Typecasting and Ligitimation: A Formal Theory

Greta Hsu, Michael T. Hannan and Laszlo Polos
Additional contact information
Greta Hsu: University of California, Davis
Michael T. Hannan: Stanford University
Laszlo Polos: Durham University

Research Papers from Stanford University, Graduate School of Business

Abstract: We develop a unifying framework to integrate two of organizational sociology's theory fragments on categorization: typecasting and form emergence. Typecasting is a producer-level theory that considers the consequences producers face for specializing versus spanning across category boundaries. Form emergence considers the evolution of categories and how the attributes of producers entering a category shapes its likelihood of gaining legitimacy among relevant audiences. Both theory fragments emerge from the processes audiences use to assign category memberships to producers. In this paper, we develop this common foundation and clearly outline the arguments that lead to central implications of each theory. We formalize these arguments using modal expressions to represent key categorization processes and the theory-building framework developed by Hannan, Polos, and Carroll (2007).

Date: 2009-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://gsbapps.stanford.edu/researchpapers/library/RP2010.pdf
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to gsbapps.stanford.edu:443 (certificate verify failed) (http://gsbapps.stanford.edu/researchpapers/library/RP2010.pdf [302 Found]--> https://gsbapps.stanford.edu/researchpapers/library/RP2010.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecl:stabus:2010

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Papers from Stanford University, Graduate School of Business Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().