Autumn Quarter 2011

What is the nature of money, credit, and banking in capitalist economies? Recent efforts in political economy, neo-institutional economics, and sociology approach this question by arguing that information is scarce, valued, and subject to manipulation; and that actors face particularly difficult challenges when, in order to price services and goods, they have to rely on information that is neither available nor potentially verifiable; on information that, only in some distant future, may or may not turn out to be accurate – in a word, on promises. Three myths, I argue here, spring from the information-centered premises of these approaches: in the “myth of fungible money,” money is understood as a neutral means of accounting for value – and thus as an instrument that serves to establish commensurability among qualitatively different commodities. In the “myth of banks as institutions of intermediation,” banks are defined as organizations charged with the allocation and distribution of scarce financial resources (capital): banks intermediate between savers and spenders. In the “myth of creditworthiness as objective assessment,” the criteria by which borrowers are granted credit are understood to be a function of the traits of the borrower: the better these criteria capture such underlying traits, the better the odds that the financial obligation will be met in the future. This paper replaces these myths with a sociological set of concepts intended to capture the dynamics of financial conflict. It uses a comparison of the banking systems of 19 th century United States and Italy to illustrate its usefulness. 

Witch burning, lynching, inquisitions, foot-binding, gay bashing, infibulation, breast ironing, ethnic cleansing, honor killing, and necklacing have been attributed to a dark side of the human psyche that surfaces on a mass scale only under special circumstances that are atypical in prosperous democratic societies. An alternative view is that these behaviors are extreme examples of a widely observed dynamic of self-organization in social networks, driven by positive feedback between homophily and social conformity. I will summarize results from computational models and experiments with human subjects that support the latter explanation. Application to the "culture wars" and red-blue polarization of contemporary American politics will also be explored, along with methodological implications for causal inference based on multivariate linear models.

Through a series of three studies, we explored when and why external audiences (i.e., fans) identified with and supported the relatively low-prestige organization called NASCAR (the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing). In a first study, involving archival data and interviews with NASCAR experts and fans, we determined that fan identification with NASCAR was due, primarily, to value congruence with NASCAR, rather than the perceived external prestige of NASCAR.  We also found that identification with NASCAR led fans to support the organization, as well as perceive that they could engage in self-expression (i.e., “be themselves”).   A second study, involving three, large scale surveys of a group of avid NASCAR fans over time, confirmed that NASCAR was perceived as relatively low in prestige, and that value congruence was a stronger predictor than perceived external prestige of fan’s identification, supportive behaviors, and self-expression.  Further this data showed that fan identification significantly mediated the effects of value congruence on supportive behaviors and self-expression.   In a final study of NASCAR fans solicited at 5 live NASCAR races, interview and survey data revealed that value of “patriotism” was: (1) the primary NASCAR value with which fans identified, and (2) perceived as important but difficult to affirm through affiliation with other groups or organizations.  Together, these findings suggest that value congruence may predict organizational identification and support to a greater degree than perceived external prestige when organizations are relatively low in prestige, and when identification allows individual affirmation of important values that are difficult to affirm elsewhere.  We discuss these findings in terms of implications for theories of organizational identification.

Firms have devised several broadly different approaches to promoting workforce diversity, following different institutional logics, of network development, affirmative action, meritocratic bureaucracy, cognitive bias.  The literature on institutional logics rarely considers the relative efficacy of different logics.  We examine time-series data on workforce composition to explore which of these institutional approaches actually leads to change in the diversity of the workforce.

Neo-institutional theorists have largely viewed social movements as agents of change and organizations as defenders of the status quo. Consequently, interaction between the two actors has been viewed almost exclusively as contentious and rules as instruments of naked power. This paper challenges this perspective by documenting a case in which a social movement and an organization acted together to seek change and rules created a mechanism for integration between the two actors. The analysis is an extreme-case study useful for a theory building approach. Data comes from the archives of a special commission within the Catholic Church that developed rules for adjudicating miracles performed by candidates to sainthood. The social movement is composed of candidates and their supporters who mobilized local communities using miracles. The period of the analysis was the aftermath of the Protestant Schism, when long established practices and beliefs were fundamentally challenged. By approving miracles that created ties between individuals that spanned across kinship and social status boundaries, the commission was able to channel legitimacy into the wounded core of the Church. At the same time, receiving Rome’s approval reduced the competition the candidate’s supporters faced from other religious activists. The non-contentious interaction that occurred between the two actors gave birth to the field of modern sainthood. The main implication for organization theory is that, even in the absence of conflict, a new environment and ideology can emerge endogenously and transform both the organization and the social movement.