Social and Symbolic Boundaries in Communities

Administrative Science Quarterly
2018, Vol. 63(4)783–818

Field Expansion and Ó The Author(s) 2017
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Communities Shape DOI: 10.1177/0001839217744555

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Social and Symbolic

Boundaries
Stine Grodal1
Abstract
To investigate how participants shape a field’s social and symbolic boundaries
over time, I conducted an in-depth longitudinal study of five core and peripheral
communities in the emerging nanotechnology field from the early 1980s to 2005.
I show that core communities—futurists and government officials—initially
expanded both social and symbolic boundaries to increase the field’s monetary
and cultural resources, yet later they reversed course and contracted the field’s
boundaries. I explain this shift by showing how an increase in resources enticed
peripheral communities (service providers, entrepreneurs, and scientists) to claim
membership in the field. Such claims created a self-reinforcing cycle—some per-
ipheral communities enlarged the symbolic boundary of the field to grow the field,
but this social and symbolic expansion threatened the identity of core commu-
nities and their ability to access resources. Core communities thus attempted to
restrict the symbolic boundary and use this narrow definition to police member-
ship claims by peripheral communities aiming to access the field’s resources. I
develop a theoretical model of how debate over a field’s identity and resources
shapes its social and symbolic boundaries. I show how different communities
strategically manipulate field boundaries depending on their identification with the
field. Core communities seek to keep the social and the symbolic boundaries
aligned, while peripheral communities that identify only weakly with the field pur-
sue their self-interested actions irrespective of whether these actions misalign
the social and symbolic boundaries.
Keywords: organizational fields, institutional change, nanotechnology field
Understanding how a field’s boundaries form and change is a central question

in organizational theory. Scholars who have studied the symbolic boundary, or
what defines belonging to the field (Weber, Heinze, and DeSoucey, 2008;
1
Questrom School of Business, Boston University
784 Administrative Science Quarterly 63 (2018)
Navis and Glynn, 2010), have found that it is created through efforts to demar-
cate the field as field participants come to agree on its meaning. At stake in
contestations over the contours of the symbolic boundary is the field’s collec-
tive identity: the perceived central and distinctive characteristics of the field
(Lamont, 1992; Glynn, 2008; Wry, Lounsbury, and Glynn, 2011). Other scholars
have examined contestations over the social boundary—who has access to the
resources associated with the field (Lamont and Molnar, 2002; Zietsma and
Lawrence, 2010; Wry, Lounsbury, and Glynn, 2011).
Though research on social or symbolic boundaries has provided important
insights, few theories explain how field participants’ actions to influence a
field’s social and symbolic boundaries are related (Hoffman, 1999). Most
research assumes that a change in a field’s symbolic boundary automatically
translates into a change in its social boundary and thus access to the field’s
resources, and vice versa (Lamont and Molnar, 2002; Lamont, 2012). Often,
however, this process is not straightforward. In many fields, there is flexibil-
ity and contestation about how a change in the symbolic boundary affects
membership and resource acquisition. Translating between the symbolic and
the social boundary necessitates moving from an abstract definition to a con-
crete determination about whether the traits of a specific participant fit the
definition or not (Murphy, 2004). If these traits are abundant or difficult to
observe, there is leeway for participants with proximity to the symbolic
boundary to strategically claim or reject membership in the field (Granqvist,
Grodal, and Woolley, 2013). For example, restricting the symbolic boundary
of ‘‘corporate social responsibility’’ does not automatically change the social
boundary of the field. Instead, such a change ignites dispute about how the
new definition applies to individual members, providing strategic opportuni-
ties to contest which companies are socially responsible and which are not
(Windsor, 2006). Generating the symbolic boundary is therefore only one
step in determining access to the field’s resources and thus the social bound-
ary (Lamont and Molnar, 2002).
Likewise, a change in a field’s social boundary does not automatically trans-
late into a change in its symbolic boundary (Lamont, 1992). Potential partici-
pants might claim membership in a field to access its resources even if they
are at odds with the field’s prevailing definition (Lee, 2001; Glynn and Abzug,
2002; Zhao, Ishihara, and Lounsbury, 2013). Anteby (2010) showed how inde-
pendent ventures gained access to the lucrative market for cadavers although
these ventures did not conform to the symbolic boundaries of the field set by
anatomists. If these discrepancies are not policed or if the symbolic boundary
is not actively changed, however, misalignment between the social and sym-
bolic boundaries can occur and persist. Missing from all these studies is an
examination of how both types of field boundaries evolve in concert—how par-
ticipants shape a field’s social and symbolic boundaries over time. This is
important because belonging to a field can confer large advantages and gener-
ate pervasive inequalities (Lamont and Molnar, 2002).
Without studying fields’ social and symbolic boundaries in concert we can-
not resolve a contradiction in organizational theory. Institutional scholars have
detailed how social boundaries expand over time to provide resources to a
growing constituency (Powell, Koput, and Smith-Doerr, 1996; Wry, Lounsbury,
and Glynn, 2011). For example, during the emergence of the biotechnology
field an increasing number of firms and nonprofits became field members
Grodal 785
(Powell and Sandholtz, 2012). In contrast, population ecologists have shown

how the symbolic boundary contracts over time as definitions of the field
become more specific and clearly defined (Hannan, Pólos, and Carroll, 2007).
Ruef and Patterson (2009), for example, showed how over time, as the credit
rating schema of R. G. Dun and Company became better defined, so did indus-
try field boundaries.
Understanding the relationship between the social and symbolic boundaries
of fields necessitates a differentiated understanding of the participants driving
boundary dynamics. Fields consist of multiple communities that ‘‘in the aggre-
gate, constitute a recognized area of institutional life: key suppliers, resource
and product consumers, regulatory agencies, and other organizations that pro-
duce similar services or products’’ (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983: 148; Wry
et al., 2010). Some of the communities that constitute fields are close-knit,
geographically bounded groups with a strong uniform identity; many others are
loosely connected groups united through a shared purpose. Yet all commu-
nities are ‘‘collections of actors whose membership in the collective provides
social and cultural resources that shape their action’’ (Marquis, Lounsbury, and
Greenwood, 2011: xvi).
An important and often overlooked aspect of fields is that some commu-
nities participate in multiple fields simultaneously (Wenger, 1998; Seo and
Creed, 2002) and differ in the degree to which they identify with any given field
(Lave and Wenger, 1991; Glynn, 2008; Navis and Glynn, 2010; Cattani, Ferriani,
and Allison, 2014). Core communities identify strongly with the field. The field’s
symbolic boundary determines not only the collective identity of the field but
also the identity of the core community (see Dutton, Dukerich, and Harquail,
1994; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006; Glynn, 2008). In contrast, peripheral com-
munities identify weakly with the field. Understanding the role of both core and
peripheral communities is important because they are differently situated in
terms of what is at stake in the emerging field (Lawrence, 2004; Glynn, 2008).
Changes to the symbolic boundary may shape the identity of the core commu-
nities but leave peripheral communities unaffected. Likewise, peripheral com-
munities may want access to the resources associated with the field, at a cost
to core communities (Lamont, 1992; Lamont and Molnar, 2002).
Acknowledging that fields consist of core and peripheral communities mat-
ters (Wry et al., 2010), but the existing institutional literature has been con-
cerned primarily with the actions of core communities in shaping a field’s social
or symbolic boundary. Weber, Heinze, and DeSoucey (2008), for example,
showed how dedicated cattle ranchers attempted to spur more farmers to join
the field of grass-fed cattle by changing the symbolic boundary of grass-fed
production to form a new collective field identity based on sincerity, honesty,
and connectedness. Ferraro and O’Mahony (2012) detailed how programmers
committed to the open software movement managed the social boundary of
their projects. To the extent that scholars have theorized how different commu-
nities construct field boundaries, they have imposed a division of labor whereby
entrepreneurial organizations strategically and symbolically claim membership
in the field, and market audiences who make up peripheral communities, such
as service providers, government officials, and consumers, evaluate these
membership claims (Hsu and Hannan, 2005; Hannan, Pólos, and Carroll, 2007;
Navis and Glynn, 2010). But peripheral communities might do more than
merely evaluate claims, and they may have a strategic interest in how the
boundaries of a field are set (Pontikes and Kim, 2017). To investigate how parti-
cipants shape a field’s social and symbolic boundaries over time, I conducted
an in-depth longitudinal study of five core and peripheral communities in the
emerging nanotechnology field from the early 1980s to 2005.
THE SOCIAL AND SYMBOLIC BOUNDARIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL

FIELDS
An organizational field is a set of organizations ‘‘that partake of a common
meaning system and whose participants interact more frequently and fatefully
with one another than with actors outside the field’’ (Scott, 2000: 56). To under-
stand the dynamics of fields we need to consider both a field’s symbolic and
social boundary. The symbolic boundary is created through efforts to define the
field as field participants consider its meaning and how the field is understood
(Lamont and Molnar, 2002). When they agree on the field’s collective identity
(White, 1992; Wry, Lounsbury, and Glynn, 2011) and delineate its central and
distinctive characteristics (Glynn, 2008), the boundary forms.
In contrast, a field’s social boundary determines who can and cannot access
its monetary and cultural resources (Lounsbury and Glynn, 2001; Lawrence,
2004; Zietsma and Lawrence, 2010). Cultural resources are contextual and pub-
lic symbols such as legitimacy, status, and visibility that field participants can
use strategically to forward their own interests (Williams, 1995; Lamont, 2012).
An important step toward accessing a field’s resources is coming to be viewed
as a field member (Zott and Huy, 2007). For example, membership in a field
can provide a community with funding opportunities, and it can also provide
recognition as an influential voice in a new industry. Many fields lack centralized
governance, so membership claims are often taken at face value (Granqvist,
Grodal, and Woolley, 2013). And because the social boundary is associated
with access to the field’s resources, it is often highly contested (Holm, 1995;
Zietsma and Lawrence, 2010). If a field has ample monetary and cultural
resources, multiple communities might claim membership even though they
do not identify strongly with the field. For instance, Zbaracki (1998) showed
how the perceived legitimacy associated with total quality management (TQM)
led many firms to claim membership in the field even when their management
practices diverged from those prescribed by TQM.
The existing literature has focused on how field participants shape either a
field’s social or symbolic boundary but has not studied how these two bound-
aries are influenced in concert. Jones et al. (2012) showed how contestation
among architects about what constituted a modern building expanded the sym-
bolic boundary of modern architecture to encompass more diverse kinds of
buildings. Though that study provided insight into the contested nature of how
a field’s symbolic boundary is formed, it did not explore how changes in the
symbolic boundary shaped who had access to the field’s resources. Likewise,
Hoffman (1999) detailed how corporate environmentalism in the U.S. chemical
industry emerged through contested issues, but missing from that study is an
understanding of how contestation over issues was interrelated with the
resources at stake in the field.
Other studies have focused primarily on the social boundary. For example,
Lawrence (1999) detailed the struggle to create the field of forensic accounting.
During the field’s early period, it consisted primarily of a core community of
Grodal 787
boutique firms. Over time, however, large diversified firms began to claim
membership in the field to access its resources. Missing from this analysis is
how large diversified firms shaped the symbolic boundary to claim membership
in the field. Studying the emergence of social boundaries in satellite radio and
computer workstations, respectively, Navis and Glynn (2010) and Kennedy
(2008) both showed that the social boundaries of a field emerge when firms
associate new organizations with the field. Yet these accounts did not take into
consideration that not all organizations might want to be members of a field or
how changes in the social boundary shape the symbolic boundary.
To study how field participants shape a field’s social and symbolic bound-
aries, we need to investigate their dynamic interrelationship. Disentangling
social and symbolic boundaries, however, is not easy (Gieryn, 1983; Lamont
and Molnar, 2002) because it necessitates studying multiple claims to member-
ship, resource generation and attainment, and varying definitions of the field as
used by diverse communities over time. Yet failing to do so prevents us from
identifying the foundations of unequal access to a field’s resources as bound-
aries change.
Field Boundaries, Communities, and Resources

Fields consist of multiple communities (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Though all
the communities that constitute a field obtain part of their identity from field
participation, they differ in their degree of identification with the field (Glynn,
2008). Core communities tend to enter the field early and focus their activities
on it as their focal field. In turn, their identity is primarily derived from the field’s
collective identity (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Cattani, Ferriani, and Allison, 2014;
see also Dutton, Dukerich, and Harquail, 1994). Any changes to the field’s sym-
bolic boundary thus shape the core community’s identity. For example, early
proponents of ‘‘green chemistry’’—an effort within chemistry to improve the
safety and environmental effects of chemicals—identified strongly with the
field. Challenges to the symbolic boundary of the field therefore became
viewed as a threat to the identity of this core community, which then fought to
regain control (Howard-Grenville et al., 2017).
In contrast, peripheral communities derive only a small part of their identity
from the focal field, while their main source of identity is elsewhere (Cattani,
Ferriani, and Allison, 2014). For example, newcomers to the field of green
chemistry from private industry or other parts of the chemistry field were not
as dedicated to green chemistry as the core community and obtained their
identity primarily from their existing scientific disciplines (Howard-Grenville
et al., 2017). Because communities often participate in multiple fields at once,
peripheral communities might enter and exit a particular field based on the
monetary and cultural resources perceived to be associated with it, without
being dedicated to its core values and principles.
Viewing the construction of field boundaries from the perspective of multiple
communities opens up the question of whether boundary practices by core
and peripheral communities differ and whether these practices might change
during a field’s formation (Wry, Lounsbury, and Glynn, 2011). The existing liter-
ature has focused primarily on the actions of core communities. Wry and col-
leagues (2011), for example, posited that during the early period of field
formation, core communities might define resourceful outsiders as part of the
field in hopes of influencing stakeholders’ perception of the field’s desirability

and generating resources for the field. Lounsbury, Ventresca, and Hirsch (2003)
showed that core communities engaged in framing activities to stimulate par-
ticipation in recycling. Likewise, Jones and colleagues (2012) showed that early
core communities in the field of modern architecture attracted new resourceful
participants to the field by inviting them to join.
We know less about the actions of peripheral communities, which often
enter a field later. Though the existing literature has primarily cast them as
judges unaffiliated with the core communities’ activities (Hsu and Hannan,
2005; Hannan, Pólos, and Carroll, 2007; Navis and Glynn, 2010), the role periph-
eral communities play in shaping field boundaries might be more expansive.
Some research has suggested, for example, that peripheral communities are
more prone to engage in practices that fit poorly with the field’s symbolic
boundary (Anteby, 2010; Granqvist, Grodal, and Woolley, 2013). Organizations
might change their name or that of their product to invoke references to the
field to increase their legitimacy or attract resources, despite their tangential
relationship to the field’s core activities (Lee, 2001; Glynn and Abzug, 2002;
Glynn and Marquis, 2004; Zhao, Ishihara, and Lounsbury, 2013). Peripheral
organizations may also claim association with the field in employment ads
(Zilber, 2006), press releases (Pontikes, 2012), or conferences (Granqvist,
Grodal, and Woolley, 2013) to advance their strategic interests. Early partici-
pants in the purist Dogme film movement, for example, were dedicated to the
core values of eliminating post-production manipulations of filmed material;
later, peripheral participants tried to relax these constraints, diluting what it
meant to produce a Dogme film. Taken to an extreme, such activities can alter
the field’s boundaries, reframing its activities, altering its collective identity, and
creating misalignment between its social and symbolic boundaries.
This body of research demonstrates the importance of studying how both
types of field boundaries evolve in concert, which I begin to do by identifying
how communities in the nanotechnology field expanded and contracted the
definition of the field to shape the symbolic boundary and, in turn, used this
symbolic boundary to influence the social boundary and restrict who could
access the field’s cultural and monetary resources. In detailing this process I
explain how identity and resources drive how communities shape a field’s
social and symbolic boundaries over time.
METHODS
Though much existing research has been done in settings in which field bound-
aries were defined by a regulatory body (see, e.g., Hoffman, 1999; Zietsma and
Lawrence, 2010), research in less institutionalized settings is lacking.
Considering fields with less regulatory oversight may provide more insight into
the dynamics of how both core and peripheral communities shape a field’s
social and symbolic boundaries, because in these instances communities may
have more influence. For example, peripheral communities may be able to
claim membership more easily in less institutionalized fields, as no regulatory
body polices such claims for their veracity.
Based on these considerations, I chose to study the nascent nanotechnol-
ogy field. Nanotechnology is invisible to the naked eye and involves complex
science. Such complexity and remoteness from lived experience make the field
Grodal 789
more difficult to comprehend and open to interpretation and contestation. At

the same time, the nanotechnology field is large and heterogeneous, involving
multiple diverse communities (Kennedy, Lo, and Lounsbury, 2010; Granqvist
and Laurila, 2011; Kaplan and Radin, 2011).
The National Nanotechnology Initiative describes nanotechnology as
research, engineering, and technology that operate at the nanometer scale
(National Science and Technology Council, 2000).1 Research in nanoscience
can be traced back to the 1950s, but the major scientific breakthroughs that led
to the advancement of nanoscience happened in the early 1980s (Granqvist
and Laurila, 2011; Wry, Lounsbury, and Jennings, 2014) when research in
materials science, physics, electrical engineering, and chemistry were conver-
ging on the nanoscale. I provide an overview of key events in the formation
of the nanotechnology field in table A1 in the Online Appendix (http://journals
.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0001839217744555).
Data Collection
I employed a grounded-theory approach to data collection and analysis (Strauss
and Corbin, 1994) and collected four types of data: (1) ethnographic observa-
tions at conferences and networking events; (2) interviews with members of
core and peripheral communities; (3) archival data from each of the five com-
munities involved in the nanotechnology field; and (4) nanotechnology defini-
tions found in the top 50 U.S. newspapers. Table 1 provides an overview of
these data.
Ethnographic observations. I conducted ethnographic observations at 26

nanotechnology conferences and networking meetings focused on the com-
mercialization of nanotechnology primarily from 2003 to 2005 (I attended one
conference in 2016). Conferences and networking meetings can be field-
configuring events (see Garud, 2008; Zilber, 2012) during which participants
actively discuss, contest, and negotiate field boundaries. At these events, I
found that opinions about who and what should be included in the field varied
depending on a community’s membership.
From my observations, I identified five main communities involved in the
nanotechnology field: (1) futurists, (2) government officials, (3) service provi-
ders, (4) entrepreneurs, and (5) university scientists. These communities dif-
fered in their degree of cohesion, but for all of them ‘‘membership in the
collective provid[ed] social and cultural resources that shape[d] their actions,’’
which resulted either from ‘‘propinquity, interest in a common goal, or common
identity’’ (Marquis, Lounsbury, and Greenwood, 2011: xvi). The participants in
the futurist community were followers of Eric Drexler and his nonprofit organi-
zation, the Foresight Institute. Drexler was a Ph.D. student at MIT who in 1986
wrote an influential book, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of
Nanotechnology, which introduced the concept of nanotechnology, to great
interest, in the popular press. Members of the futurist community self-
identified as a core community in the nanotechnology field. An early participant
stated that ‘‘we were engaged . . . we all wanted nanotechnology to develop
safely.’’ The government community comprised employees in congressional
1
One nanometer is one billionth of a meter.
Table 1. Overview of the Data
Peripheral Communities
Core Communities
Service University
Futurists Government providers Entrepreneurs scientists
Interviews (N = 85)
2003–2005 13 11 18 24 11
(N = 77)
2016 (N = 8) 2 1 1 4
Archival data Foresight Update Congressional Business press* Press releases The journal
source hearings Science
Archival data 1987–2004 1991–2005 1984–2005 1988–2005 1956–2005
years
Articles analyzed 926 925 494 4,157 509
quantitatively:
7,011
Articles analyzed 204 142 189 170 233
qualitatively: 938
Members Participants at Members of Lawyers, Employees at Researchers at
activities government consultants, companies universities and
organized by the agencies and VCs, conference government labs
Foresight work groups organizers, and
Institute journalists
Identification with High High Lower Low Low

the The futurist Government Most service Many Most scientists
nanotechnology community was officials providers had a entrepreneurs perceived their
field founded to championed the fleeting interest already scientific
stimulate and creation of the in identified with discipline as the
manage the National nanotechnology. another field. main locus for
nanotechnology Nanotechnology Few were Few identified identification.
field. Initiative (NNI), dedicated to the primarily with
and their own field. nanotechnology.
success was
linked to the
success of the
initiative.
Example ‘‘We were ‘‘[T]he NNI ‘‘We founded ‘‘I see us as an ‘‘I only refer to
focused on became one of NanoTrade to instrument- my work as
developing our core serve the tation company. nanotech in
nanotech . . . initiatives . . . for growing interest . . . We go to grant
nanotechnology some this in nanotech.’’ nanotech things applications.’’
was the reason became the Vs: ‘‘We jumped sometimes.’’ ‘‘[N]anotech is
the Foresight defining project in because that ‘‘We do biotech, not really what
Institute was of their tenure.’’ was what nanotech, lab- we do.’’
founded.’’ people wanted on-a-chip.’’
to hear.’’
*Fortune, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Business Week.

Grodal 791
offices and government agencies, as well as appointees to government com-

mittees, who saw themselves as committed to the interests of the U.S. gov-
ernment. A government official explained, ‘‘I am part of a group [of
government officials] . . . who are working to increase funding for science and
technology . . . we view innovation as the engine of growth.’’
Venture capitalists, conference organizers, and journalists at trade maga-
zines composed the community of service providers, who were united around
the goal of stimulating demand for their services in the emerging nanotechnol-
ogy field even though they came from diverse backgrounds. A conference
organizer stated, ‘‘There are a lot of us . . . working on the sideline of nanotech
. . . driving interest.’’ The community of entrepreneurs included representatives
from small and large as well as private and public firms. One entrepreneur said,
‘‘We [entrepreneurs] bring a specific perspective. . . . At these [nanotech]
events I seek out other founders.’’ Researchers at universities and government
research facilities made up the community of university scientists, who had a
strong identification with the community of fellow scientists (see also Price,
1963; Crane, 1969). One commented, ‘‘First and foremost I am a scientist . . .
nano is just a small part of what I do.’’ More information on each of these com-
munities and their relationship to the nanotechnology field is provided in table 1.
Interviews. To deepen my understanding of how communities constructed

the boundaries of the nanotechnology field, I interviewed participants from
each community. From 2003 to 2005, I conducted 77 interviews. In 2016, I
conducted an additional eight interviews to reaffirm my findings and ask follow-
up questions, for a total of 85 interviews. I approached the initial interviewees
at nanotechnology conferences and networking events or located them
through nanotechnology directories, and I identified subsequent interviewees
using snowball sampling. Table 1 displays the distribution of interviews among
the five communities involved in the field.
Archival data. To understand how the boundaries were constructed over

time, I collected an extensive set of archival materials from newspapers, trade
journals, press releases, newsletters, and congressional records, among others
(see Ventresca and Mohr, 2002). I followed Hoffman’s (1999: 5) advice that
studies of fields ‘‘must be located within each actor’s particular communication
and interaction channels’’ and Abrahamson and Eisenman’s (2008) call to study
discourse longitudinally. I located communication channels that represented
each of the five communities and used data from these sources to construct a
dataset of articles for each community from the time participants in the com-
munity began to talk about nanoscience up to and including 2005. I searched
for articles pertaining to nanoscience, which is broader than just the term
‘‘nanotechnology,’’ to avoid left-censoring of the data and avoid bias in the data
due to shifting terminologies referring to the field. Across the five databases,
the search yielded 7,011 articles. I used this larger sample to pinpoint when
each community became involved in nanotechnology and how its members
discussed the boundaries of the field. To develop a precise understanding of
the social and symbolic boundaries, I considered nanoscience articles that
referenced nanotechnology, as well as articles that discussed nanoscience but
did not reference nanotechnology.
To create a representative sample of articles from each of the five datasets

for qualitative analysis, I selected one article each month. If no article appeared
in a focal month, I searched for articles in the following month and selected
two articles if they were available. In the early years, if less than 12 articles
existed for a particular year, I included all articles from that year in the analysis
regardless of when they were published. Table 1 provides an overview of the
complete set of archival data and the subset of 938 articles selected for in-
depth qualitative analysis. I used these five archival datasets to create a
detailed longitudinal understanding of the practices that each community
engaged in to shape the social and symbolic boundaries of the nanotechnology
field from the early 1980s to 2005.
Nanotechnology definitions. To investigate change in the symbolic bound-

aries of nanotechnology over time, the last step in my data collection was to
gather changing definitions of nanotechnology. Every month I chose definitions
from articles that were published on or close to the 1st and the 15th day of the
month from the top 50 U.S. newspapers (defined by circulation) from 1987,
when the first definition of nanotechnology appeared, to 2005. As above, if no
definition appeared in a focal month, I oversampled on definitions in the follow-
ing months. This methodology generated a total of 146 definitions.
Data Analysis
I coded the ethnographic observations, interviews, and archival data using a
grounded theory-building methodology (see Spradley, 1979). Consistent with this
tradition, my analysis cycled among deeply analyzing the data, developing theore-
tical categories, and relating these insights to the existing literature on social and
symbolic boundaries in emerging fields. The first step in data analysis was open
coding (see Strauss and Corbin, 1990, 1994), which began during my initial analy-
sis of the ethnographic observations and continued during collection of the inter-
views and archival data in an iterative fashion. During open coding I developed
some broad and some very specific codes. Through several rounds of iteration
and moving back and forth between broad and specific codes, I reached a level
of theoretical saturation. My data analysis then proceeded in five stages.
Stage 1: Creating social and symbolic boundaries. One theme that

emerged in the first stage of analysis was the distinction between the social
and symbolic boundary. Following Lamont and Molnar (2002), I coded defini-
tions of what belonged to the field as the creation of a symbolic boundary. I
thus coded the statement by a service provider that ‘‘Nanotechnology is
defined as anything that is at the nano-scale’’ as an example of what nanotech-
nology was, shaping the symbolic boundary. I also coded the change in defini-
tions of nanotechnology in newspaper articles to detail changes in the symbolic
boundary systematically over time.
I tracked systematic changes in membership claims to the field by searching
for the frequency with which each community used the words ‘‘nanotech’’ or
‘‘nanotechnology’’ when referencing nanoscience. To identify the social bound-
ary, I analyzed whether these membership claims were associated with access
to the field’s cultural and financial resources (Lamont, 1992). I thus coded the
statements ‘‘I have several nanotechnology grants’’ and ‘‘we have not received
Grodal 793
any NNI funds’’ as indications of who had or did not have access to the mone-
tary resources associated with the field. I also coded statements about access
to cultural resources or penalties as evidence of the social boundary. I coded
statements such as ‘‘we get a lot of visibility by claiming to be nano’’ and ‘‘I
say ‘no!’ We are not nano. We would be sending the wrong signals by being
associated with such weird stuff’’ as examples of the social boundary. I coded
such statements about who did and did not access the resources and suffer
the penalties associated with the field to determine the social boundary.
Stage 2: Identifying core and peripheral communities. During the second

stage, I identified core and peripheral communities based on whether commu-
nity members believed the attributes that defined the field also defined their
community—in other words, their degree of identification with the field (see
Dutton, Dukerich, and Harquail, 1994). For example, I coded the statement
‘‘the mission of the Foresight Institute has always been to advance nanotech-
nology’’ as strong identification with the field, whereas I coded the statement
‘‘I see myself primarily as a material scientist. . . . I only use ‘nanotech’ with
funding agencies’’ as weak identification with the field. Thus the Foresight
member would be considered a member of a core community, and the material
scientist would not. Although there was heterogeneity within communities
(particularly among scientists) with regard to how strongly members identified
with the field, the variance across communities was larger, providing additional
evidence for the distinctions among the communities. I found that futurists and
government officials identified strongly with the field and thus constituted its
two core communities. In contrast, I found that service providers, entrepre-
neurs, and scientists identified weakly with the field and thus constituted its
peripheral communities. Table 1 shows how each community’s identification
with the nanotechnology field distinguished it as either core or peripheral.
Stage 3: Identifying changes to the cultural and monetary resources

associated with the field over time. I found that monetary and cultural
resources were a key driver of contestations between the core and peripheral
communities. To understand how access to field resources affected boundary
dynamics, I traced the monetary and cultural resources associated with the
field over time. I identified monetary resources from data on the available gov-
ernment and private funding for nanotechnology. I also coded statements in
the archival, interview, and ethnographic data about perceptions of the availabil-
ity of monetary resources. I identified cultural resources as the contextual and
public symbols that field participants associated with the field (Williams, 1995).
Importantly, the perception of the value of cultural resources varied both across
communities and over time. I coded statements like ‘‘nano signaled novelty
and excitement’’ as statements about the field’s cultural resources from the
perspective of the government community, and I coded statements like ‘‘if you
say ‘nanotechnology’ scientists do not take you serious’’ as evidence of scien-
tists’ perceptions of symbolic penalties associated with the field.
Stage 4: Identifying six boundary practices and their effects. During the
fourth stage of analysis, I followed the advice of Hedström and Swedberg
(1996: 281) to ‘‘clearly explicate the social mechanisms that produce observed
relationships’’ between an explanation and the thing being explained. I identi-
fied six boundary practices: two related to expanding and contracting the sym-
bolic boundary (‘‘enlarging the definition’’ and ‘‘restricting the definition’’) and
four related to expanding and contracting the social boundary (‘‘associating
new members,’’ ‘‘self-claiming membership,’’ ‘‘self-disassociating,’’ and ‘‘poli-
cing membership’’). For example, I coded ‘‘We tried to define nanotechnology
in a more general way’’ as ‘‘enlarging the definition,’’ an expanding symbolic
boundary practice, and ‘‘[the new guidelines included] a new more specific defi-
nition’’ as ‘‘restricting the definition,’’ a contracting symbolic boundary practice.
I coded the statement ‘‘I have been working in this field for a long time . . .
recently I have begun to label my research as ‘nanotech’ in order to get govern-
ment grants’’ as ‘‘self-claiming membership,’’ an expanding social boundary
practice. I coded ‘‘I call people out if they are not really nano’’ as ‘‘policing
membership,’’ a contracting social boundary practice.
After identifying these six practices, I analyzed how core and peripheral com-
munities used them differently. I found that it was primarily peripheral commu-
nities that engaged in self-claiming membership and self-disassociating. Both
peripheral and core communities engaged in the expansive boundary practices,
enlarging the definition of the field and associating new members. In contrast,
it was mostly the core communities that engaged in the contracting boundary
practices of policing membership and restricting the definition of the field. To
make sense of these findings, I examined the temporal development of when
and how core and peripheral communities used these practices.
Stage 5: Identifying relationships among communities, resources, and

boundaries over time. I coded when each community began to participate in
the nanotechnology field and identified how each community used the six
boundary practices. I also mapped the relationship between cultural and mone-
tary resources and the communities’ boundary practices over time. During this
analysis, I identified two inflection points: the first was in 1997, when periph-
eral communities began to self-claim membership in the field, thus beginning
the dramatic expansion of the field’s social boundary; the second was in 2000,
when core communities reacted to the identity and resource threat posed by
the expansion of field boundaries and began contracting the definition of the
field to police who was included within the social boundaries and thus could
access field resources. I chose these inflection points because there was clear
‘‘continuity in the activities within each period and . . . certain discontinuities at
[their] frontiers’’ (Langley, 1999: 703). This analysis led me to identify three
phases of the nanotechnology field: (1) creating field boundaries: 1980s–1997;
(2) expanding field boundaries: 1998–2000; and (3) contracting field boundaries:
2001–2005. Although these phases sometimes overlapped and blurred, for
clarity, I discuss them separately.
HOW COMMUNITIES SHAPE A FIELD’S SOCIAL AND SYMBOLIC

BOUNDARIES
From the inception of the nanotechnology field in the 1980s until 2005 when
nanotechnology became a household word, the symbolic boundary of
Grodal 795
nanotechnology expanded from signifying a miniature mechanical system (e.g.,

nanoscale robots) to include any activity at the nanoscale (e.g., thin films or
nanocompounds). One futurist who had been involved in the nanotechnology
field since its emergence in the 1980s described this broadening: ‘‘The term
‘nanotechnology’ of course has now been expanded . . . to include all sorts of
things that were not part of the original definition of the technology, and to
some extent there had been a parallel growth in the use of the term just to
mean any nanoscale activity.’’ In the late 1980s nanotechnology was defined
as a robotic or computational system. For example, an article in the Boston
Globe on January 24, 1988 defined nanotechnology as ‘‘creating microscopic
computers.’’ Seventeen years later, on October 26, 2005, the New York Times
defined nanotechnology as ‘‘the science of manipulating very small particles,’’
a broad definition that could apply to an expansive array of science ranging from
chemistry and materials science to biotechnology.
During this same period, the number of communities involved with the nano-
technology field increased from one (the founding futurist community) to five.
The increase in membership claims meant that more communities were vying
for access to the field’s resources and creating contestation over the field’s
social boundary. Figure 1 shows the shift in membership claims over the study
period. The period also saw a dramatic change in the monetary and cultural
resources associated with the field, as shown in figure 2 and table 2. Initially,
only cultural resources were associated with the field; these took the form of
stories and symbols inspired by science fiction about a futuristic utopia created
by nanotechnology. Later on, however, articles about nanotechnology focused
on government support for a technology aimed at spurring the next technologi-
cal revolution. After the enactment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative in
2001, the field became flush with monetary resources as both venture capital-
ists and the U.S. government created funds earmarked for nanotechnology.
Beneath this seemingly uniform development lies a sea of contestation over
the boundaries and a reversal of boundary practices by both core and peripheral
communities. As I discovered in Stage 4 of my data analysis, field participants
engaged in two practices to shape the symbolic boundary: enlarging the defini-
tion and restricting the definition. Changes in the social boundary happened
when communities engaged in four practices: associating new members, self-
claiming membership, policing membership, and self-disassociating. Table 3
shows how core and peripheral communities used these six boundary prac-
tices to shape field boundaries. Table 4 provides an overview of how the com-
munities used the practices during each of the three phases. I include
illustrative quotes of the six boundary practices throughout the next section
and provide further examples in table A2 in the Online Appendix.
The Boundary Practices of Core and Peripheral Communities
Phase 1: Creating field boundaries (1980s–1997). During this first phase,

core communities created and enlarged the symbolic boundary of the field and
subsequently used this expanded boundary to attract individuals and organiza-
tions that would have access to the field’s resources, thereby expanding the
social boundary.
Figure 1. Informing the social boundary: Expanding claims to membership in the

nanotechnology field.*
100
90
80
70
Percentage of articles
60
50 Entrepreneurs
Service Providers
40 Futurists
30 Government officials
University scientists
20
10
0
1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Phase 1:Creating field boundaries (1980s–1997) Phase 2: Phase 3:

Expanding field Contracting field
boundaries boundaries
(1998–2000) (2001–2005)
* The y-axis represents the percentage of articles about nanoscience that also mention nanotechnology.
Table 2. Cultural Resources Associated with the Nanotechnology Field over Time
Phase 1: Creating field Phase 2: Expanding field Phase 3: Contracting field

boundaries (1980s–1997) boundaries (1998–2000) boundaries (2001–2005)
The core futurist community creates Core and peripheral communities Peripheral communities create stories
stories and symbols about create stories and symbols about and symbols about nanotechnology as
nanotechnology as nanorobots and nanotechnology as the next big a funding opportunity and the next big
nanomachines. scientific revolution. commercial market.
Examples
‘‘Because [nanorobots] will let us place ‘‘[M]aterials with 10 times the strength ‘‘Nanotechnology is the Next-Big-
atoms in almost any reasonable of steel and only a fraction of the Thing. It is going to be a 1 trillion
arrangement, they will let us build weight; shrinking all the information at dollar market by 2015.’’ (Interview,
almost anything that the laws of the Library of Congress into a device peripheral member)
nature allow to exist.’’ (Drexler, 1986: the size of a sugar cube; detecting ‘‘Nanotechnology is going transform all
14, core member) cancerous tumors that are only a few industries. Applications include semi-
‘‘Drexler’s ideas about nanorobots cells in size.’’ (Clinton, 2000: 3, core conductors, biotechnology, thin films
were exciting. . . . We could recreate member) . . . even clothing.’’ (Interview,
the world at the nano-scale.’’ ‘‘There were many exciting ideas about peripheral member)
(Interview, core member) how nanotech would create new ‘‘The National Nanotechnology Initiative
‘‘Nanotechnology . . . was that kind of technologies, new jobs . . . which got changed everything . . . now it is
first-order obvious. When you hear senators interested.’’ (Interview, core mainstream.’’ (Interview, peripheral
about it you knew that it was going to member) member)
happen.’’ (Interview, core member) ‘‘It began to change . . . it was the late ‘‘Many see nano very differently now
‘90s. Many were now talking about that the government is involved.’’
nano in standard science terms.’’ (Interview, peripheral member)
(Interview, peripheral member)
Grodal 797
Figure 2. Monetary resources associated with the nanotechnology field over time.*
Annual spending
Billion $
Monetary resources
1.5 VC funding
Government
1.0 funding
VC funding
0.5 Government
estimate*
funding estimate*
1986 1990 1995 2000 2005
* Data available only starting in 1997, because money flowing to nanotechnology was not tracked prior to
this time.
Table 3. The Use of Field Boundary Practices by Core and Peripheral Communities*
Core communities Peripheral communities
Boundary Service Entrepre- University Effect on

Boundary practices Futurist Government providers neurs scientists boundaries
Symbolic Enlarging the definition • • •

Social Associating new members
Self-claiming membership
• • •
• • •
} Expanding
Symbolic Restricting the definition • •

Social Policing membership
Self-disassociating
• • •
• •
} Contracting
* A black circle signifies that the community engaged frequently in the boundary practice. The semicircle signifies
that the community engaged infrequently in the boundary practice.
Table 4. Field Boundary Practices Used during Field Formation
Phase 1: Phase 2: Phase 3:

Creating Expanding Contracting Effect on
Boundary boundaries boundaries boundaries field
Boundary practices (1980s–1997) (1998–2000) (2001–2005) boundaries
Symbolic Enlarging the definition Core communities Core communities Peripheral communities
Social Associating new members
Self-claiming membership
Core communities Core communities
Peripheral
Peripheral communities
}
Expanding
communities
Symbolic Restricting the definition n.a. n.a. Core communities
Social Policing membership
Self-disassociating
n.a.
Peripheral
n.a.
n.a.
Core communities
}
Contracting
communities
Enlarging the symbolic boundary and infusing the field with cultural
resources. In the early 1980s, Eric Drexler began musing about the possibility
of constructing nanoscale mechanical systems that mirrored the functioning of
biological organisms. Drexler called these nanoscale machines ‘‘nanotechnol-

ogy’’ and founded a nonprofit, the Foresight Institute, to cautiously develop it.
A community of people formed around the Foresight Institute with the
expressed purpose of enabling the future of nanotechnology. The identity of
this community centered on stimulating and managing the growth of the field.
An early futurist recalled that ‘‘we were creating a group of engaged
individuals—people who cared deeply about nanotechnology.’’ The futurists
were the field’s first core community.
One of the core community’s first actions was to create the field’s symbolic
boundary by defining what ought to be associated with the nanotechnology
field. In Drexler’s first book, Engines of Creation (1986: 4–5), he wrote: ‘‘The
new technology will handle individual atoms and molecules with control and
precision. . . . We can use the term ‘nanotechnology’ . . . to describe the new
style of technology. The engineers of the new technology will build both nano-
circuits and nanomachines.’’ That is, the core community defined nanotechnol-
ogy as the creation of nanosized machines, electronics, and robots. The
futurists also explicated the consequences of nanotechnology by mixing scien-
tific principles with ideas from science fiction: ‘‘In short, replicating assemblers
will copy themselves by the ton, then make other products such as computers,
rocket engines, chairs, and so forth. They will make disassemblers able to
break down rock to supply raw material. . . . There is nothing too startling about
growing a rocket engine in a specially prepared vat’’ (Drexler, 1986: 63).
Over time, this core community of futurists realized that for nanotechnology
to succeed they needed to expand the definition of the field to appeal to more
communities. They thus enlarged the definition, creating a definition of nano-
technology that included more diverse interpretations. During the early 1990s,
the core community wrote several books to attract interest in nanotechnology
from other communities. In Unbounding the Future, Drexler, Peterson, and
Pergamit (1991: 19) enlarged the definition of nanotechnology to ‘‘[t]horough,
inexpensive control of the structure of matter based on molecule-by-molecule
control of product and byproducts’’—a definition that broadened nanotechnol-
ogy beyond the creation of robotic systems yet maintained the idea of control
at the molecular level. A futurist who was involved in writing one of the early
books explained:
The readership was not attracting people coming from the non-technical side of the
house, so that would be folks from business, intelligent people with a humanities
background, people in law, politics. . . . And if what you were interested in doing was
seeing the field develop, not just technically but also with a business perspective,
you’re going to need to fund this thing. . . . So you just need to be able to open this
dialogue. . . . So I mean [expanding the definition] was deliberately based on audi-
ence targeting.
Over the course of the early 1990s, this core community’s efforts at expanding
the definition of nanotechnology were increasingly successful. By including a
broader range of technologies and commercial products, the core community
expanded the symbolic boundary of what could be considered nanotechnology.
At the same time as these books and other writings expanded the symbolic
boundary, the futurists also tried to infuse the field with cultural and monetary
resources. They added cultural resources by generating stories and symbols
Grodal 799
about the impact the nanotechnology revolution would have on our society by
making ‘‘supercomputers, air conditioner and solar cells’’ as ‘‘cheap as wood,’’
thereby ‘‘shattering a whole set of technological and economic barriers more or
less at one stroke’’ (Drexler, Peterson, and Pergamit, 1991: 29–33). Their
attempts at securing monetary resources for the field were less successful.
For example, they founded a second nonprofit organization, the Institute for
Molecular Manufacturing, as a vehicle to attract research funding, but few
donors expressed interest. One futurist remembered this early period:
Well, I think that the idea [behind the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing] was pri-
marily . . . to get funded to do nanotech research. . . . The idea was that Foresight
would be more educational and conferences . . . and that this would be more R&D.
But it didn’t actually work out that way partly because the funding situation for . . .
nanotech was years off, way too early.
Contestation over the field’s social boundary. The core community’s failure
to attract monetary resources to the field in the early period led members to sti-
mulate membership in the field in other ways. They used the enlarged symbolic
boundary to expand the field’s social boundary by associating new members—
that is, they asserted that other communities were members of the field. In
doing so, they allowed these communities access to the field’s cultural
resources. In an early newsletter (Foresight Update 2, 1987: 1), Drexler stated
that there were ‘‘dozens or hundreds of research groups, in industry and acade-
mia’’ that were ‘‘contributing to the emergence of nanotechnology.’’ Attempts
at expanding membership aimed to create alignment between the field’s sym-
bolic and social boundary, so that all people doing work that fit within the sym-
bolic boundary were also viewed as field members. The core community’s
attempts to associate scientists and entrepreneurs with the field were largely
unsuccessful, however, because these communities viewed the cultural
resources associated with nanotechnology negatively. As a scientist explained:
In my mind [the rejection of nanotechnology] was nothing more than an ad hominem

attack on Eric [Drexler]. It just absolutely wasn’t fair. And I attribute a lot of the criti-
cism that came from the physical science community to the fact that even though
people were even at that point talking about multidisciplinary science, nobody was
practicing it. If you were a chemist your peers were chemists and if you were a phy-
sicist your peers were physicists. And if you started talking outside of your discipline
you were smacked down by your senior peers. And there was no peer group for
nanotechnology.
Thus many entrepreneurs and scientists self-disassociated by actively distan-

cing themselves from the field. The rhetoric of the core community of futurists
violated principles of scientific purity (see Gieryn, 1983), and many scientists
and entrepreneurs therefore shunned engaging with the field. A futurist
lamented:
The kiss of death was that we had Eric all over the Web site [for the Institute for
Molecular Manufacturing] . . . so people would look at it and say, ‘‘Oh, you mean
you’re involved with Eric Drexler?’’ Like in that tone of voice. And I would say,
‘‘Yes.’’ And they would say. . . . ‘‘Well, it’s obvious that we’ve already written him off
as a crackpot.’’
The core community of futurists also tried, with more success, to entice the
U.S. government to participate in the field. An early core member explained
how ‘‘we called out . . . people within NASA who were really doing nano-
related work. . . . Some were intrigued.’’ By the mid-1990s, after about 10
years of recruiting members into the field, the core community found a recep-
tive audience among some government officials who viewed the cultural
resources associated with the nanotechnology field positively. These officials
were not hindered by the perceptions of scientific purity dominant in the scien-
tific community. Instead, they viewed the nanotechnology field as rife with cul-
tural resources that could excite congressional members about funding science
and engineering. As a government official explained, ‘‘The problem is, whether
we like it or not, if you walk into Congress and you say, ‘chemistry,’ or you say,
‘physics,’ or you say, ‘mathematics’ to them, it says, ‘more of the same.’ And
so they are looking for new and exciting things that should benefit the country,
and I think the term [nanotechnology] kind of got that.’’ Several government
officials became very involved in nanotechnology, joining the field’s core com-
munity, and it became the brainchild of their tenure. As another government
official explained, ‘‘This is the biggest thing that I have done. . . . I think that
people associate me with nano.’’
The core community also associated service providers who were interested
in participating (e.g., journalists, conference organizers, consultants, and law-
yers) with the nanotechnology field. One conference organizer explained, ‘‘We
are always looking for ‘The Next Big Thing’—people want to hear about the
new things that are going on. That is what drives business.’’ In contrast to the
scientists, who viewed membership in the field as a penalty, service providers
perceived the cultural resources associated with nanotechnology positively. A
publisher noted, ‘‘There was excitement around nanotechnology.’’ For many
service providers, however, nanotechnology was but one field in which they
were engaged, and their identification with the field was therefore weak. A pat-
ent lawyer explained this transient relationship: ‘‘We participate in all sorts of
technologies—nano for us is just an emerging opportunity.’’ Most service provi-
ders viewed nanotechnology as a fleeting opportunity—a field in which they
might be involved temporarily until other opportunities presented themselves.
The service providers therefore became the first peripheral community in the
nanotechnology field.
Phase 2: Expanding field boundaries (1998–2000). Both core and periph-

eral communities were involved in the dynamics and contestations over
expanding the field’s boundaries. Simultaneously, the U.S. government began
to allocate monetary resources to the field, which set in motion the expansion
of the social boundary and provided incentives for peripheral communities to
claim field membership.
Enlarging the symbolic boundary. Starting around 1998, when the govern-
ment became a core member of the field, the core communities attempted to
create a definition of nanotechnology that would work across multiple govern-
mental agencies, ranging from the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) to the National Science Foundation (NSF) to the National
Institutes of Health (NIH). This new definition was more encompassing
because it was no longer restricted to the creation of only machines at the
Grodal 801
nanoscale, but core communities maintained that it had to include some

‘‘degree of control’’—meaning it involved placing atoms in specific locations. A
government official explained, ‘‘Nanotechnology is not just anything that is less
than 100 nanometers—it needs some degree of control, some precision.’’ The
core communities perceived the need to carefully control the expansion of the
symbolic boundary; at stake for them was the field’s collective identity. A core
member noted, ‘‘We were still committed to the little robots . . . that’s why
people were involved.’’
In contrast, service providers—a peripheral community—were bolder in their
attempts to expand the definition of nanotechnology. Because service provi-
ders were less dedicated to the nanotechnology field, their main goal was to
create a definition that would make their services (such as conferences, trade
magazines, and legal advice) relevant to a large number of clients. An organizer
of networking events explained that ‘‘we used a broad definition of nanotech-
nology’’ so as ‘‘not to exclude any specific technologies.’’ Thus this peripheral
community expanded the definition of nanotechnology beyond that advocated
by the core communities to include activities at the nanoscale in which firms
and scientists were currently involved even if their work did not include any
degree of control at the molecular level. This expansion weakened the distinc-
tion between nanotechnology and other proximate fields, such as materials sci-
ence, physics, or chemistry, thus diluting the symbolic boundary that the core
communities had erected and tailored. One service provider explained, ‘‘It’s dif-
ficult to say how they [nanotechnology and other sciences] are different—
nanotech is really just a kind of materials science.’’
Expanding the social boundary. Both core and peripheral communities used
the expanded symbolic boundary of nanotechnology, as they defined it, to
increase membership in the field, and they associated new members based on
their differing perceptions of the symbolic boundary. Core communities adher-
ing to a more restrictive symbolic boundary granted membership only to promi-
nent scientists and entrepreneurs whose work ‘‘contained an element of
control.’’ For example, to shepherd support for nanotechnology through the
U.S. Congress, the CEO of a nonprofit organization explained how his organiza-
tion was granted membership to the nanotechnology field: ‘‘I do think it was
useful for Congress to point to us and say, ‘Look, there’s an industrial associa-
tion in existence. See, [nanotechnology] is real.’ . . . So to be able to show . . .
us—a business community—that’s a step forward.’’ In associating a select set
of scientists and entrepreneurs with the field, core communities aimed to
maintain alignment between the social and symbolic boundaries.
In contrast, drawing on a more expansive symbolic boundary, service provi-
ders identified a plethora of companies and university scientists that could be
showcased at conferences and written about in magazines. One CEO
explained that based on the more restrictive symbolic boundary he did not con-
sider his company to belong to the nanotechnology field; however, conference
organizers kept including his firm:
This idea [that nanotechnology] is things that are smaller than a hundred nanometers,
that by virtue of those dimensions produce novel physical properties—that’s not
what we’re doing at all. But there we are, lumped into nanotechnology. Neither we
nor XynTinic [another company presenting at the conference] are really nanotechnol-
ogy by that definition.
In particular, the peripheral community tried to involve successful entrepre-

neurs and scientists like the CEO above who would make their conferences
and journal articles attractive to their customers.
This expanded membership in nanotechnology was consequential. With its
mix of scientific disciplines and lingering traces of language and imagery from
science fiction, nanotechnology was not the ideal home for most hard scien-
tists (see Granqvist and Laurila, 2011; Kaplan and Radin, 2011). Although a few
scientists, like Mihail Roco and Richard Smalley, worked actively to build sup-
port for nanotechnology (Roco, Williams, and Alivisatos, 2000), most other
scientists did not identify with the nanotechnology field. Likewise, many entre-
preneurs did not view nanotechnology as a serious commercial endeavor. Both
university scientists and entrepreneurs wanted to participate in the field in
order to access its resources, but their core identity was with other fields. A
scientist explained that he and his colleagues never used the label nanotechnol-
ogy when talking to each other but only when they were applying for funding:
I know a lot of people from chemistry doing nanoscience and technology, and when
they talk within the scientific community, they don’t use the [labels] nanoscience and
nanotechnology. . . . When they talk to others in industry, and venture capitalists they
certainly use these terms a lot, because this is what . . . brings attention. . . . So, two
things: . . . [First] you don’t need to use nanoscience and technology terms to encour-
age your colleagues. . . . [Second] you do understand the significance of these terms
to the public eye. [When you talk to funders] you might want to use layman terms to
describe your work.
Associating peripheral new members who identified only weakly with the field
granted these new participants access to the field’s resources, thus expanding
the social boundary. An entrepreneur admitted, ‘‘Why nano? . . . It makes us
visible.’’ These new members then began to exert their own influence on both
the symbolic and the social boundary, increasing both misalignment between
the field boundaries and contestation among the communities.
Increase in monetary resources and social boundary expansion. The expan-
sion of the symbolic boundary also altered the field’s cultural resources. The
expansion of the symbolic boundary to include technologies aligned with exist-
ing scientific work weakened previous associations with science fiction, which
had prevented peripheral communities from claiming membership in the field.
One scientist explained, ‘‘Nanotech was no longer viewed as sci-fi. . . . I could
see the connections to my work.’’ During this phase the social boundary of
nanotechnology also expanded through self-claiming membership—i.e., poten-
tial participants claiming to belong to the field in order to access the field’s
resources. An entrepreneur explained, ‘‘You began to see a lot of firms putting
‘nano’ in their name . . . it helps with funding.’’ During the late 1990s the
expanded symbolic boundaries enticed more peripheral members to self-claim
membership in the field, albeit at first only slowly.
The incentive for peripheral communities to self-claim field membership
increased in the beginning of the new millennium. Government officials, after
years of building support among representatives from the various government
agencies and building coalitions with influential politicians, had been successful
at convincing Congress to fund the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI).
On January 21, 2000, President Bill Clinton announced ‘‘a major new national
Grodal 803
nanotechnology initiative worth $500 million.’’ In 2001 the budget of the NNI
was $363 million, and that steadily increased to $1.43 billion in 2005
(www.nano.gov/node/1573). This sharp rise in monetary resources changed
the field dynamics. A peripheral member explained that ‘‘after the government
[became involved] many began to look to nanotech as the Next Big Thing. It
changed things.’’ Many participants in peripheral communities began to self-
claim that their existing work was nanotechnology. Another peripheral member
I interviewed had referenced his work as ‘‘materials science’’ or ‘‘photovol-
taics’’ throughout his entire academic career, but after the government associ-
ated resources with the nanotechnology field, he ‘‘began to refer to his work
as nanotechnology’’ in grant proposals because he believed that it increased
his ‘‘probability of getting funded.’’
Many field participants noted the explosion in claims to membership in nano-
technology work. A core member explained that he had ‘‘even seen people
lately who are working with complex molecules that say they are nanotechnol-
ogy’’— that is, people doing basic chemistry self-claiming membership in nano-
technology. And a peripheral member complained to me that companies used
the word ‘‘nanotechnology’’ to describe their products even though they did
not fit within the symbolic boundary: ‘‘Unfortunately, I think ‘nano’ has become
misused. Anything that seems to be smaller than the normal product line they
call nano, like nano-switches as big as your watch. It’s ridiculous.’’
These claims were motivated by access to not only monetary resources but
also cultural resources in the form of visibility and increased reputation. One
peripheral member explained this dynamic:
Let’s take HP . . . it’s squandering away its corporate R&D and they need a story.
What do they find? They find nanotechnology. Their researchers have been studying
‘‘nanotechnology’’ for the last 30 years, [but now] they started producing graphs and
charts and their researchers started applying for and getting [nano] awards. So the
company can create a story that, ‘‘Oh, nanotechnology is next.’’
Playing up such claims, as well as recognizing the current buzz, the American
Chemical Association’s ironic slogan to advertise its 2005 annual conference
was ‘‘What is a nine letter word for nanotechnology? ‘Chemistry’.’’ Such ram-
pant claims to membership by peripheral communities accelerated the expan-
sion of the social boundary so that an increasing number of participants in each
community accessed the field’s cultural and monetary resources. This expan-
sion increased competition for the field’s monetary resources as more core
members found themselves unable to obtain the resources they had once
helped attract.
Phase 3: Contracting field boundaries (2001–2005). After 2001 a crush of

peripheral participants began to claim membership in nanotechnology to access
the abundant monetary resources associated with the field. It was not until this
third phase that most entrepreneurs and university scientists began to self-
claim membership in the nanotechnology field. These increased membership
claims by peripheral communities profoundly affected the symbolic boundary.
The expansion of the social boundary to provide resources to peripheral mem-
bers who had only a weak fit with the symbolic boundary created contradic-
tions between the two boundary types. For many peripheral members this
misalignment was not a problem because they did not identify with the field.
For others, it was a strategic opportunity to enlarge the symbolic boundary
even further. For example, in 2005 an article appeared in the Chicago Sun-
Times stating, ‘‘Nanotechnology [is] the science of creating things on a molecu-
lar level,’’ a definition that considered any technology at the molecular scale—
from materials science, applied physics, chemistry, biotechnology, and electri-
cal engineering—to be within the symbolic boundary of nanotechnology. A per-
ipheral member I spoke with explained this dynamic, which started with
magazines writing interesting stories about nanotechnology, in turn fueling the
interests of investors, scientists, and entrepreneurs and creating a self-
reinforcing cycle:
There are magazines that have just basically started [the interest in nanotechnology].
. . . Some [investors] said . . . if this thing is supposed to happen ten years from now
and I could . . . make it happen in five years I’m going to hit the home run. . . . [After]
the first few investment stages professors start looking at it and saying, ‘‘well, this is
getting funded, this is my chance,’’ and they get in. . . . It’s an indirect network effect
because if you get funded you can apply for awards, you get more publicity and a
whole bunch of things start happening. More magazine articles are written.
What he described demonstrates how the enlargement of the symbolic

boundary fueled the expansion of the social boundary; an enlarged definition
made it easier for peripheral communities to self-claim membership in the field.
This expansion of the social and the symbolic boundary suggests a self-
propelling dynamic powered by the cultural and monetary resources associated
with the field. A founder of one of the largest conferences on nanotechnology
explained how the expansions of the social and symbolic boundaries were
mutually reinforcing:
I think there was a kind of self-fulfilling definition, which came about through ‘‘Here’s
the funding for it.’’ So when you have the funding for nanotech you’ve got all these
people sitting around saying, ‘‘Can I get that funding? If I can, that means I’m nano.’’
So there was a scrambling of name changes in academia—materials science depart-
ments or electrical engineering departments five years ago saying, ‘‘I’m nano.’’ And
when they say they’re nano they now define ‘‘That’s nano.’’ And then you have all of
the industrial sectors and industrial societies that said, ‘‘Within our communities now
we’re going to do a nano-conference or we’re going to do a nano-publication. Here’s
what’s in it.’’ So the American Physical Society or the Market Research Society, or
us—we all said, ‘‘Here’s how we define [nanotechnology].’’ And in the process, all of
their constituents said, ‘‘Oh, okay, look, I’m nano now.’’
After peripheral communities expanded the symbolic boundary it was easier

for more participants to self-claim membership in the field to gain access to the
field’s resources. And as more peripheral communities became members of
the field they were increasingly motivated to continue expanding the symbolic
boundary to increase demands for their services.
This escalating dynamic between the expansions of the symbolic and the
social boundaries meant that other contradictions arose, marking a turning
point for the field. First, contradictions escalated between the core and periph-
eral communities’ understanding of the symbolic boundary. Though core com-
munities favored a restrictive symbolic boundary that preserved their identity,
Grodal 805
peripheral communities were eager to expand the symbolic boundary to accel-

erate membership claims. An entrepreneur explained, ‘‘Basically, if you look at
the nanotechnology area there are, depending on who you talk to . . . a lot of
different perceptions of what it is, and in some cases they don’t match up or
don’t even overlap.’’ Second, while core communities had long perceived many
membership claims to be at odds with the field’s symbolic boundary, it reached
a tipping point in this phase. The existence of these contradictions undermined
the cultural resources associated with the nanotechnology field as participants
inside and outside the field began to question the field’s veracity. As a periph-
eral member told me, ‘‘[Nanotechnology] is so broad that there is no coher-
ence, and it is so broad that [scientists who claim they are working on
nanotechnology] are not developing a specific technology.’’
Restricting the symbolic boundary. At stake with the expansion of the sym-
bolic boundary was the field’s collective identity. Changes in the symbolic
boundary threatened the identity of the core communities. One futurist
explained that ‘‘now when we say we are dedicated to developing the future
of nanotechnology people think about stain-resistant pants and windshield
wipers. That is not nanotech . . . that is not what we do!’’ The expansion of the
symbolic boundary thus motivated core communities to reverse their prior prac-
tices and begin to restrict the definition of nanotechnology as a way to curtail
the self-claims to membership and peripheral communities associating new
members. Restricting the definition involved creating a definition that narrowed
the meaning of nanotechnology and excluded technologies from the field.
Core communities tried to restrict the definition by referring to how nano-
technology was defined in the beginning of the field. Drexler (2004: 21–25)
lamented the field’s new, expanded symbolic boundary this way:
The revolutionary . . . vision of a powerful and general nanotechnology, based on

nanomachines that build with atom-by-atom control, promises great opportunities
and, if abused, great dangers. This vision made nanotechnology a buzzword and
launched the global nanotechnology race. Along the way, however, the meaning of
the word has shifted. A vastly broadened definition of nanotechnology (including any
technology with nanoscale features) enabled specialists from diverse fields to infuse
unrelated research with . . . mystique. The resulting nanoscaletechnology funding
coalition has obscured the [original] vision by misunderstanding its basis, distrusting
its promise, and fearing that public concern regarding its dangers might interfere with
research funding. . . . It is time for the nanotechnology community to reclaim the
[original] vision in its grand and unsettling entirety.
The expansion of the symbolic boundary was also problematic for government
officials, as they began to worry about losing control of both the flow of
resources and the direction of the field that they had helped to create. One gov-
ernment official explained their efforts to restrict the definition this way:
[Nanotechnology] does have a definition, and we spent quite a bit of time on it. . . .
So I think there’s a general agreement that nanotechnology is not just small but
rather is small with the incorporation of some performance or property because of its
size. The third thing is the idea of control—that there’s sort of an engineered or
designed quality. It’s not just collecting pollen samples that happen to be nanometer
size. That’s just not a nanotechnology project!
She further explained that within the government there was intense debate
about specifying the symbolic boundaries of nanotechnology. Government offi-
cials wanted to create a more specific definition that could be used to exclude
scientists who claimed that part of their activity was at the nanoscale even
though it was not innovative or transformative. Ultimately, however, the core
communities’ attempts to restrict the symbolic boundary were not successful.
Their definition of the field became just one among several that were proposed,
and peripheral members tended to adhere to the definition that best suited
their needs. As a core member explained, ‘‘It is difficult to control. The genie is
out of the bottle. . . . The whole world is claiming they are doing nano.’’
Contracting the social boundary. At stake with regard to nanotechnology’s
social boundary was access to the field’s monetary and cultural resources. The
expansion of the social boundary meant that core communities had to compete
for resources with larger peripheral communities. For example, when the gov-
ernment began working toward the creation of the National Nanotechnology
Initiative (NNI), futurists had eagerly been anticipating the flow of resources to
their causes. Yet because peripheral communities were also claiming member-
ship in nanotechnology, resources were being diverted elsewhere. Drexler
(2004: 22) explained:
One would expect that the NNI, funded through appeals to the [futurists’] vision,
would focus on research supporting this strategic goal. The goal of atom-by-atom
control would motivate studies of nanomachines able to guide molecular assembly
. . . . In the course of a broad marshaling of resources, at least one NNI-sponsored
meeting would have invited at least one talk on prospects for implementing the
[futurists’] vision. The actual situation has been quite different. No NNI-sponsored
meeting has yet included a talk on implementing the [futurists’] vision.
Because many peripheral communities were now claiming membership and

accessing government grants, the futurists were partially excluded from the
social boundary and unable to obtain the monetary resources associated with
the field. A futurist explained, ‘‘We created nanotechnology . . . but now that
[there is] money we are not getting it.’’
In a reversal of prior actions, core communities began to engage in policing
membership to restrict membership in the field. Policing membership relies on
‘‘enforcement, auditing, and monitoring’’ participants’ actions (Lawrence and
Suddaby, 2006: 231). In particular, it involves the repudiation of others’ claims
to field membership. The futurists were the most aggressive in policing field
boundaries. One of them explained, ‘‘We began identifying people who were
claiming nano but doing nothing of that sort.’’ The government officials were
more cautious in policing membership claims. As an employee at the
Environmental Protection Agency, who sorted through applications for nano-
technology funding, explained, ‘‘We have had to become more aggressive in
denying funding. . . . The application asks what the topic area is and poses
some sample questions, and occasionally there are some people who cannot
read directions [by submitting things that are not nanotechnology]. But you just
throw those out.’’
Core communities’ attempts at policing did curtail the expansion of the
social boundary, but they were not able to police all self-claims and the associa-
tion of new members by peripheral communities. And because there was no
Grodal 807
central venue for membership claims to be made, core communities lacked the
regulatory authority to police them all.
Contracting the social boundary. Although many potential peripheral mem-
bers were still self-claiming membership during the third phase of the field’s
evolution, some peripheral members, who were prominent within their respec-
tive fields, began to worry that the expansion of nanotechnology’s symbolic
boundaries undermined its cultural resources. Because the identity of the per-
ipheral members was not closely tied to the nanotechnology field, many chose
to self-disassociate and focus on their other fields of interest. For example, the
founder and CEO of a nanotechnology start-up described an instance when his
firm was included in the nanotechnology field by a conference organizer,
despite his reservations:
I remember the first time. We got invited to this conference called the Nanotech
Capital Conference. And I said to our VP of marketing at that time, ‘‘I really don’t
know that we want to be associated with this stuff, honestly.’’ I don’t think we want
to be affiliated with nanotech. This stuff is just too diffuse, too weird. I don’t think
we want to categorize ourselves that way. And he said, ‘‘you know, that’s fine, let’s
go present anyway, you know, I’m curious.’’ So our VP of marketing went out there,
presented at the Nanotech Capital Conference, which was organized by a couple of
big banks. And they gave awards to the five nanotechnology companies most likely
to succeed, and [my company] was one of them. And then my VP of marketing said,
‘‘Wait, actually I didn’t mean to win.’’
Because peripheral communities were associating his firm with nanotechnol-

ogy, the CEO struggled to keep his company from being included in the field.
The company was successful, and because its technology was close to the
nanoscale, many peripheral members who were working in or writing about
nanotechnology included the company on their lists of successful nanotechnol-
ogy firms. The CEO of another firm was in a similar situation. He explained that
many stakeholders included his firm as part of the nanotechnology field, but he
constantly disassociated from the field: ‘‘No, no, no! I don’t [position my firm
as a nanotech company]. Some people put us in that category and the truth is
‘nah.’’’
Self-disassociation by prominent peripheral members left the nanotechnol-
ogy field with fewer successful members, which eroded the cultural resources
associated with the field and made it less attractive for new peripheral mem-
bers to self-claim field membership. This process began to create some wiggle
room for the core communities to regain control of the field.
Theoretical Model: How Communities Shape a Field’s Social and Symbolic

Boundaries
Figure 3 provides an overview of the dynamic process through which commu-
nities shape the social and symbolic boundaries of an emerging field. My analy-
sis shows that core communities initially expanded the nanotechnology field’s
symbolic boundaries and introduced new cultural and monetary resources to
the field, but they later contracted the field’s boundaries by restricting the defi-
nition and policing membership. Peripheral communities were initially uninter-
ested in the field, but the availability of new resources attracted them at a later
stage, expanding the field’s social and symbolic boundaries to advance
Figure 3. Theoretical model of how communities shape a field’s social and symbolic
boundaries.
SOCIAL BOUNDARY SYMBOLIC BOUNDARY
Phase 1: Creating Boundaries
Core community defines field and enlarges the definitio
Core communities associate new members
Peripheral communities self-disassociate
Phase 2: Enlarging Boundaries
Core communities enlarge definition
Core communities associate new members
Peripheral communities enlarge definition
Peripheral communities self-claim membership
Phase 3: Contracting Boundaries
Core communities restrict definition
Core communities police membership
Peripheral members disassociate
Core community
Social boundary
Attempted social boundary
resource claims. The theoretical explanation for these reversals draws on the
different resource and identity drivers of both core and peripheral communities
to show how communities’ interactions shape the social and symbolic bound-
aries of an emerging field.
Grodal 809
Initially, the first core community defines a field and thereby creates its sym-
bolic boundary. To make the field appealing to new participants, core commu-
nities then enlarge the definition of the field and infuse it with cultural
resources. The core community uses this expanded symbolic boundary to
associate new communities with the field, thereby increasing the number of
participants who can access the field’s resources. The attempts at associating
new members with the field are not always successful, however, because
some communities might hold negative views of the field’s cultural resources
and self-disassociate with the field. Yet over time the initial core community
might identify communities that perceive the cultural resources associated with
the field to be valuable and that accept being associated with the field, thus
expanding the social boundary. These new communities might bring with them
new cultural and monetary resources, thereby making the field more attractive
for other communities to join.
But this expansion of the symbolic and social boundaries and the increase in
cultural and monetary resources is a double-edged sword. The new commu-
nities might differ with regard to their degree of identification with the field.
While some of the new communities identify strongly with the field (and
become core communities), others join the field due to resource availability
(and become peripheral communities). Because the peripheral communities do
not identify strongly with the field, they enlarge the symbolic boundary even
further if doing so is in their interest. Enlarging the symbolic boundary alters
the field’s collective identity, which is problematic for members of the core
communities, who see their identity threatened. The expanded symbolic
boundary also allows more peripheral communities seeking the field’s cultural
and monetary resources to self-claim membership in the field, further expand-
ing the social boundary. These self-claims to membership ignite a self-
reinforcing cycle. Cultural and monetary resources entice the peripheral com-
munities to further enlarge the symbolic boundary, making it easier for even
more peripheral communities to self-claim field membership. This expansion
further alters the collective identity, threatening the identity of the core commu-
nities and increasing competition for monetary resources. The competition for
resources might become so fierce that core communities find themselves par-
tially excluded from the social boundary.
Identity threats and resource constraints trigger a counter-reaction by core
communities. To regain control over the field they try to contract the symbolic
boundary by defining the field more restrictively. With a new definition in hand,
core communities try to use it to police the peripheral communities’ member-
ship claims. The contradictions that arise within the field also have conse-
quences for peripheral members, some of whom might self-disassociate from
the field to seek cultural and monetary resources elsewhere.
DISCUSSION
Understanding a field’s evolution requires attention to its shifting social and
symbolic boundaries. Though research has examined how core communities
shape the symbolic and social boundaries separately (Weber, Heinze, and
DeSoucey, 2008; Ferraro and O’Mahony, 2012), less is known about how other
actors shape such boundaries over time. In this paper I develop a more
comprehensive model of how core and peripheral communities’ contestation

of a field’s resources shapes its social and symbolic boundaries.
Contributions to Theories of Field Expansion and Contraction

Institutional scholars have generally associated the expansion of a field’s social
and symbolic boundaries with an increase in legitimacy (Maguire, Hardy, and
Lawrence, 2004; Kennedy, 2008; Weber, Heinze, and DeSoucey, 2008; Wry,
Lounsbury, and Glynn, 2011), specifically as growing participation increases the
attention paid to the field (Lawrence, 1999; Kennedy, 2008). In contrast, popu-
lation ecologists theorizing market categories have tended to associate an
increase in legitimacy with the contraction of the symbolic boundary as defini-
tions of the field become more specific and clearly defined (Hannan, Pólos, and
Carroll, 2007; Ruef and Patterson, 2009). These studies suggest that a contrac-
tion of the symbolic boundary is followed by a contraction in the social bound-
ary because core participants can use the symbolic boundary to police who is
viewed as a field member. Scholars in this tradition thus imply that market
categories become legitimated through a more narrowly defined field. For
example, Rosa et al. (1999) showed that multiple conceptions of a mix
between a car and a truck existed initially, but over time the notion of a mini-
van came to dominate the field. This contraction of the symbolic boundary both
increased the legitimacy of the field and restricted who was seen as a valid
member.
This paper provides a bridge between these two approaches by showing
that a field can obtain cultural resources both through boundary expansion and
boundary contraction and that whether a field is legitimate or not can be in the
eyes of the beholder. While peripheral communities in my context viewed the
expansion of the field’s symbolic boundaries as increasing the legitimacy and
thus the cultural resources associated with the field, the core communities held
the opposite opinion. In their review of the institutional literature, Lawrence
and Suddaby (2006: 222) found that ‘‘most defining work focuses on the cre-
ation of ‘constitutive rules’ (Scott et al., 2000), or rules that allowed for the
expansion and not the contraction of field boundaries.’’ In contrast, I found that
definitional work can be used both to expand and contract boundaries. During a
field’s early period core communities might expand the social and symbolic
boundary to gain recognition for the field and to associate it with cultural and
monetary resources. The increase in cultural resources can be problematic,
however, as abundance makes it attractive for peripheral communities to claim
membership in the field. These communities might not have been invited to
participate (see Wry, Lounsbury, and Glynn, 2011) but act on their own volition.
From the perspective of the core community such claims threaten to under-
mine the legitimacy of the field, stimulate self-disassociating, and thus put the
field in danger of collapse.
This study creates a more nuanced account of cultural resources in fields by
highlighting that legitimacy is bestowed on the field not only through the inclu-
sion of legitimate members (Wry, Lounsbury, and Glynn, 2011) or by aligning
the field with external values (Suchman, 1995) but also from the perspective of
the core communities, by creating a balance between the social and the sym-
bolic boundary. In emerging fields such legitimacy is particularly fragile,
because emergence necessitates the inclusion of new members, who might
Grodal 811
perceive the social and symbolic boundaries differently and whose activities
might be a weak fit with the symbolic boundary. This study therefore opens up
new research questions about how legitimacy is created in emerging fields—
not only how it is achieved but also how it is maintained and how perceptions
of legitimacy differ among community members. Furthermore, this study
shows that if we want to understand the evolution of fields’ social and sym-
bolic boundaries we need to look beyond legitimacy to other types of cultural
resources that might be equally influential in driving field dynamics. During a
field’s earliest period, when it is unlikely that the field is going to be legitimate,
let alone be associated with monetary resources, the worth that potential new
members place on the symbols and stories associated with it might be most
important.
The Role of Communities in Shaping a Field’s Social and Symbolic

Boundaries
Several studies have focused on how communities shape the social or sym-
bolic boundary separately. Scholars have shown how core communities might
redefine a field’s symbolic boundary to gain influence and shape resource allo-
cations (Lawrence, 1999; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006; Weber, Heinze, and
DeSoucey, 2008; Jones et al., 2012). Core communities might also try to grow
the field by expanding the social boundary (Wry, Lounsbury, and Glynn, 2011)
or police the social boundary to secure resources and expel unwanted mem-
bers (Lawrence, 1999; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006; Anteby, 2010). This
paper extends this literature by showing how communities strategically manip-
ulate field boundaries and by claiming that the relationship between actions on
the social and symbolic boundaries depends on the communities’ identification
with the field. Core communities seek to keep the social and the symbolic
boundaries aligned to avoid contradictions between them. In contrast, periph-
eral communities pursue their self-interested actions even if these actions mis-
align the field’s social and symbolic boundaries.
This paper emphasizes the importance of acknowledging that fields consist
of multiple communities (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). The focus in extant liter-
ature on studying core communities has made understanding the intricate rela-
tionship between the social and symbolic boundaries difficult because it
neglects the actions of peripheral communities. Other research in institutional
theory has shown how peripheral communities engage in various symbolic
practices and membership claims. Granqvist, Grodal, and Woolley (2013), for
example, showed a lack of alignment between the technological capabilities of
nanotechnology firms and their symbolic practices. Glynn and colleagues
(Glynn and Abzug, 2002; Glynn and Marquis, 2004) showed how firms strategi-
cally change their names to claim membership in or disassociate from a field.
Kim and Lyon (2015) identified how firms strategically over- and underreport
their investments in environmental sustainability depending on which stake-
holder they are signaling to. But scholars have yet to link these actions by per-
ipheral communities to field dynamics.
This paper unites these different strands of institutional theory work into an
integrated model. When companies change names or claim membership in a
field although their activities are a poor fit with the existing symbolic boundary,
they are not merely increasing their access to cultural and monetary resources
but are contributing to changing the field’s social boundary. This study shows
that such actions by peripheral communities, coupled with the responses by
core communities, change both the social and symbolic boundaries of fields.
Without capturing the actions of both core and peripheral communities, we
cannot understand the temporal evolution of boundaries.
This study also moves beyond viewing peripheral communities only as eva-
luators of the action of entrepreneurial organizations (Hsu and Hannan, 2005;
Hannan, Pólos, and Carroll, 2007; Navis and Glynn, 2010). I show not only that
peripheral communities have differing views about who is a member of the
field but also that they are self-interested and proactive in creating distinctions
and acting on those beliefs. These communities thus act not only as evaluators
of membership claims but also as the generators of social and symbolic distinc-
tions. In extreme cases peripheral communities might even replace a field’s
core communities. Future research might therefore consider who is transcend-
ing boundaries and the effects of such crossing, as well as the strategic inter-
ests audience members have in stimulating and creating such actions in the
first place. For example, to what extent are food critics not only evaluators of
restaurants’ efforts to hybridize classic and nouvelle cuisine (see Rao, Monin,
and Durand, 2005) but also the engines of such blending processes?
This study furthers existing views on the temporal involvement of commu-
nities in fields. Though most studies on the formation of technological fields
suggest that university scientists and entrepreneurs are the communities most
instrumental in shaping the boundaries of those fields (Aldrich and Fiol, 1994;
Santos and Eisenhardt, 2009), in nanotechnology most university scientists and
entrepreneurs became involved at a later stage. University scientists tended to
identify with other fields, such as chemistry or materials science, and were
therefore not vested enough in the nanotechnology field to engage in defining
and policing its boundaries. Even during later periods, university scientists’
involvement was limited to either claiming or disassociating themselves from
the field. In contrast, in the biotechnology field, university scientists were first
to define the field and identified strongly with it (Berg et al., 1975). Scientists
thus constituted a core community in the biotechnology field, and their defini-
tional work attempted to police the social boundary, in particular, to keep out
any claims to membership from participants who engaged in activities associ-
ated with human cloning. Likewise in green chemistry it was core scientists
who identified strongly with the field and worked to police its boundaries
(Howard-Grenville et al., 2017). This paper contributes to sorting out why a
community might engage in different boundary practices across fields by point-
ing to a community’s degree of identification with a focal field as an important
explanatory mechanism.
To understand how communities construct the boundaries of organizational
fields we need to acknowledge that identification with the field varies depend-
ing on the communities’ affiliations with other fields, and each community is
pluralistic (Glynn, 2008). This plurality creates tensions with regard to what is at
stake for the involved communities, motivating them to change the boundaries
over time. Future research might consider how various aspects of community
involvement affect field formation. For example, how do core and peripheral
communities coordinate across community boundaries? What happens if sev-
eral core communities have conflicting interests? Furthermore, heterogeneity
also exists within communities, as some participants identify more strongly
Grodal 813
with the field than others. Future research should consider how this heteroge-
neity affects the dynamics within the communities and the impact it might
have on field boundaries.
Boundary Conditions and Future Research

Like most studies of organizational fields, this research focuses on one field
alone (e.g., Hoffman, 1999; Navis and Glynn, 2010; Zietsma and Lawrence,
2010). As the pressure to expand and contract might vary with the degree of
identification among the participating communities and the legitimacy of the
field, it is important for future research to conduct comparative case studies of
fields that vary across these dimensions.
Another important boundary condition is that although both the social and
symbolic boundaries of the nanotechnology field were quite elastic, the elasti-
city of social and symbolic boundaries might vary across fields. One dimension
that might affect the elasticity of a field’s boundaries is the ease in assessing
whether the social and symbolic boundaries are aligned. We might expect, for
example, more rampant membership claims in less materialistic fields
anchored around services or issues, as it is difficult to assess whether mem-
bership claims fit within the symbolic boundary. Many studies have found that
the presence of material objects guides and restricts the transfer of information
(Carlile, 2002; Leonardi and Barley, 2010). The materiality of the nanotechnol-
ogy field was difficult to observe because the technologies were invisible to
the naked eye and understanding most products required specialized knowl-
edge. Future research might examine the relationship between boundary prac-
tices and the relative materiality of fields.
Finally, viewing fields from the perspective of multiple communities raises
the question of the relationship between the evolving identity of the commu-
nity and the evolving identity of the field and how the identities of communities
might change when they become part of new fields. Such shifts in identity
may affect their boundary practices. For core communities in particular, there is
likely to be a close link between the construction of the community identity
and the construction of the field’s collective identity, but we know little about
how peripheral communities manage their identities in relation to a new field.
Future research could examine how the evolution of the identity of the commu-
nity and the field differ for core and peripheral communities amid the dynamics
of an emerging field.
Acknowledgments
I thank Michel Anteby, Stephen R. Barley, Emily Barman, Julie Battilana, Beth Bechky,
Maria Binz-Scharf, Kim Elsbach, Filiz Garip, Emily Heaphy, Chip Heath, Greta Hsu, Candy
Jones, Sarah Kaplan, Kate Kellogg, Mukti Khaire, Ming Leung, Johanna Mair, Siobhan
O’Mahony, Elizabeth Pontikes, Walter W. Powell, Lakshmi Ramarajan, Sameer
Srivastava, Juliana Schroeder, Laurel Smith-Doerr, Mary Tripsas, Mathijs de Vaan,
Tammar Zilber, and participants at the 2009 UC Davis Conference on Qualitative
Research, the 2010 EGOS Conference, and the Harvard and MIT Economic Sociology
Seminar for their valuable comments on this paper. I thank Steven Shafer and Karen
Propp for their editorial assistance. This research was supported by National Science
Foundation Grant No. SES-0531146.
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Author’s Biography
Stine Grodal is an associate professor at Boston University Questrom School of
Business, Boston, MA 02215 (e-mail: grodal@bu.edu). Her research centers on the evo-
lution of markets and organizational fields with a specific focus on the actions market
participants take to create, shape, and exploit categorical structures. She received her
Ph.D. from Stanford University in management science and engineering.

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Social and Symbolic Boundaries in Communities

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Administrative Science Quarterly

2018, Vol. 63(4)783–818

Communities Shape DOI: 10.1177/0001839217744555

Social and Symbolic

Keywords: organizational fields, institutional change, nanotechnology field

Understanding how a field’s boundaries form and change is a central question

(Powell and Sandholtz, 2012). In contrast, population ecologists have shown

THE SOCIAL AND SYMBOLIC BOUNDARIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL

Field Boundaries, Communities, and Resources

field in hopes of influencing stakeholders’ perception of the field’s desirability

more difficult to comprehend and open to interpretation and contestation. At

Ethnographic observations. I conducted ethnographic observations at 26

Table 1. Overview of the Data

Identification with High High Lower Low Low

*Fortune, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Business Week.

offices and government agencies, as well as appointees to government com-

Interviews. To deepen my understanding of how communities constructed

Archival data. To understand how the boundaries were constructed over

To create a representative sample of articles from each of the five datasets

Nanotechnology definitions. To investigate change in the symbolic bound-

Stage 1: Creating social and symbolic boundaries. One theme that

Stage 2: Identifying core and peripheral communities. During the second

Stage 3: Identifying changes to the cultural and monetary resources

Stage 5: Identifying relationships among communities, resources, and

HOW COMMUNITIES SHAPE A FIELD’S SOCIAL AND SYMBOLIC

nanotechnology expanded from signifying a miniature mechanical system (e.g.,

The Boundary Practices of Core and Peripheral Communities

Phase 1: Creating field boundaries (1980s–1997). During this first phase,

Figure 1. Informing the social boundary: Expanding claims to membership in the

Phase 1:Creating field boundaries (1980s–1997) Phase 2: Phase 3:

Phase 1: Creating field Phase 2: Expanding field Phase 3: Contracting field

1986 1990 1995 2000 2005

Core communities Peripheral communities

Boundary Service Entrepre- University Effect on

Symbolic Enlarging the definition • • •

Symbolic Restricting the definition • •

Table 4. Field Boundary Practices Used during Field Formation

Phase 1: Phase 2: Phase 3:

biological organisms. Drexler called these nanoscale machines ‘‘nanotechnol-

In my mind [the rejection of nanotechnology] was nothing more than an ad hominem

Thus many entrepreneurs and scientists self-disassociated by actively distan-

Phase 2: Expanding field boundaries (1998–2000). Both core and periph-

nanoscale, but core communities maintained that it had to include some

In particular, the peripheral community tried to involve successful entrepre-

Phase 3: Contracting field boundaries (2001–2005). After 2001 a crush of

What he described demonstrates how the enlargement of the symbolic

After peripheral communities expanded the symbolic boundary it was easier

peripheral communities were eager to expand the symbolic boundary to accel-

The revolutionary . . . vision of a powerful and general nanotechnology, based on

Because many peripheral communities were now claiming membership and

Because peripheral communities were associating his firm with nanotechnol-

Theoretical Model: How Communities Shape a Field’s Social and Symbolic

SOCIAL BOUNDARY SYMBOLIC BOUNDARY

Phase 1: Creating Boundaries

Core community defines field and enlarges the definitio

Core communities associate new members

Peripheral communities self-disassociate

Phase 2: Enlarging Boundaries

Core communities enlarge definition

Core communities associate new members

Peripheral communities enlarge definition

Peripheral communities self-claim membership

Phase 3: Contracting Boundaries

Core communities restrict definition