Evaluative schemas and the attention of critics in the US film industry

Abstract

Industrial and Corporate Change Advance Access published May 8, 2006 Industrial and Corporate Change, page 1 of 30 doi:10.1093/icc/dtl009 Evaluative schemas and the attention of critics in the US film industry Greta Hsu This article explores the constraints evaluative schemas place on critics’ allocation of attention. Prior research suggests that a critic’s ability to establish himself as an expert of the market is based on the appeal to a rationalized and defensible sys- tem of standards for evaluating products. In this article, I argue that this creates a fundamental bias in the allocation of critical attention such that critics will dem- onstrate a tendency to favor arenas in which they have developed clear and struc- tured schemas for evaluation. As a result, producers within such categories will receive disproportionately greater critical attention. I test and find support for this hypothesis within the context of the US feature film industry. The implications of this bias in terms of producer legitimacy are discussed. 1. Introduction Several prominent lines of research within organizational theory have called attention to legitimacy as an underlying driver of diverse organizational processes and dynamics. Neo-institutional theorists, for example, propose that organizational actors conform to institutionalized beliefs regarding how organizations should look and behave in order to gain legitimacy and, as a result, valuable resources (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Researchers interested in the social structuration of markets have demonstrated that perceptions of what is legitimate impact on the opportunities available to organizations (Podolny, 1993, 1994, 1996; Stuart et al., 1999). Organizational ecologists, meanwhile, have focused on the impact of legitimacy at the category or population level. Ecological research finds that the legitimacy audiences’ award to organizational populations affects the resources available to population members and, as a result, organizational vital rates (Hannan and Freeman, 1989). While the importance of legitimacy in shaping organizational dynamics is clearly established, the cognitive processes by which certain types of organizational actors gain legitimacy relative to others remain largely unexplored. As Suchman (1995) observes, legitimacy is a generalized perception created by audiences toward organiza- tions. Audiences, and the beliefs they hold, determine the degree of legitimacy con- ferred onto categories of organizations. And while researchers have identified a variety of different types of audiences who act as sources of legitimacy (see Ruef and Scott, © The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Associazione ICC. All rights reserved.