Description
Book SynopsisCategorization pervades economic life; products, services, firms and industries are continuously being classified by rivals, clients, experts and critics. A stream of research highlighting the importance of market and product categories for organizations and individuals has grown in importance during the past 40 years. This volume contains ten essays on categorization authored by some of the world’s leading scholars within sociology of markets, organization theory, and strategy research. It opens with revisiting the influential theory of “the categorical imperative”, and moves on to present various accounts of the social processes that form part of categorization and elaboration of their consequences. Together, the different chapters effectively show that categorization is a process, tightly connected to actors involved and their specific acts, the characteristics of the entity being categorized, and the context and timing informing these activities. As such, it complements the earlier cognitive perspectives by discussing the evaluative, social, and political manifestations of categorization.
Trade ReviewScholars working in the sociology of markets, organization theory, and strategy research in North America, Europe, and South Korea provide 11 essays on categorization as a cognitive and social process, focusing on categories in the context of markets. They consider categorization as a tool for social evaluation; categorization as politics and strategy, in terms of how technology firms categorize themselves and how analysts categorize those firms, the use of hybrid categories, and how meaning is constructed through discourse in market categorization; how unknown or ambiguous objects are categorized, such as Bitcoin, the information privacy category, and how the Sundance Institute reoriented the value of independent film; and the influence of time and place on the categorization process, in terms of category origins, organizational identity, and category spanning. -- Annotation ©2017 * (protoview.com) *
Table of ContentsSECTION I: INTRODUCTION From Categories to Categorization: A Social Perspective on Market Categorization - Rodolphe Durand, Nina Granqvist and Anna Tyllström The Categorical Imperative Revisited: Implications of Categorization as a Theoretical Tool - Ezra W. Zuckerman SECTION II: CATEGORIZATION AS POLITICS AND STRATEGY Strategic Categorization - Elizabeth G. Pontikes and Ruben Kim Hybrid Categories as Political Devices: The Case of Impact Investing in Frontier Markets - Q. C. Quinn and Kamal A. Munir The Discursive Perespective of Market Categorization: Interaction, Power, and Context - Stine Grodal and Steven J. Kahl SECTION III: CATEGORIZING THE UNKNOWN Categorical Anarchy in the UK? The British Media's Classification of Bitcoin and the Limits of Categorization - J. P. Vergne and Gautam Swain Privacy in Public: Translating the Category of Privacy to the Digital Age - Kartikeya Bajpai and Klaus Weber The Importance of Being Independent: The Role of Intermediaries in Creating Market Categories - Mukti Khaire SECTION IV: TIMES AND PLACES OF CATEGORIZATION Things that Last? Category Creation, Imprinting, and Durability - Eunice Y. Rhee, Jade Y. Lo, Mark T. Kennedy, and Peer C. Fiss Forging Concensus: An Integrated View of How Categories Shape the Perception of Organizational Identity - Lionel Paolella and Amanda Sharkey Opportunity, Status, and Similarity: Exploring the Varied Antecedents and Outcomes of Category Spanning Innovation - Tyler Wry and Adam R. Castor Index
