Reconsidering the Knowledge Ecology in Fashion Industry: a Metaphorical Approach

Abstract

Creative industries have seen a growing academic, in which the vast majority of the literature has concentrated on the physicality of the environment and their locational accumulations. Recent studies have intended to describe the existence of creative industry structures through economic and political perspectives, and physical planning. In contrast, there is much being interest in the question of how the inner dynamics and nature of creative industries operate and respond to the given knowledge environment. Nevertheless, the nature of their organizational structure is equally worth studying. In the present study, the ecosystem of creative industry structure is considered as being the creative-based and knowledge intense activities of the fashion industry. The study aims at investigating how the fashion industry operates as an ecosystem. Methodologically, the present study engages significant ecological characteristics widely used in the theoretical and applied fields of business ecosystems, ecosystem management and creative ecology, and attempts to integrate some of these perspectives into the fashion industry, through a formulation of an innovative metaphoric approach. The ecology approach is here based on the application of appropriate scientific methodologies, focused on levels of biological metaphor of organization that encompasses the essential processes and interactions among organizations, and their environment. In such a metaphorical approach, factors in changing ecological concepts, diversity, interaction, competition and evolution are employed and evaluated with insights from the particular ecosystem of fashion industry.