Article2013

Overcoming the Illegitimacy Discount: Cultural Entrepreneurship in the US Feature Film Industry

Eric Yanfei Zhao · Masakazu Ishihara · Michael D. Lounsbury

126 citations0/0 files storedOrganization Studies

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Cinema and Media Studies Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification Management and Organizational Studies

Abstract

How can organizations spanning institutionalized categories mitigate against the possibility of reduced attention by audiences? While there has been a good deal of research on the illegitimacy discount of category spanning, scant attention has been paid to how organizations might strategically address this potential problem. In this paper, we explore how the strategic naming of products might enhance audience attention despite the liabilities associated with category spanning. Drawing on a sample of films released in the United States market between 1982 and 2007, we analyze different naming strategies and show that names that simply signal familiarity are not potent enough to offset the illegitimacy discount, while names imbued with known reputations serve as a symbolic device that enhances audience attention to genre-spanning films.

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References

1983The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields 1977Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony 2004The iron cage revisited institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields 1995Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches 1996Sensemaking in Organizations 1993Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Managing Customer-Based Brand Equity 2011External Control of Organizations: Resource Dependence Perspective 1996Clarifying the Entrepreneurial Orientation Construct and Linking It To Performance

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