We investigate what factors are required in order to succeed in projectbased cultural industries. In particular, we focus on the effects of relational stability and reputation on two key dimensions of movies' success: commercial success and artistic merit. We combine the two dimensions of films' performance for a more accurate understanding of how authenticity and artistic merit are manufactured in the movie industry. We examine this question by analysing a sample of Italian films and focusing on the role of the film director. We argue that commercial success is favoured by a director's strong vertical ties (with producers and distributors) and economic reputation, while artistic merit is positively affected by a director's weak horizontal ties (with other creative partners) and artistic reputation. We propose an explanation in terms of varying degrees of task routineness and we use it to account for the divergence between our results and others in the cultural and organizational literature.

Conceiving institutional effects as occurring within the boundaries of predefined institutional environments, spaces or fields leaves little leeway for understanding transnational phenomena of interaction, competition and overlapping jurisdiction of ideas, norms and regulations of multiple origin. I propose here the metaphor of intersecting institutional streams, which influence social actors due to their different origin, strength and fluidity. Thanks to a new understanding of the interaction between roles, institutionalized identities and the self, I refer to individuals not as cultural and institutional dopes, but as able, in varying degrees, to participate in multiple cultural traditions and to maintain distinctive and inconsistent action frames. I collected quantitative information on 418 Italian middle managers, working for local and international firms in Italy, and qualitative information on 113 of them. The majority in international firms enacted Anglo-Saxon identities, and more so in US and British firms; hybridizations occurred with positively perceived aspects of Italian institutions. The majority in Italian firms enacted a traditional Italian identity. Enactment was dependent on characteristics of the role (hierarchical level, international interconnectedness) and on the degree of identification with the international firm’s culture. The latter was spurred by the global integrated use of HRM practices.

What do middle managers do? Based on a conceptualization of knowledge as the capacity to act in response to uncertain, complex and ambiguous environmental stimuli, we analyse the role of middle managers in Germany, Great Britain and Italy as holders of different types of knowledge in relation to national institutions such as the education system, the system of industrial relations and the career system. We identify the common role of middle managers in the three countries as the responsibility to both maintain a positive social environment and to handle exceptions and solve unexpected problems. German and Italian managers are directly involved in the solution of technical problems, while their British counterparts act as brokers of technical specialized competences. Italian firms differ from German ones in that the role of middle managers is less formalized.

Status orders are critically important -yet shifts in the status and social meaning of a market category and of the organizations associated with it have been little investigated. In particular, there is limited understanding of how a deeply institutionalized low status category might extend its reach to high status positions. Instead, most studies have examined the status of organizations within a category. Status recategorization -i.e. the vertical extension and reclassification of an entire category, involving the displacement of deeply institutionalized cognitive understandings and their associated socio-cultural practices, has been neglected. Applying qualitative methods to a case study of grappa in Italy, we theorize how status recategorization might occur in mature contexts where the exigencies of status imperatives are pressingly felt. Our primary contribution is identification of a form of theorization -theorization by allusionthat involves the mechanisms of category detachment, emulation, and sublimation, and which is particularly appropriate for change involving status because of its singular avoidance of contestation and resistance.