Essays on Dynamics of Collaboration and Recognition in Hollywood Movie Industry

No abstract available

This dissertation explores how social actors in creative industry, especially in Hollywood movie industry, take advantage of their network, status, and recognition. In this industry, to achieve successful career, it is crucial to manage them. By focusing on different behaviors i.e. whistle-blowing, formation of a status heterophilous tie, and adoption of a new technology, I investigate how they work with others. The first chapter examines how individuals in Hollywood engage in whistle-blowing. Studies on whistle-blowing investigate how individual characteristics and contextual factors are related to probability of whistle-blowing. However, they do not explain how individuals leverage their network to engage in it. To explore this, we consider the incidents of whistle-blowing behaviors of sexual harassments in October 2017 in Hollywood. Whistle-blowing is very costly especially in Hollywood where social connections are crucial for achieving career success. Nevertheless, they decided to blow a whistle on sexual harassment. We explore who can be whistle-blowers and how network structure can amplify the probability and timing of whistle-blowing. We found that individual characteristics i.e., middle-age, social status, visibility, and media coverage can increase the probability of whistle-blowing. Also, high network status individuals and those are closer to previous whistle-blowers will be likely whistle-blowers. Moreover, by considering timing of whistle-blowing, individuals who are in open network will be early whistle-blowers while high-status individuals will be late whistle-blowers. The second chapter investigates how high-status social actors select status of partners. Per literature on status homophily, social actors work with those with a similar status as theirs. High status actors refrain from working with a low-status actor to avoid perceptions of low quality of their product especially under high uncertainty about their products. However, status heterophily research reports collaborations among actors who differ in their social status. High-status actors receive extraordinary amount of recognition. We examine if high-status actors form status heterophilous ties when they need to share recognition with their partners. To avoid competing with high-status partners for recognition, we expect that high-status actors prefer to work with low-status actors. We also consider three situations that can increase the formation of status heterophilous ties: awareness to a product, more information about a product from critics and age of high-status actors. We use difference-in-differences analysis to test our hypotheses by collecting data on Oscar winner directors and nominees as counterfactuals. The third chapter explores how social actors adopt and select new technology when they receive less recognition to their product(s) compared to their past. Performance-feedback theory explains that when social actors perform less than their aspirations, they are more likely to change their behavior to improve their performance. Consistent with this theory, I argue that social actors who receive less recognition decide to adopt new technology by expecting to improve their recognition. Also, social actors who significantly receive less recognition adopt new technology in riskier fields. I tested these hypotheses by focusing on digital camera adoption in Hollywood film industry between 2000 and 2010. To sum up, this dissertation tries to answer how social actors in Hollywood movie industry work with others by considering their network, status, and recognition. I believe this dissertation can convey insightful findings to develop past literatures on social network, status, and recognition.