Researchers have advanced two opposing accounts of the relationship between status and cultural innovation. We aim to reconcile these views – and their conflicting findings that high- low-status cultural producers are more likely to innovate – by adopting a dynamic view of status. We argue that changes in status – at the individual and the field level – affect the relationship between status and innovation. Focusing on the national American television industry over the period 1956–2010, we found that increases and decreases in producers’ status moderated the effect of their current status on the innovativeness of their shows. We also found that the degree of instability in the overall status hierarchy of producers conditioned the impact of status on show innovativeness. When the status hierarchy was relatively stable, high-status producers tended to create more innovative shows than low-status producers. Greater levels of instability, however, decreased the show innovativeness of high-status producers but increased that of low-status producers. By exposing the pressures and opportunities that cultural producers experience as a result of changes in both their status and the status hierarchy, we reveal that the relationship between status and innovation is more nuanced than prior studies suggested.

中文翻译：

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卫兵换岗：美国电视节目的地位动态和创新，1956-2010

研究人员对地位与文化创新之间的关系提出了两种相反的解释。我们的目标是通过采用动态的地位观来调和这些观点——以及他们相互矛盾的发现，即地位高低的文化生产者更有可能创新。我们认为，个人和领域层面的地位变化会影响地位与创新之间的关系。关注 1956 年至 2010 年期间的美国全国电视行业，我们发现制片人地位的增减缓和了他们当前地位对其节目创新性的影响。我们还发现，制作人整体地位等级的不稳定程度决定了地位对节目创新性的影响。当地位等级相对稳定时，地位高的制片人往往比地位低的制片人创造更多创新节目。然而，更大程度的不稳定会降低高地位制片人的节目创新性，但会增加低地位制片人的创新性。通过揭示文化生产者因其地位和地位等级的变化而经历的压力和机遇，我们揭示了地位与创新之间的关系比先前的研究表明的更加微妙。