Through analyses of audience reception of U.S.-produced feature film projects from the period 2000–2003, I develop insight into the trade-off assumed in organizational ecology theory between an organization's niche width and its fitness. This assumption, termed the principle of allocation, holds that the greater the diversity in regions of resource space targeted by an organization, the lower the organization's capacity to perform well within them. Using data at both the professional critic and consumer levels, I demonstrate the empirical validity of this principle: films targeting more genres attract larger audiences but are less appealing to those audience members. Moreover, I find that audiences' perceptions of a film's fit with targeted genres drive this trade-off, as multi-genre films are difficult for audiences to make sense of, leading to poor fit with tastes and lowered appeal. These findings highlight the key role audiences' perceptions play in the trade-offs associated with different niche strategies.

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. I n recent years, there has been an increasing emphasis within organizational ecology on identity as a fundamental basis for the conceptualization and identification of organizational forms. This paper highlights the benefits of an identitybased conceptualization of organizational forms and outlines an identity-based agenda for organizational ecology. We begin by discussing fundamental properties of organizational identity, drawing extensively from the formal-theoretical conceptualization proposed by . We then build on this foundation by proposing a number of systematic ways in which forms can be specified and differentiated in terms of identity. We also address the challenge of measuring forms by discussing various approaches researchers may use to assess the beliefs contemporaneous audiences hold regarding organizational identities. This paper concludes with a discussion of research questions revolving around three issues core to an ecological approach to organizations: (1) the emergence of identities, (2) the persistence of identities, and (3) the strategic trade-offs among different types of identities. Key words: identity; organizational forms; organizational ecologyOver the past two decades, macro research on organizations has converged on a research strategy of analyzing the life histories of (all) organizations in specified populations, regarded as collections of organizations with common forms. Developing and refining this populationbased strategy has been beneficial in promoting certain craft standards once largely lacking in organizational research and in increasing the comparability of findings across studies. Yet, continued progress requires that the theoretical foundations of this approach be reworked.In particular, the basic concept of form lacks a clear specification. Current work continues to refer to initial formulations that spelled out only partial definitions (Hannan and Freeman 1977, 1984). As a result, guidelines for a crucial step in empirical research-the specification of meaningful population boundaries-are less than clear. As this style of research has diffused broadly beyond the relatively homogeneous group of organizational ecologists, such lack of clarity has become increasingly problematic.Fortunately, several recent strands of work have advanced our understanding of the issues involved in specifying forms and populations. As this work has progressed, it has opened new avenues of theory and empirical research on core issues in organization theory. This pap...

This article examines the effects of market specialization on economic and social outcomes. Integrating two perspectives, we explore why products that span multiple categories suffer social and economic disadvantages. According to the audience-side perspective, audience members refer to established categories to make sense of products. Products that incorporate features from multiple categories are perceived to be poor fits with category expectations and less appealing than category specialists. The producerside view holds that spanning categories reduces one's ability to effectively target each category's audience, which decreases appeal to audience members. Rather than treating these as rival explanations, we propose that both processes matter and offer a systematic, integrated account of how penalties arise as a consequence of audience-side and producer-side processes. We analyze data from two dissimilar contexts, eBay auctions and U.S. feature-film projects, to test the central implications of our theory. Together, these tests provide support for our integrated approach and suggest that both processes contribute to the penalties associated with category spanning.

The concept of a ''category'' and the social process of ''categorization'' occupy a crucial place in current theories of organizations. In this introductory chapter to Research in the Sociology of Organization's volume on Categories in Markets: Origins and Evolution, we review published work in various streams of research and find that studies of organizational forms and identities, institutional logics, collective action frames, and product conceptual systems have key commonalities and predictable differences.

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