David Strang
Biographic Data
| ID | 98359 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David Strang |
| GIVEN NAMES | David |
| FAMILY NAME | Strang |
| SIGNATURE | STRANG D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cornell University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1639 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
The Oxford Handbook of Management Ideas
Management ideas, and their associated applications, have become a prevalent feature of our working lives. While their focus is familiar, such as efficiency, motivation, and improvement, they range from specific notions such as activity-based costing, to broad movements like corporate social responsibility. This Handbook brings together some of the latest research from leading international scholars on how management ideas are produced, promoted,…
Oxford Handbook of Management Ideas
From ‘just the facts’ to ‘more theory and methods, please’: The evolution of the research article in Administrative Science Quarterly , 1956–2008
This paper analyzes the surface structure of research articles published in Administrative Science Quarterly between 1956 and 2008. The period is marked by a shift from essays that interweave theory, methods and results to experimental reports that separate them. There is dramatic growth in the size of theory, methods and discussion sections, accompanied by a shrinking results section. Bibliographic references and hypotheses expand in number and …
Diffusion: From Facebook to (Management) Fashion
Diffusion refers to the spread of ideas and behaviors across a population. The field does not cohere around a central question whose solution would clarify fundamental issues. Instead, what we see is the constant and fruitful exploration of new social worlds, and the adaptation of research methods and theoretical concepts to capture central realities of these worlds. We begin by describing two lines of diffusion research whose core assumptions an…
Peer Review and Scholarly Originality: Let 1,000 Flowers Bloom, but Don’t Step on Any
We examine the criticisms and subsequent changes that arise in the course of peer review. Fifty-two scholars who had recently published in Administrative Science Quarterly were surveyed regarding their peer review experience and how their article changed from initial journal submission to eventual publication. Papers that challenged theoretical perspectives faced distinctively high levels of criticism and change, particularly with attention to me…
Innovation Diffusion
Much organizational research examines the process by which new ideas and practices spread.
Sensitive Chaos
This paper describes the life (and death) of the interface in the installation Tiny Moments by David Strang. Tiny Moments is a sound and light interactive installation that explores natural phenomena surrounding heat, ice and presence/ proximity. This installation explores the process of natural materials in computer interaction in a way beyond simple hardware devices available to users. What is created is a space filled with ever changing rhythm…
Revising as Reframing: Original Submissions versus Published Papers in Administrative Science Quarterly, 2005 to 2009
Peer review guides the intensive reworking of research reports, a key mechanism in the construction of social scientific knowledge and one that gives substantial creative agency to journal editors and reviewers. We conceptualize this process in terms of two types of challenges: evidentiary challenges that question a study's methodology and interpretive challenges that question a study's theoretical framing. A survey of authors recently published …
Asymmetries in Experiential and Vicarious Feedback: Lessons from the Hiring and Firing of Baseball Managers
We examine experiential and vicarious feedback in the hiring and firing of baseball managers. Realized outcomes play a large role in both decisions; the probability that a manager will be fired is a function of the team's win-loss record, and a manager is quicker to be rehired if his teams had won more in the past. There are substantial asymmetries, however, in the fine structure of the two feedback functions. The rate at which managers are fired…
Atria: A Sound Installation Exploring the Interface between Art, Science and Technology by Remapping Cardiovascular Development
ATRIA was an immersive sound installation that was the result of a dynamic, reflective dialogue between artist Deborah Robinson and biologist Simon Rundle during Robinson’s residency within the Marine Biology and Ecology Research Centre, Plymouth University. The work drew on theoretical ideas in developmental biology and the sociology of science and practical, laboratory investigations in developmental physiology. Data from videos of snail embryo…
Tea and Sympathy: The Tea Party Movement and Republican Precommitment to Radical Conservatism in the 2011 Debt-Limit Crisis
We examine an increasingly common political tactic: the self-binding pledge whereby lawmakers assure a constituency, social movement, or interest group that they will take a particular position on an upcoming vote or policy issue. An empirical analysis of novel data on the 2011 debt-limit crisis shows that pre-commitment by legislators to the Tea Party's "Cut, Cap, and Balance Pledge" was the joint product of grassroots pressure and ideological s…
Coevolution in Management Fashion: An Agent-Based Model of Consultant-Driven Innovation
The rise of management consultancy has been accompanied by increasingly marked faddish cycles in management techniques, but the mechanisms that underlie this relationship are not well understood. The authors develop a simple agent-based framework that models innovation adoption and abandonment on both the supply and demand sides. In opposition to conceptions of consultants as rhetorical wizards who engineer waves of management fashion, firms and …
Situating Glocalization: A Relatively Autobiographical Intervention
How do organizational practices fare on the road? With the growth of global firms and professional communities that span national boundaries, it is common for corporate programs—like the total quality management (TQM) initiative studied here—to be exported overseas. These practices often hail from the United States, home not only to many of the world's largest multinationals but also to the greatest concentration of the carriers of management kno…
Civil Liberty in America: The Diffusion of Municipal Bill of Rights Resolutions after the Passage of the USA Patriot Act
In the years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, some 400 local governments passed “Bill of Rights” resolutions in opposition to the USA PATRIOT Act. Event history analyses show that cities with progressive profiles were markedly quicker to pass such resolutions. These effects are strongest in the early phase of the Bill of Rights campaign, a period for which there is also robust evidence of contagious influence among nearby cities. The authors arg…
Product Review: Flavor of the Month: Why Smart People Fall for Fads
Flavor of the Month: Why Smart People Fall for Fads
The International Diffusion of Public-Sector Downsizing: Network Emulation and Theory-Driven Learning
We examine change in the size of the public sector between 1980 and 1997 across twenty-six Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member nations, with particular attention to diffusion dynamics. General method of moments (GMM) analyses demonstrate imitation of shifts in government employment within the United States and mutual influence among nations that are geographically proximate and that trade extensively. Disaggregated…
Networking for Other People
Journal Article Networking for Other People Get access Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action. Edited by Diani Mario McAdam Doug. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 368 pp., $70.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-19-925177-0), $24.95 paper (ISBN: 0-19-925178-9). David Strang David Strang Department of Sociology, Cornell University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies …
Organizations Evolving
Estimation of Diffusion Processes from Incomplete Data: A Simulation Study
Event-history analysis of the diffusion of practices in a social system can show how actors are influenced by each other as well as by their own characteristics. The presumption that complete data on the entire population are essential to draw valid inferences about diffusion processes has been a major limitation in empirical analyses and has precluded diffusion studies in large populations. The authors examine the impacts of several forms of inc…
In Search of Excellence: Fads, Success Stories, and Adaptive Emulation
The faddishness of the business community is often noted and lamented but not well understood by standard models of innovation and diffusion. We combine arguments about organizational cognition and institutional mimicry to develop a model of adaptive emulation, where firms respond to perceived failure by imitating their most successful peers. Computational experiments show that this process generates empirically plausible cascades of adoption, ev…
Diffusion in Organizations and Social Movements: From Hybrid Corn to Poison Pills
There has been rapid growth in the study of diffusion across organizations and social movements in recent years, fueled by interest in institutional arguments and in network and dynamic analysis. This research develops a sociologically grounded account of change emphasizing the channels along which practices flow. Our review focuses on characteristic lines of argument, emphasizing the structural and cultural logic of diffusion processes. We argue…
Constructing the Nation-State: International Organization and Prescriptive Action. Connie L. McNeely
Specification and Estimation of Heterogeneous Diffusion Models
Heterogeneous diffusion models let one combine the analysis of intrinsic propensities with that of intrapopulation contagion, and to disaggregate contagion effects into individual susceptibilities, the infectiousness of prior adopters, and the social proximity of prior-potential adopter pairs. This paper reports the results of a series of Monte Carlo simulation studies that investigate estimation issues for this class of models. Graphical analysi…
Ideas, Interests, and American Trade Policy
Institutional conditions for diffusion
Diffusion in Organizations and Social Movements: From Hybrid Corn to Poison Pills
There has been rapid growth in the study of diffusion across organizations and social movements in recent years, fueled by interest in institutional arguments and in network and dynamic analysis. This research develops a sociologically grounded account of change emphasizing the channels along which practices flow. Our review focuses on characteristic lines of argument, emphasizing the structural and cultural logic of diffusion processes. We argue…
The International Diffusion of Public-Sector Downsizing: Network Emulation and Theory-Driven Learning
We examine change in the size of the public sector between 1980 and 1997 across twenty-six Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member nations, with particular attention to diffusion dynamics. General method of moments (GMM) analyses demonstrate imitation of shifts in government employment within the United States and mutual influence among nations that are geographically proximate and that trade extensively. Disaggregated…
From Dependency to Sovereignty: An Event History Analysis of Decolonization 1870-1987
This paper examines the precipitants of decolonization among Western dependencies from 1870 to 1987 within an event history framework. It focuses on the implications of world economy and world polity perspectives. Results indicate the usefulness of both perspectives, while also pointing to an array of other factors. On the world economy side, the rate of decolonization rose during the period of American hegemony. On the world polity side, decolon…
Spatial and Temporal Heterogeneity in Diffusion
Standard models of diffusion assume spatial and temporal homogeneity. This article develops a class of diffusion models that incorporate spatial and temporal heterogeneity by turning to the individual level within an event-history framework. These models permit the analyst to represent social structural relations thought to channel diffusion, and to model decay in the influence of events over time. Heterogeneous diffusion models are applied to a …
The International Labor Organization and the welfare state: Institutional Effects on National Welfare Spending, 1960–80
National welfare programs are importantly affected by models of welfare activity institutionalized at the global level. This article examines the impact of the welfare regime advocated by and within the International Labor Organization (ILO). Countries that have recently ratified ILO conventions related to welfare show increased growth in spending, net of national characteristics. Subanalyses show that the effects of ILO ratification are strong i…
Adding Social Structure to Diffusion Models: An Event History Framework
Most diffusion models make the implausible assumption that diffusion is unstructured by relationships within the population of interest. This article proposes methods for incorporating a priori notions about social structure into analysis. Diffusion is modeled within an event history framework where the individual's rate of adoption is a function of prior adoptions by related actors. Two diffusion models are suggested: an epidemic model where ado…
In Search of Excellence: Fads, Success Stories, and Adaptive Emulation
The faddishness of the business community is often noted and lamented but not well understood by standard models of innovation and diffusion. We combine arguments about organizational cognition and institutional mimicry to develop a model of adaptive emulation, where firms respond to perceived failure by imitating their most successful peers. Computational experiments show that this process generates empirically plausible cascades of adoption, ev…
Global Patterns of Decolonization, 1500-1987
This paper examines global patterns in the breakdown of Western overseas empires between 1500 and 1987. It counterposes the implications of world-economy, Marxist, and institutional arguments for the timing of decolonization. Nonparametric analyses indicate great variation in the rate of decolonization over historical time, and virtually no variation over dependency age. This suggests that the processes producing decolonization are primarily exte…
Anomaly and commonplace in European political expansion: Realist and Institutional Accounts
The global expansion of the European state system suggests strong connections between political “life chances” and international status. Polities recognized as sovereign within the Western international community are much less likely than unrecognized polities to be colonized and are much less likely than dependencies to merge or dissolve. These variations in stability are difficult to understand through balance-of-power politics. They may be mor…
Categorical Imperatives: The Structure of Job Titles in California State Agencies
The division of labor in formal organizations has important consequences for the distribution of opportunities and rewards. This paper examines variations in job title structures across work roles. Analyzing 3,173 job titles in the California civil service system in 1985, we investigate how and why lines of work vary in the proliferation of job categories that differentiate ranks, functions, or particular organizational locations. The statistical…
Civil Liberty in America: The Diffusion of Municipal Bill of Rights Resolutions after the Passage of the USA Patriot Act
In the years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, some 400 local governments passed “Bill of Rights” resolutions in opposition to the USA PATRIOT Act. Event history analyses show that cities with progressive profiles were markedly quicker to pass such resolutions. These effects are strongest in the early phase of the Bill of Rights campaign, a period for which there is also robust evidence of contagious influence among nearby cities. The authors arg…
Construction of the First Mass Education Systems in Nineteenth-Century Europe
This article analyzes two aspects of the construction of the first mass education systems in Europe and the United States in the nineteenth century: the timing of national laws mandating compulsory education and organizational expansion in enrollments. The interaction among the state, the church, and societal groups was a critical determinant of the form these systems took. Where the state was formally allied to a national church, it was able to …
Specification and Estimation of Heterogeneous Diffusion Models
Heterogeneous diffusion models let one combine the analysis of intrinsic propensities with that of intrapopulation contagion, and to disaggregate contagion effects into individual susceptibilities, the infectiousness of prior adopters, and the social proximity of prior-potential adopter pairs. This paper reports the results of a series of Monte Carlo simulation studies that investigate estimation issues for this class of models. Graphical analysi…
Organizations Evolving
Revising as Reframing: Original Submissions versus Published Papers in Administrative Science Quarterly, 2005 to 2009
Peer review guides the intensive reworking of research reports, a key mechanism in the construction of social scientific knowledge and one that gives substantial creative agency to journal editors and reviewers. We conceptualize this process in terms of two types of challenges: evidentiary challenges that question a study's methodology and interpretive challenges that question a study's theoretical framing. A survey of authors recently published …
Coevolution in Management Fashion: An Agent-Based Model of Consultant-Driven Innovation
The rise of management consultancy has been accompanied by increasingly marked faddish cycles in management techniques, but the mechanisms that underlie this relationship are not well understood. The authors develop a simple agent-based framework that models innovation adoption and abandonment on both the supply and demand sides. In opposition to conceptions of consultants as rhetorical wizards who engineer waves of management fashion, firms and …
The Inner Incompatibility of Empire and Nation: Popular Sovereignty and Decolonization
This paper argues that metropolitan political theories and institutions grounded in popular sovereignty help to produce decolonization. Radical distinctions between metropolis and dependency only arise when communities, and not rulers, are the theoretical source of political authority. Metropoles organized around popular sovereignty tend to legitimate peripheral claims to autonomy, and to construct political institutions (most importantly colonia…
Peer Review and Scholarly Originality: Let 1,000 Flowers Bloom, but Don’t Step on Any
We examine the criticisms and subsequent changes that arise in the course of peer review. Fifty-two scholars who had recently published in Administrative Science Quarterly were surveyed regarding their peer review experience and how their article changed from initial journal submission to eventual publication. Papers that challenged theoretical perspectives faced distinctively high levels of criticism and change, particularly with attention to me…
Tea and Sympathy: The Tea Party Movement and Republican Precommitment to Radical Conservatism in the 2011 Debt-Limit Crisis
We examine an increasingly common political tactic: the self-binding pledge whereby lawmakers assure a constituency, social movement, or interest group that they will take a particular position on an upcoming vote or policy issue. An empirical analysis of novel data on the 2011 debt-limit crisis shows that pre-commitment by legislators to the Tea Party's "Cut, Cap, and Balance Pledge" was the joint product of grassroots pressure and ideological s…
Estimation of Diffusion Processes from Incomplete Data: A Simulation Study
Event-history analysis of the diffusion of practices in a social system can show how actors are influenced by each other as well as by their own characteristics. The presumption that complete data on the entire population are essential to draw valid inferences about diffusion processes has been a major limitation in empirical analyses and has precluded diffusion studies in large populations. The authors examine the impacts of several forms of inc…
Asymmetries in Experiential and Vicarious Feedback: Lessons from the Hiring and Firing of Baseball Managers
We examine experiential and vicarious feedback in the hiring and firing of baseball managers. Realized outcomes play a large role in both decisions; the probability that a manager will be fired is a function of the team's win-loss record, and a manager is quicker to be rehired if his teams had won more in the past. There are substantial asymmetries, however, in the fine structure of the two feedback functions. The rate at which managers are fired…
From ‘just the facts’ to ‘more theory and methods, please’: The evolution of the research article in Administrative Science Quarterly , 1956–2008
This paper analyzes the surface structure of research articles published in Administrative Science Quarterly between 1956 and 2008. The period is marked by a shift from essays that interweave theory, methods and results to experimental reports that separate them. There is dramatic growth in the size of theory, methods and discussion sections, accompanied by a shrinking results section. Bibliographic references and hypotheses expand in number and …
Sensitive Chaos
This paper describes the life (and death) of the interface in the installation Tiny Moments by David Strang. Tiny Moments is a sound and light interactive installation that explores natural phenomena surrounding heat, ice and presence/ proximity. This installation explores the process of natural materials in computer interaction in a way beyond simple hardware devices available to users. What is created is a space filled with ever changing rhythm…
Construction of the First Mass Education Systems in Nineteenth-Century Europe
This article analyzes two aspects of the construction of the first mass education systems in Europe and the United States in the nineteenth century: the timing of national laws mandating compulsory education and organizational expansion in enrollments. The interaction among the state, the church, and societal groups was a critical determinant of the form these systems took. Where the state was formally allied to a national church, it was able to …
Categorical Imperatives: The Structure of Job Titles in California State Agencies
The division of labor in formal organizations has important consequences for the distribution of opportunities and rewards. This paper examines variations in job title structures across work roles. Analyzing 3,173 job titles in the California civil service system in 1985, we investigate how and why lines of work vary in the proliferation of job categories that differentiate ranks, functions, or particular organizational locations. The statistical…
From Dependency to Sovereignty: An Event History Analysis of Decolonization 1870-1987
This paper examines the precipitants of decolonization among Western dependencies from 1870 to 1987 within an event history framework. It focuses on the implications of world economy and world polity perspectives. Results indicate the usefulness of both perspectives, while also pointing to an array of other factors. On the world economy side, the rate of decolonization rose during the period of American hegemony. On the world polity side, decolon…
Anomaly and commonplace in European political expansion: Realist and Institutional Accounts
The global expansion of the European state system suggests strong connections between political “life chances” and international status. Polities recognized as sovereign within the Western international community are much less likely than unrecognized polities to be colonized and are much less likely than dependencies to merge or dissolve. These variations in stability are difficult to understand through balance-of-power politics. They may be mor…
Global Patterns of Decolonization, 1500-1987
This paper examines global patterns in the breakdown of Western overseas empires between 1500 and 1987. It counterposes the implications of world-economy, Marxist, and institutional arguments for the timing of decolonization. Nonparametric analyses indicate great variation in the rate of decolonization over historical time, and virtually no variation over dependency age. This suggests that the processes producing decolonization are primarily exte…
Adding Social Structure to Diffusion Models: An Event History Framework
Most diffusion models make the implausible assumption that diffusion is unstructured by relationships within the population of interest. This article proposes methods for incorporating a priori notions about social structure into analysis. Diffusion is modeled within an event history framework where the individual's rate of adoption is a function of prior adoptions by related actors. Two diffusion models are suggested: an epidemic model where ado…
Of Time and Power: Leadership Duration in the Modern World
The Inner Incompatibility of Empire and Nation: Popular Sovereignty and Decolonization
This paper argues that metropolitan political theories and institutions grounded in popular sovereignty help to produce decolonization. Radical distinctions between metropolis and dependency only arise when communities, and not rulers, are the theoretical source of political authority. Metropoles organized around popular sovereignty tend to legitimate peripheral claims to autonomy, and to construct political institutions (most importantly colonia…
The International Labor Organization and the welfare state: Institutional Effects on National Welfare Spending, 1960–80
National welfare programs are importantly affected by models of welfare activity institutionalized at the global level. This article examines the impact of the welfare regime advocated by and within the International Labor Organization (ILO). Countries that have recently ratified ILO conventions related to welfare show increased growth in spending, net of national characteristics. Subanalyses show that the effects of ILO ratification are strong i…
Spatial and Temporal Heterogeneity in Diffusion
Standard models of diffusion assume spatial and temporal homogeneity. This article develops a class of diffusion models that incorporate spatial and temporal heterogeneity by turning to the individual level within an event-history framework. These models permit the analyst to represent social structural relations thought to channel diffusion, and to model decay in the influence of events over time. Heterogeneous diffusion models are applied to a …
Institutional conditions for diffusion
Ideas, Interests, and American Trade Policy
Specification and Estimation of Heterogeneous Diffusion Models
Heterogeneous diffusion models let one combine the analysis of intrinsic propensities with that of intrapopulation contagion, and to disaggregate contagion effects into individual susceptibilities, the infectiousness of prior adopters, and the social proximity of prior-potential adopter pairs. This paper reports the results of a series of Monte Carlo simulation studies that investigate estimation issues for this class of models. Graphical analysi…
Constructing the Nation-State: International Organization and Prescriptive Action. Connie L. McNeely
Diffusion in Organizations and Social Movements: From Hybrid Corn to Poison Pills
There has been rapid growth in the study of diffusion across organizations and social movements in recent years, fueled by interest in institutional arguments and in network and dynamic analysis. This research develops a sociologically grounded account of change emphasizing the channels along which practices flow. Our review focuses on characteristic lines of argument, emphasizing the structural and cultural logic of diffusion processes. We argue…
Estimation of Diffusion Processes from Incomplete Data: A Simulation Study
Event-history analysis of the diffusion of practices in a social system can show how actors are influenced by each other as well as by their own characteristics. The presumption that complete data on the entire population are essential to draw valid inferences about diffusion processes has been a major limitation in empirical analyses and has precluded diffusion studies in large populations. The authors examine the impacts of several forms of inc…
In Search of Excellence: Fads, Success Stories, and Adaptive Emulation
The faddishness of the business community is often noted and lamented but not well understood by standard models of innovation and diffusion. We combine arguments about organizational cognition and institutional mimicry to develop a model of adaptive emulation, where firms respond to perceived failure by imitating their most successful peers. Computational experiments show that this process generates empirically plausible cascades of adoption, ev…
Organizations Evolving
Networking for Other People
Journal Article Networking for Other People Get access Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action. Edited by Diani Mario McAdam Doug. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 368 pp., $70.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-19-925177-0), $24.95 paper (ISBN: 0-19-925178-9). David Strang David Strang Department of Sociology, Cornell University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies …
The International Diffusion of Public-Sector Downsizing: Network Emulation and Theory-Driven Learning
We examine change in the size of the public sector between 1980 and 1997 across twenty-six Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member nations, with particular attention to diffusion dynamics. General method of moments (GMM) analyses demonstrate imitation of shifts in government employment within the United States and mutual influence among nations that are geographically proximate and that trade extensively. Disaggregated…
Product Review: Flavor of the Month: Why Smart People Fall for Fads
Flavor of the Month: Why Smart People Fall for Fads
Civil Liberty in America: The Diffusion of Municipal Bill of Rights Resolutions after the Passage of the USA Patriot Act
In the years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, some 400 local governments passed “Bill of Rights” resolutions in opposition to the USA PATRIOT Act. Event history analyses show that cities with progressive profiles were markedly quicker to pass such resolutions. These effects are strongest in the early phase of the Bill of Rights campaign, a period for which there is also robust evidence of contagious influence among nearby cities. The authors arg…
Situating Glocalization: A Relatively Autobiographical Intervention
How do organizational practices fare on the road? With the growth of global firms and professional communities that span national boundaries, it is common for corporate programs—like the total quality management (TQM) initiative studied here—to be exported overseas. These practices often hail from the United States, home not only to many of the world's largest multinationals but also to the greatest concentration of the carriers of management kno…
Asymmetries in Experiential and Vicarious Feedback: Lessons from the Hiring and Firing of Baseball Managers
We examine experiential and vicarious feedback in the hiring and firing of baseball managers. Realized outcomes play a large role in both decisions; the probability that a manager will be fired is a function of the team's win-loss record, and a manager is quicker to be rehired if his teams had won more in the past. There are substantial asymmetries, however, in the fine structure of the two feedback functions. The rate at which managers are fired…
Political science (24 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (12 works) · Economics (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Management and Organizational Studies (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Diffusion (7 works)