The Things we do by Definition: Definitional Discourse & Changing Moral Boundaries in Markets

For over a decade researchers have been paying increasing attention to the role of categories in providing cognitive structure to markets by guiding expectations and beliefs about the behaviours and characteristics of organisations (Zuckerman, 1999; Durand and Paolella, 2012).  As institutional theorist have long argued, categories entail both unwritten rules and written rules (such as legal definitions) that effectively limits what firms of a particular category can do.  For example, under UK charity law a “charitable organisation” is not allowed to have overtly political purposes and any engagement in the political arena carried the risk of being stripped of “charitable" status and the various advantages that entailed. 

Simple insights such as these have increasingly drawn researchers’ attention to the fact that different categorizations matter in a material sense; that they are, in Porac et al’s (1995) apt words, “laced with considerable political capital”.  This helps explain why organisational (and product market) categorisation is frequently the object of such strategic, interest-driven manipulation, as firms seek to position themselves in the most advantageous categories while distancing themselves from those that might entail disapproval from their stakeholders.  Note, for example, how many banks tried to distance themselves from the category of “sub-prime” which became highly stigmatized in the wake of the (sub-prime) credit crisis; or how De Beers, the world’s largest mining company, sought to distance themselves from accusations that they were involved in mining “conflict diamonds” or “blood diamonds” as this category was brought increasingly to public awareness through such media as Edward Zwick’s film “Blood Diamond” (starring Leonardo DiCaprio) and Kayne West’s song Diamonds (from Sierra Leone). 

In growing recognition of these facts, scholars, such as Duarand and Paolella (2012), are calling for a move towards a view of categories as involving “tests of congruence and a goal satisfying calculus”, that sees firms as willing and able to manipulate category meanings and boundaries to suit their strategic goals.   Despite advances in this direction there is still a shortage of research that considers the actual tools used to engineer categories for strategic ends, and which recognizes the places of agency and structure, and of power and struggle in this process.  For example, which tools are available to actors in their attempts to engineer categories in their favour? How do you stretch or narrow the boundary of social category in order benefit from it?  Indeed, how do you increase or decrease the moral worth of a market category? 

One particular discursive device (Whittle et al., 2008) that seems especially relevant to these questions, but which has not yet received much attention, is the practice of definition, or more broadly, definitional discourse: talk or text that fixes the meaning of a category.  We certainly have plenty of evidence within academic research that definition is at play in instances of category emergence or change and in judgements of worth.  For example, Zuckerman’s (1999) influential work showed that organisations that are more difficult to define, perhaps because they span multiple categories, have lower chances of success than their more clearly defined rivals.   Luc Boltankski’s study of the emergence of “cadres” in France highlights the central role played by a “social process of definition” (pg 30-1).  At a more theoretical level, Lawrence and Suddaby (2009) have pointed to the potential importance of ‘defining work’ in occasions of institutional maintenance, change or disruption.  While, at a more philosophical level, such eminent thinkers as John Dewey (with Bentley) have observed that “the processes of definition may be seen as the throbbing heart – both as pump and as circulation – of the whole knowledge system” (p.287).

In this paper I wish to introduce and exemplify a framework for analysing the connection between definitional discourse and the rejigging of category boundaries with a particular focus on the legitimacy or moral tone underpinning those category boundaries.  Specifically, I draw on an eclectic mix of contemporary examples of definitional discourse - including “lobbying”, “sugar”, “first generic drugs”, “craft beer”, “conflict diamonds” etc - to demonstrate the range of ways in which category boundaries and moral tone (or what I called, after Bakhtin, ‘evaluative accent’) can be strategically altered by means of definitional discourse.  In order to do so, I draw on two broad intellectual resources: first, the linguistic turn in philosophy, particularly Frege’s conceptualisation of meaning as composed of the sense, reference, tone and force of an utterance; second, Bourdieu’s work on classificatory struggle and symbolic power.  The former provide a basis for understanding how definition works at a semantic level while the latter is essential in gaining an understanding of the relationship between power/authority and definition.  

References

Berger, P.L. and Luckmann, T. (1966) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, 

Boltanski, L. (1987) The Making of a Class: Cadres in French Society.  New York: Cambridge University Press

Dewey, J. and Bentley, (1947) “Definition” Journal of Philosophy 44 (22 May 1947).

Durand, R. and Paolella, L. (2013) "Category stretching: reorienting research on categories in strategy, entrepreneurship, and organization theory." Journal of Management Studies, 50(6):

Porac, J. F., Thomas, H., Wilson, F., Paton, D. and Kanfer, A. (1995). ‘Rivalry and the industry model of Scottish knitwear producers’. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40, 203–27.

Lawrence, T. B., Suddaby, R., and Leca, B. 2009. Introduction: Theorizing and studying institutional work. In T. Lawrence & R. Suddaby & B. Leca (Eds.), Institutional work: Actors and agency in institutional studies of organizations: 1-28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Whittle, A., Mueller, F. and Mangan, A. (2008) "In Search of Subtlety: Discursive Devices and Rhetorical Competence." Management Communication Quarterly 22.1 (2008): 99-122.

Zuckerman, E. W. (1999). ‘The categorical imperative: securities analysts and the illegitimacy discount’. American Journal of Sociology, 104, 1398–438.