Style Typologies and Competitive Advantage

Abstract

The concept of style is gaining momentum in organizational research. Focusing on its implications for strategy, this paper presents a conceptual and methodological framework to make the notion of style operational and applicable to both research and practice. Style is defined here as a combinatorial, socially situated, and semiotic device that can be organized into typologies-recurrent combinations of stylistic dimensions exerting a normative and semiotic function within and across contexts. The empirical analysis, situated in the field of electronic music, considers the music genres and the color dimension of artists' appearance as components of their style. Results show how coherent style typologies normatively dominate the field, and how nonconformist but coherent typologies correspond to superior creative performance. Operating as unifying device, style can transform varied and potentially confounding traits into distinctiveness, and shed light on competitive market dynamics that cannot be fully explained via other theoretical constructs. Discussion points to the relevance of style in strategy, and to the promising inclusion of information from visual material in organizational research.

Relations in Aesthetic Space: How Color Enables Market Positioning

“…Drawing inspiration from the relational tradition in cultural sociology (e.g., Bielby and Bielby, 1994;Swidler, 2001), we postulate that the meaning of color emerges from relations with objects, persons, or events (Formilan, 2021), highlighting its ability to externalize identities and to connect relevant others into a network. Similar to Godart and Galunic (2019), we articulate two types of relations: between cultural producers and elements and between the elements themselves.…”

“…The relations between color and other elements influence the perception of each element so that color is perceived and valorized on the basis of its alignment with the whole. Producers and audiences take into account internal relations between form and content in making aesthetic decisions (Witkin, 1990), such as in the alignment between music played by DJs and their choices of color (Formilan, 2021).…”

“…Scholars recognize that color is a central feature of social life (Rose-Greenland, 2016) and that its application is socially patterned, reflecting fundamental collective processes and emotions (Turner, 1990). It is therefore surprising that color remains muted as a research subject, as evidenced in the absence of a systematic theory of color in sociology (Fine et al, 1998), psychology (Elliot and Maier, 2007), and organizational scholarship (Beyes, 2017;Formilan, 2021). There are several reasons for this.…”

“…In this perspective, color constitutes a means of positioning relative to a group or a set of elements. This positioning is inherently dynamic: the meaning attributed to a color is contingent on comparison to colors dominating a given context at a point in time (Fine et al, 1998;Formilan, 2021).…”

Moments of identity: dynamics of artist, persona, and audience in electronic music

“…The interviews and informal conversations were complemented with observational research in which we frequented electronic music venues in Berlin and New York (both underground and popular clubs), attended several contemporary festivals on techno, house, and experimental electronic music, and participated in a rehearsal session in Berlin. We also informed our understanding of the electronic music scene through a wide variety of secondary data, including economic and sociological investigations of the field (Formilan, 2021;Formilan & Boari, 2021;Hennion, 2009;Hesmondhalgh, 1998;Lange & Buerkner, 2012;Reynolds, 1998), studies on the politics of dance and club culture (Gilbert & Pearson, 1999;Hesmondhalgh, 1997;Thornton, 1996), accounts of the technological means of music production (Nelson, 2015;Pinch & Trocco, 2009;Prior, 2009), and secondary interviews, documentaries, and experts' commentaries published in various specialized outlets (among others, Resident Advisor, DJ TechTool, DJMag, MixMag, xlr8r, Pitchfork, Discogs, Rolling Stone, Boiler Room, Telekom Electronic Beats, Cultures of Resistance Films). These sources helped us situate the use of aliases in electronic music culture.…”