5 minute read
NOT SO DIFFERENT AFTER ALL
portfolios are searching for an agency job. One mentions in interviews that she studied opera in college, enjoys bluegrass music, and does pin weaving in her spare time. The other candidate has few interests outside of advertising to discuss. of diversity the practice fosters. “Evaluators unconsciously choose people who are similar to them socioeconomically, because cultural omnivores tend to be from privileged class backgrounds.” So, she says, more of the same people get hired. “Employers go out looking to hire
candidate well, as 75 percent of ad agency creative managers consider it a marker for creativity, outranking their interest in
Put another way, Koppman says that for a creative candidate with the most omnivorous might like heavy metal, opera, rap, new employment in an agency are more than six times greater than they are for a candidate with the least omnivorous taste possible
someone who is new and different in exactly the same way they are.” She adds, “The produces a rather homogeneous workforce.”
Even more revealing is that on the only 18 percent of employees come from working class backgrounds, and only six percent are non-white. Men outrank women, who comprise only about one-third of creative departments. This lack of diversity is striking, Koppman says. “So much of the research on organizational creativity
Koppman cautions these cultural cues can be misleading for creative managers. “Reliance on this signal actually goes against much of what we know about creative careers: that success requires extensive and deliberate practice, that production depends on collectives of individuals with specialized skills, and that creative producers who specialize are more employable.” And, while a long list of cultural activities can signal intellectual curiosity, she adds that it can also suggest a scattered attention span or indecision. insights come from integrating diverse viewpoints. Here, we reproducing the status quo.”
Koppman acknowledges that there are no hard and fast their creative potential, and she refers to contrasting hiring particular subjects, rather than their many outside interests.
Still, ad agencies defend the practice of seeking out people with similar omnivorous cultural interests, citing robust
intellectual curiosity as a necessary skill. Said one of the hiring
Because you can tell a lot about someone by the activities intellectual curiosity.” The respondent adds, “If you were to look want to know about everything.”
Still, Koppman offers a word of caution to any organization seeking out-of-the box thinkers. “Employers need to be aware that even when they think they are selecting employees people who are like us prevails.”
Sharon Koppman is an assistant professor of Organization & Management at the UC Irvine Paul Merage School of Business. Her research examines the work of culture and the culture of work. She studies the work of culture by investigating career and employment of work by analyzing how culture is used as a resource in the The Sociological Quarterly; Poetics; Science, Technology & Human Values; Information Technology & People; Research in the Sociology of Work; and Lecture Notes in Computer Science.
Sanjeev Dewan, Professor of Information Systems
CONSUMERS AND SOCIAL MEDIA: WHAT DRIVES BUYING DECISIONS?
By Connie Clark
What’s behind purchasing decisions for the music buying public? Do they buy songs based on the overall popularity of a song or artist? Or, do they buy based on what their social network friends are listening to? These are among the questions posed in a recent study published in Information Systems Research, and the answers have implications for all types of online communities, and for marketers of everything from books and online video games to movies and travel.
“Popularity or Proximity: Characterizing the Nature of Social
distributors, says Sanjeev Dewan, professor of Information Systems at the UC Irvine Paul Merage School Business. “In when, where and how to consume it.”
Dewan and his team searched for answers by studying an MP3 blog aggregator site known as The Hype Machine. They pinpointed a particular feature that allows users to
narrow-appeal music than mainstream music. And the two types
popularity cues drive consumption decisions, until a friend has especially as an exploding variety of music content is available online for downloading or streaming.”
The research underscores the need for music websites and affect buyer decisions, so they can create the right types of marketing programs in response.
Dewan suggests that online communities be more proactive in leveraging both popular and proximity resources to increase engagement. For example, he advises that website creators prominently display regular “most popular” lists. This is especially important for niche or narrow-appeal music he says. and incentivized to increase their social ties and be rewarded for their social engagement with friends.”
According to the report authors, the online music community thing, they say, music is an “experience good,” and consumers depend on the opinions and actions of others as signals that determine whether they will like a particular song. They also point out that music is an “information good,” and that discovery and consumption are online activities that happen at the same time, often on a single website. In addition, the music industry has been dramatically shaped by technology in recent years, be expected for other information and experience goods—like movies, software and other digital media.
Indeed, the study, authored by Dewan, Yi-Jen Ho, Merage School PhD candidate, and Jui Ramaprasad, Merage School that online music communities, like Spotify and Last.FM, should even to broader social networks. Which means that sites from Expedia.com to Facebook and Twitter need to pay close attention too.
Sanjeev Dewan is a professor of Information Systems at the UC Irvine Paul Merage School of Business. Prior to joining UCI in Fall 2001, he served on the faculties of the business schools at the University of Washington, Seattle, and George Mason University. He received his PhD in Business Administration from the Simon School at the University of Rochester, in the area of Information Systems. Previously, he received a B.Tech. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India.
risk and return of IT investments, business value of Web 2.0 technologies, and electronic commerce. He is currently serving as a senior editor at Information Systems Research and associate editor at Management Science.
