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This chapter explores the concept of market infrastructure, which is tentatively defined as a materially heterogeneous arrangement that silently supports and structures the consummation of market exchanges. Specifically, the authors investigate the enactment of market infrastructure in the US grocery retail sector by exploring how barcodes and related devices contributed to modify its market infrastructure during the period 1967–2010. Combining this empirical case with insights from previous research, the authors propose that market infrastructures are relational, available for use, modular, actively maintained, interdependent, commercial, emergent and political. The authors argue that this conception of market infrastructure provides a powerful tool for unveiling the complex agencements and engineering efforts that underpin seemingly superficial, individual and isolated market exchanges.

A growing body of research outlines how to best facilitate and ensure methodological rigor when using dictionary-based computerized text analyses (DBCTA) in organizational research. However, these best practices are currently scattered across several methodological and empirical manuscripts, making it difficult for scholars new to the technique to implement DBCTA in their own research. To better equip researchers looking to leverage this technique, this methodological report consolidates current best practices for applying DBCTA into a single, practical guide. In doing so, we provide direction regarding how to make key design decisions and identify valuable resources to help researchers from the beginning of the research process through final publication. Consequently, we advance DBCTA methods research by providing a one-stop reference for novices and experts alike concerning current best practices and available resources.

This chapter explores the extent to which an innovator is able to capture innovation rents. After examining the two main drivers of such rents, the strength of the appropriability regime and the ownership of specialized complementary assets, the chapter examines how their interaction is so critical in affecting imitation, commercialization options, and firm performance. After reviewing the underlying conceptual framework and empirical evidence, and using a perspective that cuts across both time and industries, the authors then discuss the implications of innovation profits for the resources to be devoted to the discovery of new or improved product and processes.

Goffman (1963) provided us with an explanation of the operation of stigma in microinteractional contexts. However, his definition and explication of the experiences and processes of stigmatization predate what many consider to be the most major shift in discourse and categorization to develop in the twentieth century – the rise of the language of risk. In this chapter, I discuss the intersections of risk discourse and stigma. Drawing on my empirical research with families affected by incarceration, I illustrate the shift toward structural stigma as an exercise of power and governance. I argue that contemporary “common-sense” understandings and usage of the term stigma emphasize negative individual interactions while ignoring the ways that risk categorizations, even in seemingly benign contexts, create structural disadvantage and serve to “other” stigmatized individuals. Singular focus on stigma at the microinteractional level, particularly in destigmatization campaigns, obscures the pervasive structural stigma couched in the language of risk management that permits systematic marginalization.

Wages have been spreading out across workers over time – or in other words, the 90th/50th wage ratio has risen over time. A key question is, has the productivity distribution also spread out across worker skill levels over time? Using our calculations of productivity by skill level for the United States, we show that the distributions of both wages and productivity have spread out over time, as the right tail lengthens for both. We add Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries, showing that the wage–productivity correlation exists, such that gains in aggregate productivity, or GDP per person, have resulted in higher wages for workers at the top and bottom of the wage distribution. However, across countries, those workers in the upper-income ranks have seen their wages rise the most over time. The most likely international factor explaining these wage increases is the skill-biased technological change of the digital revolution. The new artificial intelligence (AI) revolution that has just begun seems to be having similar skill-biased effects on wages. But this current AI, called “supervised learning,” is relatively similar to past technological change. The AI of the distant future will be “unsupervised learning,” and it could eventually have an effect on the jobs of the most highly skilled.

This chapter seeks to investigate the ways individualistic versus collectivistic values moderate neural responses to social exclusion among African American and White respondents. The author hypothesized that the vmPFC – a key brain region for emotion regulation – would correspond to collectivistic value moderation and the dlPFC – the cognitive control center of the brain – would be associated with individualistic value moderation.

This study used a virtual ball tossing game (Cyberball), where 17 African American and 11 White participants were excluded or included with ball tosses, while inside an fMRI scanner. Before the start of each round the participants were primed with individualism, collectivism or a comparison condition.

Results showed that (1) African Americans showed stronger neural responses to exclusion and (2) offered support for the hypothesis that the dlPFC showed greater activation in African Americans (compared to Whites) when they were primed with individualism values during exclusion. There was no support for the collectivism hypothesis.

Research limitations included a relatively small sample size (N = 28), a comparison of only two racial groups and that the partners in the game were virtual (pre-programmed by the experimenter).

This research offers an empirical framework for sociologists seeking to apply social theories into neurological studies.

Identifying effective coping strategies for historically oppressed racial groups.

The chapter is original for demonstrating the moderating effects of values on neural responses to exclusion for the first time and by offering a novel neurosociological framework.

The study is focused on exploring demographic characteristics of the target audience of retail grocery stores whose buyer behavior is most responsive to coupon promotions. The demographic variables considered in the paper are age, employment status, and household size. As a result of a statistical analysis of scanner data, the demographic profile is developed for the coupon-sensitive category of consumers. Managerial recommendations for grocery stores’ coupon-promotion tactics are discussed.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of online price dispersion in Europe, across a broad range of product categories and countries. Using the dominant European price comparison site we collected firm specific prices, weekly, from seven European countries (Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom) for 31 unique products, falling into five distinct product categories (printers, PDAs, scanners, games consoles, computer games and music), over the nine-month period October 2001 to June 2002. The resulting data set comprises over 17,000 individual price observations.

Using a number of alternative measures of price dispersion we find significant differences in the degree of price dispersion observed in online markets, both between countries and across product categories. We consider alternative explanations for online price dispersion and analyze their significance in explaining the observed differences.