Heterarchies of Value in Manhattan-Based New Media Firms

Abstract

This article develops a sociology of worth that blurs the traditional disciplinary divide between economic value and social values. Through ethnographic study of a new media startup in Manhattan's Silicon Alley, we examine how a new firm in an emerging industry negotiates an uncertain environment where metrics gauging performance remain illusive as the industry itself gropes toward a clearer definition of its content and contours. Faced with complex foresight horizons, new media firms must develop an organizational capacity for learning, innovation, and flexible adaptation to constantly changing requirements. We examine how the clash of evaluative criteria guiding the work of cross-disciplinary project teams becomes a source for innovation and a resource for learning when deliberation across evaluative principles is combined with an organizational and administrative structure that relies on lateral accountability.

Emerging (internet) industry and agglomeration: Internet entrepreneurs coping with uncertainty

“…The authors state that national contexts, such as the social legitimacy and strength of pre-existing industries and the socioeconomic status of entrepreneurs or pioneer firms in an emerging industry, has an effect on cross-sectoral transfer of skills. Other research put emphasis on how uncertain environments of emerging industries require both organizational capacity for learning and innovation, and flexible adaptation to constantly changing requirements (Girard and Stark 2003). Further research within this field have studied topics of knowledge diffusion in open source software development projects (Sawabe and Egashira 2007), and the role of inter-firm relational skills (Patchell 1999).…”

“…To cope with uncertainties related to the labour market of emerging industries entrepreneurs to a large extent depends on temporary structures such as short term projectbased organisation of labour and 'ad hoc' solutions (Girard and Stark 2003). Temporary systems (Goodman 1981) or temporary organisations (Ekstedt et al 1999) involves several people, and maybe even more important, several types of skills and competences.…”

Consuming conventions: sustainable consumption, ecological citizenship and the worlds of worth

“…Instead this paper discusses conventions theory (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991) as a useful complement to the social practices approach on the grounds that it provides useful way of considering the cultural conventions through which practices are contextualized and either reproduced or changed. Whilst conventions theory has has been widely applied in studies of organization and production (for example Stark, 2000 Girard andStark, 2003) and producereconsumer relations (Renard, 2003;Kirwan, 2006;Truninger, 2008); it has not yet, to the best of my knowledge, been extended to studies of consumption. As such, this paper aims to start thinking about how conventions theory might usefully be applied to studies of consumption, sustainability and everyday life.…”

Extending community management to industry‐university‐government organizations

“…Etzkowitz and Leydesdroff (, p. 112) describe TH organizations as tri‐lateral networks and argue that the re‐organization and establishment of new TH organizational arrangements must accommodate renegotiating and redefining network ‘overlays of communications and expectations between the distinct logics of market, research, and public interests’. Others (Girard and Stark, ; Vedres and Stark, ) emphasize a hierarchy of knowledge production, stressing the organization of diverse knowledge and the creation of novel knowledge combinations through lateral relations. Dzisah and Etzkowitz () have more recently called for practical suggestions on ways in which a multitude of diverse actors can collaborate.…”