Solidarity in Strategy: Making Business Meaningful in American Trade Associations. By Lyn Spillman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Pp. xiv+517. 90.00(cloth);90.00 (cloth); 30.00 (paper).

There are two ways to read this book about American trade associations (TAs). The first way—as an overview of a neglected but important part of the U.S. economy—may be summarized as follows. In chapters 2 and 3 of Solidarity in Strategy, Lyn Spillman provides a useful synthesis of existing historical and sociological research on American TAs as well as a “census” (i.e., a compilation of self-descriptions, organizational features, and key activities of all contemporary U.S. trade associations) conducted by Spillman and colleagues. These chapters make several good points: (a) that TAs have long been very important in the United States. even if they have no formal role in governing the economy, as they do in Western Europe; (b) that TAs are not merely about lobbying the government or (in Adam Smith’s famous words) “conspiracies against the public” by “members of the same trade”; (c) that TAs are “multifunctional,” offering educational services and peer-to-peer learning, networking opportunities, and coordination on club goods such as industry standards, certification programs, and marketing campaigns; and (d) that contra Berk and Schneiberg, the development of this broad array of functions likely was not an accommodation to antitrust enforcement but emerged as TAs did, with the industrial revolution

Re-Imagining Economic Sociology. Edited by Patrik Aspers and Nigel Dodd. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xiii+324. $110.00.

Here’s a basic criterion for evaluating a social scientific theory: Does the theory make progress addressing an important, difficult “research question” that other social scientists can appreciate? This criterion seems so obvious as to be banal. After all, a social scientific theory is a tool—a means, not an end. And we cannot assess the value of a tool if we do not know what tasks it helps us solve; nor can we know the limits of that tool and whether we might need to combine that tool with others to get the job done. And finally, without knowing the purpose of the tool, we can hardly assess the toolmaker’s claims that she has made improvements in the tool or that her tool is superior to those of competitors

Faking It Is Hard to Do: Entrepreneurial Norm Enforcement and Suspicions of Deviance

Recent research suggests that many norms may be upheld by closet deviants who engage in enforcement so as to hide their deviance. But various empirical accounts indicate that audiences are often quite sensitive to this ulterior motive. Our theory and experimental evidence identify when inferences of ulterior motive are drawn and clarify the implications of such inferences. Our main test pivots on two contextual factors: (1) the extent to which individuals might try to strategically feign commitment and (2) the contrast between "mandated" enforcement, where individuals are asked for their opinions of deviance, and "entrepreneurial" enforcement, where enforcement requires initiative to interrupt the flow of social interaction. When the context is one where individuals might have a strategic motive and enforcement requires entrepreneurial initiative, suspicions are aroused because the enforcers could have remained silent and enjoyed plausible deniability that they had witnessed the deviance or recognized its significance. Given that the mandate for enforcement might be rare, a key implication is that norms might frequently be underenforced

The Problems and Promise of Hierarchy: Voice Rights and the Firm

The firm's continued importance for coordinating economic activity is puzzling given that (1) economists have not demonstrated that the greater alignment of effort they expect from hierarchical coordination overcomes the reduction in employee effort created by "low-powered" incentives, (2) employee effort is further threatened by the alienating effects of hierarchical control, and (3) firms, as we show, are necessarily hierarchical. Why, then, do firms dominate the capitalist economy? Our theory is rooted in a more subtle set of rights that is also intrinsic to the firm hierarchy: "voice rights" (who can speak within and on behalf of the firm). Control of voice is crucial for endowing the firm with a capacity that cannot be acquired by a mere "nexus" of contractors: it can become a reliable and accountable actor. This, in turn, gives the firm three necessary (if insufficient) ingredients for creating strong identification with the collective enterprise. Our theory thus suggests why firms remain important despite their inherent limitations and why some firms are marked by alienation and perfunctory performance while others are marked by strong identification and consummate performance

Breaking up is hard to do: Irrational inconsistency in commitment to an industry peer network

This paper strengthens the basis for a key claim of contemporary economic sociology — that strong ties among capitalists cannot be reduced to rational considerations. Support for this claim has been limited by reliance on an external standard of rationality, whereby irrationality in commitment to a partner or network is based on an observer’s evaluation of an actor’s interests. In this article we address this limitation by developing an internal standard for assessing the rationality of an actor’s commitment, which is derived from Davidson’s (1980) definition of akrasia or ‘incontinence.’ In addition, we clarify the mechanisms that produce ‘akratic’ commitment among capitalists: (a) short-term emotions that overwhelm rational calculation; and (b) a sense of loyalty that leads one to incorporate others’ interests into one’s own. Finally, we provide systematic evidence of akratic commitment and the proposed mechanisms from studies of an industry peer network in the remodeling construction industry

So You Think You Can Dance? Lessons from the US Private Equity Bubble

This article develops a sociologically informed approach to market bubbles by integrating insights from financial-economic theory with the concepts of voice and dissimulation from other cases of distorted valuation studied by sociologists (e.g., witch hunts, unpopular norms, and support for authoritarian regimes). It draws on unique data—longitudinal interviews with private equity market participants during and after that market’s mid-2000s bubble—to test key implications of two existing theories of bubbles and to move beyond both. In doing so, the article suggests a crucial revision to the behavioral finance agenda, wherein bubbles may pertain less to the cognitive errors individuals make when estimating asset values and more to the sociological and institutionally driven challenge of how to interpret complex social and competitive environments

The Denigration of Heroes? How the Status Attainment Process Shapes Attributions of Considerateness and Authenticity

This article develops and tests a theory to explain the common tendency to “denigrate heroes,” whereby high-status actors are suspected of being inconsiderate and inauthentic relative to low-status counterparts. This tendency is argued to reflect two conditions typical of status attainment processes: (a) assertions of superiority over others and (b) the presence of incentives to pursue status. The latter is key since awareness of such incentives breeds suspicions of inauthenticity, which in turn undermine perceptions of prosocial intentions. This theory is validated in a series of online experiments, in which categorical status hierarchies emerge either via deference on a coordinated task or via competitive interactions. Results show that high-status actors may also be “celebrated” as authentic and considerate when the observable incentive structure is such that assertions of superiority appear as unintended by-products of prosocial action. Implications are drawn regarding the sources of instability and insecurity in status hierarchies

A Lack of Security or of Cultural Capital? Acculturative Conservatism in the Naming Choices of Early 20th-Century US Jews

Past research demonstrates a marked tendency toward “acculturative conservatism,” whereby immigrants select given names for their children that are established—that is, popular in an earlier generation of the native population. Prior research has generally understood such conservatism as reflecting a lack of “mainstream” cultural capital; established names are popular among immigrants because they are unaware of current fashion. But we argue and show that even when they are aware of current fashion, immigrants may favor established names to affirm their membership in the host society. Comparing given names among World War II Jewish servicemen (born around 1918) with given names in the general US population in 1920, we show that the parents of these servicemen exhibited a pattern of acculturation that was (1) selective (in avoiding popular native names with strong Christian associations, and embracing certain unpopular native names) and (2) conservative (in their tendency to favor established names relative to newly popular names). In addition, our key finding is that these parents favored those established names whose popularity was rising and avoided those whose popularity was declining. This suggests that Jewish immigrants were aware of mainstream fashion, but deliberately chose established names so as to express their membership in American society. More generally, this result indicates that the acculturation process is as much about gaining social acceptance as about becoming adept in the mainstream culture

When Politics Froze Fashion: The Effect of the Cultural Revolution on Naming in Beijing

The authors examine the popularity of boys’ given names in Beijing before and after the onset of the Cultural Revolution to clarify how exogenous and endogenous factors interact to shape fashion. Whereas recent work in the sociology of culture emphasizes the importance of endogenous processes in explaining fashion, their analysis demonstrates two ways in which politics shaped cultural expression during the Cultural Revolution: by promoting forms of expression reflecting prevailing political ideology and by limiting individuals’ willingness to act differently. As argued by Lieberson and developed further in this article, the second condition is important because endogenous fashion cycles require a critical mass of individuals who seek to differentiate themselves from common practice. Exogenous factors can influence the operation of the endogenous factors. The authors discuss the implications of their study for understanding the nature of conformity under authoritarian regimes and social conditions supporting individual expression

Book Review of Reimagining Economic Sociology

This is a book review written in February 2017 for American Journal of Sociology. It reviews Re-Imagining Economic Sociology. Edited by Patrik Aspers and Nigel Dodd. 2015. Oxford University Press. It also tries to say something more general about what theory is for and why senior scholars often seem to build theory in an unproductive way