From Categories to Categorization: Studies in Sociology, Organizations and Strategy at the Crossroads: 51 (Research in the Sociology of Organizations) - Hardcover

Scholars working in the sociology of markets, organization theory, and strategy research in North America, Europe, and South Korea provide 11 essays on categorization as a cognitive and social process, focusing on categories in the context of markets. They consider categorization as a tool for social evaluation; categorization as politics and strategy, in terms of how technology firms categorize themselves and how analysts categorize those firms, the use of hybrid categories, and how meaning is constructed through discourse in market categorization; how unknown or ambiguous objects are categorized, such as Bitcoin, the information privacy category, and how the Sundance Institute reoriented the value of independent film; and the influence of time and place on the categorization process, in terms of category origins, organizational identity, and category spanning. -- Annotation (c)2017 * (protoview.com) *

Categorization pervades economic life; products, services, firms and industries are continuously being classified by rivals, clients, experts and critics. A stream of research highlighting the importance of market and product categories for organizations and individuals has grown in importance during the past 40 years. This volume contains ten essays on categorization authored by some of the world's leading scholars within sociology of markets, organization theory, and strategy research. It opens with revisiting the influential theory of "the categorical imperative", and moves on to present various accounts of the social processes that form part of categorization and elaboration of their consequences. Together, the different chapters effectively show that categorization is a process, tightly connected to actors involved and their specific acts, the characteristics of the entity being categorized, and the context and timing informing these activities. As such, it complements the earlier cognitive perspectives by discussing the evaluative, social, and political manifestations of categorization.