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The Categorical Imperative: Securities Analysts and the Illegitimacy Discount
Abstract
This article explores the social processes that produce penalties for illegitimate role performance. It is proposed that such penalties are illuminated in markets that are significantly mediated by product critics. In particular, it is argued that failure to gain reviews by the critics who specialize in a product's intended category reflects confusion over the product's identity and that such illegitimacy should depress demand. The validity of this assertion is tested among public American firms in the stock market over the years 1985–94. It is shown that the stock price of an American firm was discounted to the extent that the firm was not covered by the securities analysts who specialized in its industries. This analysis holds implications for the study of role conformity in both market and nonmarket settings and adds sociological insight to the recent “behavioral” critique of the prevailing “efficient‐market” perspective on capital markets.
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Cites
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Social Structure and Organizations
Stinchcombe, A. L. (2004) · Advances in Strategic Management · doi:10.1016/s0742-3322(00)17019-6 · Cited by 4,347
Caveat Emptor: The Construction of Nonprofit Consumer Watchdog Organizations
Rao, H. (1998) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/231293 · Cited by 562
Estimation in Panel Models: Results on Pooling Cross-Sections and Time Series
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Cited by
Institutional Complexity and Organizational Responses
Greenwood, R., Raynard, M., Kodeih, F., Micelotta, E. R., & Lounsbury, M. (2011) · Academy of Management Annals · doi:10.5465/19416520.2011.590299 · Cited by 3,519
Corporate reputation and sustained superior financial performance
Roberts, P. W., & Dowling, G. R. (2002) · Strategic Management Journal · doi:10.1002/smj.274 · Cited by 2,926
Advancing Research on Hybrid Organizing – Insights from the Study of Social Enterprises
Battilana, J., & Lee, M. (2014) · The Academy of Management Annals · doi:10.1080/19416520.2014.893615 · Cited by 2,107
Networks as the Pipes and Prisms of the Market
Podolny, J. M. (2001) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/323038 · Cited by 1,635
Toward a Comparative Sociology of Valuation and Evaluation
Lamont, M. (2012) · Annual Review of Sociology · doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-070308-120022 · Cited by 1,492
Metadata
- Authors
- Zuckerman, E. W.
- Venue
- American Journal of Sociology
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 1999-03
- Volume
- 104
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1398-1438
- ISSN
- 0002-9602 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5390
- OpenAlex
- W1984465657
- Cited by
- 2,143
- References
- 8
- FWCI
- 24.61
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
