Social Cohesion, Structural Holes, and a Tale of Two Measures

EMBARGOED - author can archive pre-print or post-print on any open access repository after 12 months from publication. Publication date is May 2013 so embargoed until May 2014.This is an author’s accepted manuscript (deposited at arXiv arXiv:1211.0719v2 [physics.soc-ph] ), which was subsequently published in Journal of Statistical Physics May 2013, Volume 151, Issue 3-4, pp 745-764. The final publication is available at link.springer.com http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10955-013-0722-

Optimizing Multiple Institutional Logics within the Collective Creative Process

Institutional logics form the foundational building blocks for understanding organizational life and work. While earlier conceptions portrayed institutional logics as static and monolithic, scholars have more recently embraced an action perspective that views logics as fluid and dynamic. With this lens, organizations, fields and professions are seen as rife with a plurality of logics that are continuously contested and negotiated. Our research sheds light on how a multiplicity of logics are navigated over time beyond the context of a single organization or profession, and how micro-level action in the context of the collective creative process may inform, and is informed by, the larger field or industry context

DNA and Lovesongs:Optimization within the Collective Creative Process

Contemporary creative work often brings together multiple experts to realize a novel outcome, and each area of expertise is associated with unique aspirations, requirements and standards. How does the collective creative process unfold when these are conflicting? We harness the institutional logics literature as a lens to highlight cognitive and behavioral implications of larger institutional dynamics that shape and constrain the collective creative process. Based on a comparative ethnography of creative work in the science and music industries, we demonstrate that a significant portion of the collective creative process consists of optimization work. More specifically, we find that actors in both settings developed an approach of optimization – shaping their work so as to integrate and satisfy the requirements of conflicting logics to the greatest extent possible. This study illuminates a critical part of the collective creative process that has so far been unarticulated, and adds to best practices of comparative ethnography