Erik Aadland

Academy of Management Discoveries Doi: https://doi.org/10.5465/amd.2023.0270

Studies of destigmatization in markets typically feature targeted actors and audiences. This paper changes the analytical perspective by exploring the role of market intermediaries. It highlights the practice of “valuation arbitrage”, employed by intermediaries to capitalize on differences between the valuation of a product in stigmatized and non-stigmatized conditions. This practice may reduce the exclusionary power of stigma by facilitating the integration of targeted actors into product or labor markets. We investigate valuation arbitrage in the context of Norwegian black metal: a heavy metal genre that became notorious in the mid-1990s for its involvement in criminal activities. The analysis is abductive in nature, as exploration of qualitative data allows to identify a pattern and formulate an expectation that is then tested with quantitative data. An event history analysis of the hazard of a first record release attests to valuation arbitrage by international record labels that signed local bands to build up international demand, reinterpreting the transgressions as a sign of authenticity.

Administrative Science Quarterly 68(1) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/00018392221137289

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 Norwegian black metal—a genre of extreme metal music that achieved notoriety in the early 1990s through band members’ criminal activity. Our analysis of 5,125 album covers between 1989 and 2019 confirms the alignment of aesthetic and music features and articulates the role of color in the construction of a relational identity based on forces of association and disassociation. Black metal bands associated with past color choices of non-black metal bands up to a point, after which they started to disassociate from them. The positioning is dynamic, pursuing adaptation to external events. Black metal bands reacted to their stigmatization in Norwegian society by increasing colorfulness and later returning to a darker aesthetic in defiance of the genre’s commercialization. Our analysis attests to color’s ability to organize producers’ exchange of information and attention, illustrating the interweaving of aesthetic features and relational processes in markets.

Theory and society 52(1) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-022-09477-1

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 illustrated in the context of “black” metal – a branch of heavy metal music that appeared in Norway in the early 1990s, notorious for its involvement in criminal activities. Using fanzine data, we construct a narrative of how a process of escalation led to innovation and transgression through self-selection and exclusion. The analysis addresses two related theoretical problems – what motivates actors to challenge normative scripts and “burn the bridges” to social acceptance, and why such challenges may prove more effective in achieving recognition than compromise. Examples from politics, culture and sports reinforce the importance of these problems.

PLOS ONE 15(9) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238651

How do candidates’ status and social proximity to members of the evaluating audience interact to shape recognition in peer-based evaluative settings? In this study, we shed light on this question by adopting a mixed-method approach. We first examined field data on the conferral of awards in a peer-based evaluative contest–“The Silver Tag”–which is one of the most prestigious digital advertising awards contests in Norway. The field study revealed the existence of a negative interaction between status and social proximity on the allocation of awards. We then conducted two experiments to probe the mechanisms responsible for this finding. In the first experiment, we replicated the main pattern observed in the field study. In the second experiment, we showed that the interaction effect is contingent on the nature of the evaluative setting. When audience members’ decisions were in the public domain (i.e., the other audience members knew them), social proximity tempered the effect of status on candidates’ recognition, but it did not when decisions were private (i.e., the other audience members did not know them). We conclude by discussing several implications of our study for research on the socio-psychological processes underlying evaluative outcomes in tournament rituals.

Academy of Management Journal 62(3) p. 883-917 Doi: https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2016.0437