Essays on Identity Social Construction, Multidimensionality, and its Effect on Creative Products' Performance in Electronic Dance Music

Abstract

My Ph.D. thesis consists of three research papers focused on actors’ identity as social outcome, its intrinsic multidimensionality raised by multiple identity-shaping sources, and the relationship between identity dimensions and market performance. The first paper offers an overview of the literature on identity, social identity, and two identity-determining tools – social categories and network relations. It discusses how identity emerges from multiple identifying social forces that determines its multidimensionality. The second paper qualitatively explores the idea of multidimensionality in Electronic Dance Music (EDM). Through interviews with New York-based artists and producers, and secondary data analysis, EDM is unveiled as a field in which complex interrelations and exchanges occur among its actors. This complexity is then transferred to identity, and the word Sound emerges as vernacular term to refer to that multi-sided element that allows mutual recognition and collaboration – EDM actors’ socially constructed, multidimensional identity. Finally, the third paper tests four hypotheses relating EDM releases’ performance to external categorization, alliance portfolio, and their interaction. Regression models test: 1) the relationship between EDM releases’ Grade of Generalism (the weighted number of spanned styles) and commercial performance, 2) the relationship between releasing artists’ Relational Pluralism (the number of commercial partners) and releases’ performance, and 3) the combined effect of Generalism and Pluralism on releases’ performance. Results show a curvilinear relationship between both Generalism and Relational Pluralism and releases’ performance, and statistically confirm the existence and relevance of identity multidimensionality, especially from an inter-temporal perspective. Overall, my Ph.D. dissertation introduces the idea of multidimensional identity, and explores it in qualitative and quantitative terms. Moreover, the dissertation presents and unveils Electronic Dance Music as novel and relevant context for organization research.