VII Medici Summer School, May 31 st - June 5 th, 2015 Social Valuation in Organizational, Interpersonal, and Market Contexts We are pleased to announce the organization of the 7 th edition of the Medici Summer School in Management Studies for doctoral students and young researchers which will be held in Bologna, May 31 st - June 5 th, 2015. The school is organized and sponsored by Alma GS (University of Bologna), HEC Paris (Society and Organizations Research Center and the HEC Foundation), and MIT Sloan School of Management (Economic Sociology PhD Program). http://www.societyandorganizations.org/ http://www.medicisummerschool.it/ http://sociology.mit.edu/programs Mission The Summer School is designed to promote doctoral education and research organization theory and related fields (economic sociology, management studies, strategy) and contribute to the development of enlightened practice in the management of business organizations. The Medici Summer School advocates a special focus on cross-fertilizing research across North American and European traditions. The Summer School is a unique educational program for qualified doctoral students interacting with thought leaders in the management field who have shared their knowledge and wisdom on frontier research topics. The Medici School combines lectures and research seminars by prominent international scholars with an active engagement of participant students. Every day of the one-week program is scheduled to end with the 1
presentation of students work related to the topic of the School, with a panel of senior faculty providing feedback. There is no fee to participate. Selected candidates will be fully covered in their accommodation expenses provided that they stay the full week. Note that transportation is not covered by the organizers. The Summer School will begin on Sunday May 31st with a welcoming reception and will conclude the afternoon of Friday June 5th. Theme The program of The 2015 Medici Summer School will focus on social valuation in organizational and market contexts. Social valuation as a research topic has attracted considerable attention in recent years. This trend has manifested itself across multiple literatures. Economic sociologists have analyzed the workings of markets for the production of value; students of inequality have analyzed the distribution of social honor in societies and the effect of status characteristics on distributive outcomes; organizational sociologists have studied processes of categorization; cultural sociologists have examined cultural valuation of symbolic goods and social practices; and management scholars have long been concerned with questions of performance and its evaluation. Although they draw from different theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches, these and related lines of work have much to gain from dialogue with one another. Perhaps the main basis for such dialogue rests in the shared recognition that social valuations are socially constructed within objective constraints. But this recognition leads to many challenges. Most generally, there is the ontological problem that it is not clear what these objective conditions are independent of subjective appreciation of them. And if the same conditions support a wide variety of valuations across different audiences (e.g., peers, critics or users), how constraining are they? For instance, it is hard to say why certain products are judged to be different from or more authentic than other in all regards identical -- products? On the other hand, social valuations are not fully constructed but are instead significantly constrained by objective conditions. For instance, over the years a 2
consensus emerged that Cremonese violins were the best string instruments for music performances in big concert halls. More generally, probing the influence of social valuations is critical for understanding how resources (material and symbolic) are allocated among competing offers (e.g., products, technologies, organizational forms, etc.), which offers are more likely to become accepted and legitimated in a given market or industry, and, more broadly, how value is produced, diffused, assessed and institutionalized across a range of settings. Indeed, understanding what makes an organization s product offerings valuable to consumers is not only central to marketing research but also and more generally to research concerned with the acceptance of novelty in strategy, organizational theory and economic sociology. Valuations originate inside the mind of individuals making judgments the primary concern of cognitive psychology. Yet they become social when valuation criteria emerge that are widely shared and used to compare different entities, and a consensus on who should be regarded as a legitimate judge is reached. Probing the link between individual and social valuations is not merely a matter of aggregating across different levels of analysis, but calls for a deeper investigation of how these levels interact. The goal of the 2015 edition of the Medici Summer School is to shed light on the mechanisms underlying social valuations, in particular what drives the formation of valuative judgments, the actors involved and their role, and how those judgments vary both across actors and over time as the conditions under which those judgments are made change too. The 2015 Medici Summer School will help students untangle a complex theoretical landscape, circumscribing the questions, identifying open puzzles and delineating the central ideas for a future agenda devoted to the understanding of social valuation in organizational contexts. To this end, the 2015 Medici Summer School brings together interdisciplinary scholarship at multiple levels of analysis to understand the phenomena of social valuation within and among organizations. 3
Program and Faculty The host faculty members include representatives from the three cosponsoring institutions and those who have been organizing the Summer School over the years. Host faculty at this year s summer school include Ezra Zuckerman and Emilio Castilla (MIT), Gino Cattani (NYU), Simone Ferriani and Gianni Lorenzoni (Bologna), and Rodolphe Durand (HEC Paris). In addition to the host faculty, the Summer School will bring together guest faculty who consist of leading strategy, organizations, sociology, marketing, and social psychology scholars. The five days of the Summer School will be tentatively organized in terms of the following themes, with the following guest faculty: Day 1, June 1 st : On the evaluation of authenticity by audiences and the supply of authenticity by organizations. Lead faculty: Glenn Carroll, Stanford University, California, USA. Day 2, June 2 nd : Understanding how our experiences and the experiences of others jointly affect the formation of evaluative judgments. Lead faculty: Gael le Mens, Pompeu Fabra University, Catalonia, Spain. Day 3, June 3 rd : Relational dynamics of value creation and capture in markets. Lead faculty: Isabel Fernandez-Mateo, London Business School, London, UK. Day 4, June 4 th : Morality and respect: Some causes and consequences of interpersonal valuation in groups. Lead faculty: Robb Willer, Stanford University, California, USA. Day 5, June 5 th : The social value of new product acceptance: Perspective from marketing science. Lead faculty: Christophe Van den Bulte, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, USA. Each faculty member will be in residence at the School for several days, allowing ample time for one-to-one sessions, knowledge sharing, and networking opportunities. A typical day will feature a guest faculty member presenting on their research, an integrative session led by a host faculty member that explores links among the guest faculty research, and a workshop in which the host 4
and guest faculty work with students to flesh out their own ideas, both theoretically and empirically. Overall, students will advance in their own research via: 1. Exposure to the cutting edge of research in this area. 2. Open discussion of key research challenges experienced by the faculty in their own research. 3. Direct feedback on how to tackle complex questions of both theory and empirics. Application procedure The School will admit 20-25 student participants. Applications for these slots are welcome from current Ph.D. students in Management, Strategy, Organization Theory, Economic Sociology, and related disciplines from universities worldwide. Students for the Summer School will be selected in accordance with the quality of their doctoral curricula, research interests, and application materials. Applications from students who have completed at least two years of doctoral training will be considered, with preference given to those who have satisfied their course requirements and exams but have not yet embarked on their dissertation research. Applications from post-docs will also be considered. There is no application or participation fee. Student participants will be responsible for covering their own travel expenses to and from Florence, but the Summer School will cover all accommodation and board expenses during the week of sessions provided that students attend the entire week. Applications should include: a. A simple statement declaring that the applicant is interested in being considered for admission to the Summer School together with the applicant s contact information: email address, telephone, and mailing address. All of this should be in the body of an email sent to the address below. b. Curriculum vitae listing educational background, Ph.D. program, nationality, etc. c. A motivation letter (no longer than 1 page) clearly indicating the applicant s current research activities and his/her specific interest in the topic of the 2015 Summer School. 5
d. A brief recommendation letter from a member of their dissertation committee. e. Applicants are also encouraged (but not required) to submit an extended abstract or discussion note that they will present during the Summer School. The Selection Committee will evaluate the relevance of this paper to the 2015 School theme. All application materials should be sent by April 1st 2015 exclusively via email to the following address: simone.ferriani@unibo.it with application Medici Summer School in the subject of the email. For any specific inquiry or clarification please contact also simone.ferriani@unibo.it. The deadline for applications is April 1st, 2014. Admitted candidates will be notified by April 15. A waiting list of other candidates will be established. 6