SWG 05 – Social Evaluations in Organization Studies (SEOS)

Social evaluations are the perceptions and social judgements formulated about social actors, whether they are organizations (Bitektine, 2011; George et al. 2016) or individuals (Lamont, 2012; Fini, et al. 2018). The field of social evaluations has burgeoned in the last two decades, but at the same time, it remains highly fragmented (Pollock et al., 2019), and probably even more than ever. This fragmentation presents a major hurdle in the advancement of research on social evaluations.

Social evaluations can be examined from the perspective of the evaluator(s), bringing in considerations of how the evaluations are subject to such influences as human bias, media framing, impression management by the evaluated entity, and general processes of social construction (e.g., Bitektine, 2011; Bitektine & Haack, 2015; Lange & Washburn, 2012). Social evaluations also can be examined from the perspective of the social actor being evaluated (an organization, category of social actors, group or an individual actor). For these social actors, social evaluations represent stocks and flows of intangible assets or resources, which have important implications for the social actors’ survival and well-being, but only imperfectly controlled by them (e.g., Fombrun, 1996; Rindova & Martins, 2012).

Social evaluations have always been prevalent and influential, but in the recent era have taken on special salience for organizational researchers and practitioners. The rise of social media and the emergence of the gig economy have resulted in a social judgment environment that is immediate, sometimes turbulent, and often highly consequential (Etter, et al., 2019). In a post-truth era in which “fake news” is common (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017), evaluations can be manipulated to serve the interest of a minority. In the meantime, the political landscape suggests that polarization in social judgements increases, with actors being evaluated in diametrically opposed ways by audiences (Zavyalova et al., 2017). This new social reality and the implications for organizations remain to be fully explored in organization studies.

This SWG aims to further our understanding of this field by bringing together scholars who use different concepts, theories, and methods to understand social evaluations. Each of these perspectives can bring new insight and advance our understanding of the fundamental processes that underlie and unite social evaluations. A number of challenges have emerged in the fragmented literature on social evaluations that highlight the benefits of creating a scientific forum at EGOS:

• Construct proliferation: A wide range of related concepts have been investigated. While legitimacy (Bitektine, 2011; Suddaby et al., 2017), reputation (Lange et al. 2011), status (Podolny, 1993; Piazza & Castellucci, 2014) and trust (Kramer & Lewicki, 2010; Gillespie & Dietz, 2009) are already well established constructs, many others are only attracting researchers’ interest, such as celebrity (Rindova et al., 2006), market identity (Wang, et al. 2016), peer evaluation (Shymko & Roulet, 2017), and authenticity (Kovacs et al., 2013).

Despite a few theoretical attempts to clarify the differences and commonalities among concepts (e.g., Devers et al. 2009; Pollock et al., 2019), future research is needed to find common links and substantive differences among them (e.g. McDonnell & King, 2018).

• A range of theoretical approaches: Within the literature on social evaluations, authors have used a multitude of theoretical lenses ranging from institutional theory (Bitektine & Haack, 2015), categorization theory (Vergne, 2012), network theory (Podolny, 1993), and stakeholder theory (Shymko & Roulet, 2017), to name a few. Bringing these perspectives together and identifying areas of convergence and divergence will help further develop theoretical foundations of social evaluations.

• Negative and positive evaluations: Some constructs have been used to depict negative evaluations, such as stigma (Hudson, 2008; Devers et al. 2009; Roulet, 2015), illegitimacy (Zuckerman, 1999), disapproval (Vergne, 2012), infamy (Zavyalova et al., 2017), and distrust (Guo, Lumineau & Lewicki, 2017). The link between positive and negative evaluations has been debated for many social evaluations, but could further be developed by engaging scholars of the two sides. Further research could also consider the implications of the argument that negative and positive social evaluations lie on two distinct continua (Hudson, 2008), including the differences in the formation of the opposing evaluations and the role of emotions (Pollock et al. 2019).
• Multilevel perspectives: Evaluations at the micro- and macro-level are intertwined and require a multi-level approach (Bitektine & Haack, 2015). Mechanisms at the individual level, such as trust and expectations, play a crucial role in the formation and consequences of social evaluations at the macro-level (Bachmann et al. 2015). Further work is needed to understand how micro-level evaluations aggregate to the group, organizational, or field level (Tost, 2011).
• Advancing a variety of methods: A variety of approaches have been used to empirically explore social evaluations ranging from qualitative to quantitative methods. On the qualitative side, scholars have relied on participant observation to collect data in contested industries (Hudson & Okhuysen, 2009; Roulet et al. 2017), but also on historical approaches tracing back long term trends (Galvin et al., 2005). Organizational narratives are another fruitful area to understand how evaluations are managed (Vaara et al. 2016). On the quantitative side, the same empirical measures are frequently used to assess different theoretical constructs (e.g., use of rankings to assess reputation and status). Topic modeling offers a promising opportunity to generate large scale dynamic analysis of social evaluations (Hannigan et al. 2019), while social media provide a new and unique source of individual-level data on social evaluations (Etter et al. 2019). Some studies have combined qualitative and quantitative approaches (e.g., Shymko & Roulet, 2017). Also, the potential of experimental methods in exploration of different types of social evaluations remains grossly underutilized (Bitektine & Haack, 2015).