ABSTRACT
Develops a new theory to explain the development of media production processes, starting by reviewing economic approaches highlighting economies of scale, vertical integration and division of labour, including “scientific management”, Taylorism, labour process, and Fordism. The chapter moves on to discuss issues specifically relevant to media production including theories of uncertainty, like transaction cost economics, and flexibility (flexible specialisation, the flexible firm) and the growth of freelancing and precarity in media work. The chapter illustrates the potential of evolutionary economics to link the various levels of analysis through the concepts of the industry life cycle, dominant design, process innovation, cycle time, task interdependencies and task decomposition. The chapter concludes by drawing on rhetorical text type theory to analyse the different forms of coherence structures used in media productions.
