What makes an actor's position in social structure robust rather than fragile? This article introduces a network model that pictures occupants of robust positions as recipients of diversified support from durably located others, and portrays occupants of fragile positions as dependents on...

What is the best way to design tournaments for status, where individuals labor primarily for the esteem of their peers? What process, in other words, should organizers of status-based contests impose upon those who covet peer recognition? We propose a formal model of status-based competition...

What are the boundary conditions of the Matthew Effect? In other words, under what circumstances do initial status differences result in highly skewed reward distributions over the long run, and when, conversely, is the accumulation of status-based advantages constrained? Using a formal model,...

One of the core beliefs of organizational and economic sociology is that audience-held expectations for certain kinds of organizational behavior shape actual organizational behavior. As a result, deviations from such expectations - for example, organizational nonconformity and market...

This study calls into question the completeness of the argument that economic actors who fail to conform to certain identity-based logics — such as the categorical structure of markets — garner less attention and perform poorly, beginning with the observation that some nonconforming actors...

We develop a dynamic cognitive model of network activation and show that people at different status levels spontaneously activate, or call to mind, different subsections of their networks when faced with job threat. Using a multi-method approach (General Social Survey data and a laboratory...

Organizational names serve important identity functions. One such function is to reduce ambiguity vis-à-vis a given audience. Organizations often strive to accomplish this goal by choosing a deliberate name that includes a product (e.g., “Tire”) or market (e.g., “Automotive”) identifier...