Search results

Much of contemporary institutional theory rests on the identification of structured, coherent, and encompassing logics, and from there proceeds to examine multilevel dynamics or the relationship between logics in a field. Less research directly studies the internal properties and dynamics of logics and how they are structured over time. In this paper, we propose a method for understanding the content and organization of logics over time. We advocate for an analysis of logics that is grounded in a repertoire view of culture (Swidler, 1986; Weber, 2005). This approach involves identifying the set of cultural categories that can make up logics, and measuring empirically the dimensions that mark a cultural system as more or less logic-like. We discuss several text analytic approaches suitable for discourse data, and outline a seven-step method for describing the internal organization of a cultural repertoire in term of its “logic-ness.” We provide empirical illustrations from a historical analysis of the field of alternative livestock agriculture. Our approach provides an integrated theoretical and methodological framework for the analysis of logics across a range of settings.

Much of contemporary institutional theory rests on the identification of structured, coherent, and encompassing logics, and from there proceeds to examine multilevel dynamics or the relationship between logics in a field. Less research directly studies the internal properties and dynamics of logics and how they are structured over time. In this paper, we propose a method for understanding the content and organization of logics over time. We advocate for an analysis of logics that is grounded in a repertoire view of culture (Swidler, 1986; Weber, 2005). This approach involves identifying the set of cultural categories that can make up logics, and measuring empirically the dimensions that mark a cultural system as more or less logic-like. We discuss several text analytic approaches suitable for discourse data, and outline a seven-step method for describing the internal organization of a cultural repertoire in term of its “logic-ness.” We provide empirical illustrations from a historical analysis of the field of alternative livestock agriculture. Our approach provides an integrated theoretical and methodological framework for the analysis of logics across a range of settings.

We examine the translation of the concept of privacy in the advent of digital communication technologies. We analyze emerging notions of informational privacy in public discourse and policymaking in the United States. Our analysis shows category change to be a dynamic process that is only in part about cognitive processes of similarity. Instead, conceptions of privacy were tied to institutional orders of worth. Those orders offered theories, analogies, and vocabularies that could be deployed to extrapolate the concept of privacy into new domains, make sense of new technologies, and to shape policy agendas.

The popularity of research into categories has grown in recent decades and shows no sign of abating. This introductory article takes stock of the research into two facets of categorization, addressing it both as a cognitive and a social process. We advocate a rebalance toward the social process of categorization, paying more heed to the entity to be categorized, the actors involved, their acts, and the context and timing, which informs these activities. We summarize the contributions to the volume in relation to these dimensions and briefly discuss avenues for future research.

Although markets are intensely social, stock markets are peculiar in that they are normatively anonymous spaces. Anonymity is a difficult-to-achieve social accomplishment in which material identity information is successfully stripped from participants. The academic literature is conflicted regarding the degree to which equity markets are anonymous and how this influences traders’ behavior.

Based on focused, tape-recorded ethnographic interviews, this chapter investigates the work practices of professional investors and brokers to describe the conditions under which brokers veil or reveal investors’ identities to their competitors, and thereby shed light on how anonymity is socially produced (or eroded) in global stock markets.

The social structure of brokered financial markets places brokers in the awkward situation of sitting in an information-poor structural location for so-called “fundamental information” while being paid to share information with professional investors who sit in an information-rich structural location. A resolution to this material and social dilemma is that brokers can erode the market’s anonymity by gifting identity information (“order flow”) – the previous, prospective, or pending trades of their clients’ competitors – thereby providing traders a competitive advantage. They share identity information in three types of performances: transparent relationships, masked relationships, and the transformation of illicit material identity information into licit and sharable “fundamental” information. Each performance partly erodes transaction-level and market-level anonymity while simultaneously partially supporting anonymity.

Laws and regulations requiring brokers’ confidentiality of their clients’ trades are easily and systematically eluded. Policy makers and regulators may opt to respond by increasing surveillance and mechanization of brokers’ work so as to promote a normatively anonymous market. Alternatively, they may opt to question the value of promoting and policing anonymity in financial markets by revising insider trading regulations.

Even well-regulated markets are semi-anonymous spaces due to the systematic exposure of investors’ identities to competitors by their shared brokers on a daily basis. This finding provides an additional explanation for how professional investors can imitate one another (“herd”) as well as why subpopulations of investors often trade so similarly to one another.

Some of the best entrepreneurs fail early and often. Less talented or less committed entrepreneurs do not even get a second chance. Failure and setbacks, however, can be instructive.What lessons can be learned from these experiences? How can the entrepreneur (and investors) navigate around the potholes on the New Venture Highway? Read on.

In order to cope with a substantial increase in output and enhance customer services, Mebon Ltd — a leading company in surface coatings technology — has invested approaching £2 million in a 50,000 sq metre warehouse.