Abstract
"Market identities affect the development of behavioral norms, perception of categorical demarcations, appropriate ways of doing business, and choice of strategic behavior. Identities however, are not always fixed guideposts informing market interactions, rather they can be fragmented and oppositional among producers. This leads to a competition of identity where co-existing belief structures, norms and cultural understandings are in conflict with each other. The dissertation is structured around the following research question: How do producers, who are competing on identity, strategically position themselves in order to influence the extent to which their identities are perceived as legitimate by audiences of co-producers or consumers? The first study, empirically set in Lyon's silk-manufacturing guild (1700-1788), examines the dilemma of gatekeepers trying to maintain professional identity norms amidst the emergence of a new creative occupation that threatens to disrupt existing social structures. The study uses the theoretical framing of relational work (Zelizer, 2012) to understand how gatekeepers choose creative partners while grappling and negotiating the cultural and political dimensions of creative workers' social ties. Findings suggest that during times of occupational identity conflict, gatekeepers privilege social ties that reinforce cultural and political social ties aligned with their own professional identity. When occupational identity conflict diminishes, gatekeeper selection of partners is less focused on cultural and political homogeneity of partners. The second study examines how location choice is strategically used by producers to contest opposing ontological understandings of taken-for-granted traditional practices, norms and values of an occupation. Set in Lyon's bakery market (1998-2017), the study investigates how locations are chosen among 177 producers representing two opposing classes of bakeries, the traditional (i.e., purist) and non-traditional (i.e., pragmatist) bakery. I find that producers wishing to maintain traditional practices (i.e. purists) choose locations to contrast differences with their ontological rivals (i.e. pragmatists). In doing so, purist producers expect to direct consumers’ attention towards the authenticity differential that sets them apart from non- traditional producers located within their vicinity. To the extent that colocation emphasizes such differences, purist producers expect that their ontological rivals will be perceived as inauthentic and insincere to categorical expectations. Inversely, pragmatist producers with an intention to modify existing cultural models chose discrete locations so as to not be noticeably different from traditional producers, whereby they gradually adapt expectations “under-the- radar” of the producer community. The third study, also set within Lyon’s bakery market, illustrates how producers’ choice of organizational naming is evaluated based on identity expectations of consumers. This study interrogates the likelihood of organizational mortality on consumers evaluation bakery’s usage of “boulangerie” conditioned on whether the owner is French or an immigrant. The third study argues that some institutionalized names are culturally-evocative, affecting who can legitimately claim them. Findings suggest that entrepreneurs who use organizational names reflecting a collective social identity, to which they are not affiliated, are perceived as illegitimate and are more likely to experience business failure. However, when incongruency with the collective is overtly signaled in an organizational name, audience evaluations are more tolerant and organizations are more likely to be accepted as legitimate. This conclusion contributes to our understanding of how buyer communities may shift their expectations of producers on the basis of cultural in-group and out-group identity perceptions."