Abstract
This study finds that it is possible for organizations in emerging categories to resist stigmatization through discursive reconstruction of the central and distinctive characteristics of the category in question. We examined the emerging market of organic farming in Finland and discovered how resistance to stigmatization was both an internal and an external power struggle in the organic farming community. Over time, the label of organic farming was manipulated and the practice of farming was associated with more conventional and familiar contexts, while the stigma was diverted at the same time to biodynamic farming. We develop a process model for removal of stigma from a nascent category through stigma diversion. We find that stigma diversion forces the core community to (re)define themselves in relation to the excluded community and the mainstream. We also discuss how notoriety can be an individuating phenomenon that helps categorical members conduct identity work and contributes to stigma removal.
Highlights
Emerging categories often challenge established meanings, values and power constellations in markets while simultaneously seeking to persuade audiences about their core features and values (Rosa, Porac, Runser-Spanjol, & Saxon, 1999; Weber, Heinze, & DeSoucey, 2008)
The guiding questions were: How is the meaning of organic farming constructed in the text? What does it include or exclude, and how? Whose interests are furthered by the discourse, and whose are not? We further identified who spoke in these discursive instances
Drawing on an in-depth study that used novel methodologies to category research, we explore the discursive processes by which actors engage in symbolic boundary construction
Summary
Emerging categories often challenge established meanings, values and power constellations in markets while simultaneously seeking to persuade audiences about their core features and values (Rosa, Porac, Runser-Spanjol, & Saxon, 1999; Weber, Heinze, & DeSoucey, 2008). Audiences may engage in the use of power to protect their value system, position and interests. Sometimes this may lead to stigmatization – a form of profound moral disapproval and social control – of new categories and their offerings (Goffman, 1963). As a result, stigmatized categories encounter stakeholder disengagement (Piazza & Perretti, 2015; Pontikes, Negro, & Rao, 2010), identity struggles (Tracey & Phillips, 2016) and employee devaluation (Sutton & Callahan, 1987). Because stigmatizing attributes are persistent, firms are more likely to engage in privacy and secrecy (Blithe & Lanterman, 2017; Vergne, 2012; Wolfe & Blithe, 2015) or disengage from a stigmatized category than seek to redefine it actively (Durand & Vergne, 2015; Piazza & Perretti, 2015)
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