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Deconstructing the Outsider Puzzle: the Legitimation Journey of Novelty This article was downloaded by: [193.205.30.1] On: 28 December 2017, At: 06:55 Publisher: Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) INFORMS is located in Maryland, USA Organization Science Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://pubsonline.informs.org Deconstructing the Outsider Puzzle: The Legitimation Journey of Novelty Gino Cattani, Simone Ferriani, Andrea Lanza To cite this article: Gino Cattani, Simone Ferriani, Andrea Lanza (2017) Deconstructing the Outsider Puzzle: The Legitimation Journey of Novelty. Organization Science 28(6):965-992. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1161 Full terms and conditions of use: http://pubsonline.informs.org/page/terms-and-conditions This article may be used only for the purposes of research, teaching, and/or private study. Commercial use or systematic downloading (by robots or other automatic processes) is prohibited without explicit Publisher approval, unless otherwise noted. For more information, contact [email protected]. The Publisher does not warrant or guarantee the article’s accuracy, completeness, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. Descriptions of, or references to, products or publications, or inclusion of an advertisement in this article, neither constitutes nor implies a guarantee, endorsement, or support of claims made of that product, publication, or service. Copyright © 2017, INFORMS Please scroll down for article—it is on subsequent pages INFORMS is the largest professional society in the world for professionals in the fields of operations research, management science, and analytics. For more information on INFORMS, its publications, membership, or meetings visit http://www.informs.org ORGANIZATION SCIENCE Vol. 28, No. 6, November–December 2017, pp. 965–992 http://pubsonline.informs.org/journal/orsc/ ISSN 1047-7039 (print), ISSN 1526-5455 (online) Deconstructing the Outsider Puzzle: The Legitimation Journey of Novelty Gino Cattani,a Simone Ferriani,b, c Andrea Lanzad, e a Department of Management and Organizations, Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, New York 10012; b Department of “Scienze Aziendali,” University of Bologna, 40126 Bologna, Italy; c Cass Business School, City University London, London EC1Y 8BZ, United Kingdom; d Department of Business Administration and Law, University of Calabria, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy; e SDA Bocconi School of Management, 20136 Milan, Italy Contact: [email protected], http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8310-7182 (GC); [email protected] (SF); [email protected], http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4741-7500 (AL) Received: August 6, 2014 Abstract. The proposition that outsiders often are crucial carriers of novelty into an estab- Revised: April 13, 2016; February 19, 2017; lished institutional field has received wide empirical support. But an equally compelling June 25, 2017 proposition points to the following puzzle: the very same conditions that enhance out- Accepted: June 30, 2017 siders’ ability to make novel contributions also hinder their ability to carry them out. We https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1161 seek to address this puzzle by examining the contextual circumstances that affect the legiti- mation of novelty originating from a noncertified outsider that challenged the status quo in Copyright: © 2017 INFORMS an established institutional field. Our research case material is John Harrison’s introduction of a new mechanical method for measuring longitude at sea—the marine chronometer— which challenged the dominant astronomical approach. We find that whether an outsider’s new offer gains or is denied legitimacy is influenced by (1) the outsider’s agency to further a new offer, (2) the existence of multiple audiences with different dispositions toward this offer, and (3) the occurrence of an exogenous jolt that helps create a more receptive social space. We organize these insights into a multilevel conceptual framework that builds on previous work but attributes a more decisive role to the interplay between endogenous and exogenous variables in shaping a field’s shifting receptiveness to novelty. The framework exposes the interdependencies between the micro-, meso-, and macro-level processes that jointly affect an outsider’s efforts to introduce novelty into an existing field. Funding: The authors gratefully acknowledge financial assistance from the University of Bologna (Alma Idea Funding Scheme) and the MIUR-PRIN (“Creativity, Audiences and Social Evaluation” [Grant 2015LJXRXJ] and “Collaboration and Combination” [Grant 20124AE52R]). Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1161. Keywords: outsiders • insiders • jolts • audiences • agency • legitimacy • novelty • field • historical study • longitude • John Harrison • chronometer Introduction likely to preempt a line of inquiry merely because it An established sociological tradition treats outsiders— runs counter to received wisdom. Yet they have no (or i.e., actors who are not active players in the field and so only limited) social ties to field insiders, and no power are unconstrained by its conventions—as crucial car- or status within the particular field they seek to chal- riers of novelty (Coser 1965, Merton 1973). What has lenge: most notably, they lack experts’ authority and received less attention, though, is the problematic pro- trust. How do they then stake out ground in the insid- cess by which outsiders and, in particular, noncertified ers’ own terrain? outsiders—whose expertise lacks formal certification At least three research traditions offer cues to ad- (e.g., a university degree)—succeed in entering into an dress this puzzle. One familiar class of explanations institutional field and building legitimacy around their focuses on individual attempts at introducing novelty. novel offers. This process almost by definition is puz- This work primarily advances actor-centric accounts of zling precisely because the same social position that extraordinarily skilled individuals whose acumen and enhances outsiders’ ability to depart from prevailing social skills enable them to “innovate upon received Downloaded from informs.org by [193.205.30.1] on 28 December 2017, at 06:55 . For personal use only, all rights reserved. social norms also signals their lack of crucial markers cultural categories and conditions of action in accor- of credibility to attest to the legitimacy of their offers dance with their personal and collective ideals, inter- (Cattani and Ferriani 2008). Outsiders possess what ests, and commitments” (Emirbayer and Goodwin Merton (1973, pp. 518–519) called focused naïveté—i.e., 1994, p. 1442). Another recent line of inquiry points to “a useful ignorance of prevailing assumptions and the- fields’ particular structural features that can make them ories that allows them to attack problems generally more or less permeable to the reception of novelty and regarded as impossible or uninteresting by specialists” their subsequent reconfigurations (Padgett and Powell (Gieryn and Hirsh 1983, p. 91)—and so may be less 2012). Studies in this tradition have drawn attention to 965 Cattani, Ferriani, and Lanza: The Legitimation Journey of Novelty 966 Organization Science, 2017, vol. 28, no. 6, pp. 965–992, © 2017 INFORMS the structural fragmentation of the field (Sgourev 2013) astronomical approach for calculating longitude at or the extent to which the social audiences in charge sea—set new standards for timekeeping precision, had of channeling critical material and symbolic resources a major impact on navigation at sea, and helped cement are receptive to new offers (Cattani et al. 2014). Other Britain’s position as a world sea power. In 1714, a established explanations rely on the role of exogenous few years after the worst maritime disaster in UK his- shocks in subverting the social order of an existing field tory, when an inaccurate longitude calculation had and creating pathways for the entry of new players caused the wreckage of a British squadron off the Isles (Sine and David 2003). Specifically, some scholars have of Scilly with the loss of 2,000 lives, British Parlia- noted that in response to transient large-scale pertur- ment announced three extraordinarily large rewards to bations, field actors may become more permeable to stimulate scientific and technological advances in this new offers and engage in search processes to identify extremely critical matter. It appointed a committee— alternatives. the Board of Longitude, whose constituents included Working at different levels of analyses—micro, meso, members of the astronomy community (mostly aca- and macro—each of these approaches has produced demics from Oxford and Cambridge Universities), important insights into how novelty emerging at the politicians (members of Parliament), and the Navy’s margin of a given field may take root and propa- highest-ranking officers—which was charged with gate (Garud et al. 2007). Agency-centric explanations evaluating the various solutions proposed to the lon- emphasise the superior motivations and skills of some gitude problem. Amid competition from some of the peripheral actors who advance offers that deviate from most brilliant minds of the time, the solution came the field’s normative expectations, but do not explain from an outsider, John Harrison—a self-taught crafts- the circumstances that precipitate the same actors to man of humble origins from an obscure village in the do so. By overstating the ability of these individuals
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