Greta Hsu
Professor
Research Expertise: Organizational behavior and identity, economic sociology, entrepreneurship
Consumers, producers, critics and other market actors rely on categories like hedge fund, Napa Valley winery, and Western film to understand products and producers in markets. Through her research, Professor Greta Hsu develops understanding of how such categories are socially constructed, how they are used and strategically manipulated by market actors and how they shape market and competitive dynamics. Her current research focuses on how tobacco producers created and then manipulated consumers’ understandings of the category of “light cigarettes” to their strategic advantage. She is also studying genre spanning in the U.S. feature film industry, as well as patterns in perceptions of organizational identity across organizations and organizational roles
Hsu’s papers include “Category Taken-for-Grantedness as a Strategic Opportunity: The Case of Light Cigarettes, 1964 to 1993,” published in the American Sociological Review; “Evaluative Schemas and the Mediating Role of Critics and Identities, Genres, and Organizational Forms,” published in Organization Science; ”Multiple Category Memberships in Markets: A Formal Theory and Two Empirical Tests,” published in American Sociological Review; and “Jacks of All Trades and Masters of None: Audiences’ Reactions to Spanning Genres in Feature Film Production,” published in Administrative Science Quarterly.
Hsu received her Ph.D. in organizational behavior from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. She also received her M.A. in sociology, M.S. in statistics and B.A. in sociology from Stanford.
Ill-fated ‘Titanic’ love story has audiences still watching 20 years later
The combination of a disaster film with a romantic subplot often doesn’t work well, said Greta Hsu, a professor at University of California, Davis, whose research looks at the tradeoffs of combining different film genres.
All Politics—and Cannabis Marketing—Are Local
Study: Washington, Colorado Provide Insight for California
Prof.Greta Hsu examines the marketing of cannabis dispensaries in Washington and Colorado and shows how county voting on legalization affects their marketing—just ahead of the opening of California’s retail market.
Co-opt or Co-exist? A Study of Medical Cannabis Dispensaries’ Identity-based Responses to Recreational-use Legalization in Colorado and Washington
Professor Greta Hsu
Co-authors: Özgecan Koçak, Emory University; Balázs Kovács, Yale University
When Doing What You’ve Always Done Is No Longer Enough
To truly take full advantage of the benefits of social capital, it becomes important to diagnosis all of the networks that make up your network. Knowing who is in your task network, your career network and your social network is key.
Having a Mentor vs. Having a Developmental Network: Diversity is Key!
A developmental network is more than just a group of individuals who provide you with professional support and guidance.
Maximizing Your Mentoring and Developmental Network
Presented by: Greta Hsu, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Management
UC Davis Graduate School of Management
To schedule an Open Enrollment Executive Education program, please contact Natalie Hull-Frazier.
Consumers Increasingly Face Companies’ Creative Smoke and Mirrors
Vaping Under Fire as a Public Health Threat
A new study investigates how the tobacco industry managed to raise the levels of tar and nicotine in “light” cigarettes for decades without a regulatory crackdown—despite mounting proof of health hazards.
The findings by Associate Professor Greta Hsu shed light on the current controversy over electronic cigarettes.
Heavily marketed as a safer, healthy alternative to smoking, electronic cigarettes are under fire from California health officials, who have declared “vaping” a public health threat.
Is Vaping a Matter of Smoke and Mirrors?
Just because a product’s label says light, natural, green, energy-saving or numerous other vague terms, doesn’t mean it is.
That’s what the American Sociological Association reports in a new study released this month in the American Sociological Review journal.
Consumers Increasingly Face Companies’ Creative Smoke and Mirrors, UC Davis Study Finds
Heavily marketed as a safer, healthful alternative to smoking, e-cigarettes are under fire from California health officials who have declared “vaping” a public health threat, hoping to head off the type of deceptive manipulation that tobacco companies succeeded with for decades, according to new research from the University of California, Davis.
The Shazam Effect
Record companies are tracking download and search data to predict which new songs will be hits.
Associate Professor Greta Hsu, who has done research on genre-blending in Hollywood, says that although mixing music categories is risky, hybrids can become standout successes, because they appeal to multiple audiences as being somehow both fresh and familiar.
Explaining Variation in Organizational Identity Categorization
Professor Greta Hsu
Co-Authors: Kimberly D. Elsbach, UC Davis
How Wine Critics’ Quality Ratings Impact the Market
It is well known that in markets such as restaurants, films and books, critics directly shape outcomes by guiding consumers’ attention and purchase decisions through their assessments of product quality. Less understood is how critics influence the decision making and behavior of producers.
How Wine Critics’ Quality Ratings Impact the Market
Oganization Science: Evaluative Schemas and the Mediating Role of Critics
It is well known that in markets such as restaurants, films and books, critics directly shape market outcomes by guiding consumers’ attention and purchase decisions through their assessments of product quality. Less understood is how critics influence the decision-making and behavior of producers.
Greta Hsu Awards
- Seeman Faculty Term Fellowship, UC Davis, 2011.
- Invited Speaker, Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Management, 2011.
- Invited Speaker, The 13th Organizational Ecology Conference, Helsinki, Finland, 2010.
- Research Grant, National Science Foundation, Co-Primary Investigator on “SoD-TEAM: Longitudinal effects of design in open source projects,” ($750,000), 2006-09.
- Industry Studies Program Travel Grant, Sloan Foundation, (with S. Grodal), 2008.
- Small Grant in Aid of Research, UC Davis.
Four Faculty Awarded Fellowships
Four faculty members have received prestigious fellowships for their research productivity, teaching excellence and dedicated service to the School.
Associate Professor Greta Hsu, a specialist in organizational behavior and economic sociology, was awarded the Seeman Faculty Term Fellowship. The fellowship is made possible by a generous gift from alumna May Seeman ’89 and her husband, Philippe.
Typecasting, Legitimation, and Form Emergence: A Formal Theory
Sociological Theory, 2011
In this paper, Associate Professor Greta Hsu and co-authors Michael T. Hannan from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and László Pólos from Durham University propose a formal theory of multiple category memberships which has the potential to unify two seemingly unconnected theories: typecasting and identity-based form emergence.
Greta Hsu and Victor Stango Awarded Tenure as Associate Professors
Assistant Professors Greta Hsu and Victor Stango have both received tenure and will be promoted to associate professor effective this summer.
Hollywood and eBay: Cases for Market Specialization
American Sociological Review, 2009
Why are products or producers that span multiple categories penalized in competitive markets? A recent study by Assistant Professor Greta Hsu and colleagues Professor Michael T. Hannan of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Assistant Professor of Management Özgecan Koçak of Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, examines the effects of market specialization in the U.S. feature-film industry and eBay.
Jacks of All Trades and Masters of None: Audiences’ Reactions to Spanning Genres in Feature Film Production
Administrative Science Quarterly, 2006
Through analyses of audience reception of U.S.-produced feature film projects from the period 2000–2003, Associate Professor Greta Hsu develops insight into the trade-off assumed in organizational ecology theory between an organization’s niche width and its fitness.
Identities, Genres, and Organizational Forms
Organization Science, 2005
In recent years, there has been an increasing emphasis within organizational ecology on identity as a fundamental basis for the conceptualization and identification of organizational forms. This paper, by Associate Professor Greta Hsu and co-author Michael T. Hannan from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, highlights the benefits of an identity-based conceptualization of organizational forms and outlines an identity-based agenda for organizational ecology.
Greta Hsu Awards
- Seeman Faculty Term Fellowship, UC Davis, 2011.
- Invited Speaker, Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Management, 2011.
- Invited Speaker, The 13th Organizational Ecology Conference, Helsinki, Finland, 2010.
- Research Grant, National Science Foundation, Co-Primary Investigator on “SoD-TEAM: Longitudinal effects of design in open source projects,” ($750,000), 2006-09.
- Industry Studies Program Travel Grant, Sloan Foundation, (with S. Grodal), 2008.
- Small Grant in Aid of Research, UC Davis.