Organizational Stigma Research Articles

Defensive Practice Adoption in the Face of Organizational Stigma: Impression Management and the Diffusion of Stock Option Expensing

AbstractAlthough most diffusion research focuses on firms adopting new practices to maintain their legitimacy, this paper examines a setting in which firms adopted a controversial practice to defend themselves against challenges relating to corporate deviance. We argue that understanding defensive adoption requires attending to both the dynamics of organizational stigma and impression management, and test our theoretical claims by analysing the diffusion of an accounting practice, stock option expensing (SOPEX), following the Enron scandal. We first provide evidence that the media and shareholder activists transformed the practice into a defensive device by theorizing it as a solution to problems relating to corporate fraud and corporate governance. Using event history analysis, we then show that corporations that became targets of stigma‐inducing threats were more likely to adopt SOPEX and that the media were a key force channelling these threats.

Guilt and Victimhood: Institutional contradiction and the stigma over the finance industry

The concept of organizational stigma has received significant attention in recent years. The theoretical literature suggests that for a stigma to emerge over a category of organizations, a “critica...

Metal Detectors and Feeling Safe at School

This article argues that metal detectors bestow an organizational stigma to schools. One symptom of this is students’ heightened level of fear at school. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and a matched-pair design, this study finds that metal detectors are negatively correlated with students’ sense of safety at school, net of the level of violence at school. However, this association is different for urban students. The negative association between metal detectors and urban students’ sense of safety is 13% less than what it is for students attending suburban or rural schools.

Learning from a Service Guarantee Quasi Experiment

The authors analyze data from a service guarantee program implemented by a midpriced hotel chain. Using a multisite regression discontinuity quasi-experimental design developed over 16 months, they control for unobserved heterogeneity among guests and treatments across hotels and develop Bayesian posterior estimates of the varying program effect for each hotel. The results contribute to theory and practice. First, they provide new insights into how service guarantee programs operate in the field. Specifically, the guarantee was more effective at hotels with a better prior service history and an easier-to-serve guest population, which is consistent with signaling arguments but does not comport with the incentive argument that guarantees actually improve service quality. Second, the results offer managers better decision rules. Specifically, the authors devise program continuation rules that are sensitive to both observed and unobserved differences across sites. In addition, they devise policies to reward hotels that exceed site-specific expectations. By controlling for observed and unobserved differences across sites, the authors show that these policies potentially reward even hotels with negative net program effects, which is useful in reducing the organizational stigma of failure. Finally, the authors identify sites that should be targeted for future program rollout by computing the odds of succeeding.

A General Theory of Organizational Stigma

In recent years, the term stigma has been widely applied to organizations. However, scholars have yet to advance a theoretically consistent definition or comprehensive theory of organizational stigma. The purpose of this paper is to define the construct of organizational stigma and provide a general theory that explains the conditions under which organizational stigmas are likely to arise, how this process unfolds, and the initial effects stigmas inflict on organizations. In doing so, we distinguish organizational stigma from both individual-level stigma and the organizational-level constructs of reputation, status, celebrity, and legitimacy. We then build upon multiple streams of research to develop a richer theoretical explanation of the roles social context, social processes, and social actors play in the origination and effects of an organizational stigma.

Against all Odds: A Consideration of Core-Stigmatized Organizations

Studies of illegitimate organizations have failed to present consistent definitions and to recognize that illegitimate organizations persist. Drawing on the emerging organizational stigma literature, I separate recoverable event-stigma from nonrecoverable core-stigma—an extreme form of the poorly defined construct of illegitimacy. I examine the nature of core-stigma, the role of conflicting external audience evaluations that determine and express this stigma, and some organizational outcomes and responses. I end by proposing some implications for building a greater understanding of these and other illegitimate organizations and a possible agenda for future research.

FALLING OUT OF FAVOR: ILLEGITIMACY, SOCIAL CONTROL, AND THE PROCESS OF ORGANIZATIONAL STIGMATIZATION.

Drawing on individual- and organizational-level research, we define the construct of organizational stigma. We then integrate stigma theory with the organizational image, reputation, perception man...

Religion and Organizational Stigma at Work by Stanley Bruce Thomson

While “Spirituality has exploded onto the management agenda . . . religion seems to have been left be-hind by business academics” (p. 2). This is surprising considering that many consider religion is an aspect of diversity that numerous individuals cannot simply switch off when they go to work (p.2). Going beyond a mere conversation about religious accommodation in the workplace, Stanley Bruce Thomson offers a book that is an insightful exploration of the strategies individuals use to manage their religious identity in the workplace.