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Consecration represents the most definitive form of legitimation in every cultural field. Complementing previous research focused on individual, contextual, and structural conditions underpinning consecration, this paper takes a sequence analytical perspective and explores whether diverse creative trajectories are more frequently associated with consecration. We introduce the notion of signature style and the pace of category spanning as key features for consecration. We argue that a consecrated signature style is just as likely to result from a producer’s adherence to a specific style over time or from a consistent (and fast-paced) category-spanning creative trajectory. The resulting identity will be specialist in the first case, eclectic in the second. We analyze the stylistic trajectories of 863 electronic music artists and find robust support to our hypothesis. The analysis is corroborated by further exploratory findings that identify intriguing questions for future research. By examining the organization of creative journeys in the career of cultural producers, this paper emphasizes the importance of considering the unfolding and rhythm of creativity over time. This temporal perspective sheds new light on the dynamics of distinctiveness and consecration in cultural fields.

This volume brings together empirical and conceptual papers that investigate the challenges of organizing creativity in the innovation journey in and across different empirical contexts. Seen as the basis for innovating new products, processes or services, organizing creativity is studied as intentional efforts that occur in teams, organizations, and fields. What creativity is, how it is defined, negotiated and recognized is hereby co-constructed with different audiences and in different economic and societal spheres. The papers in this volume extend our understanding of these contextualized social dynamics of organizing creativity in four directions. The first direction sheds light on the temporal dynamics of organizing creativity in artistic fields. The second direction compares creative processes in arts and science, thereby examining tensions and uncertainties in the creative process unfolding in two distinctive contexts of creativity. The third direction examines identity struggles of creative agents in organizations with clashing roles, professional norms, and ambiguities in creativity assessment. The fourth and final direction unravels the communicative journey of ideas from pitching to feedback, revealing how ideas are challenged, enriched, and acquire meaning in communicative interaction. Overall, the papers in this volume contribute to a situated view of creative processes in innovation which goes beyond questions of idea generation to account for dynamics of idea development, judgment, and dissemination which involve identity struggles, evaluation, and communication – processes which are at the heart of organizing for innovation.

Consecration is the process by which producers in creative fields become canonized as “greats.” However, is this the end of the story? Research on consecration focuses on the drivers of consecration but pays little attention to the post-consecration period. Furthermore, the research ignores the dynamics of consecration. To address these gaps, we examine the changing fortunes of a consecrated artist – the musician Phil Collins. We identify the ways in which three actors (fans, critics, and peers) assemble for consecration, disassemble for deconsecration, and reassemble for reconsecration. Examining the changing public image and commercial fortunes of Collins as a solo artist between 1980 and 2020, we identify an N-shaped process of rise-fall-rise that we call the Phil Collins Effect. This effect offers a new way of thinking about how cultural producers gain, lose and regain status in their fields.

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.

Our editorial argues that categories theory can be advanced by embracing heuristics research, and the insight that audiences often evaluate items based on multiple valued criteria. Thus, rather than building on extant theory – which suggests that categories embody specific evaluative criteria, or that audiences operate according to a set “theory of value” – the authors argue that hybrids research would benefit from attending to the underlying processes that actors use to weigh and balance the diverse considerations that guide their decisions. The authors define and discuss three commonly used heuristics (satisficing, lexicographic preferences, and elimination by aspects), and show how these might lead audiences to support different types of hybrid entities.

How do organizational associations affect extra-organizational boundaries? This chapter addresses this question by looking into the long-established practice among universities to form associations. In order to examine how associations delineate boundaries in universities’ institutional environment, the chapter draws on the scholarly work on categories and conceptualizes associations as meta-organizations. The chapter finds that category-based identities, and other organizational characteristics, enacted to demarcate members from non-members play a central role in this process. In following these lines of demarcation on a sample of 185 national and international university associations a typology emerges, accompanied by a global diffusion pattern. Three sets of institutional conditions are then identified as being conducive to this process: (1) the twentieth-century university expansion and the consolidation of national higher education fields, (2) the intensification of cross-border interaction and the advent of international institutions, and (3) the formation of a global field and the rise of competition as an ideological imperative.

This article suggests that both producers and analysts are strategic about categorization. Producers use categorization to maintain a balance of differentiation and legitimacy, whereas analysts seek to influence categorization and clarify boundaries. Ideas are explored for software producers and Gartner, the preeminent high-technology analyst. Findings show evidence of strategic categorization. Producers move to proximate market categories in response to competition. Gartner reports on large categories and those that receive investment and stops reporting on categories that have fuzzy boundaries. Compared to analysts, producers may be more influential in category creation than previous research has acknowledged.

This chapter provides an updated review of research examining the relationship between occupational stressors and job performance. We begin by presenting an eight-category taxonomy of workplace stressors and we then review theories that explain the relationships between workplace stressors and job performance. The subsequent literature review is divided into two sections. In the first section, we present a summary of Jex's (1998) review of research on the job stress–job performance relationship. In the second section, we provide an updated review of the literature, which includes studies that have been published since 1998. In this review, we evaluate how well the contemporary research has dealt with weaknesses and limitations previously identified in the literature, we identify and evaluate current trends, and we offer recommendations and directions for future research.