Cross-cultural color-odor associations

Colors and odors are associated; for instance, people typically match the smell of strawberries to the color pink or red. These associations are forms of crossmodal correspondences. Recently, there has been discussion about the extent to which these correspondences arise for structural reasons (i.e., an inherent mapping between color and odor), statistical reasons (i.e., covariance in experience), and/or semantically-mediated reasons (i.e., stemming from language). The present study probed this question by testing color-odor correspondences in 6 different cultural groups (Dutch, Netherlands-residing-Chinese, German, Malay, Malaysian-Chinese, and US residents), using the same set of 14 odors and asking participants to make congruent and incongruent color choices for each odor. We found consistent patterns in color choices for each odor within each culture, showing that participants were making non-random color-odor matches. We used representational dissimilarity analysis to probe for variations in the patterns of color-odor associations across cultures; we found that US and German participants had the most similar patterns of associations, followed by German and Malay participants. The largest group differences were between Malay and Netherlands-resident Chinese participants and between Dutch and Malaysian-Chinese participants. We conclude that culture plays a role in color-odor crossmodal associations, which likely arise, at least in part, through experience

Contesting the Champs-Elysées

World-renowned urban places struggle to retain the qualities that made them famous as the fabric of the city changes. Often their specific charms and qualities, indeed, their identity, are threatened by organization changes in the urban environment. This article shows how the 'Champs-Elysées' is fragmenting into anonymous subspaces that raise the risk of it becoming a non-place. We show the role of a specific institutional influence, the Comité des Champs-Elysées, which seeks to preserve the site despite the heterogeneity of its members. Two strategies emerge from their actions: deceleration of the flows of people is sought to slow and channel people on the Avenue within a modernized iconic space, while the constitution of events seeks to combine different sights and make them coexist together as a mosaic of experiences. The article concludes by showing the limits of influence of regulation that leaves the future of the space undetermined. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

When events interact with business ethics

The article analyses the dynamics of the interaction between events and business ethics within organizations. Events comprise those unpredictable things that happen. When they do, organizationally embedded managers will be responsible for making sense of these events. By being responsible, they are enacting ethics in the choices that they make for dealing with them. Events always raise ethical considerations because they are non-routine rather than a strict repetition of existing repertoires. Under certain circumstances, which we illustrate with a theory of the event, drawing on the work of Gilles Deleuze, we are able to investigate the de/institutionalizing of ethics theoretically. We draw on the new economic sociology to discuss the conditions of ethical and event de/institutionalization. Finally, we conceptualize the linkage between micro and macro dimensions framing the dynamics of business ethics in interaction with events. © The Author(s) 2010

Back in the USSR: Introducing Recursive Contingency Into Institutional Theory

© The Author(s) 2014 Institutional theory’s understanding of unplanned change in fragmented and complex environments has made the connection between institutional work at the micro level and institutional logics at the macro level a central issue. Change that is not planned is contingent on events. In practice an event, as a single occurrence of an unexpected, unanticipated or unacknowledged process, connects these levels, as the event is selected for attention, enacted in meaning, and organizationally coded. Not all events are selected, enacted and coded, of course. The recognition, attributes and potential of events depend on selections made from and meaning given to past events and those conceived as coming into being in the future perfect. The concept of recursive contingency describes how unique occurrences become connected in an evolving process over time; in doing so, it stresses the important role of the unexpected in regard to institutional change. Using a theoretical framework derived from Luhmann’s work, in which institutions are seen as relatively autonomous self-closed subsystems generating contingency, we define an event as such by the fact that what it means and what is to be done with it cannot be decided by the application of a rule: choice is demanded that requires coding it as a specific type of event. A recursive view of contingency can be connected to an institutional theory of change in which the central role of institutional codes and networks of communication is stressed, producing a new theoretical approach to the explanation of institutional change. To illustrate the argument we make reference to one of the most significant counterfactual cases for questioning the solidity of institutions: the collapse of the key organization of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party

On tasty colours and colourful tastes? Assessing, explaining, and utilizing crossmodal correspondences between colours and basic tastes

Can basic tastes, such as sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and possibly also umami, be conveyed by means of colour? If so, how should we understand the relationship between colours and tastes: Is it universal or relative, innate or acquired, unidirectional or bidirectional? Here, we review the growing body of scientific research showing that people systematically associate specific colours with particular tastes. We highlight how these widely shared bidirectional crossmodal correspondences generalize across cultures and stress their difference from synaesthesia (with which they are often confused). The various explanations that have been put forward to account for such crossmodal mappings are then critically evaluated. Finally, we go on to look at some of the innovative ways in which chefs, culinary artists, designers, and marketers are taking—or could potentially push further—the latest insights from research in this area as inspiration for their own creative endeavours

On tasty colours and colourful tastes? Assessing, explaining, and utilizing crossmodal correspondences between colours and basic tastes

Can basic tastes, such as sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and possibly also umami, be conveyed by means of colour? If so, how should we understand the relationship between colours and tastes: Is it universal or relative, innate or acquired, unidirectional or bidirectional? Here, we review the growing body of scientific research showing that people systematically associate specific colours with particular tastes. We highlight how these widely shared bidirectional crossmodal correspondences generalize across cultures and stress their difference from synaesthesia (with which they are often confused). The various explanations that have been put forward to account for such crossmodal mappings are then critically evaluated. Finally, we go on to look at some of the innovative ways in which chefs, culinary artists, designers, and marketers are taking—or could potentially push further—the latest insights from research in this area as inspiration for their own creative endeavours