Opening up New Vistas in Categorization Research
通过三篇论文的辩论，呼吁分类研究从关注已有类别的影响转向探索类别的主动构建与协商，强调认知和社会过程在类别形成中的作用，对组织理论、创业和创新研究者有启发。
Recent years have seen a surge of interest in work on categorization and categories at the level of industries, markets, and firms. This interest can be explained by the ubiquity of categories and categorization in the world of organizations where we, as researchers and more generally as individuals exposed to organizations, assign organizations to classes or sets such as industries or markets, modes of production, forms of branding, types of technology, and the like. By engaging in such a categorization process, we set boundaries, invoke relevant knowledge, and create common understanding about organizations that guides and informs our perceptions and actions. A particularly prominent theme in past research has been the study of the priming or activation of certain categories on the reactions of relevant audiences (Zuckerman, 1999). The underlying aim of this line of work has been to identify the broader cultural cognitive infrastructure of categories that stakeholders have in their mind when they evaluate organizations, new entrepreneurial ventures, or innovative new products. The consequence of such a structure, it is assumed, is that when the subject cannot be easily assigned to a relevant category and seen as a prototypical member of it, there is the likelihood that the subject in question will be discounted. Whilst this has been a burgeoning line of research, particularly amongst researchers within economic sociology and organizational ecology, it black-boxes important and significant questions about the very process of categorization, and about the flexible and changing ways in which categories can be constructed, reconfigured, or even combined (Porac et al., 2011). It also does not flesh out the ways in which people, in a cognitive and social sense, derive meanings from categories and make use of them. With this Point–Counterpoint debate we hope to turn the gaze slightly away from work that assumes that categories simply exist ex ante and then sets out to model and explain how invoked categories to a greater or lesser extent prime certain reactions in relevant audiences. To illustrate this point, Hsu (2006) studied the categories used by film critics but did not explore the origins of the categories or how consensus over their defining features was reached. Similarly, Ruef and Patterson (2009) identified and defined the historical emergence of new business categories and how these were evaluated, but not how these categories arose in the first place. In other words, these studies primarily tend to establish the effects of categories, as culturally grounded cognitive schemas, that, once these are established, structure expectations and cue behavioural responses. As such, these studies mark how the ongoing thoughts and actions of actors in institutionalized settings exhibit regularity, in following established frames of reference, but have accordingly been less focused on understanding how such modes of understanding emerge in the first place (Durand and Paolella, 2013; Kennedy and Fiss, 2013; Navis and Glynn, 2013). As such, we believe there is value in broadening our understanding of the very subject of categorization by exploring the active construction and negotiation of categories and category-based meanings in context, which is a different but complementary interest to studying the activation and effects of a given category. In some senses, this refocusing harks back to the initial line of research by Porac and his colleagues (1989) on the socio-cognitive dynamics by which individuals construct broader categories of understanding about organizations and products (Porac et al., 1989; Rosa et al., 1999). The advantage that this turn more broadly brings is that it offers the prospect of deepening our understanding of the cognitive and sociological processes underpinning categorization processes. Further, it recognizes that human agency, thought, and action plays an important role in establishing and institutionalizing the structure and meaning of categories. Through this refocusing we aim to open up new vistas for research on categories and categorization. With this aim in mind, we asked three sets of authors to present a particular turn on existing research. The opening shot by Durand and Paolella (2013) rethinks the cognitive processes underlying categorization. They critique in particular sociological and ecological accounts of categories that treat them in effect as ‘feature lists’ (i.e., categorization models based on set theory or on an exhaustive listing of a category's individual features) and that therefore fail to represent dynamic, relational information. Drawing on Barsalou's (1991) work in cognitive psychology in particular, they demonstrate that individuals construct category meanings around organizations and products not strictly based on attributes or features but instead on causal or relational associations that connect causes and effects or actions and outcomes. The outcome of their reconsideration of the cognitive underpinnings of categories is a much roomier and more flexible framework that is better attuned to modelling fuzziness in categories and complex forms of categorization. Navis and Glynn (2013) take up the call next and argue for expanding our perspective even further away from a strict focus on the cognitive aspects of categorization and the force of their constraint at the individual level of analysis. Their main message is that categories, whilst cognitive, are generally socially and culturally embedded. The main implications that they highlight are that through this embedding, a category is a carrier of cultural meaning and identities; it intersects with other categories with which it culturally resonates; and it becomes in effect also a resource for individuals and collectives in giving meaning to organizational life and in actively construing alternative framings and categorizations. That is, categories, and specifically the labels and default meanings associated with them, present a kind of ‘toolkit’ that individuals can use to create or construe a meaning for an organization or product. Entrepreneurs, for example, will use prior categories as legitimizing devices to familiarize resource holders with the new venture, but will also simultaneously try to highlight how what they offer is different from other providers. Navis and Glynn (2013) provide a cultural and much more plastic perspective on categories that puts the focus on how actors mobilize the labels and meanings associated with categories to construe understanding of the changing and complex organizational world around them. The final paper in this debate is by Kennedy and Fiss (2013) who suggest that what the field generally needs is a shift in perspective to studying emergence rather than staying focused on the structure and effects of existing categories. This shift towards understanding how broadly shared cognitive categories in social and organizational settings emerge, or indeed change over time, hinges, they suggest, on understanding human agency not as opposed to, but as a constituent of categories as macro level structures. As they argue, it requires therefore an ontological shift in thinking, in the sense that as researchers we should try and probe our understanding of the cognitive and sociological processes that in a sense lie behind the taken-for-granted social realities presented by categories. In a very direct sense, this shift would bring an enlarged and much more process-driven perspective compared to prior research and provokes us as researchers to trace the rise and fall of categories, as well as the very processes that constitute why categories emerge or indeed fall out of favour over time. This obviously also requires a more nuanced theoretical vocabulary that stretches beyond considered notions such as legitimacy. Kennedy and Fiss (2013) present a model that should be helpful for this task. In short, the three papers in this Point–Counterpoint take stock of the current body of knowledge in categories research and suggest several important expansions along a number of different, yet potentially complementary, lines. As such, these papers expand our thinking on categories in a number of directions and in a number of ways. We trust that as such they spur empirical research as part of the broad research agenda on the topic of categories.