Doctoral Dissertation Research: Blending Commerce and Community: Feminist Bookstores and the Negotiation of Hybrid Identity

女权主义书店，其意识形态的承诺往往使他们的斗争复杂化，生存作为小企业，组织与混合身份。他们拥有多重的、不协调的身份，这些身份是基于相互竞争的制度逻辑。它们不是坚持完全以效率为基础或完全以价值为基础的制度逻辑，而是积极努力平衡这两者。他们如何协商这些相互竞争的逻辑？这些谈判及其结果是否会随着组织的生命周期阶段或书店所处的组织领域而变化？为了回答这些问题，我借鉴了多种方法和数据源。首先，我进行定性内容分析的问题女权主义书店新闻（1976年至2000年出版的贸易杂志）和材料的女权主义书店新闻档案位于旧金山弗朗西斯科公共图书馆。这些历史数据使我能够追踪有关组织身份谈判的话语。其次，我使用半结构化的采访与女权主义书店老板，员工和客户进一步调查的过程和结果，这样的谈判。最后，为了提供新出现的模式的详细说明，我构建了三个女权主义书店（位于加州，密歇根州和格鲁吉亚）的深入的案例研究，使用档案材料，半结构化访谈，观察和客户调查。这项研究的更广泛的影响包括社会学领域的贡献，通过照明的机制，身份混合组织谈判竞争的逻辑，重点是正在进行的谈判，而不是那些发生在组织中断，以及分析这些策略如何根据组织的生命周期阶段的变化。这些发现对许多拥有多重身份的组织具有实际意义，包括那些仍然存在的女权主义书店。作为女权主义书店的组织领域的第一个纵向研究，我的研究还提供了一个全面的研究致力于妇女问题的组织领域，特别强调女同性恋和有色人种妇女。

Feminist bookstores, whose ideological commitments often complicate their struggles to survive as small-businesses, exemplify organizations with hybrid identities. They embrace multiple, incongruous identities that are based on competing institutional logics. Rather than adhering to an institutional logic that is either fully efficiency-based or fully value-based, they actively work to balance the two. How do they negotiate these competing logics? Do these negotiations and their outcomes change depending on the life-cycle stage of an organization or of the organizational fields in which a bookstore is embedded? To answer these questions, I draw on multiple methods and data sources. First, I conduct qualitative content analysis with issues of Feminist Bookstore News (the trade journal published from 1976-2000) and materials from the Feminist Bookstore News archives located at the San Francisco Public Library. These historical data allows me to trace discourse regarding organizational identity negotiation. Second, I use semi-structured interviews with feminist bookstore owners, employees, and customers to investigate further the processes and results of such negotiations. Finally, in order to provide detailed illustrations of emerging patterns, I construct in-depth case studies of three feminist bookstores (located in California, Michigan, and Georgia), using archival materials, semi-structured interviews, observation, and customer surveys. The broader impacts of this research include contributions to the field of sociology by an illumination of mechanisms through which identity-hybrid organizations negotiate competing logics, a focus on ongoing negotiations rather than those that take place during organizational disruption, and an analysis of how such strategies change depending on the organization's life-cycle stage. The findings hold practical relevance for the many organizations that hold multiple identities, including those feminist bookstores still in existence. As the first longitudinal study of the organizational field of feminist bookstores, my research also offers a comprehensive look at an organizational field dedicated to women's issues, with particular emphasis on lesbians and women of color.