This study develops and tests a set of novel theoretical predictions about the conditions under which category spanning is rewarded by external audiences. To do this, we revisit the assumption that comprehensible organizational identities are associated with individual categories. Drawing on...

The concept of collective identity has gained prominence within organizational theory as researchers have studied how it consequentially shapes organizational behavior. However, much less attention has been paid to the question of how nascent collective identities become legitimated. Although it...

This paper examines the role of category affiliations in entrepreneurial resource acquisition. Pace existing studies, we suggest category spanning will cause firms to be overlooked or discounted because evaluators assume that they have less expertise than their category-focused competitors; a...