E Pluribus Unum: Framing, Matching, and Form Emergence in U.S. Television Broadcasting, 1940-1960

Recent research holds that new organizational forms emerge from the identity of candidate organizations that enter a domain. In this study we argue that emergence of a new form, which is ultimately based on validation by external audiences, depends on two mechanisms: identity framing, i.e., how audiences perceive and frame the identity of an emerging organizational domain, and identity matching, i.e., the match between the identity of the domain and the identity of candidates. Accordingly, form emergence is best characterized as contextual rather than as an inherent attribute of the categories of candidate organizations. Using data on the U.S. commercial television industry from 1940 to 1960, we explore how entry rates of TV stations were affected by audiences’ expectations about the identity of the nascent domain and by the densities of organizations with different origins. We find evidence that focused expectations expressed through public discourse about media, and the number of stations coming from radio broadcasting increased entry rates. We reconcile our findings with existing theory on the emergence of organizational forms by pointing to the joint relevance of domain-related and candidate-related identities.