Workers' Orientation toward Retention and Its Structural Conditions in the Animation Industry

Focusing on the Informal Communities of Network Organization

Abstract

In comparison to the industries related to art or culture, it is necessary that the content industry retains workers, for it demands a large number of skilled creators. The animation industry also happens to be a labor-intensive industry; thus, the manner in which the creators maintain orientation toward retention is critical. For retention to be sustained, it is necessary that the creators have the prospect of continuing to obtain work. In the animation industry, it is difficult to evaluate the competence of creators who are primarily recruited as project-based contractors. This makes the mutual evaluation of creators highly significant in order to retain themselves in the industry. We employed an interview research method to examine the structural conditions and the limits of informal communities, which help the creators conduct mutual evaluations.

Due to the recent technological innovations, the management workforce has become younger, making the hierarchical evaluation difficult and strengthening the importance of mutual evaluation. While the older generations built informal communities to enable the evaluation of themselves, the younger generations feel that their colleagues do not evaluate them. This difference is a result of workflow segmentation, which has converted evaluations into ambiguous and shortened broadcasting periods, thus making the younger generations eventually lose out on mutual communication opportunities.

The animation industry needs informal communities to enable workers' orientation toward retention. These analyses illustrate the structural factors that obscure the evaluation of young animators and point out the significance of research on the structural condition of communities, which underpins workers' retention in the content industry.