Celebrity Couples as Business Families: A Social Network Perspective.

Yasaman Gorji,Rajshree Prakash,Michael Carney

doi:10.1177/08944865211050348

Yasaman Gorji, Rajshree Prakash + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/08944865211050348

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Abstract

We depict Hollywood celebrity couples as business families who participate in the project-based movie production industry, which is a temporary and disaggregated form of organization where skilled individuals are linked to one another through contractual and social relationships. Appearing in Hollywood movies generates celebrity capital, which can be converted into economic capital through involvement in endorsements and other rent-generating activities. Finding projects is facilitated by membership in high-quality social networks, and we consider celebrity marriage as a means of merging two individuals’ social networks, which can be mutually beneficial for both parties. We develop and test three hypotheses about the quality of social networks prior to and after marriage and analyze their impact upon celebrities’ postmarriage career performance. We contribute to the family business literature by exploring hybridized and adaptive forms of business family in contemporary project industries, which has the potential to enlarge family business scholars’ research horizons.

Highlights

Much of the recent family business literature views business families from a “one family-one firm” perspective and focuses on how family resources or significant family events influence firm outcomes (Brinkerink et al, 2020; Combs et al, 2020)
While we situate our empirical study in the Hollywood film production industry, we propose that the business families as a nexus of contracts apply more generally to industries populated by project organizations
While we controlled for gender, age, industry experience in years before marriage (BM), awards before marriage, type of role, and change of role after marriage (AM), the relationship between Degree centrality and count of projects after marriage is significant (.0051, p < .01)

Summary

Introduction

Much of the recent family business literature views business families from a “one family-one firm” perspective and focuses on how family resources or significant family events influence firm outcomes (Brinkerink et al, 2020; Combs et al, 2020). We develop and test three hypotheses about the size and quality of celebrity couples’ social networks and their effect on finding new projects before and after marriage in the context of the U.S film production industry. In the context of project organizations, each of these social network characteristics, degree centrality, status, and the capacity for bridging structural holes are potentially valuable mechanisms to a receiving spouse seeking career advancement in their field. Other research finds that women often have difficulty finding male sponsors for myriad reasons (Groysberg, 2010; Lutter, 2015) With this hypothesis, we reason that some of the detrimental career effects of female stereotyping and social network formation may be diminished by marriage, especially in project-based career environments, which differ from traditional careers. The values with a p-value less than 0.01 are indicated in boldface. *p < .1. **p < .05. ***p < .01

Results

Years after marriage Equal variances assumed

Discussion