Organizational Stigma: Taking Stock and Opening New Areas for Research

Abstract

Since its introduction as a concept, organizational stigma has become central to explaining how organizations or industries become tainted, and how they overcome and manage such taint. In this introduction to the Special Issue on organizational stigma, we start by exploring the origins of the concept, providing basic definitions and reviewing the existing research on stigmatization, stigma transfer and experienced stigma. The papers in this issue flesh out our understanding of what causes organizational stigma and its implications at different levels. The remainder of this introduction takes stock of this recent work to explore future research opportunities around the micro‐ and macro‐foundations of organizational stigma, the links with scandals, controversies and other negative social evaluations and research methods. As the concept of organizational stigma reaches a new stage, we argue that its explanatory power can be harnessed to explore new and increasingly relevant phenomena and contexts.

Making sense of renouncing: A typology of types, motives, and approaches to renouncing at work

“…The constraining regime can be enacted through "multiple local and distal discourses" (Kuhn, 2006(Kuhn, , p. 1340, including narratives of renouncing that are shared by organizational members, ultimately regulating individuals' sense of meaningfulness. At the organizational level, deviance from the publish and perish regime of norms-or inversely, adherence to-might generate stigmatization (Hudson et al, 2022) and have consequences in terms of attractiveness for employees and rankings.…”

Correction to “Organizational Stigma: Taking Stock and Opening New Areas for Research”

“…In our introductory essay to the Journal of Management Studies Special Issue on Organizational Stigma, "Organizational Stigma: Taking Stock and Opening New Areas for Research", we claimed that "as a process, stigmatization has two 'moments', that of labelling … and that of enactments of stigmatization that seek to induce conformity or have the organization go away" (Hudson et al, 2022(Hudson et al, , p. 1902. In describing these moments, we sought to highlight that stigmatization does not stop at labelling, but that it is an ongoing process of leveraging that labelling to "re-establish and re-enforce social norms and social order" (p. 1902) subsequent to the initial labelling.…”

Defiance and Sympathy: Heterogeneity of Experiences Among Members of a Stigmatized Organization

“…Until recently, literature on the experience of organizational stigma has been dominated by stigma transfer, the idea that those who are associated with stigmatized entities risk being similarly "marked" by stigmatizing audiences (Jensen & Sandström, 2015;Sutton & Callahan, 1987), and "felt stigma" (Sutton & Callahan, 1987), which results in individual shame. However, recent studies have demonstrated that the experience of stigma, both at individual and at organizational levels, can be varied (Hudson et al, 2022;Roulet, 2020).…”

“…But even while recent studies have demonstrated the heterogeneity of experiences and responses among the stigmatized, the diversity among members within a stigmatized organization has been largely overlooked (Hudson et al, 2022(Hudson et al, , p. 1904. Silence about internal heterogeneity in a stigmatized organization is surprising given that members of a non-core stigmatized organization-stigmatized not for its core identity but for its conduct at a specific time or by association with other stigmatized entities-have a choice about continuing to identify with the stigmatized organization (Cowden et al, 2022).…”

“…That organizational members can vary in their perceptions about the stigma and beliefs about the appropriate response necessitates examining how internal heterogeneity among organizational members interacts with the heterogeneity in external audiences (Aranda et al, 2023). This is because however compelling an organization's experience of stigma, ultimately, audience perceptions determine whether stigma persists or can be abated (Hudson et al, 2022(Hudson et al, , p. 1904.…”