Danny Miller

Bio: Danny Miller is an academic researcher from HEC Montréal. The author has contributed to research in topics: Consumption (economics) & Agency (sociology). The author has an hindex of 133, co-authored 512 publications receiving 71238 citations. Previous affiliations of Danny Miller include University of New Mexico & McGill University.

Of pubs and platforms

Abstract: This article argues for a more explicit concern with sociality in anthropology, illustrated through a study of one of the oldest English platforms for sociality: the English pub. Using an approach derived from the study of social media, the pub is analysed in terms of the balance between structural (mainly commercial) forces and agency (mainly the desire for particular kinds of sociality). Following an introduction to the English pub, the article considers how pubs exert control over which population they serve. The next section, shows how groups of people colonize pubs, regardless of the pub's intentions. This is followed by a discussion of the various responses by pubs to this colonization. The final section, ‘Scalable sociality’, demonstrates how these processes combine to produce a phenomenon called scalable sociality, which is also a definition of social media: a series of platforms that can be sited along various scales and parameters of sociality. This is important because a similar tension between, on the one hand, commercial or state forces and, on the other hand, the development of new forms of sociality is increasingly common within many topics studied by anthropologists.

Visual Pleasure in 1959

Abstract: Peculiarly unlucky in love, Miss Catherine: when her lustful male admirers are not bent on molesting her, they seem no less compulsively determined to make her a front for enacting, or otherwise entertaining, their desire to manhandle each other. This homosexual front may wear its crudest aspect on the beach of Cabeza de Lobo, where her cousin Sebastian Venable first launches her to fish into his clutch the local youths who eventually murder and devour him, but it also informs, mutatis mutandis, the very construction of Tennessee Williams's one-act play Suddenly, Last Summer (1957), which features Cathy as little more than a device for giving utterance to the story of Sebastian, the homosexual who, though barred from anywhere appearing in the would-be mainstream drama, by means of her recollection becomes its true protagonist.

Competitive advantage: creating and sustaining superior performance

Abstract: COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE introduces a whole new way of understanding what a firm does. Porter's groundbreaking concept of the value chain disaggregates a company into 'activities', or the discrete functions or processes that represent the elemental building blocks of competitive advantage. Now an essential part of international business thinking, COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE takes strategy from broad vision to an internally consistent configuration of activities. Its powerful framework provides the tools to understand the drivers of cost and a company's relative cost position. Porter's value chain enables managers to isolate the underlying sources of buyer value that will command a premium price, and the reasons why one product or service substitutes for another. He shows how competitive advantage lies not only in activities themselves but in the way activities relate to each other, to supplier activities, and to customer activities. That the phrases 'competitive advantage' and 'sustainable competitive advantage' have become commonplace is testimony to the power of Porter's ideas. COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE has guided countless companies, business school students, and scholars in understanding the roots of competition. Porter's work captures the extraordinary complexity of competition in a way that makes strategy both concrete and actionable.

Upper Echelons: The Organization as a Reflection of Its Top Managers

Abstract: Theorists in various fields have discussed characteristics of top managers. This paper attempts to synthesize these previously fragmented literatures around a more general “upper echelons perspective.” The theory states that organizational outcomes—strategic choices and performance levels—are partially predicted by managerial background characteristics. Propositions and methodological suggestions are included.

Clarifying the Entrepreneurial Orientation Construct and Linking It To Performance

Abstract: The primary purpose of this article is to clarify the nature of the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) construct and to propose a contingency framework for investigating the relationship between EO and firm performance. We first explore and refine the dimensions of EO and discuss the usefulness of viewing a firm's EO as a multidimensional construct. Then, drawing on examples from the EO-related contingencies literature, we suggest alternative models (moderating effects, mediating effects, independent effects, interaction effects) for testing the EO-performance relationship.

Social Identity Theory and the Organization

Abstract: It is argued that (a) social identification is a perception of oneness with a group of persons; (b) social identification stems from the categorization of individuals, the distinctiveness and prestige of the group, the salience of outgroups, and the factors that traditionally are associated with group formation; and (c) social identification leads to activities that are congruent with the identity, support for institutions that embody the identity, stereotypical perceptions of self and others, and outcomes that traditionally are associated with group formation, and it reinforces the antecedents of identification. This perspective is applied to organizational socialization, role conflict, and intergroup relations.