Pot Noodles, Placements and Peer Regard: Creative Career Trajectories and Communities of Practice in the British Advertising Industry Charlotte McLeod, Stephanie O’Donohoe 1 and Barbara Townley St Andrews University – Institute for Capitalising on Creativity, Management School, The Gateway Building, North Haugh St Andrews, UK, and 1 University of Edinburgh, Management School, Edinburgh, UK Corresponding author email: cgilmore114@aol.com The increasingly unpredictable, individualized and short-term nature of the labour market is evident in the careers of advertising creatives. We explore the career trajectories of 48 creative professionals in the British advertising industry, using theories of situated learning and communities of practice to illustrate how the collective remains important to individuals’ career prospects. Creatives learn their craft by becoming immersed in the multiple, inter-related communities that constitute the advertising world during the demanding ‘pre-peripheral’ and ‘peripheral’ stages of their career. Learning through immersion continues throughout the journey from the periphery to the centre, since creatives participate in a competitive, tight-knit creative community, actively engaged in social networking and constantly monitoring each others’ creative output. Creatives’ legitimacy (and power) is earned by winning peer regard for their work. The nature of the learning required changes as each stage of the creative trajectory brings different motivations and pressures, but the processes of learning, the mutual shaping of individual and community, and the identity work involved are evident throughout creative career trajectories. Introduction The world of work is increasingly characterized by flatter and more fluid organizational structures; insecure, individualized and competitive work ar- rangements; and flexible employment patterns (Grey, 1998; Heckscher and Donnelon, 1994; Marchington et al., 2005; Nicholson and West, 1988). Moving up the organizational hierarchy does not necessarily depend on age, tenure or even ability, and there is less reliance on staged, incremental increases in skills, knowledge, abilities and respon- sibilities (Lawrence, 1988, 1990). These changes have transformed the career into a series of mutually negotiated transactions between organizations and individuals, rather than a long-term relationship between employer and employee (Heriott, 1992; Heriott and Pemberton, 1995; Schein, 1978). Rather than opportunities for progression, careers offer ‘opportunities for development’ and improvements in marketability and employability (Viney, Adam- son and Doherty, 1995). Responsibility for such development increasingly rests with the employee (Adamson, Doherty and Viney, 1998; Brousseau et al., 1996), emphasizing individualized dimensions of career management and the importance of organizations as sites ‘for realising the project of the self’ (Grey, 1994, p. 482; see also Coupland, This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant PTA-026-27-1580). The authors would like to thank Catherine Cassell, Associate Editor, and the reviewers for constructive and insightful feedback that has helped the authors develop this paper. British Journal of Management, Vol. 22, 114–131 (2011) DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2010.00705.x r 2010 British Academy of Management. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.