Dali Ma, PhD - LeBow College of Business

Abstract

Whereas conventional wisdom suggests that categorical and status distances reinforce each other’s negative effect on interpersonal tie formation, it largely overlooked the possibility that, because of their double-edged nature, categorical and status distances may weaken each other’s negative impact. We predict that status distance can overcome categorical barriers to interpersonal tie formation in contexts where innovation and identity distinction are both important. In support for our proposition, analysis of music collaboration in the commercial music industry (2000-2015) shows that the negative effect of categorical (genre) distance on the likelihood of collaboration between the main and featured artists was weaker if the main artist had greater “status surplus” over the featured artist. In addition, the positive interaction of categorical and status distances was stronger if the main artist’s status was less volatile, which underlines the importance of the robustness of status-based identity.
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