The consequences of category spanning depend on contrast

Kovács, Balázs; Hannan, Michael T.

doi:10.1108/s0733-558x(2010)0000031008

Cited by 140 publications

(163 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Several reviewer-and review-specific control variables were also included: (1) total words in the review, (2) reviewer activism based on the number of reviews written by the same reviewer prior to the focal review (prior studies have shown that activist reviewers tend to give lower ratings [Kovács and Hannan 2010]), (3) reviewer variety-seeking based on the log of the number of establishments visited by the reviewer, (4) date of the review was accounted for with the inclusion of year fixed effects, and (5) reviewer ID to control for other nonobservable, reviewerspecific differences.…”

Section: Control Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Perils of Proclaiming an Authentic Organizational Identity

Kovács¹,

Carroll²,

Lehman³

2017

SocScience

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An emerging body of research consistently demonstrates that individuals in developed consumer markets value authenticity. But how individuals respond to organizations that tout their identities as authentic is not so well understood. We argue that organizational attempts at explicitly proclaiming their own identity as authentic will generally be regarded by individuals with skepticism and devaluation. Across two studies with different research designs, we find consistent empirical evidence that individuals devalue organizations making identity self-claims of authenticity. The first study analyzed authenticity claims made in the texts of menus from 1,393 restaurants in Los Angeles and their corresponding 450,492 online consumer reviews recorded from 2009 to 2016. The second study used a controlled, minimalistic experimental setting with fictitious restaurant menus that examined reactions to generic authenticity self-claims. The findings illuminate how individuals respond to organizational identity claims about authenticity and raise interesting questions about other types of identity claims.

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Section: Control Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Perils of Proclaiming an Authentic Organizational Identity

Kovács¹,

Carroll²,

Lehman³

2017

SocScience

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“…ECENT research has reopened the classic sociological problem of how social categorization shapes social life (Durkheim andMauss, 1969 [1903]; Zuckerman, 1999;Hsu, 2006;Kovács and Hannan, 2010;Koçak et al, 2014). Much of this research works in the spirit of what Garfinkel (1968) called breaching experiments.…”

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confidence: 99%

Conceptual Spaces and the Consequences of Category Spanning

Kovács¹,

Hannan²

2015

SocScience

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A general finding in economic and organizational sociology shows that objects that span categories lose appeal to audiences. This paper argues that the negative consequences of crossing boundaries are more severe when the categories spanned are distant and have high contrast. Available empirical strategies do not incorporate information on the distances among categories. Here we introduce novel measures of distance in conceptual space and derive measures for typicality, category contrast, and categorical niche width. Using the proposed measurement approach, we test our theory using data on online reviews of books and restaurants.

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“…In this article, we analyze the role of globalization on institutional change that leads to the mixing of blueprints belonging to opposing categories, which is a widely neglected topic in the literature (Rao et al 2005). This is an important omission, as literature shows that hybrid forms meet sharp punishment, particularly if the category codes are oppositional or involve moral imperatives (Kovács and Hannan 2010). Our study suggests, however, that if the community has a lot at stake and therefore has a strong motivation for blending oppositional categories, then hybrid forms might emerge without getting penalized.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because hybrid organizations blur the boundaries of taken-for-granted organizational forms, boundEmergence of Hybrid Islamic Schools in Turkey ary spanning generally meets sharp punishment as it has low appeal among audiences (Rao, Monin, and Durand 2005;Hsu, Hannan, and Koçak 2009;Hannan 2010;Kovács and Hannan 2010). Particularly, the punishment gets stronger if the category codes are oppositional or involve moral imperatives (Kovács and Hannan 2010).…”

Section: Local Incentivesmentioning

confidence: 99%