Emergence: (50 Research in the Sociology of Organizations)

The recent growth in research on the topic of evolutionary novelties inspired this volume of Research in the Sociology of Organizations. While previous sociological work has done an admirable job of understanding selection and differentiation processes, it has widely ignored the origin of novelty and how it grows to form initial structures and practices. Emergence is an easy to understand intuitive concept, as it simply means that an object comes into existence or appearance, but it needs further unpacking as a description of a widespread social process. In this book, emergence is seen as a process that involves 1) the creation of novelty, 2) its growth to a salient size, and 3) its formation into a recognizable social object, process, or structure. Each step should be understood through theory and empirical work. Yet the theory of each step can differ from, though it may be related to, the theory of the other two. As a consequence, emergence is a much more complex research topic than is suggested by a single word and it is these complexities that are examined in this book.

Table of Contents:
Emergence: How Novelty, Growth, and Formation Shape Organizations and Their Ecosystems - Marc-David L. Seidel and Henrich R. Greve PART I: NOVELTY Different Shades of Green: Environment Uncertainty and the Startegies of Hybrid Organizations - Juan Almandoz, Matthew Lee, and Christopher Marquis A Patchwork of Identities: Emergence of Charter Schools as a New Organizational Form - Harsh K. Jha and Christine M. Beckman Empty Categories and Industry Emergence: the Rise and Fall of Japanese J--Biru - Jesper Edman and Christina L. Ahmadjian Network Opportunity Emergence and Identification - Marc-David L. Seidel PART II: GROWTH The Social Construction of Market Categories: How Proximate Social Space Creates Strategic Incentives to be Early Claimants of the Fiscal Sponsor Label - Jessica Burshell and Will Mitchell A Theory of Crowds in Time and Space: Explaining the Cognitive Foundations of a New Market - Sorah Seong Assembling a Field into Place: SMart-City Development in Japan - Roy A. Nyberg and Masaru Yarime PART III: FORMATION Analogical Learning and Categorical Identity During Market Emergence - Jesper B. Sørensen and Mi Feng Do Connections Always Help? Network Brokerage's Negative Impact on the Emergence of Status - Bilian Ni Sullivan and Daniel Stewart Look at me: Overt Status-Seeking Behavior and Competitive Emergence Among Securities Analysts - Anne H. Bowers, Henrich R. Greve, and Hitoshi Mitsuhashi Emergence of a New Institutional Logic: SHaping the Institutionally Complex Field of Community Radio in India - Suhaib Riaz and Israr Qureshi Boundary-Crossing Job Mobility, New Porduct Area Entry, and the Performance of Entrepreneurial Ventures - Gina Dokko and Geraldine A. Wu Index

About the Author :
Marc-David L. Seidel, Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada Henrich R. Greve, INSEAD, Singapore

Review :
This volume consists of 13 essays by business, management, and other scholars from North America and Asia, who explore key parts of the theory of the emergence of novel features of society, such as new practices, organizations, or relations. They view the process as involving the creation of novelty, its growth to a salient size, and its formation into a recognizable social object, process, or structure. They examine each part of this process, beginning with novelty and discussing the Japanese regional beer movement, how newly formed organizations adapt to fields in which the formation of the emergent form has not yet occurred, the fragmentation of novel organizations in the early emergence of charter schools in California, and how competitive actions lead to the creation of opportunities for emergence in the airline industry. They then address growth and how organizations decide to adopt a new form of practice when they face multiple alternatives, which types of novel crowds turn into new markets, and organizational actions that lead to growth in smart cities in Japan, followed by discussion of formation aspects in emergence, including new product entry in high tech, the cognitive effects and customer use of existing knowledge structures in reaction to new products, network brokerage's negative impact on the emergence of status of social actors, how the emergence and maintenance of status orders in markets can impact market behaviors of securities analysts, and the emergence of community radio in India.