Stoyan V. Sgourev

Stoyan V. Sgourev
Normandy Business School

PhD

About

35
Publications
20,589
Reads
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599
Citations
Additional affiliations
October 2006 - June 2022
ESSEC - Ecole Supérieur des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales
Position
  • Professor
Education
September 1998 - May 2004
Stanford University
Field of study
  • Sociology

Publications

Publications (35)
Article
Full-text available
A key question in scholarship on evaluation is the extent to which the role of social construction is constrained by objective reality. This question is addressed in an analysis of the evaluation of artistic excellence. In an online experiment, we manipulate the subjective social status (both artwork and artist) and the degree of aesthetic complexi...
Article
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Slack is an elusive concept in organizational research, with studies documenting a variety of relationships between slack and firm performance. We advocate treating slack not as a resource, but as a practice – a sequence of events and responses over time. A longitudinal analysis of the Dutch East India Company (1700–1795) highlights the use of slac...
Article
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The analysis elaborates and illustrates a proposition on brokerage that is implicit in existing research—that through self-assembling their ties, brokers may trigger chains of events with systemic consequences that they can only partly control or benefit from. By relaxing the assumption of strategic control, the analysis contributes to reducing the...
Article
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Atypical practices of crossing categories or genres are generally discouraged in the market, but the ideal of the Renaissance mind1 persists. Building on recent work elaborating the need to reward the greater risk associated with atypicality for it to survive, this article provides the first systematic, direct evidence for such a reward. We focus o...
Article
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In structural analyses of innovation, one substantive question looms large: What makes radical innovation possible if peripheral actors are more likely to originate radical ideas but are poorly positioned to promote them? An inductive study of the rise of Cubism, a revolutionary paradigm that overthrew classic principles of representation in art, r...
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Article
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We develop an endogenous approach to the practice of denunciation, as an alternative to exogeneous historical and sociological accounts. It analyzes denunciation as a response to increasing pressure, which in turn increases pressure on social contacts. The research context is the trial of Waldensians in Giaveno, Italy, in 1335, headed by the inquis...
Article
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Linking research on networks, rivalry, and gender, we develop a contextual approach to gender‐based differences in network returns. Our principal contribution is in articulating the role of rivalry – a personalized and relational form of competition – in influencing the cognitive activation and behavioural mobilization of social networks. Three exp...
Article
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A key objective in explaining how creativity occurs and novelty is generated [may it be organized or not], is allowing for a mix of determinism and chance. One of the ways to create a disconnect between the creative act and the myriad factors bearing on it is by way of external jolts, disrupting not only routines and logics, but also structures of...
Article
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Color is omnipresent, but organizational research features no systematic theory or established method for analyzing it. We develop a relational approach to color, conceptualizing it as a means of positioning relative to a reference group or style and validating it through a computational method for processing digital images. The research context is...
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We develop a process-based framework, articulating the escalation of difference between “private” self and “public” display as an alternative trajectory in the pursuit of authenticity to alignment and compromise. A parsimonious model presents an endogenous dynamic of binary choice that generates momentum toward polarization. The model is illustrate...
Article
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There is an important constraint that can be used to regulate mobility in competitive labor markets—the existence of a deeply felt rivalry between employers. Rivalry denotes a stable antagonistic relationship between companies, as exemplified by Apple and IBM in the 1980s. Analyzing data from the Palio di Siena (an ancient horse race in Siena, Ital...
Article
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Conflicting theoretical perspectives present radical innovation as originating either from the core or the periphery of a system. Studies tend to bridge this divide by way of positions or roles. This paper proposes a process interface, where ideas from the core are radicalized on the periphery, inverting the established tendency of "tempering" of i...
Article
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The paper proposes an “optical” approach to creativity, involving a modification of the way reality is viewed. Perception is notably absent from sociological accounts of creativity, examining practices of recombination embedded in social relations. Drawing on the work of Michael Baxandall, I propose a framework where creativity emanates from the di...
Article
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This paper addresses the recognized need for connecting scholarship on materiality and evaluation by conceptualizing how materiality provides grounds for “valuation entrepreneurship.” It extends the scope of materiality scholarship by considering an ignored organizational outcome while offering stronger evidence for the role of supply-side factors...
Article
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Often met with suspicion, practices of 'fusion' between neighbouring disciplines simultaneously build on and reinforce complementarities between them. I argue that the key advantage of identifying and exploring such complementarities is the opportunity for improved understanding of the interaction of time and space in the history of art-i.e. how te...
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Pursuing a new theoretical link between sociology of culture and 'categorization' research, the article articulates the process whereby new categories emerge through bifurcation of pre-existing categories. The contribution is in conceptualizing and documenting the underlying interaction of endogenous and exogeneous factors. The assumption is that b...
Technical Report
Full-text available
A primer on academic writing
Chapter
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Scholarship has identified the need to better understand and empirically capture the complexity of the interplay between technological and social factors. One way to disentangle this interplay is to follow the same technology over time. This is the approach adopted in this chapter, pursuing a longitudinal perspective by analyzing the emergence and...
Article
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The paper elaborates the concept of temporal multiplexity, defined as the overlaying of ties of different duration, such as transient employment and enduring organizational ties. This concept is instrumental in resolving long-standing challenges in network research, such as capturing the interplay between different levels of analysis or time horizo...
Chapter
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Research on creativity is generally at the level of the individual, but scholars are beginning to offer conceptual frameworks at higher analytical levels: careers, social network s and institutional field s. This work approaches creativity as emerging from biographical transposition and relational flows across social network s. Ambiguity and hetero...
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The first wave of global trade, in which the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was a key player, writ large the problem of how “principals” could ensure that overseas “agents” protected company interests. The two principal mechanisms were suppression of opportunism and permission of agents to engage in private trade. There is near consensus in past re...
Article
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Research in consumer psychology suggests that there is limited room for acclaimed producers or brands to experiment with the aesthetic appearance and design of their products. This premise is rooted in consumers’ preference for aesthetic congruity and the cognitive difficulty associated with evaluating incongruent offerings. Yet examples of success...
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This study examines the mechanisms of risk management in innovation by relating several types of innovation at different risk levels to micro- and macro-level ageing processes. Using archival data from the “Metropolitan Opera” in New York, a time-series analysis reveals how the rate and type of artistic innovation are influenced by ageing at the in...
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The article examines the emergence of “exit chains”—temporal clusters in attrition, which are expected but rarely documented. Studying attrition in an industry peer network (IPN), we compare the three modes of leaving: as an initial exit in a chain (“leader”), a subsequent exit in a chain (“follower”), and a stand-alone exit (“loner”). Combining re...
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If institutional heterogeneity tends overall to reduce survival chances, it may also persist and be harnessed to good use. This article investigates this ambivalence by looking at how institutional heterogeneity emerges, develops, and survives. An inductive study of the “Metropolitan Opera” archives suggests that what enables heterogeneity to survi...
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This paper strengthens the basis for a key claim of contemporary economic sociology — that strong ties among capitalists cannot be reduced to rational considerations. Support for this claim has been limited by reliance on an external standard of rationality, whereby irrationality in commitment to a partner or network is based on an observer’s evalu...
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What is it that makes events difficult to predict? Starting with the assumption that unpredictability is commensurate with complexity, the article examines a highly complex process of discontinuous change, defined as ‘sudden convergence’—spontaneous, momentary correlation between components or preferences that were heretofore unrelated. This proces...
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This paper examines a cognitive bias whereby respondents in postcommunist Bulgaria systematically decrease their self estimates on material welfare in contrast to the well-established status-enhancement bias. The analysis shows that the main reason for the occurrence of status-devaluation is the experience of relative deprivation in postcommunism,...
Article
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We gain insight into the reasons why capitalists maintain social relationships with one another by analyzing a largely unexamined type of relationship - that which links "parallel peers" or noncompeting enterprises in the same industry - and an institution - the industry peer network or IPN - that is specifically designed for supporting small, excl...

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