innovative workers in relation to the city: the case of a natural resource-based centre (calgary)

8/6/2019 Innovative workers in relation to the city: The case of a natural resource-based centre (Calgary)

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Innovative workers in relation to the city: The case of a naturalresource-based centre (Calgary)

Camille D. Ryan , Ben Li, Cooper H. LangfordScience, Technology and Society Program, Faculty of Communication and Culture, University of Calgary, 2500 University Dr., NW Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 31 August 2010Received in revised form 3 February 2011Accepted 18 March 2011Available online 30 April 2011

Keywords:

EmbeddednessExpressed preferencesTalentAttractionRetentionEconomic growth

a b s t r a c t

A large recent literature argues that cities capacity to attract and retain creative talent crucially supportsinnovation and economic health. Instead of understanding creative contributions statistically througheducation, job classification, income, and economic growth, this paper qualitatively explores workersattitudes about the city in which they pursue a career. This paper identifies and reports on factors ofattraction and retention of individuals that have been identified as innovative workers by firms in Cal-gary, a natural resource-based centre in Canada studied in the years 20062008. The data were drawnfrom interviewees responses to questions about attitudes toward the city as a place to work and aboutpossible moves to alternative locations, in the context of a study of the social dynamics of innovationfrom the city perspective. Analysis qualitatively extends seven established themes of the socio and eco-nomic development. We find that economic opportunities, several environmental factors, personal net-works, and professional networks were most attractive, while socio-cultural diversity was lessemphasized.

Crown Copyright 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Capacity to attract and retain talent is a commonlyaccepted factor for success in innovation systems from thelevel of an industrial cluster (Breschi & Malerba, 2001;Maskell & Malmberg, 1999; Wolfe & Gertler, 2003) to theregional system (Cooke, Gomez, & Etxebarria, 1997; Cooke& Leydesdorff, 2006; Florida, 2002a,b, 2004) to national sys-tems (Freeman, 1997; Lundvall, 1992) and to global centersof excellence (Mahroum, 2000a,b, 2005). Such innovationstudies presume that talent, either generated individuallyor through teams, originates creative activities leading toinnovation. Studies based on semi-structured interviewswith managers in Canada of innovative firms (e.g.,

Holbrook, Adam, Arthurs, & Cassidy, 2010; Langford, Wood,& Jacobsen, 2005; Langford, Wood, & Ross, 2003; Phillips,Ryan, Karwandy, Procyshyn, & Parchewski, 2008) found thatfirms prefer to locate near thick labor markets. Thus,assessing factors that attract and retain talent is central toexamining a regional innovation system. This study focuses

on individuals in positions that influence innovation withinorganizations in both private and public sectors in the Cal-gary census metropolitan area (CMA). Creativity is mul-ti-faceted: as a precondition to innovation (Bassett-Jones,2005), as contributor to the innovation process throughdeveloping ideas (West, 2002), and in its catalytic and inter-dependent relationship with diversity and competitiveadvantage in facilitating the innovation process (West &Anderson, 1996). Creativity extends beyond arts and de-sign, encompassing all human potential for the originaland, in turn, generates unique value to the firm or broadersystem. Identifying these innovative individuals requiresfinding those whose disposition or site of opportunity leadsto demonstration of original contribution. This qualitative

study employed a protocol (see below) to identify such indi-viduals, while semi-structured interviews allowed actors toexpress views from their own perspectives.

Various hypotheses examine a regions quantitativecharacteristics to attract and retain creative individuals,ranging from a central role of a rich and diverse culture(e.g., Florida, 2000, 2002a,b, 2004; Gertler, Florida, Gates,& Vinodrai, 2002) to simple market factors (e.g., Shearmur,2007). While respecting the analytical strengths of each ofthe approaches, we use a more cultural approach ( laBarnes, 2001) to examine these human factors. Richard

1877-9166/$ - see front matter Crown Copyright 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.ccs.2011.03.002

Corresponding author. Address: Department of Bioresource Policy, Businessand Economics, College of Agriculture and Bioresources, University of Saskatche-wan, 51 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada S7N 5A8. Tel.: +1 403 8092831; fax: +1 306 966 8413.

E-mail address: [email protected] (C.D. Ryan).

City, Culture and Society 2 (2011) 4554

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Florida (2004) captures the issue in a defense of the termcreative class:

Some have criticized the idea of a creative class as elitistand exclusionary. . . it is neither. . . I came to use this termout of frustration with the snobbery of concepts such asknowledge workers, information society, high-tech

economy. . .

I find [creative class] to be more accurate indefining the real source of economic value creationthatis human creativityand because it is an intellectual con-struct that extends to all forms of human potential: the vaststorehouse that is human creative capacity (p. 4).

This article reports factors of a city region, perceived byinnovative individuals, that enable and build a talent basesupporting innovation in a natural resource (upstream oiland gas) centre. The individuals, identified as innovativeworkers by the firms or organizations that employ them,occupy roles that include but expand on Floridas creativework job categories.

Identifying the innovative worker

A common statistical approach (e.g., Florida, 2002b; Ger-tler et al., 2002) counts employment in sectors normallyrequiring advanced educational credentials1 as an indicatorof talent with a complementary category of those employedin creative occupations. These indicators by correlation (Jaf-fe, 1998) do not directly measure a target. All such indicatorsare based on statistical hypotheses. Florida and Gertlerimplicitly justify the hypotheses by two claims. The firstclaim is that talent relevant to innovation (andby implica-tiongrowth) is more concentrated in individuals with ad-vanced education credentials2 than in the generalpopulation. The second claim is that their employment indi-cates they are paid for doing creative work (Florida, 2004). 3

The statistical hypotheses do not at all imply that inno-vation processes exclude important individuals lacking for-mal credentials, nor does the second mean that allemployees in a given job category are consistently creative.Such statistical hypotheses have enabled large studiescomparing performance of many cities. In contrast, ourqualitative investigation looks deeper than educational cre-dentials to recognize direct evidence of creative contribu-tion in working environments. For comparability ofresults, this inquiry builds upon the statistical definitionsof creative talent. An expanded criterion identifies workerswhose contributions support innovation capacity in previ-ously studied and characterized work contexts. Operation-ally, innovative workers substantially control the direction,management and quality of their work and commonly em-ploy abstract concepts as a primary vocational tool. Innova-tive workers seek challenge, and especially can recognizenew connections challenging current paradigms. The roleof the social context will be the matter of empirical inves-tigation. Therefore, this study relies on an operational defi-nition of creative talent in the Calgary context, referringto both the individual informants roles and the processfor selecting innovative individuals to interview.

The overall project protocol3 prescribed semi-structuredinterviews with senior executives of firms and communityorganizations, as well as with individuals identified as inno-vative workers. In an effort to identify individuals of the lat-ter type, senior executives were asked to identify thoseindividuals who would be difficult to replace since simplyasking for creative staff yielded mainly in-house writersand graphic artists. The approach assumed that the identifiedindividuals occupational role produces a direct vocationaloutput that is not easily substitutable, despite the fact thatothers may also be difficult to replace. Candidates who con-ducted innovative work in either an individual or teamcapacity were included. Candidates deemed difficult to re-place only because of long learning curves related to theirposition in communication networks were excluded.

We thus selected individuals who occupy positions ofhigher innovative potential than workers whose static rolesprescribed invariant tasks that may nonetheless be per-formed by highly degreed individuals with grand titles.Several additional individuals were included because theircreative contributions have been publically identified. Theresulting refined list of individualsdeemed to be innova-tive workers in their respective rolesoperationalizes ourdefinition of creativity in this present innovation context.Empirically, innovative workers identified by our criteriacaptured those whose occupational circumstance (includ-ing but not limited to having a creative role or educa-tional credentials) was crucial to their employers byvirtue of providing unique value. Thus, includes creativeworkers in the sense of meeting the criteria prescribed byliterature, but also includes workers whose innovativepractice contributes to the overall creative outputs of thecity. Although this definition of innovative worker buildson previous concepts of creative, it is concerned withindividuals who do creative things affecting the city, ratherthan with (solely) their statistical categories.

The Calgary context

Despite Calgarys role as an economic hub in oil and gas,there are neither major oil wells nor refineries within100 km of the city. Key actors in the Census MetropolitanArea (CMA)4 provide managerial, technical, and financialknowledge to resource extraction projects of regional, pan-Canadian and global scope. Calgary shares such a role withother typical petroleum industry centers as Houston, Texas;

London, England; Edinburgh, Scotland; and Stavanger, Nor-way. Analysing regional knowledge-flow factors, viewedthrough a spatial lens, must draw not only on relational eco-nomic geography (Bathelt & Glckler, 2003) but must sys-tematically include context. The perceptions and expressedpreferences of interviewed innovative workers therefore pro-

1 For example, bachelors degrees and beyond.2 A major study of American cities (Florida, 2004) found that creative class

employment was a better correlate of income than human capital (education),

whereas the reverse was true for total wealth.

3 The Calgary project is one of a set of coordinated studies across Canada sponsored

by the Innovation Systems Research Network (ISRN). The ISRN project explores how

local social characteristics and processes in city-regions determine their economic

vitality and dynamism as centers of innovation and creativity. It is supported by a

Major Collaborative Research Initiative grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities

Research Council of Canada.4 The Census Metropolitan Area is defined by Statistics Canada as a central core city

of 100,000 or more and surrounding communities where a majority of the labour

force is employed in the central city.

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vide key data to analyze the social circumstances that theindividual interviewees construct.

The Calgary CMA experienced nearly unique rapid inter-nal migration growth from 1996 to 2005 among Canadiancities. Power law relationships can relate growth to sizein exponential relationships of the form:

Loggrowth bLogsizeA power law relationship implies that the driving mech-

anisms for growth are scale free. The parameter b is con-stant over all sizes. Many such relationships for cities (ona global basis) are reviewed by Bettencourt, Lobo, Helbing,Kuhnert, and West (2007) comparing growth patterns towell-known biological relationships.5 Typical biological sizescaling relationships exhibit b values less than 1, reflectingeconomies of scale. In contrast, cities relationships reflect-ing wealth creation and innovation have b values of 1.2which implies increasing returns to scale whereas thoseof infrastructure display b values of $0.8 (economies ofscale) (Bettencourt et al., 2007). Economic geographers(e.g., Krugman, 1996) typically also invoke proportionategrowth to explain urban hierarchies with growth-sizedistributions.

Slopes of power law scaling relations, b, characterizemechanisms operating throughout the group, but specialcharacteristics emerge from outliers. For example, Loren-zen and Andersen (2007) report creative class presence in445 European cities follows power laws divided into threedistinct phases.

Among Canadas larger cities (CMA population >200,000, n = 17), any power law relation between overallpopulation growth and size is weak (b $ 0.2, R2 = 0.15)and a power law for employment percentage growth iseven weaker (b $ 0.2, R2 = 0.03). However, Calgarysemployment growth of 17%, against the national averageof 9%, is more than four percent higher than the closestcompetitor city. An earlier analysis (Langford, Li, & Ryan,2010) shows a strong power law relationship for CanadianCMAs between city size and net migration from 2001 to2005 (b = 1.3, R2 = 0.82). Cities with populations over200,000 appear to experience increasing returns to scalein their attractiveness to newcomers. Positive network ef-fects are fundamental to attraction to all cities. However,Calgary is a positive outlier6 experiencing distinctive in-migration, whatever the form of the overall relationship tosize.

Embeddedness

We propose an indicator designated embeddedness tocapture factors reported about innovative workers deci-sions both to move to and to remain in the CMA. Anembedded individual is hypothesized to conduct the

majority of their personal, social and economic activitieswithin the geographic locality based upon the advanta-geous context it provides. The indicator in this case studybears a relation to embeddedness as defined as Mitchell,Holtom, Lee, Sablynski, and Erez (2001) firm-level jobembeddedness.

Utilizing a grounded theory approach, groups of phrasesabout embeddedness were drawn from fully transcribedinterviews and grouped under one or more of seven hypoth-eses which serve as high-level categories for our analysis.H1 is implicit in the literature cited above. H2 closelymatches Shearmurs (2007) economic hypothesis. Relatingclosely to H2, H3 was suggested by the very common refer-ence to Calgarys spirit of entrepreneurship. H4 and H5 as-cribe detail to abstract social networks. The remaining twotest factors of attraction in the local environment often dis-cussed in the urban studies literature. H6 concerns ameni-ties such as safe streets and good schools. H7 concerns thephysical environment, e.g., proximity to the Rocky Moun-tains and ready access to outdoor activities.

H1. A socio-cultural environment rich in diversity attractsand retains innovative workers.

H2. Economic opportunity is a key attractor for innovativeworkers based upon opportunities and growth-drivengrowth.

H3. The local business environment or a spirit of entrepre-neurship serves as a key attractor for innovative workers.

H4. The existence of professional networks (with stronglinks) provides a dynamic, adaptable and flexible workingenvironment.

H5. The existence of personal, leisure activity, and/or fam-ily networks (with strong links) attracts and retains inno-vative workers.

H6. Structural amenities such as good schools, transporta-tion and safety are important factors for embedding inno-vative workers in a community.

H7. The physically attractive environment provides oppor-tunities for recreational activity for innovative workers.

The full flavor of comments assigned to each group isillustrated with individual interview quotes in thediscussion.

Methods

A set of questionsrelating to each hypothesis (H1throughH7) was selected from the ISRN interview instrument (seeAppendix A for list of questions). For each question, a re-sponse sheet containing every Calgary interviewees re-sponse to the question was automatically compiled from adatabase of responses. Some questions provided data aboutmore than one of H1 through H7. By this means, attitudes,and perceptions were grouped into the seven categories.

5 For example, total employment in US cities scales against population with a b

coefficient of 1.01, whereas new patents, number of inventors and private sector R&D

employment all scale with b coefficients greater than 1.2. In contrast, road surface

length in Germany scales against population with a b value of 0.83 while gasoline

sales in the United States scale with a coefficient of 0.79.6 Others are Edmonton, Kitchener-Waterloo and Oshawa. Edmonton has similar-

ities to Calgary. Kitchener-Waterloo has a vibrant high technology sector, and Oshawa

is the closest CMA to Toronto. The three largest CMAs of Toronto, Montreal, and

Vancouver are experiencing major growth in suburbs and exurbs and Oshawa may be

a beneficiary of this trend.

C.D. Ryan et al. / City, Culture and Society 2 (2011) 4554 47


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Response sheets were then inspected for commonphrases capturing embeddedness factors. Responses werecoded for mentions of 28 potential embeddedness factorsthat may be viewed as positive, neutral or negative in theCalgary context (these factors are explored in more detailin a preliminary version of this paper (see Langford et al.,2010). Each embeddedness factor was finally assigned toone of H1 through H7, providing the operational definitionof the factor (vide infra). Each response sheet was also re-viewed for responses specifically targeted to one of H1through H7.

A binary variable was assigned when the intervieweementioned an embeddedness factor concerning their careersand Calgarys innovation system. Fora positive mention Cal-gary, a + was marked alongside the question number. For anegative effect, a was analogously marked. Mentions ofeach embeddedness factor were tallied, and separately thenet frequency of positive or negative mentions wascomputed.

We then computed a Positivity Index (1 to 1) for eachembeddedness factor as follows:

For each of H1 through H7, we gathered the relevantsupporting embeddedness factors. We then computed aWeighted Aggregated Positivity Index for each hypothesisas follows:

The summed positivity indices are reported in Table 1.Together, the product of the number of mentions and the

Weighted Positivity Index gives the Embeddedness Indexindicator (EI) as a candidate indicator the attractiveness

of the hypothesized influences.

Results and analysis

In total, we interviewed 48 individuals from firms andorganizations in the Calgary CMA. Some individuals identi-fied practice in more than one area for a total of 121 prac-tices. The largest area represents the aggregate of civicsociety organizations (CSOs) (i.e. government, charitableor not-for-profit organizations) at 13%. The next four larg-est employment areas, in aggregate, represent Calgarysnatural resource industries (33%): consulting/management,environmental/engineering, technical/manufacturing and/

or oil and gas. The remaining 53% span areas includingadvertising/media/multimedia, retail and customer service,

legal and financial services, architecture/design and labor/construction.

The following quotes demonstrate the process and qual-itative character of the responses assigned in each category.

Socio-cultural diversity (H1) included openness to socio-cultural novelty, perceived social issues such as homeless-ness and discrimination and responses to them as well asand opportunities for socio-cultural participation:

[Y]ouve got festivals representing every kind of culturalethnicity that I can think of which is fabulous . . . we haverepresentation in all these things, including the Gay PrideParade. . . the Disability Arts Festival and so on.

Economic opportunity (H2) includes the positive percep-tion of youth as able and desired professionals, conditionsand opportunities afforded by the large size and continuinggrowth of Calgary, spin-off from oil and gas, economicdiversity; available employment opportunities for innova-tive workers to practice their preferred vocational skills;as well as the price of goods, services and real estate:

PIn algebraic sum of positive and negative mentions embeddedness factor n

absolute value of number of times embeddedness factornoccurred

WAPIHx X

PIn number of mentions for embeddedness factorn

number of mentions for all embeddedness factor contributing toHx

Table 1

Hypotheses, supporting mentions, and indexes.

Hypotheses Numbe r of supportingmentions

Weighted AveragePositivity Index(WAPI)

EmbeddednessIndex (EI)

H4 Professionalnetworks

208 0.33 68.64

H2 Economicopportunities

306 0.18 55.08

H5 Personalnetworks

164 0.33 54.12

H3 Localbusinessenvironment

119 0.15 17.85

H1 Socio-culturaldiversity

142 0.07 9.94

H7 Naturalenvironment

47 0.11 5.17

H6 StructuralAmenities

60 0.05 3.00



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[Calgary is] a young, modern city. Theres tremendousopportunity. Its a fast city. . . the financial centre, the oilcentre, the business centre. . . Its a wonderful place, espe-cially for young professionals. Theres so much opportunityhere. . . Another interviewee offered: . . .its the boomitsthe boom philosophy, the pioneering spirit. . . we try, wewill! We do have an abundance of heart in this town. . .corporate support

. . .

citizen support. . .

The local business environment (H3) includes formaland informal governance and business aspects, such as cli-ents open to new business opportunities, entrepreneurialspirit, and the political environment. Some intervieweesequated government support with a hands-off or indirectapproach to supporting business:

I think that this is what makes Alberta unique. . . in Albertaour political culture is such that we dont expect the gov-ernment to take care of things for us. . . we dont want gov-ernment to take care of things for us. . .

Professional networks (H4) are valued informal relation-ships within a professional circle directly or indirectly con-nected to business activities. A corporate environmentcomprised of networks of inter-firm and intra-firm rela-tionships supports professional networks enabling innova-tive workers to connect to local customers and jobs:

Its all about keeping your relationships open in Calgary. If youre a little bit of an extrovert and youre smart, youshould have no problem networking yourself into neverhaving to worry about work.

Personal networks (H5) provided long-term opportuni-ties for personal (non-vocationally-driven) learning, forvolunteerism, civic activity and other community partici-

pation. Personal networks include friends and, of course,that primary personal networkfamily connections:

I have a really close network of friends. My family is here.We moved here when I was five [years old], my parents arein their 80s.

Structural amenities (H6) embedding innovative work-ers in the Calgary CMAsuch as good schools, transporta-tion and safe streetsprovided the substrate for vitality,growth and reflection:

. . .the schools, the educational system, all the of thethings. . . of an urban centre or a region. . . are the fabricof what makes Calgary a great city. . .

Finally, the CMAs unique natural and geophysical set-ting (H7) near the Rocky Mountains provided aestheticattraction and recreational opportunities for individuals,and personal and professional groups:

. . .so much availablethe mountains, right next door. . . ifyoure into that kind of thing. . . the camping, skiing, climb-ing, etc.

In addition to these positive comments, several featureswere said to be unattractive. For example, socio-culturaldiversity (H1) was mentioned moderately frequently, butnegatively. The positive impact of the economic boombrought some countervailing social disparities:

I think that the scale of urban growth is causing a diver-gence. . . causing a gulf between the rich and the poor. . .homelessness is the paradox of prosperity. The economicallyand socially disenfranchised cant keep up with the increas-ing costs. . .

The boom and dominance of the oil and gas industrywas also perceived to limit and define firm establishmentand growth:

Ive learned over the years never start into a business inAlberta that doesnt have direct implications and impacton the oil and gas business. This is an oil and gastown. . .

Between 2004 and 2006, polls of attitudes in the Calgarybusiness community (Calgary Economic DevelopmentAuthority, 2007) found that employers perceptions ofquality of life and the labor market declined and were seenas negative economic factors.

While some respondents viewed the hands-off role ofgovernment as effective in supporting the local businessenvironment, others were more critical:

I think [the government] is really trying hard, but at somepoint theyre going to have to give up their cheerleader roleand actually step in and participate as partners. . .

As with Calgarys population growth, factors that moststrongly attract and retain innovative workers and supportopportunities for these individuals to engage in innovationare scale-free.

Evaluating the indicator

On average 12.5 observations of the types quoted abovewere drawn from each of the 48 interview transcripts. Ta-ble 1 summarizes the number of relevant mentions undereach hypothesis and the calculated Weighted Average Pos-itivity Index (WAPI) and the Embeddedness Indicator (EI).These factors give an indicator ranking for each hypothesis,and provide its operational definition with respect to per-ceptions of Calgary. Interviewees indicate that Calgarysnetworks (both personal and professional), together witheconomic opportunities, mattered most to Calgarys attrac-tiveness. However, the indicator does not strongly point ina single direction, thereby underlining the complexity ofcontext. Most interviewees valued different combinationsof elements in their relationship to Calgary. Relation to a

place exhibits multi-dimensional richness escaping simplestatistical regression of key factors.

Both professional (H4) and personal (H5) networks stronglyretain (attract?) innovative workers

Personal networks ranked third in the EI, while profes-sional networks ranked first. Personal networks were oftenlinked to family and/or grassroots connections to the com-munity, both key factors for remaining in or returning tothe Calgary CMA:

I am pretty established here. . . my family is here. No, Idont think that I would move.



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Professional networks stimulated informal ties and con-nections to enable these individuals to conduct and suc-ceed in work-related activities:

What makes Calgary unique is that people are pretty openand honest here. Trust is important. It creates a foundationfor deals get done with a handshake.

Geophysics is an oil and gas area with a very strong pro-fessional network having formal and regular meetings:

Calgary has to be the most closely knit geo-scientific groupin the world. . . because the city is compact. . .

However in another sector, informal and social gather-ings were also key:

Its during the three-hour cocktail session that were actu-ally going to learn something, exchange an idea, start a con-versation that goes somewhere. . . a lot of cocktail hours,shorter formal sessions, thats the ticket.

Economic opportunity is viewed as a key attractor forinnovative workers based upon opportunities for growth-driven growth (H2)

The economic boom has created huge opportunities forenterprise and growth in the Calgary CMA. Intervieweesrepeatedly commented on this:

Calgary vibrates with opportunity!

However, some respondents criticized the expense ofliving and operating in Calgary:

This city has struggled a lot with growth. Commercialspace is expensive. . . The health system. . . lacks availabilityof family doctors. . .

The fact that innovative workers continue to live andconduct business in the Calgary CMA, despite some socialand economic adversity, indicates that other factors inthe environment are sufficiently valuable, economically orsocially, to attract and retain them:

Calgary is the most challenging place Ive ever worked. Imean, I moved here to be near the mountains, to ski andto mountain bike and to do all those kinds of things. . .

The local business environment or a spirit ofentrepreneurship serves as a key attractor for innovativeworkers (H3)

Entrepreneurial spirit and available work niches com-bine for many respondents:

Theres an entrepreneurial spirit in Calgary which you just cannot beat. . .its easy to raise money and runwith an idea.

Relative to other large metropolitan centres such as Tor-onto or Vancouver, Calgary is also viewed as easy to navi-gate around, reducing commuting times:

I think theres a lot of advantages to its location and thetransportation services, you can pretty much go wherever

you want from here and you get there relatively quick.Another interviewee stated: I like convenience, I like lowstress. I think I can get that in Calgary more than any majorcity in Canada or the US.

The dominant oil and gas industry is viewed negativelyas talent in one sector is lost to oil and gas. The oil and

gas sector has really made it difficult for businesses likemyself, because theyre paying their assistants a hundredgrand. There are also suggestions that the industrys dom-inance inhibits economic diversity within the CMA.

Governmentawarenessoractioninrelationtobackingnew,existing and necessary initiatives to enhance some aspects ofCalgarys economic environment is viewed negatively:

I think [the government is] really trying hard, but at somepoint theyre going to have to give up their cheerleader roleand actually step in and participate as partners. . . put a lit-tle bit of money where your mouth is.

A socio-cultural environment rich in diversity attracts andretains innovative workers (H1)

The calculated EI corresponds to interviewee responsesthat socio-cultural diversity does little to embed innovativeworkers in the Calgary CMA:

Culturally speaking, Calgary really needs to have a thickerbase of exciting things to do. . . Another interviewee added:Arts is a bit of a rough sell here.

Additionally, negative attitudes were reported with re-spect to government responsibility to address social issuessuch as poverty, ethno-cultural discrimination and eco-nomic disparity:

Engaging [government] has not been easy. And gettingminorities into positions of influence that could actuallymake changes is missing.

A physically attractive environment provides opportunities forrecreational activity for innovative workers (H7)

Despite the natural environments low ranking in theembeddedness index, Calgarys proximity to the mountainsstrongly attracts some innovative workers:I moved here tobe near the mountains, to ski and to mountain bike and to doall those kinds of things.

This was echoed by another interviewee:

. . .its the mountains and easy access to the great out-doors. . . Calgary was characterized as a beautiful cityand . . . a great place to live. And yet we all want to escapeto the mountains or the lake on the weekends because youwant to go back to nature. . .and its the simple things in lifethat are maybe the most important.

Structural amenities such as good schools, transportation andsafety are important factors for embedding individuals in acommunity (H6)

Structural amenities strongly attracted innovative work-ers who could access them:



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Im happy in Calgary, its vibrant, its safe, its clean. . . and[Calgary is] a great place to raise kids. It still seems to meto be a friendly place.

However, their deficiencies were unattractive andvaried:

There are social issues including homelessness and a lackof low income housing.

Another respondent raised concerns:

. . .its taking newcomers much longer to catch up than theaverage Canadian. More and more of them are homelessand. . . [a] higher, vast, growing number of them are livingin poverty.Aptly referred to by an interviewee as the par-adox of prosperity, these latter quotes and those about theimportance of networks illustrate the significant socialdimensions of innovation supporting Calgarys growtheconomy. Most responses concerning the experience of practicing a creative profession in Calgary related to thenotion of social capital.

Creative talent and social capital

The character of creative talent accumulated in a givenlocale reflects (or is reflected by) the social capital at thatlocale. Social capital may be defined as . . .networks to-gether with shared norms, values and understandings thatfacilitate co-operation within and among groups (OECD,2001). Putnam defines social capital as the features of so-cial lifenetworks, norms and trustthat enable partici-pants to act together more effectively to pursue sharedobjectives (Putnam, 2000; page 665). Coleman and James(1988) sees social capital as being comprised of social

structure resources such as government welfare agencies,sources of wealth, activities for sharing and community-based aid and the role of social contacts or networks(1994)see the importance of comments under H4 andH5 above. Collective actions are generated largely throughrepeated face-to-face interaction (or connections) in hori-zontal networks (Ostrom, 2001; Putnam, 1993; Putnam,1995; Putnam, 2000). Social capital appears in econometricanalysis because the social capital theory asserts that socialnetworks have value affecting the productivity of individu-als and groups (Putnam, 2000; 1819).

Several features of Calgarys location, and its social andeconomic history established the social capital at the foun-dation of Calgarys innovation and economic growth. Dis-

covery of oil and gas in the Turner Valley region south ofCalgary early in the 20th century, followed by constructionof pipelines in the 1950s, re-invented Calgarys economic,political and social structures. Oil and gas delivered theprosperity that had been denied by ranching and railroads(Foran & MacEwan-Foran, 1982). Phenomenal growth since1947 is almost exclusively a product of emerging leader-ship of the Canadian petroleum industry, which both devel-oped and attracted a pool of creative talent. By 2006 few oilor gas wells remained near Calgary but it has become hometo head offices of 87% of Canadas oil and natural gas pro-ducers (Calgary Economic Development Authority, 2007).Calgary concentrates the technical, managerial and finan-cial knowledge to operate resource extraction in Calgarys

Alberta hinterland, across Canada, and globally. Spencerand Vinodrai (2007, 2009) report that Calgary led all Cana-dian cities in in-migration of science and engineering,financial, and construction professionals. Simultaneously,Calgary was third among cities in in-migration of arts andculture professionals. Calgary ranks fifth among large Cana-dian cities in both the Bohemian (artistic employment) in-dex and the Mosaic (population diversity) index (Gertleret al., 2002). The differences in opportunity and/or demandin those sectors aligns with our finding that economic fac-tors take priority over social factors. While a major factor ofin-migration from 2002 to 2008 is the economic boomstimulated by the sharp rise in the price of oil, Calgarywas similarly an outlier for 19962001 when oil and gasgrowth was only moderate. These statistical measures re-flect the highly networked nature of creative talent attrac-tion qualitatively identified in the previous section.

Calgarys economy is knowledge-based and concen-trated in two senses. The headquarters of the major naturalresource players and many minor ones are concentrated ina compact city centre of high-rises bearing logos of petro-leum companies and major financial firms. Out of over700,000 jobs in the Calgary Economic Region, 138,500 jobs(City of Calgary, 2008a) are concentrated in Calgarysdowntown core (City of Calgary, 2008b). A network of en-closed pedestrian walkways connect work and publicspaces, facilitating informal networking and encouragesopen exchanges among firms and their innovative workers.

The second sense of concentration concerns knowledgeconcentration vs. knowledge diversity in an innovation sys-tem. The presence of six clustered industries identifiedfrom employment statistics of standard industrial catego-ries suggests a diverse economy. The Conference Board ofCanada (2007a) reports an economic structure index of0.77 for Calgary (0 = not diverse, 1 = highest diversity),indicating a high level of economic diversity. However,interviews with firm leaders classified in the scientific,ICT and professional services industries (Langford, Li, &Ryan, forthcoming) reveal that most scientific and engi-neering professionals focus on oil and gas activity. A verylarge fraction of the business of financial and constructionfirms support oil and gas activity. The technical, managerialand financial knowledge to operate resource extraction lo-cally and globally is not found only in oil and gas firms, butrequires gathering highly skilled employees to mobilize adiverse platform of related knowledge. The emergence of aplatform (Cooke et al., 2007) of related knowledge placesCalgary squarely between the two conceptions of knowl-edge distributions conducive of innovation and growth.The first is the idea that concentration of knowledge inthe leading industry drives innovation and growth, oftencalled the MAR theory (Glaeser, Kallal, Scheinkman, & Shle-ifer, 1992). The second is the idea that innovation andgrowth are promoted by a diverse distribution of knowl-edge over a number of industries, facilitating injection ofnovelty, an idea pioneered by Jacobs (1970). Some respon-dents emphasized value derived from informal professionalnetworks facilitated by central concentration ofemployment.

For many interviewees, professional networks did notappear superficially to promote inter-sector interaction.For example, a quote above highlights the strength of the



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geophysical community network, while remarks about cof-fee meetings and similar informal networking tend to iden-tify members of a sectors value chain (those in differentfirms working toward common goals). Exceptions includedinterviewees from multimedia/advertising, and electronicmanufacturing sectors who reported gaining reusableknowledge by working with the oil and gas industry. Previ-ous studies of the origins in Calgary of wireless telecommu-nication, global positioning systems, and several softwareactivities demonstrated that sector specific knowledgehas spun out into new independent sectors as the oil indus-try has reached out for new tools (Langford et al., 2003).

By contrast, common major environmental factors ofoutdoor recreation, civic engagement (volunteerism), andshared interests in entrepreneurship clearly gather enthu-siasts working in different sectors. These associations cancreate personally valuable and difficult to substitute weaklinks (Granovetter, 1983) diffusing heterodox ideas butalso gathering diverse sources of support for new ventures.Interest in entrepreneurial activity may lead only to mem-bership in a sector-oriented association (e.g., The Petro-leum Club, or the WiTec wireless association), or beexpressed in involvement with broader-based organiza-tions like Calgary Technologies, Inc. or the Calgary Associa-tion for Advanced Technology. Participating providesindividuals (and perhaps employers) with unique combina-tions of value. However, some respondents report difficultywhen attempting non-oil-and-gas-related enterprises de-spite access to rich networks.

A final factor in the generation of social capital emergedin interviews with organizations in cultural, charitable andcivic organizations. (Feng, Li, & Langford, forthcoming).Firms support the efforts of their employees to serve as vol-unteers and board members of these not-for-profits. Thisengages private sector actors with the social and culturalorganizations and, at the same time, brings employees ofdifferent firms together.

Concluding remarks

Statistical analysis of embeddedness of creative talent inCanadian cities, whether emphasizing cultural (Gertleret al., 2002) or economic factors (Shearmur, 2007), mustby definition deal in aggregates that cannot distinguishmixed motives of an individual from variations betweenindividuals.

The diversity of industries represented among migrantsto Calgary, and the diversity of non-Calgary-specific factors

implies that findings may generalize beyond our Calgarycase. Our observationsthat both personal and profes-sional networks are key perceived attraction and retentionfactors for what we define as innovative workersechofindings about job embeddedness in which a social net-work provides professional benefits (Mitchell et al., 2001),and consistent with literature about high switching costsagainst changing social networks leading to locationalattachment (Bolan, 1997).

Environmental factorsnatural environment and busi-ness environmentdeserve some final comment. Socialperceptions of Calgarys business environment, economicopportunity and, to a lesser degree, networking, clearly re-flect their interdependence in innovative practice:

Theres an entrepreneurial spirit in the city. . . an open-for-business attitude. . . you cant duplicate that anywhere inthe world. . .

Proximity of the Rocky Mountains and opportunities foroutdoor activity figure prominently in attracting andretaining young technical and scientific talent in the wire-less industry (Langford et al., 2003). This is a motive thatdoes animate all sectors:

Im here because its two and a half hours to my cottage . . .the lake is warm in the summer and the skiing is great inthe winter.

Received cyclical global prices, as in the oil and gas sec-tor, alternately encourages corporate and individual entre-preneurial spirit through firm hiring patterns. Thedownturn since 2008, and forthcoming years, may showwhether the entrepreneurial spirit of the Calgary CMAsustains major fluctuations in world commodity prices,environmental pressures on resource extraction, and global

economic uncertainty.Finally, socio cultural diversity attempts to capture fac-tors associated with Floridas (2002a) influential work. Inthe context of this study, such factors may be under-re-ported because they are not readily conducive to everydayconversation. Interview data only weakly indicates positiveimportance of these factors either by direct reference or bysupporting inference. This result is consistent with Shear-murs (2007) interpretation of migration data in that crea-tive talent is attracted to economic growth rather than thereverse. Our results could be interpreted as consistent withShearmurs view, but this is not necessarily a clear andcompelling reading. The qualitative considerations empha-sized in comments on natural environment and comments

on professional and personal networks, along with theoverall complexity of perceptions and expressed motives,do not provide clear indication of a simple pull of economicopportunity and economic growth.

Regression analysis on sizes of population classes ormigration data alone provide limited information aboutcausal factors. By the same token, simple explanatory prop-ositions may mislead by suppressing diversity and complexcontext factors. The indicators employed in this case studyprovide an accessible tool to quantitatively assess the qual-itative data generated through interviews. They, too, havelimits and may not be fully generalizable in their applica-tion. Application of analogous methodology to other casesseems quite promising but we must emphasize the com-

plexities associated with context. Context is critical andthere is no cookie-cutter approach to administering thistype of analysis across multiple regions. The main lessonfrom this study and our observations is this: motives arecomplex and highly context dependent. This reveals indi-vidual patterns of thought. A balance of personal factorsand individual perceptions determines each intervieweesoverall expressed attitude about attraction and retentionof innovative workers in the CMA.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the Social Sciencesand Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for their funding



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through the Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI)Innovation Systems Research Network (ISRN). Additionally,thank you to the members of the Calgary team who partic-ipated in interviews and contributed to discussions on thistopic.

Appendix A. Interview questions

1. Please describe your employment history (firm/orga-nization, location, sector, position) follow up [probe issuesof volition, challenges that workers have faced].

a. In the case where there was a succession of jobs,why?

b. Where such changes voluntary or not?c. What attributes of the cities help to minimize risk

associated with losing ones job (role of social net-works, location, policies)?

2. To what extent have you moved between different

kinds of sectors or occupations?

a. To what extent does the [city name] economy enablethis kind of mobility and the kinds of opportunitiesavailable?

b. To what extent do you apply knowledge gained fromworking in other industries or firms in your currentwork?

3. What characteristics of the [city name] economy and/or labour market make it an attractive place to work in yourfield? Follow up on the following aspects:

a. Degree to which [city name] is a city characterized by

an openness to experimentation and creativity?b. Cutting edge work in field?c. Degree to which [city name] is a tolerant/welcoming

place (i.e. in terms of race/ethnicity/sexuality/genderequality in their field)?

4. What characteristics of the [city name] economy and/or labour market undermine its attractiveness as a place towork in your field?

a. Have you encountered discrimination in [city name]in your field?

b. In the city more broadly? (Lack of business/employ-ment opportunities? Lack of buzz in your field?

Weakness of creative networks? Lack of cooperationand community in your field? Lack of innovation,experimentation, cutting edge work in your field?)

5. What characteristics of living in [city name] make itan attractive place for you? (Possible issues to follow upon: natural and/or built environment? Recreational ameni-ties? Cultural amenities? Architecture? Institutions? Socialnetworks? Restaurants? Multicultural diversity? Cleanenvironment? Local politics? Quality of public schools?Safety? How appealing is this city as a place to raise achild? Affordability?)

6. Are there particular aspects of [city name] that en-hance creativity in the city?

a. In what ways does it facilitate creativity (or not)?b. To what extent are Calgarys strengths unique to the

city or are they related to Canadian institutions andvalues more generally?

c. To what extent do your professional creative activi-ties benefit from your professional and personal net-works in Calgary or abroad?

7. What characteristics of [city name] reduce its attrac-tiveness as a place in which to live? (Follow up on same is-sues as in previous question)

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