Organization and Strategy Seminar（2018-09）

Topic: Explaining the Multi-Category Discount

Speaker: Michael T. Hannan,Graduate School of Stanford Business

Time: Friday, 09 November, 10:00-11:30 am

Location: Room K01, Guanghua Building 2

Abstract：

Extensive research reveals that objects (firms, products, performances) that get categories in multiple concepts generally get discounted by audiences. Recent theoretical work, reported inConcepts and Categories: Foundations for Sociological and Cultural Analysis, offers a theoretical explanation for this pattern. They key concept is conceptual ambiguity. An object is ambiguous when it has a high likelihood of being categorized as an instance of multiple concepts at the same level in a domain. Ambiguous objects are likely to be multiply categorized. At a deeper level, they are hard to interpret. The new theory posits that ambiguity requires audience members to engage in high cognitive effort to make sense. In the language of cognitive psychology, audience members experience disfluency. Much research shows that disfluency creates negative affect, lower valuation. Using a formal model of valuation the theory drives the result that ambiguity is the source of the discount.

Introduction:

Michael Hannan is the Stratacom Professor of Management Emeritus in the Graduate School of Business and Professor of Sociology Emeritus in the School of Humanities and Sciences as well as Professor of Organisation Theory at the Durham University Business School.

His major research interests include categories in markets, organizational ecology, sociological methodology, and formal sociological theory. His current theoretical research applies dynamic logics to organization theory. His current empirical research investigates the emergence of organizational categories and the implications of category membership for organizational identity in several domains, including winemaking in the Italian regions of Piedmont and Tuscany as well as Alsace in France.

Professor Hannan has published more than 150 articles in scholarly journals. Two of his books have received best book awards from the American Sociological Association. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences, the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, and he received a Guggenheim fellowship.

//www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/michael-hannan

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