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The desirability of establishing a value chain at a particular stage in a value system can be considered to depend on the relation between the value that can be created and the value that can be captured at that particular stage. Value chain envy motivates firms to invade the more desirable stages of the value system, either through new entry or vertical integration. The feasibility of establishing a value chain, however, can be considered to depend on the efficacy of the means to value protection at that particular stage. The concepts of value creation, capture, and protection within value systems are employed to analyze recent developments in the recorded music industries, particularly those affecting the stage of music publishing. Over the course of the 20th century the value created at the stage of music publishing diminished steadily, while the value captured remained high, thereby giving rise to value chain envy. On the basis of the proposed theoretical framework one could expect these developments to trigger strategic responses to remedy this value chain envy. However, most actors, except the major record companies, were unable to do so until new information communication technologies were introduced. Industry level data do indeed corroborate that vertical integration by major record companies was followed, from the mid-1990’s onwards, by a significant increase in the prevalence rate of newly founded SMEs in the music publishing industry in the Netherlands. These newly founded firms are testimony to new entry or vertical integration by musician-entrepreneurs, thereby providing support for the advanced arguments.

Valuation of cultural products is problematic. Nevertheless valuation takes place and resource flows are channeled accordingly. In this paper, we provide insight into how valuation of cultural products takes place by describing the essential characteristics of the competitive process and the resulting distribution of resources in terms of different types of selection systems. The selection system specifies the essential characteristics of the actors who are in competition with each other, the VHOHFWHG, and the actors whose decisions will determine the outcome of the process, the VHOHFWRUV, as well as the relations between the selectors and selected. Three ideal types of selection systems are distinguished: market selection, peer selection and expert selection. We show that a group of painters, known as the Impressionists, changed the selection system of the visual arts industry from one dominated by peer selection into one dominated by expert selection by acting and presenting themselves as a group. In doing so, they managed to change fundamentally the nature of the competitive process in the visual arts industry. In the new selection system, innovativeness has become the most highly prized product characteristic, while experts - as reviewers of works of art, as consultants to dealers, or as museum curators - play an essential role, certifying the innovativeness of individual artists and groups of artists.

This dissertation addresses the question of how the information encoded by category labels is interpreted by agents in a market for the purpose of decision-making. To this end, we first examine the influence of categorization on economic and strategic outcomes with two empirical studies, and then use the insights provided by these studies to develop a formal theory of classification systems. Consistently with Formal Concept Analysis (FCA), this theory builds on the fundamental mathematical notions of lattices and order, and it is thus uniquely suited to yield an ontological perspective on category representations. As a result, we are much better equipped to understand how categories serve as the "cognitive infrastructures'" of markets and affect economic activity. Chapter 1 offers a concise overview of the extant research on categorization in cognitive psychology, economic sociology, and organization theory. We build extensively on this diverse literature during the course of our exposition.The first part of this thesis includes our empirical studies. In Chapter 2, we synthesize insights from industrial economics, strategic management, and organizational ecology to examine the effects of product proliferation strategies. Conceptualizing the market as a multidimensional (Lancastrian) space of product features, we argue that product categories guide firms' strategic decisions by partitioning the space into subsets or regions. Product proliferation occurs when a firm bids to occupy a product category at the expense of competitors by saturating the corresponding region of space. Consistently with game-theoretic models of product competition in differentiated markets, we predict proliferation to have a negative effect on the likelihood of rival product introductions in the targeted category; however, we also predict that this effect is weaker if the region of space to which the category maps is more complex (i.e., heterogeneous in terms of product features). Our analysis of firms' patterns of new product introductions in the US recording industry supports these hypotheses; in addition, it suggests that product proliferation effectively deters competitors who can alter their positioning in feature space, but those who are constrained to particular positions remain virtually unaffected.In Chapter 3, we turn to consumers' perspective and examine how the categorization of products according to different classification systems affects the attribution of value. Focusing on the distinction between categories based on prototypes and categories based on goals, we argue that these category labels of these two kinds map to structurally different regions of the feature space. Valuation requires consumers to infer the location of products from their labels, but because type- and goal-based categories have different internal structures, they enable different sorts of inferences. Building on this argument, we theorize that under particular conditions spanning type-based categories has a U-shaped effect on consumers' evaluations, whereas spanning goal-based categories has a negative effect. At the same time, we predict that spanning goal-based categories can moderate the U-shaped effect of spanning type-based categories by enabling consumers to make more precise inferences from fewer type-based labels. Our analysis of product ratings on a popular music website offers empirical support for these hypotheses.In the second part of this thesis, we develop a formal theory of categorization that accounts for the key aspects highlighted by our empirical studies. In Chapter 4, we introduce an order-theoretic account of classification systems as RS-frames. These are algebraic structures based on RS-polarities, which we enrich with additional relations to interpret modalities. Consistently with FCA, we propose to interpret an RS-polarity as a database consisting of a set of objects (such as products or organizations in a market), a set of features, and an incidence relation linking objects with their features. All the possible categories whereby the objects and the features may be grouped arise as the Galois-stable sets of this polarity, just like formal concepts in FCA. An agent's perception of the objects and their features, which can be unique, incomplete, or even mistaken, is modeled by a relation giving rise to a normal modal operator that expresses an agent's beliefs about a category's intensional and extensional meaning. The fixed points of the iterations of belief modalities are used to model categories whose meaning is shared as they arise from social interaction.In Chapter 5, we clarify how the order-theoretic perspective on concepts enabled by FCA complements the geometric perspective allowed by the theory of conceptual spaces. In addition to introducing a sound and complete epistemic-logical language, we refine the framework presented in the previous chapter both technically and conceptually: Technically, because we free its semantics from the restrictions imposed by the RS-conditions and generalize to more natural Kripke-style frames. This makes our formalism better suited to represent formal contexts (i.e., databases) as they occur in real-world domains. Conceptually, because we enhance our theory of classification systems as concept lattices and propose formalizations for some of the most important theoretical constructs in the categorization literature, including typicality, similarity, contrast, and leniency. In particular, we elaborate our interpretation of the fixed-point construction introduced before by tying it directly to the notion of typicality. Possible extensions are discussed, especially with regard to dynamic updates.Chapter 6 summarizes the main findings of this dissertation, elucidates their implications for organizational research, identifies key areas for improvement, and presents promising directions for future study. Special consideration is given to the possibility of unifying FCA and conceptual spaces using the framework of correspondence theory. We conclude with a general reflection on the role of logic in the social sciences.

The main aim of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of the effects of categorization when products can be categorized into multiple categories or cannot be clearly categorized into an existing category. This thesis focuses on products or producers that cannot be easily categorized because they are new. Insight from studies in organization theory and marketing literature on categorization are structured through four themes. The first theme involves the phenomenon of category spanning and the consequences of spanning multiple categories. Theme 2 relates to the phenomenon that different types of market actors might disagree on the categorical membership of the same product or producer. Theme 3 deals with the fact that categories are dynamic and evolve over time. The fourth theme relates to communicating categorical membership by providing - or not providing - visual and textual category cues. These four themes are addressed in four different chapters. In Chapter 2 a framework for developing effective product service systems that span multiple categories is described and empirically tested. Chapter 3 introduces the concept of category cues and describes how producers’ decisions to use these category cues are influenced by their competitive context and their competitive position. Chapter 4 explains how providing category labels that vary in their degree of matureness affect consumers’ newness perceptions and willingness to pay. Finally, Chapter 5 proposes the concept of a classification gap and describes how such a classification gap has a negative effect on the market performance of a product. Based on these findings, practical implications are provided that will help producers to manage categorization issues, during the development and marketing phase of new products.

Vermindering van de subsidies voor podiumkunsten in Nederland lijkt te vragen om een sterkere marktoriëntatie van podiumkunstorganisaties. Pawan Bhansing laat zien dat managers van Nederlandse dans- en theatergezelschappen echter geen bijzonder hoge marktoriëntaties te hebben. Volgens Bhansing is de marktoriëntatie bij zakelijk directeuren van podiumgezelschappen over het algemeen niet het meest dominant. Ook blijken de cognitieve verschillen tussen de directeuren van theater- en dansgezelschappen in een duale leiderschapsstructuur (waarbij een artistiek directeur en een zakelijk directeur samen aan het roer staan) vrij klein te zijn. Een eerste stap naar het creëren van organisaties die meer kans hebben om te overleven in de snel veranderende omgeving van podiumgezelschappen, is het bevorderen van een grotere diversiteit binnen het duale leiderschap. Bhansing deed onderzoek naar de rol van topmanagers in dans- en theatergezelschappen bij het succes van hun gezelschap. Hij keek naar de persoonlijke eigenschappen van de topmanagers, waarbij hij selectiesysteemoriëntaties conceptualiseerde.

The distribution of power and influence within an organization, past product performance records, and product evaluations are not new for the literature and its effects to the performance and strategy of an organization have been extensively investigated. However, the impact of the changes and variability of the value of such factors across time and/or across different actors are largely overlooked. The main aim of this research is to explore and discuss how variability in consumer and expert evaluations and sales affects the performance of the organization in regard to sales and evaluations of future products, strategy in terms of the likelihood to explore new markets, and how the changes in marketing-R&D orientation strategy affect performance.