300350 Organizing Markets: Organizational Categorization, Legitimation, and Stigmatization (S) (WiSe 2022/2023)

Categories are an important part of social life and serve to construct social reality and assign specific meanings to different entities. Organizations are subject to categorizations as well and these define their identities and what is expected of them by internal and external actors. Thus, how organizations and what they do are placed within categorization systems determines their legitimacy, what resources they can acquire and the structure of the markets they operate in. The course discusses these various relationships among categorizations, organizations, and markets, including organizational stigmatization and efforts to reshape categorization systems. Thereby, the course serves as an introduction to this multidisciplinary research field and familiarizes participants with both the theoretical foundations as well as innovative empirical studies in diverse markets, such as cigarettes, nanotechnology, and stock markets.

Bibliography

Durand, R., Granqvist, N., & Tyllström, A. (Eds.) (2017). From categories to categorization: Studies in sociology, organizations and strategy at the crossroads. Bingley: Emerald Publishing.

Zuckerman, E. W. (1999). The categorical imperative: Securities analysts and the illegitimacy discount. American Journal of Sociology, 104(5), 1398–1438.