Browsing by Author "Ferriani, Simone"

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    Atypicality: Toward an Integrative Framework in Organizational and Market Settings
    (Academy of Management, 2023-11-14) Cutolo, Donato; Ferriani, Simone; Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research; European Commission’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
    Research in management and organizational studies has emphasized the importance and the double-edged nature of (a)typicality. Organizational objects that are atypical within a context - in terms of features, characteristics, or behaviors- tend to generate skepticism and encourage rejection by eliciting confusion among relevant audiences, including investors, employees, customers, and partners. However, atypicality is also often cited as a vital source of competitive advantage, as atypical actors and products can attract significant attention, innovate, and even promote structural change in a field. While research aimed at reconciling this inconsistency has accumulated rapidly, this literature has remained fragmentary and scattered across several disciplines, resulting in mixed views, conceptualizations, and perspectives. In this article, we systematically reviewed 129 papers to advance a conceptual model that helps to establish a comprehensive organizational perspective on atypicality. We a) identify three perspectives on atypicality: cognitive, normative, and innovative, b) develop an integrative framework that elaborates on the sources, consequences, and boundary conditions of atypicality, and c) highlight avenues for future studies on this topic. We hope that this review on atypicality will encourage and inform future scholarship in this fascinating domain and elucidate novel opportunities for unleashing the generative potential of this important construct.
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    Tell Me Your Story and I Will Tell Your Sales: A Topic Model Analysis of Narrative Style and Firm Performance on Etsy
    (2020-11-09) Cutolo, Donato; Ferriani, Simone; Cattani, Gino; https://ror.org/02jjdwm75
    Strategy scholars have widely recognized the central role that narratives play in the construction of organizational identities. Moreover, storytelling is an important strategic asset that firms can leverage to inspire employees, excite investors and engage customers’ attention. This chapter illustrates how advancements in computational linguistic may offer opportunities to analyze the stylistic elements that make a story more convincing. Specifically, we use a topic model to examine how narrative conventionality influences the performance of 78,758 craftsmen selling their handmade items in the digital marketplace of Etsy. Our findings provide empirical evidence that effective narratives display enough conventional features to align with audience expectations, yet preserve some uniqueness to pique audience interest. By elucidating our approach, we hope to stimulate further research at the interface of style, language and strategy.