Research suggests there are significant market penalties for organizations that do not conform to category boundaries in their product offerings. Yet, organizations continue to span categories despite these risks. In this study, we shed insight into why by examining factors that shape the...

Recent research emphasizes that legitimacy depends on consensus among agents (audiences) about the features and activities of organizations (candidates) that become taken-for-granted elements in a social domain. This study examines how consensus is affected by the structure of interaction in the...

The theory of resource partitioning proposes that competition among generalists in the center of a market can trigger a process of resource release that engenders a proliferation of specialist producers outside the center. Previous research has generally examined the relationship between this...