Style Popularity in High Fashion: Resilience, Replication, and Embeddedness of Cultural Elements

• In Event: 571 - Section on Sociology of Culture Paper Session. Culture and Networks: Connections, Meaning and Beyond

Abstract

When adopting cultural elements, for example when choosing which product categories to develop, or corporate values to adopt, organizations make choices that position them in markets vis-à-vis competitors, evaluating audiences, and other stakeholders. These choices are driven by multiple factors, and in turn drive the survival or demise of the said cultural elements. However, while the understanding of how cultural elements get adopted by actors, and evaluated by audiences, is now well-developed, it is not clear what features of cultural elements help them thrive, or hinder their development. Features can be idiosyncratic (inherent to the cultural element under consideration) or related to the environment and relations developed by the focal cultural element to other cultural elements. Using a social network perspective, we show that being embedded in many other cultural elements, in addition to being affiliated to high status actors in previous periods (but not in the current one), and being broadly covered by audiences, fosters replication and, ultimately, over time, resilience of cultural elements.

Authors

• Frederic Clement Godart, Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires

• Charles Galunic, Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires