah County evidencing a higher degree of embedding than their Salt Lake County counterparts (Wgures of 33% and 17% respectively). 5.3. Labour recruitment and job search practices The everyday practices underpinning the ‘key individuals’ and ‘strength-in-numbers’ mechanisms of cultural embedding outlined above are themselves shaped by a series of labour recruitment and job search practices which, in the Utah case, reinforce the Mormon cultural constitution of Wrms’ workplace conventions, decision-making processes, and observed patterns of behaviour. Previously, scholars have suggested that Wrms’ founders have a clear notion, based on their own cultural history and personality, of how things ought to be in their new Wrm, and use that as
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Table 5 Measuring the signiWcance of the (inter-Wrm) ‘strength-in-numbers’ mechanism of cultural embedding
MORMON FIRMS (Mormon founded AND managed)
NON-MORMON FIRMS MANIFESTATION OF EMBEDDING
(Non-Mormon founded AND managed)
(SELF-IDENTIFIED) UTAH AN PQ IE
SALT LAKE QD EC JE
UG
UTAH LJ BW
SALT LAKE NN FN XH
BELIEF IN DIVINE INTERVENTION IN THE FIRM Praying Over Corporate Strategic Direction - Firm Level Fasting for the company – individual employees Seeking revelation at the Temple w.r.t. the company TURNING DOWN IMMORAL WORK Firms unwilling to work on unwholesome content Vocalised a Mormon cultural issue Firm as money-making entity < firms as vehicle for good MORMON ORIENTATED SOFTWARE PRODUCT As deliberate corporate strategy EXPLICIT FAMILY ORIENTATION Pay levels to maintain Mormon family units Firms aware of competitors as people with families CO-OPERATION AND TRUST Mormon partners dominant SELF-SUFFICIENCY < half the mean total partners (UT and beyond) NO Utah partners RESPECT FOR ESTABLISHED IDEAS / AUTHORITY High value on unity over creative dissent within firm DEBT AVOIDANCE Internal financing strategy from start-up… …to make a MORAL decision Reservations w.r.t. non-Mormon VCist on board FAMILY (THEN CHURCH) ABOVE ALL Short work weeks (less than half mean average) Above US average holiday lengths Sunday working totally restricted Note: the two letter abbreviations at the head of the second and third columns (e.g. AN, PQ, IE, etc.) are the anonymised labels assigned to each of the 20 case study Wrms.
the basis for their selection of group of people to create a core management team that shares their original vision (Schein, 1992; Furnham and Gunter, 1993). The Utah results are consistent with these ideas. On one level, the degree to which Wrms are Mormon founded positively correlates with the degree to they are Mormon managed (rxy D 0.510). At the same time, the proportion of Wrms’
total workforces that are Mormon is positively correlated with the proportion of Mormons in their founding teams (rxy D 0.687) and management teams (rxy D 0.773). The interviews highlighted three sets of practices which explain these patterns: (i) Wrms actively seeking employees that match their own values; (ii) employees actively seeking Wrms that match their personal values; and (iii) diYculties
A. James / Geoforum 38 (2007) 393–413
405
Table 6 Self-identiWed Mormon cultural markers Cultural marker (self-identiWed)
Comments
‘Mormon Speak’
A particular vocabulary, much of which is derived from Mormon religious heritage – e.g. Mormons are forever ‘grateful’, ‘blessed’, ‘humble’, and ‘take counsel’ with people CTRs (‘Choose the Right’) are a classiWcation of Mormon children aged 4 to 7 yrs, but the popular terms has also given rise to a range of jewellery emblazoned with the initials for teenagers and adults Garments are the special underclothing worn by Mormons who have gained special endowment ordinances in the Temple. Seams are visible under thin clothing (e.g. business suits) halfway down the thigh, upper arm, and around the neck Mormons are counselled to be modest in their appearance Mormons abstain from most forms of caVeine, alcohol and tobacco as counselled by the ‘Word of Wisdom’, the LDS Church’s divinely-inspired health code Sunday is the Sabbath within the LDS Church, and Monday evenings the church’s ‘family home evening’ in which members are urged to undertake worship as a family and when all other church activities are suspended Utah County’s population is oYcially 90% Mormon Brigham Young University’s student body is over 99% LDS 2 years for males; 18 months for females. The Mormon mission system enlists 60% of Mormons age 19–26 yrs. Some explicitly state Mission on their resumes, others remove the LDS Church label
CTR Rings & Jewellery Garment Lines
Modesty in Dress Not Drinking Alcohol/Smoking Availability on Sundays/ Monday Evenings Utah County Residence BYU Alumnus Status Mission Service
of recruiting (non-Mormon) employees from out of state. These are detailed below. Under Title VII of the US Civil Rights Act (1964) it is illegal to discriminate in labour recruitment based on assumptions about the abilities, traits or performance of individuals of a certain religious, ethnic or cultural group. Nevertheless, results for the Utah case suggest that Wrms do discriminate between Mormon versus non-Mormon employees. On one level, there exist direct Wltering mechanisms in the form of explicit requests on the type of candidate Wrms are seeking to Wll a position, admitted by one quarter of the Wrms in the case study sample with varying degrees of candidness: ‘It’s not stated, but when I know they’re Mormon, will I be more likely to call them for interview? – yes. Will I feel more comfortable because I won’t have to wrestle with them over issues of character? – yes. If I was ever charged with a discrimination lawsuit, would they ever prove it? – probably not’. Director of Technology and Co-Founder, active Mormon male There also exist indirect Wltering mechanisms, as Wrms seek to hire people who provide a ‘good Wt’ with a Wrm’s existing culture. This practice is applicable to all of the Wrms in the sample, and is consistent with the notion that once we develop an integrated set of cultural assumptions, we will be most comfortable with those who share the same set of assumptions, and uncomfortable in situations where diVerent assumptions operate (Schein, 1992, pp. 22–23). Various ‘cultural markers’ (see Table 6) are used by recruiters to evaluate the desirability of potential candidates: ‘If we have someone in from Utah County, I immediately make assumptions about them; something in the way they act or the way they talk. But it’s not overt, I don’t ever go in and sit down in a hiring process and
say ‘Oh, I wonder if these guys are Mormon or not’. I just make those judgments during the course of an interview’. Director of Marketing, active Mormon male ‘Job interviews here are a nightmare; I’ve been asked questions like how long I’ve been married, where did I meet my husband, do I know Bishop blah from my home town, which Ward I’m in – things that go real close to the edges but without ever coming right out and asking if you’re Mormon or not’. Vice President of Marketing, inactive Mormon female Practices of Wrms actively recruiting employees who match their existing cultural priorities is reinforced by potential employees actively doing likewise in their search for potential employers. The main preferences vocalised by Mormon candidates at job interview involve not working Sundays; not working on violent, sexual, or gambling software content; earning a wage that is large enough for their wife to remain at home and so maintain a traditional Mormon nuclear family; and working on products with obvious social beneWt. While these are not exclusively Mormon preferences, research participants suggested that only potential Mormon applicants vocalise these issues with explicit recourse to religious justiWcations. These twin practices of culturally-motivated recruitment and job search are thus crucial for understanding Wrms’ cultural embedding because together they reinforce the ‘key individuals’ and ‘strength-in-numbers’ mechanisms through which Wrms’ organisational structures, workplace norms, decision making processes, and observed behaviour are culturally constituted. Additionally, Utahn Wrms face signiWcant diYculties in recruiting non-Mormon employees from out of state due to a series of lifestyle and amenities considerations which contrast with those increasingly recognised as attractive to
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knowledge workers (see Florida, 2002). First, Utah is a racially homogenous state with over 92% of the population identifying themselves as white non-Hispanic. Utah’s Mormon population is even more homogenous: over 98% white non-Hispanic (Heaton, 1996). The dominant image of the LDS Church as a predominantly white church of the suburban west (Lattin and Cimino, 1998) discourages many potential employees from moving to Utah. Second, a legacy of the LDS Church’s anti-Equal Rights Amendment campaign is a widespread lack of credibility for Mormonism as an advocate for women (Quinn, 1997). Coupled with the LDS Church’s active stance against homosexuality and gay liberation (May, 2001), this reinforces an ultraconservative image of Mormon Utah that discourages many: ‘You talk to potential employees about coming to Utah, and the only things they know about it is Mormons, Donnie and Marie, and ski-ing. So we don’t even get up to the plate with about 90% of the potential employees because they’re afraid that everyone’s gonna be Mormon and they won’t talk to us, that it’s a boring place where nobody drinks and nobody has fun. I’m a transplant – I told my family I was moving to Utah and quite frankly they thought I was nuts!’ CEO, LEL, non-Mormon ‘There’s this perception of Utah as some holier-thanthou Hicksville, that the Mormons are out here in their stovepipe hats and horse and buggies, a cultural lifestyle like in Urban cowboy you know, that we’ll go bull riding and after that we’ll go shear some sheep! OK, so this is not the birth place of free love, but people have just no sense of how multicultural Salt Lake City is. So that really limits our ability to grow, and I don’t know that we’ll ever completely eliminate that’. Director of User Experience, NSO, active Mormon Almost three quarters of the Wrms in the case study sample admitted severe diYculties of attracting appropriately qualiWed employees from outside Utah. These barriers therefore restrict workforce diversity by discouraging non-Mormon potential employees. At the same time, research participants conWrmed that the majority of their non-Utah employees who have moved from out of state are members of the LDS Church keen to move closer to the Mormon cultural heartland. This reinforces the ‘key individuals’ and ‘strength-in-numbers’ mechanisms of cultural embedding outlined above. 5.4. Education, socialisation and training Within the geographical literature, universities have been widely theorised as central to high tech regional dynamism, functioning as: sources of advanced research; supplying skilled labour, continuing education and retraining; aggressively licensing their intellectual property; granting
faculty time to consult to Wrms; and developing research parks and local incubators (e.g. Rogers and Larsen, 1984; Saxenian, 1994; Scott and Paul, 1990). But while these concrete roles of universities have been well theorised, there has been relatively little discussion of the practices of universities as mechanisms that reinforce Wrms’ cultural embedding via graduates as ‘embodied culture’. In Utah, Brigham Young University (located in Provo 45 miles south of Salt Lake City) is the US’s largest privately owned religious university, wholly Wnanced and managed by the LDS church (Bezzant and Chadwick, 1996). Three everyday practices at BYU are pertinent to the analysis here. First, faculty are encouraged to integrate secular academic learning with LDS religious teachings, and its student body are selected only from individuals who voluntarily live the principles of the LDS Church. Thus, over 99% of BYU’s current 32,000 students are members of the LDS Church (Davies, 1996). Second, as a condition of their continuing enrolment, students must observe the University’s strict honour code, which includes continuing ecclesiastical endorsement and regular church attendance, along with speciWc policies on dress, grooming, and residential living. This honour code maintains a strong Mormon culture at BYU. Third, even in their major subject, students are urged to frame their questions in ‘prayerful’ and ‘faithful’ ways: ‘We encourage students to use the moral independence they’ve learned to help shape the way business is done. We’re hoping that the students grow that innate spiritual character, that wherever they then go in the world they can hopefully share that point of view in decisions that are made’. BYU computer science Professor, active Mormon male Research participants explained how Mormon-centred examples are widely used to illustrate academic arguments, even in technical subjects, and how many student meetings are opened with prayers (traits also prevalent amongst the Mormon founded and managed Wrms in the case study Wrm sample19). The strength of this mechanism of cultural embedding centres, therefore, on graduates socialized into BYU’s distinctive culture taking its attendant norms, attitudes and values to their subsequent Wrms on employment, via the labour recruitment and job search mechanisms of cultural embedding outlined above. SigniWcantly, around one quarter of BYU computer science graduates stay in Utah once they have graduated (BYU Internal Salary Survey, 1996– 1999). Moreover, the survey showed that of Utah’s lead 105 software Wrms, 36% of Wrms were founded by BYU alumni (includes 55% of all the Mormon founded Wrms), and 33% of Wrms were headed by CEO’s who are BYU alumni. Additionally, one quarter of the Wrms in the case study sample outlined an explicit preference for BYU 19 Prevalence of meetings opened with prayers (in 5 Wrms in the case study sample, all 5 have majority Mormon workforces and Mormon management teams).
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graduates, on the basis of the mission experience.20 The vast majority of BYU’s student body are returned missionaries. Having defended the church and its doctrines for two years, returned missionaries tend to be more orthodox and active in the church than other members (Vernon, 1980). Consequently, BYU students are also typically two years older than the average undergraduate elsewhere and are recognised as more self-assured, polished, mature, and self-conWdent (Stark, 2001), which many local Wrms Wnd attractive: ‘When you get a young man at the age 19, send them out to a foreign country and tell them to ‘sell Jesus Christ’, that’s a very challenging position to be in. But you learn that it’s OK to be rejected, how to move on, how to communicate with people, and come back more emotionally mature than your buddies who’ve been at Frat parties’. CEO and Co-Founder, active Mormon male Two other elements of the LDS educational system further reinforce the Mormon cultural embedding of Wrms in Utah’s high tech regional economy. First, as the LDS Church continues to grow in excess of 11 million members worldwide, the result is that there are currently over 200,000 college-aged church members in the US alone, while the BYU undergraduate population remains limited to 32,000. Consequently, the quality of BYU students is much higher than would otherwise be expected for comparable universities elsewhere in the US, further reinforcing their attractiveness to many Utahn high tech employers, with important consequences for Wrms’ cultural embedding via the labour recruitment and job search mechanisms described above. Second, in addition to BYU, the LDS Church also operates 1407 institutes at colleges and universities in the US and Canada (including the University of Utah) to provide LDS-orientated educational and social programmes for college students in secular education (LDS Church/Deseret News, 2000), and therefore exercise a high degree of social control over non-BYU Mormon students’ (and hence graduates’) sense of identity and behaviour (see Bahr, 1994). Crucially, these components of the LDS Church educational system also increase the chances of young Mormons maintaining their commitment to LDS culture in later (work) life. 5.5. Legislative structures: local and extra-local Finally, to understand fully the practices and mechanisms through which Wrms come to be culturally embedded within regional economies, it is important also to consider 20 In 1999 the LDS Church supported 58,593 LDS Missionaries in the Weld across the US and to 119 other countries worldwide (LDS Church/ Deseret News, 2000), approximately 75% of whom are young men between the ages of 19 and 26. After 8 weeks training in Utah, Missionaries are sent out in pairs, on two year assignments (18 months for females) to teach the LDS Gospel, win converts, and participate in community service.
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the role of political-economic institutions at multiple scales which structure Wrm behaviour and labour market functioning (see also Whitley, 2000). Two pieces of state legislation play a major role in reinforcing the Mormon cultural constitution of many of Utah’s computer software Wrms’ internal structures and observed patterns of behaviour as outlined. First, Utah maintains some of the toughest state liquor laws and anti-smoking policies in the US,21 reinforcing the ultraconservative image of Mormon Utah which discourages many non-Mormon potential employees from out of state moving to Utah, employees that would otherwise weaken the Mormon cultural constitution of local software Wrms’ workplace practices and behaviour currently premised on Mormon majority workforces. Second, Utah is a ‘right-to-work’ state, which prohibits contractual terms conditioning employment on membership in, or Wnancial support of, a labor union.22 Research participants explained the implications of this legislation for reinforcing the multiple ways in which the norms, values and evaluative criteria within Mormonism inform the practices and behaviour of local Wrms: ‘Legislation in Utah is very much in favour of the employer. As this right-to-work state, employers can allow their religion to drive their management style, they can hold business meetings where prayers are said and it’s no big deal. You say a prayer at a business meeting in California [non right-to-work state], you’re gonna get your butt sued oV!’. President and CEO and Founder, WSU, non-Mormon female Both pieces of legislation evidence the systemic power of the LDS Church in Utah government (Burbank et al., 2001). Because the Mormon component of Utah’s population has grown past 70%, almost invariably most of the candidates for Utah public oYce have been members of the LDS Church. There is also a very strong public perception in Utah that non-Mormons, women, and ethnic minorities have little chance of being elected and so few stand for oYce. These two key factors have historically combined to produce Mormon majorities in excess of 80% in the Utah legislature in recent decades (Burbank et al., 2001, p. 172; Quinn, 1997). Thus, even though the LDS Church as a formal institution rarely gets involved in Utah politics, decisions are nevertheless made as if it had been involved. Thus, Utah’s anti-liquor and anti-smoking laws reXect the LDS prohibition of alcohol and tobacco use as part of its divinely-inspired health code; and Utah’s right-to-work status (since 1955), the LDS Church’s historical opposition 21 Utah has the toughest anti-smoking policy of any US state, and although Utah’s liquor laws have been relaxed as part of preparations for the 2002 winter olympics, many restaurants still require that customers get a patron who is a ‘member’ of the establishment to sponsor them in order that they be allowed to buy alcohol. 22 The origin of the phrase “right to work” is often attributed to a 1941 Dallas Morning News editorial which urged the adoption of an amendment to the federal constitution protecting the right of employees to work without coercion with respect to joining a labor union.
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to labour unions, and its doctrines on work as a God-given privilege that should be available to all (Ludlow, 1992). US federal legislation is also important. Most importantly, the US Workplace Religious Freedom Act (1972) amended Title VII of the US Civil Rights Act (1964) to require employers to make reasonable accommodation for the religious beliefs of employees and prospective employees, unless doing so would ‘impose an undue hardship’, deWning religion as ‘all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief’. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1997) further increased employers’ responsibilities to accommodate workers’ religious beliefs within the workplace. These two pieces of legislation therefore reinforce Wrms’ obligations to accommodate Mormon workers’ religious-cultural values at work, reinforcing the ‘strength-innumbers’ mechanism of cultural embedding premised on practices of conformity to group norms, mutual observation, and group ratiWcation of culturally informed decisions. 5.6. Integrating the causal mechanisms of cultural embedding Rather than the all-encompassing notions of ‘regional culture’ often employed in the regional learning and innovation literature, Paivi Oinas has instead argued for recognition of the distinction between: (i) regional culture; (ii) regional industrial culture; and (iii) organisational cultures (see Oinas, 1995, p. 202): ‘Why are these distinctions important? Because ƒ it helps us to understand Wrms as actors in regional development: as actors having to operate in – and at least partly having to accept as a given – a preexisting regional culture, but also as actors that within that wider culture create their own internal organizational cultures and participate in the formation of a regional industrial culture that, in its turn, supports their operation.’ (Oinas, 1995, pp. 202–203). Firms’ cultural embeddedness can therefore be understood in terms of the ways in which regional cultural systems of collective beliefs, ideologies, understandings and conventions (regional culture) shape local Wrms’ systems of organizational control, rule systems and decision-making processes (organisational culture). Indeed, these culturally inXected patterns of corporate behaviour are often common to other Wrms in the region (regional industrial culture) (see James, 2005). It is the various manifestations of these cultural inXections, their meaning and consequences for Wrms’ observed economic performances, and their underlying causal mechanisms and responsible agents which have formed the focus of this paper. Overall, the causal mechanisms through which regional cultural imperatives unavoidably come to inform Wrms’ organizational structures, workplace conventions, decision-making processes, and observed patterns of behaviour as evidenced in the Utah case are represented graphically in Fig. 1. The primary mechanisms are two-
fold. The Wrst can be termed the ‘key individuals’ mechanism, and centres on Wrms’ founders and management teams who exist simultaneously as members of the Wrm and of the regional culture and whose personal actions, identities and commitments become closely entwined with corporate identities and commitments. This is in turn reinforced by the ‘strength-in-numbers’ mechanism in which culturally-informed decisions are ratiWed at the group level, reinforced by processes of conformity to the group, mutual observance and peer pressure, and which operate at both the intra- and inter-Wrm levels. These primary mechanisms are underpinned by a series of secondary reinforcing mechanisms which include: (i) culturally-motivated job search and labour recruitment practices which reinforce existing corporate cultures, as Wrms seek employees that match their existing corporate culture, and employees seek Wrms that match their own personal values; (ii) educational and skilling mechanisms, in which graduates as embodied cul-ture take the university’s cultural values, attitudes and norms into which they have been socialised to the Wrms that subsequently employ them; (iii) programmes administered by civic institutions that socialise their individual members into a particular set of values and which therefore maintain a high degree of social control over members’ sense of identity and behaviour patterns; and (iv) local, regional and national legislation that strengthens the power of the employer vis-à-vis the employee, or which increases employers’ responsibilities to accommodate their employees’ particular cultural lifestyles in the workplace. Overall, therefore, cultural embeddedness is not pregiven, inherited or static, but continually remade via these various causal mechanisms and practices which might usefully be grouped together in terms of their eVects on three general sets of ‘relations of embeddedness’, namely: (i) those between individuals and individuals; (ii) those between individuals and the Wrm; and (iii) and those between the Wrm and its wider (formal and informal) institutional environment. In this way, the cultural values, attitudes, expectations and behaviour of employees and Wrms in the region are informed by those of its lead civic, educational, political and labour institutions, in turn shaped by legislative mechanisms at the regional and national scales which regulate patterns of corporate governance. These spill over to workers, Wrms and industries in the region through the course of time (see also Martin et al., 1994), in eVect setting the social rules and deWning the norms of behaviour across Wrms throughout the region (see Glasmeier, 2000). This is not to argue that regional culture mechanically or rigidly determines worker and Wrm behaviour, but rather that it structures the material and cultural resources that enable and constrain the actions of individuals and the Wrms in which they work. As such, it is imperative that we conceptualise the Wrm as embedded in socio-cultural relations both as a collectivity and via the embeddedness of its individual employees (see also Oinas, 1999) articulated through the three sets of relations detailed above.
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CORPORATE DECISION MAKERS & OPINION LEADERS Simultaneous occupation of positions of corporate power and regional cultural identity Borrowing from models are familiar with
STRENGTH IN NUMBERS INTRA-FIRM LEVEL
INTER-FIRM LEVEL
Conformity to norms of the group Mutual observance Group ratification of culturally-informed decisions
Influence of surrounding firms Visibility factor – lead firms
FOUNDING / MANAGING / STAFFING FIRMS CIVIC INSTITUTIONS
LABOUR RECRUITMENT
Socialisation
Firms actively seeking employees that match their own values
Systemic govt power
Employees seeking firms that match their own values
EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
Universities/colleges Graduates as embodied culture
STATE-SCALE POLITICAL LEGISLATION e.g. anti-smoking and liquor licensing laws; impacts on amenities and lifestyle choices
NATIONAL-SCALE POLITICAL LEGISLATION e.g. Civil Rights Act (1964) & Workplace Religious Freedom Act (1972) Fig. 1. Connecting the major mechanisms of Wrms’ cultural embedding in the region.
6. Conclusion While the concept of ‘cultural embeddedness’ has been drawn upon extensively to theorise and explain uneven patterns of regional economic development, our understanding of the causal mechanisms and practices through which spatially variable sets of socio-cultural conventions, norms, attitudes, values and beliefs shape and condition the economic performance of Wrms in regional industrial systems remains under-speciWed. On the one hand, regional learning accounts tend to ‘dehumanise’ processes of cultural embedding by divorcing them from everyday material practice as experienced by workers. On the other hand, this literature also suVers from a tendency to underemphasise the importance of wider extra-local structures based on a misplaced conception of regions as ‘closed systems’ or mere ‘containers’ of intangible assets and sociocultural structures. In contrast, this paper has sought to make visible the everyday practices, mechanisms and emergent eVects both locally and extra-locally through which the cultural embedding of Wrms within regional economies is performed and (un)unintentionally (re)produced. Drawing on the case study of the high tech regional economy in Salt Lake City, Utah, the paper Wrst summarised how local computer software Wrms’ abilities to access external sources of knowledge and competencies, and to use new knowledge once it enters the Wrm are diVerentially shaped by the socially constructed norms, values and evaluative criteria within this region’s dominant
culture (particularly Mormon ethics of unity, reciprocity, self-suYciency, independence, self-reliance and non-confrontation). The paper has also explored the meaning and consequences of that cultural embedding for Wrms’ economic performance, as measured across a series of metrics of competitiveness. Second, in contrast to previous tendencies within the regional learning literature to ‘dehumanise’ cultural embeddedness as a reiWed set of inherited relations, the analysis focused on the deliberative human agents, actors and bureaus whose ongoing purposive actions are not only constitutive of, but also themselves constrained by, processes of cultural embedding. As part of this, the analysis unpacked some important extra-regional labour market practices and national legislative structures. While the analysis presented here has illustrated these mechanisms with regard to the Utah case, arguably these represent locally-instituted manifestations of more general mechanisms which are potentially applicable to other regions with strong cultures, be those based on class, ethnicity, unionization, or industrial specialization. But what of empirical conWrmation of that transferability? Importantly, some recent work on the masculinist work cultures in Cambridge’s high tech regional economy (Gray and James, 2007; c.f. Massey, 1995) and on the long hours work culture in Dublin’s ICT cluster (James, 2006b) has identiWed similar mechanisms of cultural embedding in operation, and hence that the analysis presented does potentially oVer a useful framework for understanding the everyday
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mechanisms and practices which underpin the mutual constitution of culture/economy in other places. Clearly however, there remains considerable scope for future studies to explore this transferability. Second, in order to avoid a static view of embeddedness, future work should explore further how the meaning and consequences of these diVerent mechanisms and practices of cultural embedding for Wrms’ observed behaviour and economic performance evolve over time, as Wrms grow in size, set up subsidiaries in other regions, or else merge with other Wrms. Preliminary results from the Utah case suggest that as Wrms grow from small cohesive groups of people committed to similar culturallyinformed goals and objectives to larger, more bureaucratic and segmented type corporate environments, the values of the founders and the original group often became lost (‘key individuals’ mechanism weakened), in turn reinforced by new employees joining a company with a greater diversity of skill sets and cultural backgrounds, resulting in a lesser ratiWcation of regionally-culturallyinformed decisions within the Wrm (‘strength-in-numbers’ mechanism weakened): ‘So last year in particular we went through a lot of political in-Wghting with this new batch of employees, with the traditional LDS structure really Wghting up against the people who came in from the outside. And the outside won, they usually always do’. Director of Marketing, FQY, active Mormon And Wnally, given the negative impacts of some mechanisms and practices of cultural embedding on Wrms’ economic performance as illustrated in the Utah case, future work might also explore the amenability of these various mechanisms to deliberate programmes of targeted change in pursuit of new patterns of Wrm behaviour and hence regional economic development (for example, in line with the myriad cluster policy proscriptions in the UK, US and beyond that have simply exhorted Wrms to become more cooperative or embracing of risk). In so doing, cultural economic geographers can further their development of a powerful, in-depth empirical corpus of work commensurate with the exciting conceptual developments that have largely dominated cultural economic geography over the last decade, and hence circumvent the critiques of ‘thin empirics’ and ‘scanty evidence’ recently leveled at the sub-discipline (Markusen, 1999; Martin, 2001). Acknowledgements I am grateful for comments on earlier versions of this paper by Mia Gray, Jane Pollard, Sarah Damery, three anonymous referees, and audiences at invited seminars to the Departments of Geography at the Universities of Newcastle Upon Tyne, Oxford and Lund. Thanks also to all of my research participants in Utah who kindly took time out from their busy work schedules to be interviewed, and especially those who bought me lunch. The research was funded
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