Social Spaces and Field Boundaries in Reputation Formation: An Introduction

Francesca Giardini; Flaminio Squazzoni

doi:10.6092/issn.1971-8853/15634

Authors

Francesca Giardini Department of Sociology, University of Groningen https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7512-0048

Francesca Giardini is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences, of the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) and member of the Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology. She is the scientific coordinator of the theme "Disaster resilience" in the Agricola School of Sustainable Development, University of Groningen.
Flaminio Squazzoni Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6503-6077

Flaminio Squazzoni is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan (Italy), where he leads the Behave Lab, a research center for research and training in behavioral sociology. He is editor in chief of JASSS - Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation and co-editor of Sociologica - International Journal for Sociological Debate. He has been president of ESSA - European Social Simulation Association.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/15634

Keywords:

Reputation, Cooperation, Organization, Gender, Politics

Abstract

This article introduces a symposium on Social Spaces and Field Boundaries in Reputation Formation, which includes four sociological articles. Here, we have provided a general context to the symposium by discussing reputation research and exploring new sociological directions. Despite its importance to understand cooperation in various social contexts (e.g., groups, populations, and organizations), and its centrality in many socially constructed systems of evaluation (e.g., online markets, science, and intellectual professions), reputation is still under-investigated in sociology. At the same time, current reputation research in other disciplines, such as behavioral sciences, evolutionary biology, and management studies, neglects the importance of sociological factors, including the role of contextual features and boundary conditions across various social fields. This symposium aims to tackle these challenges by presenting a selection of articles that focus on the uniqueness of reputation-driven human cooperation, the relationship between social evaluations and governance failures, the gender dimension of reputation, and the role of reputation repair in international politics. We believe that these articles offer a compact overview of the different ways in which social evaluations can contribute to explain social dynamics. By considering different levels of analysis, i.e., micro, meso and macro levels, they can stimulate sociological research and debate on this important topic.

References

Bartley, T., & Child, C. (2014). Shaming the Corporation: The Social Production of Targets and the Anti-sweatshop Movement. American Sociological Review, 79(4), 653–679. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122414540653

Besnier, N. (2009). Gossip and the Everyday Production of Politics. Honolulu, HA: University of Hawaii Press.

Boero, R., Bravo, G., Castellani, M., & Squazzoni, F. (2009). Reputational Cues in Repeated Trust Games. Journal of Socio-Economics, 38(6), 871–877. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2009.05.004

Bouvard, M., & Levy, R. (2018). Two-sided Reputation in Certification Markets. Management Science, 64(10), 4755–4774. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2742

Coleman, J. (1994). Foundations of Social Theory. New York, NY: Belknap Press.

Cook, K.S., Cheshire, C., & Gerbasi, A. (2018). Power, Dependence, and Social Exchange Theory. Amsterdam: Academic Press.

Dafoe, A., Renshon, J., & Huth, P. (2014). Reputation and Status as Motives for War. SSRN. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2332048

De Gioannis, E., Bianchi, F., & Squazzoni, F. (2023). Gender Bias in the Classroom: A Network Study on Self and Peer Ability Attribution. Social Networks, 72, 44–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2022.09.001

Diekmann, A., Jann, B., Przepiorka, W., & Wehrli, S. (2014). Reputation Formation and the Evolution of Cooperation in Anonymous Online Markets. American Sociological Review, 79(1), 65–85. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122413512316

Dukerich, J.M., & Carter, S.M. (2000). Distorted Images and Reputation Repair. The Expressive Organization: Linking Identity, Reputation, and the Corporate Brand (pp. 97–112). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Elias, N. (1987). The Retreat of Sociologists into the Present. Theory, Culture, and Society, 4(2-3), 223–247. https://doi.org/10.7312/meja92024-008

Ellickson, R.C. (1994). Order without Law. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press.

Ellwardt, L., Steglich, C., & Wittek, R. (2012). The Co-evolution of Gossip and Friendship in Workplace Social Networks. Social Networks, 34(4), 623–633. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2012.07.002

Emler, N. (1990). A Social Psychology of Reputation. European Review of Social Psychology, 1(1), 171–193. https://doi.org/10.1080/14792779108401861

Espeland, W.N., & Sauder, M. (2007). Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds. American Journal of Sociology, 113(1), 1–40. https://doi.org/10.1086/517897

Esposito, E., & Stark, D. (2019). What's Observed in a Rating? Rankings as Orientation in the Face of Uncertainty. Theory, Culture, & Society, 36(4), 3–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276419826276

Fine, G.A. (2019). Moral Cultures, Reputation Work, and the Politics of Scandal. Annual Review of Sociology, 45, 247–264. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-073018-022649

Garfield, Z.H., Schacht, R., Post, E., Uehling, A., Ingram, D., & Macfarlan, S.J. (2021). The Content and Structure of Reputation Domains across Human Societies: A View from the Evolutionary Social Sciences. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 376(1838). https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0296

Giardini, F., Balliet, D., Power, E. A., Számadó, S., & Takács, K. (2021). Four Puzzles of Reputation-Based Cooperation. Human Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-021-09419-3

Giardini, F., & Conte, R. (2012). Gossip for social control in natural and artificial societies. Simulation 88(1), 18–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0037549711406912

Giardini, F., & Wittek, R. (2019a). Gossip, Reputation, and Sustainable Cooperation: Sociological Foundations. In F. Giardini & R. Wittek (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Gossip and Reputation (pp. 23–46). Cambridge, MA: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190494087.013.2

Giardini, F., & Wittek, R.P. (2019b). Silence Is Golden. Six Reasons Inhibiting the Spread of Third-party Gossip. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1120. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01120

Gluckman, M. (1963). Papers in Honor of Melville J. Herskovits: Gossip and Scandal. Current Anthropology, 4(3), 307–316. https://doi.org/10.1086/200378

Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Greif, A. (1989). Reputation and Coalitions in Medieval Trade: Evidence on the Maghribi Traders. The Journal of Economic History, 49(4), 857–882. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050700009475

Henrich, N., & Henrich, J.P. (2007). Why Humans Cooperate: A Cultural and Evolutionary Explanation. Cambridge, MA: Oxford University Press.

Heugens, P.P., Van Riel, C.B., & Van Den Bosch, F.A. (2004). Reputation Management Capabilities as Decision Rules. Journal of Management Studies, 41(8), 1349–1377. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2004.00478.x

Kniffin, K.M., & Wilson, D.S. (2005). Utilities of Gossip across Organizational Levels. Human Nature, 16(3), 278–292. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-005-1011-6

Kollock, P. (1998). Social Dilemmas: The Anatomy of Cooperation. Annual Review of Sociology, 24(1), 183–214. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.24.1.183

Lin, N. (2002). Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511815447

Lindenberg, S., Wittek, R., & Giardini, F. (2020). Reputation Effects, Embeddedness, and Granovetter’s Error. Berlin: De Gruyter.

MacNell, L., Driscoll, A., & Hunt, A.N. (2015). What’s in a Name: Exposing Gender Bias in Student Ratings of Teaching. Innovative Higher Education, 40(4), 291–303. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-014-9313-4

Manrique, H.M., Zeidler, H., Roberts, G., Barclay, P., Walker, M., Samu, F., Fariña, A., Bshary, R., & Raihani, N. (2021). The Psychological Foundations of Reputation-based Cooperation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 376(1838), 20200287. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0287

Masum, H., & Tovey, M. (2012). The Reputation Society: How Online Opinions Are Reshaping the Offline World. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8777.001.0001

Mengel, F., Sauermann, J., & Zölitz, U. (2019). Gender Bias in Teaching Evaluations. Journal of the European Economic Association, 17(2), 535–566. https://doi.org/10.1093/jeea/jvx057

Milgrom, P.R., North, D.C., & Weingast, B.R. (1990). The Role of Institutions in the Revival of Trade: The Law Merchant, Private Judges, and the Champagne Fairs. Economics & Politics, 2(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0343.1990.tb00020.x

Milinski, M. (2019). Gossip and Reputation in Social Dilemmas. The Oxford Handbook of Gossip and Reputation (pp. 193–213). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nowak, M.A., & Sigmund, K. (1998). Evolution of Indirect Reciprocity by Image Scoring. Nature, 393(6685), 573–577. https://doi.org/10.1038/31225

Nowak, M.A., & Sigmund, K. (2005). Evolution of Indirect Reciprocity. Nature, 437(7063), 1291–1298. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04131

Peterson, D.A.M., Biederman, L.A., Andersen, D., Ditonto, T.M., & Roe, K. (2019). Mitigating Gender Bias in Student Evaluations of Teaching. PLOS ONE, 14(5), e0216241. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0216241

Rhee, M., & Haunschild, P.R. (2006). The Liability of Good Reputation: A Study of Product Recalls in the U.S. Automobile Industry. Organization Science, 17, 101–117. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1050.0175

Riel, V., & Fombrun, C.J. (2007). Essentials of Corporate Communication: Implementing Practices for Effective Reputation Management. London: Routledge.

Rochat, P. (2009). Others in Mind: Social Origins of Self-Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Rogers, T., Goldstein, N.J., & Fox, C.R. (2018). Social Mobilization. Annual Review of Psychology, 69, 357–381. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033718

Romano, A., Giardini, F., Columbus, S., de Kwaadsteniet, E.W., Kisfalusi, D., Triki, Z., Snijders, C., & Hagel, K. (2021). Reputation and Socio-ecology in Humans. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 376(1838), 20200295. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0295

Santos, F.P., Pacheco, J.M., & Santos, F.C. (2021). The Complexity of Human Cooperation under Indirect Reciprocity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 376(1838), 20200291. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0291

Santos, F.P., Santos, F.C., & Pacheco, J.M. (2018). Social Norm Complexity and Past Reputations in the Evolution of Cooperation. Nature, 555(7695), 242–245. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25763

Sapolsky, R. (2017). Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. New York, NY: Penguin.

Stark, D. (2011). The Sense of Dissonance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Takács, K., Gross, J., Testori, M., Letina, S., Kenny, A.R., Power, E.A., & Wittek, R.P.M. (2021). Networks of Reliable Reputations and Cooperation: A Review. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 376(1838), 20200297. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0297

Werner, R.M., & Asch, D.A. (2005). The Unintended Consequences of Publicly Reporting Quality Information. Journal of the American Medical Association, 293(10), 1239–1244. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.293.10.1239

Wittek, R., & Wielers, R. (1998). Gossip in Organizations. Computational & Mathematical Organization Theory, 4(2), 189–204. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009636325582

Social Spaces and Field Boundaries in Reputation Formation: An Introduction

Authors

DOI:

Keywords:

Abstract

References

Downloads

Published

How to Cite

Issue

Section

License

Information

Make a Submission

Keywords

Current Issue