Individual Status Attainment and Entreprenurial Entry: The Mobility of Award Winning Creative Directors in the Advertising Industry.

This study examines the effect of status gains associated with award winning by creative directors in the advertising industry on their mobility across firms as a means of investigating forces that rein in or perpetuate Matthew Effects. On one hand, award winners are likely to leverage their attained status to join higher status firms, a prediction consistent with the Matthew Effect. On the other hand, the status associated with award winning means these individuals can attract resources independently of the firm that employs them and so they may choose to join younger firms or start-ups. In this latter case, rather than stabilizing the existing status structure, status gains associated with awards fuel new firm founding and growth, curtailing the Matthew Effect. Our main argument is that this choice depends on how tightly coupled the individual’s status is to the status of the employing firm. As a creative director accumulates awards, the coupling of individual status and firm status decreases and the director becomes increasingly likely to move to firm with lower status or a start-up. The results of our analyses suggest that ironically actions taken by incumbents in the industry – the bestowal of awards to recognize the work of individuals – actually lay the groundwork for reining in the Matthew Effect.

Biography

Michelle Rogan is an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD. She holds an undergraduate degree in Psychology from Yale University and received her PhD in Strategic and International Management from the University of London (London Business School). 

Professor Rogan’s research centers on corporate entrepreneurship. In particular, she focuses on acquisitions of social capital – i.e. how firms use acquisitions of target firms to gain valuable inter-organizational relationships to customers – suppliers and other business partners, in the advertising industry. In her research, she has examined how changes in competitive context affect the stability of inter-organizational relationships and how firm v. employee “ownership” of these relationships affects the firm’s retention of the relationships. Prof. Rogan is currently investigating the effect of competition among clients of advertising firms on the formation of new advertising agencies both within and outside of existing advertising holding companies. In related research in the consulting industry, she is also exploring how ownership rights to inter-organizational relationships affect new business development in established firms. Her research has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly, the Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science and The Annual Review of Sociology.

Prior to her doctoral studies, Prof. Rogan worked for several years as a management consultant at Accenture in San Francisco where she was involved in the implementation of large-scale change initiatives including corporate entrepreneurship efforts in global technology firms. The focus of her client work involved the mobilization of sponsorship networks to support corporate renewal efforts in these firms as well as the design and implementation of firm-wide training programs.

Professor Rogan teaches the Corporate Entrepreneurship in the MBA and EMBA programs and selected Executive Education programs include Learning to Lead and Achieving Outstanding Performance. She also has written multiple teaching case studies, including two award winning cases, “The transformation of BP” (with S. Ghoshal and L. Gratton) and “Accenture Development Partnership” (with C. Bode).