Embedded digital creative workers and Creative Services in banking

Pages: 145-157

DOI: 10.4337/9781782545705.00018

Abstract:

This chapter explores the roles and functions of both embedded digital creative workers and Creative Services firms in an industry beyond the core Creative Industries: banking. The chapter focuses on the design and development of applications (apps) and mobile websites for smartphones and tablet computers, with examples drawn principally from the Australian banking sector. While it might be assumed that utility and practicality are more important and more highly valued in apps development for financial services institutions than innovation and aesthetic design, this chapter illustrates the growing importance placed on creative work in this sector. The finance industries, and in particular banking, are information-intensive businesses. They have typically been early adopters of information technology (IT) (Bons et al. 2012, 198), and major employers of IT and software professionals. According to figures from the 2006 and 2011 Australian censuses, the highest proportion of embedded creative workers (that is, workers in creative occupations employed outside the core Creative Industries), measured as a percentage of the total industry workforce, was employed in the finance and insurance services industries, of which banking forms a part. In addition, in both censuses, across all divisions, these industries employed the largest total number of software and digital content workers. The largest proportion of embedded creative workers in the finance and insurance sector in both 2006 and 2011 was in software and digital content occupations, followed by those in advertising and public relations occupations.

Source: Scopus