Stine Grodal

Category Taken-for-Grantedness as a Strategic Opportunity The Case of Light Cigarettes, 1964 to 1993

Theories within organizational and economic sociology that center on market categories often equate taken-for-grantedness with increased constraint on category members’ features. In contrast, we develop a novel perspective that considers how market participants’ changing category-related attributions decrease the scrutiny of category offerings, opening up strategic opportunities for firms. We further argue that whether producers should be expected to take advantage of these opportunities depends on the extent to which they are incentivized to do so. We use the case of the light cigarette category to test this thesis. We argue and find evidence that increasing taken-for-grantedness of the light cigarette category created greater opportunity for tobacco firms to strategically manipulate category features.

Great Expectations: Discourse and Affect During Field Emergence

Abstract Studies show that discourses are important in legitimating emerging fields. However, we still lack understanding of how potential participants’ interpretations of discourses shape their involvement in emerging fields – particularly when the field’s definition is ambiguous. Drawing on an in-depth study of the emerging nanotechnology field we show that individuals’ affective responses to discourses play an important role in their decisions to participate. We find that discourse, expectations, affective responses, and participation in emerging fields are mutually constituted, and develop a model that shows these interconnections. Theoretically, our study expands understandings of discourse and field emergence by incorporating affect.

The Discursive Perspective of Market Categorization: Interaction, Power, and Context

Abstract Scholars have primarily focused on how language represents categories. We move beyond this conception to develop a discursive perspective of market categorization focused on how categories are constructed through communicative exchanges. The discursive perspective points to three under-researched mechanisms of category evolution: (1) the interaction between market participants, (2) the power dynamics among market participants and within the discourse, and (3) the cultural and material context in which categories are constructed. In this theoretical paper, we discuss how each of these mechanisms shed light on different phases of category evolution and the methods that could be used to study them.

Field Expansion and Contraction: How Communities Shape Social and Symbolic Boundaries:

To investigate how participants shape a field’s social and symbolic boundaries over time, I conducted an in-depth longitudinal study of five core and peripheral communities in the emerging nanotechnology field from the early 1980s to 2005. I show that core communities—futurists and government officials—initially expanded both social and symbolic boundaries to increase the field’s monetary and cultural resources, yet later they reversed course and contracted the field’s boundaries. I explain this shift by showing how an increase in resources enticed peripheral communities (service providers, entrepreneurs, and scientists) to claim membership in the field. Such claims created a self-reinforcing cycle—some peripheral communities enlarged the symbolic boundary of the field to grow the field, but this social and symbolic expansion threatened the identity of core communities and their ability to access resources. Core communities thus attempted to restrict the symbolic boundary and use this narrow definition to police membership claims by peripheral communities aiming to access the field’s resources. I develop a theoretical model of how debate over a field’s identity and resources shapes its social and symbolic boundaries. I show how different communities strategically manipulate field boundaries depending on their identification with the field. Core communities seek to keep the social and the symbolic boundaries aligned, while peripheral communities that identify only weakly with the field pursue their self-interested actions irrespective of whether these actions misalign the social and symbolic boundaries.

Call for papers for a special issue on culture, innovation and entrepreneurship

Deadline: 15 October 2017 While the study of innovation and entrepreneurship is a diverse, multi-disciplinary endeavor, the role of culture is often neglected or under-emphasized (Lounsbury & Glynn, 2001). However, building on the cultural turn across the social sciences and humanities (Weber & Dacin, 2011; Friedland & Mohr, 2004), there has been a recent flowering of conversations on how culture shapes innovation and entrepreneurship. This work has drawn on various cultural theories and concepts including boundaries, logics, schemas, scripts, and values (e.g., Gehman, Treviño, & Garud, 2013; Perkmann & Spicer, 2014; Thornton, Ocasio, & Lounsbury, 2012; Zietsma & Lawrence, 2010), narratives, vocabularies, discourse and framing (e.g., Bartel & Garud, 2009; Cornelissen & Werner, 2014; Dalpiaz, Tracey, & Phillips, 2014; Grodal & Granqvist, 2014; Kahl & Grodal, 2016; Zilber, 2007), identity, categories, and practices (e.g., Durand, Granqvist, & Tyllström, 2017; Kennedy & Fiss, 2013; Lounsbury & Crumley, 2007; Navis & Glynn, 2010). While these recent advances are encouraging, the work has been scattered and these various contributions are yet to be synthesized into a more coherent and cumulative research program. In this Special Issue of Innovation: Organization & Management, we therefore aim to further advance this agenda and to this end seek empirical and theoretical papers that highlight how culture shapes innovative and entrepreneurial processes within and across organizations. In particular, we seek to draw on recent advances in cultural analysis and theory to begin to cultivate a more coherent conversation around culture, innovation and entrepreneurship. Instead of conceptualizing culture as an external constraint, contemporary cultural approaches share an emphasis on understanding how organizations draw upon and employ cultural materials in more pragmatic and strategic ways (Rindova, Dalpiaz, & Ravasi, 2011). Research further explores how cultural elements are produced and taken into use in various situations (Garud, Schildt, & Lant, 2014; Granqvist, Grodal, & Woolley, 2013). Previous studies often draw on the notion of culture as an existing ‘toolkit’ (Swidler, 1986), but also make use of practice theory (Bourdieu, 1984), communicative theories of institutions (Cornelissen, Durand, Fiss, Lammers, & Vaara, 2015), and other strands of cultural analysis that endogenize various forces ‘as themselves culturally constructed’ (Weber & Dacin, 2011, p. 287). While there remain important differences across contemporary