David C. Stark
Encyclopedia
David C. Stark is Arthur Lehman Professor of Sociology
and International Affairs
at Columbia University
where he serves as chair of the sociology department and directs the Center on Organizational Innovation
. He is an External Faculty Member of the Santa Fe Institute
.
in 1972 and a Ph.D. in sociology
from Harvard in 1982. Stark was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship
in 2002. He is the former president of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, and has been a visiting fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation
in New York City, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
in Palo Alto, the Institute for Advanced Study/Collegium Budapest, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
in Paris, the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), and the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna
. Stark won the 2009 W. Richard Scott Award for Distinguished Scholarship from the American Sociological Association for his paper, “Social Times of Network Spaces” (with Balazs Vedres), which appeared in American Journal of Sociology
(2006).
, referring to the process of distributed intelligence and diversity of evaluative principles in organizations. He coined the term "recombinant property" to analyze asset ambiguity during the transformation of the economies of the former Soviet bloc. It has been adopted to study processes of innovation in high technology sectors of the United States and Western Europe.
Stark has been a leading contributor to the new Economic sociology
. His research uses ethnographic fieldwork and social network
analysis. In examining organizational forms as sites of multiple evaluative principles, or frames of worth, he has carried out field research in Hungarian factories before and after 1989, in new media startups in Manhattan before and after the dot.com crash of hi-tech firm stocks in 2000, and in a World Financial Center
trading room
before and after the attacks on September 11, 2001. Recent work with Balazs Vedres develops a combination of network and sequence analytic methods.
His recent book, The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life, published in 2009, Stark draws on much of his recent research in post-socialist transformations in Hungary, his study of new media firms in Silicon Alley, and his work on decision making in trading rooms. Stark ties these examples together and suggests a number of key determinants of innovation within organization. Foremost of these determinants is a wealth of different goals and notions of worth motivating actors in an organization. With different conceptions of what is valuable, he argues, organizations can be equipped to succeed in a search in which what they are searching for is unclear (how Stark defines innovation).
Society 2008, 25(5):31-56 (with Verena Paravel).
Cetina and Alexa Preda, eds., The Sociology of Financial Markets. Oxford: Oxford University
Press (with Daniel Beunza).
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and International Affairs
International relations
International relations is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations , international nongovernmental organizations , non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations...
at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
where he serves as chair of the sociology department and directs the Center on Organizational Innovation
Center on Organizational Innovation
The Center on Organizational Innovation is a research center at Columbia University's Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy...
. He is an External Faculty Member of the Santa Fe Institute
Santa Fe Institute
The Santa Fe Institute is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, including physical, computational, biological, and social systems.The Institute houses a...
.
Biography
He received a B.A. from PrincetonPrinceton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in 1972 and a Ph.D. in sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
from Harvard in 1982. Stark was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
in 2002. He is the former president of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, and has been a visiting fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation
Russell Sage Foundation
The Russell Sage Foundation is the principal American foundation devoted exclusively to research in the social sciences. Founded in 1907 and headquartered in New York City, the foundation is a research center, a funding source for studies by scholars at other institutions, and a key member of the...
in New York City, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences is an American interdisciplinary research body in Stanford, California focusing on the social sciences and humanities . Fellows are elected in a closed process, to spend a period of residence at the Center, released from other duties...
in Palo Alto, the Institute for Advanced Study/Collegium Budapest, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
The École des hautes études en sciences sociales is a leading French institution for research and higher education, a Grand Établissement. Its mission is research and research training in the social sciences, including the relationship these latter maintain with the natural and life sciences...
in Paris, the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), and the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. Stark won the 2009 W. Richard Scott Award for Distinguished Scholarship from the American Sociological Association for his paper, “Social Times of Network Spaces” (with Balazs Vedres), which appeared in American Journal of Sociology
American Journal of Sociology
The American Journal of Sociology was established in 1895 by Albion Small and is the oldest academic journal of sociology in the United States. The journal is attached to the University of Chicago's sociology department and it is published bimonthly by The University of Chicago Press. Its...
(2006).
Work
He has been a leading contributor in developing the concept of heterarchyHeterarchy
A heterarchy is a system of organization replete with overlap, multiplicity, mixed ascendancy, and/or divergent-but-coexistent patterns of relation...
, referring to the process of distributed intelligence and diversity of evaluative principles in organizations. He coined the term "recombinant property" to analyze asset ambiguity during the transformation of the economies of the former Soviet bloc. It has been adopted to study processes of innovation in high technology sectors of the United States and Western Europe.
Stark has been a leading contributor to the new Economic sociology
Economic sociology
Economic sociology studies both the social effects and the social causes of various economic phenomena. The field can be broadly divided into a classical period and a contemporary one. The classical period was concerned particularly with modernity and its constituent aspects...
. His research uses ethnographic fieldwork and social network
Social network
A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
analysis. In examining organizational forms as sites of multiple evaluative principles, or frames of worth, he has carried out field research in Hungarian factories before and after 1989, in new media startups in Manhattan before and after the dot.com crash of hi-tech firm stocks in 2000, and in a World Financial Center
World Financial Center
The World Financial Center is a complex of buildings across West Street from the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan in New York City, overlooking the Hudson River. This complex is home to offices of companies including Merrill Lynch, RBC Capital Markets, Nomura Group, the Wall Street...
trading room
Trading room
A trading-room gathers traders operating on financial markets.The trading-room is also often called the front office.The terms dealing-room and trading-floor are also used, the latter being inspired from that of a open outcry stock exchange....
before and after the attacks on September 11, 2001. Recent work with Balazs Vedres develops a combination of network and sequence analytic methods.
His recent book, The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life, published in 2009, Stark draws on much of his recent research in post-socialist transformations in Hungary, his study of new media firms in Silicon Alley, and his work on decision making in trading rooms. Stark ties these examples together and suggests a number of key determinants of innovation within organization. Foremost of these determinants is a wealth of different goals and notions of worth motivating actors in an organization. With different conceptions of what is valuable, he argues, organizations can be equipped to succeed in a search in which what they are searching for is unclear (how Stark defines innovation).
Selected articles
- "Structural Folds: Generative Disruption in Overlapping Groups." American Journal of SociologyAmerican Journal of SociologyThe American Journal of Sociology was established in 1895 by Albion Small and is the oldest academic journal of sociology in the United States. The journal is attached to the University of Chicago's sociology department and it is published bimonthly by The University of Chicago Press. Its...
, January 2010, 115(4): in press (with Balazs Vedres). - "PowerPoint in Public: Digital Technologies and the New Morphology of Demonstration." Theory, Culture &
Society 2008, 25(5):31-56 (with Verena Paravel).
- "Social Times of Network Spaces: Network Sequences and Foreign Investment in Hungary.” (with Balazs Vedres) American Journal of SociologyAmerican Journal of SociologyThe American Journal of Sociology was established in 1895 by Albion Small and is the oldest academic journal of sociology in the United States. The journal is attached to the University of Chicago's sociology department and it is published bimonthly by The University of Chicago Press. Its...
, March 2006, vol. 111, no. 5, pp. 1368–1411. - "Socio-technologies of Assembly: Sense-making and Demonstration in Rebuilding Lower Manhattan.” (with Monique Girard) In David Lazer and Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger, eds., Governance and Information: The Rewiring of Governing and Deliberation in the 21st Century. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
- "How to Recognize Opportunities: Heterarchical Search in a Trading Room." Pp. 84-101 in Karin Knorr
Cetina and Alexa Preda, eds., The Sociology of Financial Markets. Oxford: Oxford University
Press (with Daniel Beunza).
- "Tools of the Trade: The Socio-Technology of Arbitrage in a Wall Street Trading Room.” (with Daniel Beunza) Industrial and Corporate Change, vol. 13, no. 1, 2004, pp. 369–401.
- "Permanently Beta: Responsive Organization in the Internet Era." (with Gina Neff) In Philip E.N. Howard and Steve Jones, eds., Society Online: The Internet In Context. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003, pp. 173–188. ISBN 978-0761927082
- “Distributing Intelligence and Organizing Diversity in New Media Projects.” (with Monique Girard) Environment and Planning A, vol. 34, no 11, November 2002, pp. 1927–1949. ISSN 0308-518X
- “Ambiguous Assets for Uncertain Environments: Heterarchy in Postsocialist Firms,” In Paul DiMaggioPaul DiMaggioPaul Joseph DiMaggio is an American educator, and professor of sociology at Princeton University since 1992.-Career:...
, ed., The Twenty-First-Century Firm: Changing Economic Organization in International Perspective. Princeton University Press, 2001, pp. 69–104. ISBN 978-0691116310 - "Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism." American Journal of SociologyAmerican Journal of SociologyThe American Journal of Sociology was established in 1895 by Albion Small and is the oldest academic journal of sociology in the United States. The journal is attached to the University of Chicago's sociology department and it is published bimonthly by The University of Chicago Press. Its...
. January 1996, vol. 101, no. 4, pp. 993–1027.
Books
- Postsocialist Pathways: Transforming Politics and Property in East Central Europe (with László Bruszt). New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 ISBN 978-0521580359
- Restructuring Networks in Postsocialism: Legacies, Linkages, and Localities (Co-editor with Gernot Grabher), London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0198290209
- Remaking the Economic Institutions of Socialism: China and Eastern Europe (Co-editor with Victor NeeVictor NeeVictor Nee is the Frank and Rosa Rhodes Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Economy and Society at Cornell University. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology at Harvard University in 1977...
), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0804714952 - The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life, Princeton University Press, 2009.