Tournament Rituals in the Evolution of Fields: the Case of the Grammy Awards

Abstract

We show how award ceremony rituals influence organizational field evolution through four critical processes: distributing prestige in “situated” performances; enacting a highly charged ceremonial form designed to attract the collective attention of a field; serving as a medium for surfacing and resolving conflicts about the legitimacy of field participants; and tightening horizontal linkages within the field. Using the Grammy Awards as a case study, we present a mixed-method, longitudinal analysis of these processes operating in tandem.