Organization theory highlights the spread of norms of rationality in contemporary life. Yet rationality does not always spread without friction; individuals often act based on other beliefs and norms. We explore this problem in the context of restaurants and diners. We argue that consumers...

Most studies in organization theory are retrospective and rely on historical data. Because more data are available about widely diffused practices or about large populations, studies typically focus on these. Using simulation, we demonstrate that such selective sampling of empirical settings has...

In 1999, the International Volleyball Federation (IVF) changed the scoring system of volleyball, from the side-out scoring system to the rally scoring system. The main goal of the scoring system change was to make the length of the game more predictable. This short paper investigates whether the...

A general finding in economic and organizational sociology states that producers and products that span categories lose appeal to audiences. This paper argues that to assess the consequences of category spanning researchers need to take account of the relations among the categories spanned. We...

This paper investigates status multiplicity, an under-theorized concept in sociological research. We assert that actors’ status can vary both within and across audience segments and argue that embracing status multiplicity is important as it is local status, i.e., status as perceived by the...