Overcoming the Illegitimacy Discount: Cultural Entrepreneurship in the US Feature Film Industry

Abstract

How can organizations spanning institutionalized categories mitigate against the possibility of reduced attention by audiences? While there has been a good deal of research on the illegitimacy discount of category spanning, scant attention has been paid to how organizations might strategically address this potential problem. In this paper, we explore how the strategic naming of products might enhance audience attention despite the liabilities associated with category spanning. Drawing on a sample of films released in the United States market between 1982 and 2007, we analyze different naming strategies and show that names that simply signal familiarity are not potent enough to offset the illegitimacy discount, while names imbued with known reputations serve as a symbolic device that enhances audience attention to genre-spanning films.

Cultural entrepreneurship: from making culture to cultural making

“…Definition "the carrying out of a novel combination that results in something new and appreciated in the cultural sphere" (Swedberg, 2006, p. 260) "the process of storytelling that mediates between extant stocks of entrepreneurial resources and subsequent capital acquisition and wealth creation" (Lounsbury & glynn, 2001, p. 545) "a process of continual framing and reframing of future aspirations and past events, even as an entrepreneurial journey unfolds over time" (garud et al, 2014b, p. 1489) Concept of culture the outcome of the "process by which urban elites forged an institutional system embodying their ideas about the high arts" (DiMaggio, 1982, p. 33) "a flexible set of tools that can be actively and strategically created and deployed as actors struggle to make sense of the world" (Lounsbury Revised storytelling: ongoing relational, temporal and performative process of giving meaning and gaining support Sources acheson et al, 1996;DiMaggio, 1982;Johnson, 2007;Jones et al, 2016;oakley, 2014;Peterson & Berger, 1971;Scott, 2012;Swedberg, 2006;aldrich & Fiol, 1994;Lounsbury & glynn, 2001;Martens et al, 2007;navis & glynn, 2010;o'Connor, 2002;rao, 1994;Swidler, 1986;zhao et al, 2013;Dalpiaz et al, 2016;…”

“…Here the focus is on "deploying culture, " in the sense that entrepreneurship entails efforts to legitimate a nascent venture by stitching together available cultural bits and pieces into a coherent and compelling identity. The cultural resources involved have ranged from company and product names (Glynn & Abzug, 2002;Zhao, Ishihara, & Lounsbury, 2013) to stories about market opportunities, business models, and future profits (Martens et al, 2007;Navis & Glynn, 2010;O'Connor, 2002). From this perspective, culture is conceived as a consequential aspect of any entrepreneurial domain, and the scholarly focus is whether and how entrepreneurs deploy cultural resources to legitimate their new ideas and ventures.…”

Beyond Homo Entrepreneurus: Judgment and the Theory of Cultural Entrepreneurship

“…Moreover, scholars have highlighted how the effects of entrepreneurial stories on entrepreneurial identity and legitimacy are shaped by category and market dynamics (e.g., Zhao et al, , ), institutional pluralism and complexity (Greenwood et al, ; Kraatz and Block, ), and the existence of multiple audiences (Fisher et al, ). While findings have revealed that astute cultural communications coupled with appropriate behavioral signals enable capital acquisition, these developments have more richly theorized how cultural context plays a key role in shaping how entrepreneurs act as ‘skilled cultural operators’ who are able to harness cultural resources in the pursuit of firm goals (e.g., see Rao, ; Sarasvathy, ; Überbacher et al, ).…”

“…In a related vein, Cornelissen and Clarke () theorized how entrepreneurs facing increased uncertainty and decreased legitimacy would be likely to adapt or replace the analogies and metaphors they used to justify their ventures. Their insights are borne out, for instance, in changing naming conventions (Glynn and Abzug, ; Zhao et al, ), such as the rapid rise and fall of dot‐com firms (Glynn and Marquis ), or in the recent rush to signal involvement in fields as diverse as nanotechnology, cryptocurrencies, and artificial intelligence. This body of work highlights how entrepreneurial stories continually evolve, change, and adapt over time as they are revised in response to changing organizational and environmental conditions.…”

Anchors in Rough Seas: Understanding Category Spanning as a Source of Market Coordination

“…Our paper addresses this question by relaxing the association between spanning and disruption (Durand and Paolella, ; Wry et al, ) and by advancing commercial success – i.e., positive market reception (see Delmestri et al, ) – as a condition under which spanning products neither create confusion nor necessarily spawn new categories. In fact, maintaining that spanning products are less successful than focused products (Hsu et al, ) should not prevent us from acknowledging that, among spanning products, some might enjoy commercial success (Zhao et al, , ). We thus propose commercial success as a signal that compensates for the confusion inherent to widespread spanning, and we discuss how the commercial success of spanning products helps producers and consumers to coordinate their market activities.…”