How do organisations that belong to a stigmatised industry manage negative perceptions? We contribute to answering this question by highlighting how organisational members turn external negative evaluations into positive self-idealisations. Our research offers a unique perspective on how stigmatised actors navigate their tarnished image, as well as how they remain attached to a group and its attributes despite its stigmatisation. The study reports findings from two French fruit and vegetable wholesalers, who are commonly perceived as thieves, bandits and unwanted intermediaries. We explain how organisational members were able to neutralise negative perceptions by mobilising and maintaining an idealised perception of their centrality. This structuring fantasy formed a powerful defence against stigmatised perceptions, transforming the stigma into self-idealisation that supported organisational stability. The organisations studied developed idealisation strategies based on members’ attachment to or distancing from nostalgic fantasies of the past. We suggest that awareness of the idealised construct that underpins a particular attachment to a stigmatised attribute may help organisations and their members free themselves from stigma.
ArandaAMHelmsWSPattersonKDW, et al. (2023) Standing on the shoulders of Goffman: Advancing a relational research agenda on stigma. Business & Society62(7): 1339–1377.
2.
AshforthBEKreinerGE (1999) ‘How can you do it?’: Dirty work and the challenge of constructing a positive identity. The Academy of Management Review24(3): 413–434.
3.
BeckmanTEngleN (1951) Wholesaling: Principles and Practice. New York: The Ronald Press Company.
4.
BerryJ-B (2003) Le commerce de gros s’adapte aux pressions du marché. Report. Division Commerce, Insee.
5.
BouéeML (1944) Le problème des intermédiaires. Revue des Deux Mondes (1829–1971)81(3): 304–308.
6.
ButlerN (2018) Fantasies of strategy: Žižek, discourse and enjoyment. Critical Perspectives on Accounting53: 79–88.
7.
CorleyKGGioiaDA (2004) Identity ambiguity and change in the wake of a corporate spin-off. Administrative Science Quarterly49(2): 173–208.
8.
DeckerSHassardJRowlinsonM (2021) Rethinking history and memory in organization studies: The case for historiographical reflexivity. Human Relations74(8): 1123–1155.
9.
DeversCEDewettTMishinaY, et al. (2009) A general theory of organizational stigma. Organization Science20(1): 154–171.
10.
DoBLyleMCBWalshIJ (2019) Driving down memory lane: The influence of memories in a community following organizational demise. Organization Studies40(9): 1307–1329.
11.
DriverM (2009) Struggling with lack: A lacanian perspective on organizational identity. Organization Studies30(1): 55–72.
12.
DugotP (2000) Le commerce de gros. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.
13.
EkmanS (2013) Fantasies about work as limitless potential – how managers and employees seduce each other through dynamics of mutual recognition. Human Relations66(9): 1159–1181.
14.
ForoughiH (2020) Collective memories as a vehicle of fantasy and identification: Founding stories retold. Organization Studies41(10): 1347–1367.
15.
ForoughiHCoraiolaDMRintamäkiJ, et al. (2020) Organizational memory studies. Organization Studies41(12): 1725–1748.
16.
FotakiM (2010) Why do public policies fail so often? Exploring health policy-making as an imaginary and symbolic construction. Organization17(6): 703–720.
17.
FotakiMForoughiH (2022) Extinction Rebellion: Green activism and the fantasy of leaderlessness in a decentralized movement. Leadership18(2): 224–246.
18.
FrandsenSMorsingM (2022) Behind the stigma shield: Frontline employees’ emotional response to organizational event stigma at work and at home. Journal of Management Studies59(8): 1987–2023.
19.
GaddeL-E (2012) La dynamique des réseaux de distribution: implications pour les intermédiaires. Management & Avenir51(1): 137–155.
20.
GlynosJ (2008) Ideological fantasy at work. Journal of Political Ideologies13(3): 275–296.
21.
GoffmanE (1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, 1st Touchstone edn. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
22.
GonzalezJAPérez-FlorianoLR (2015) If you can’t take the heat: Cultural beliefs about questionable conduct, stigma, punishment, and withdrawal among Mexican police officers. Organization Studies36(5): 665–687.
23.
HampelCETraceyP (2017) How organizations move from stigma to legitimacy: The case of Cook’s travel agency in Victorian Britain. Academy of Management Journal60(6): 2175–2207.
24.
HelmsWPattersonK (2014) Eliciting acceptance for ‘illicit’ organizations: The positive implications of stigma for MMA organizations. Academy of Management Journal57(5): 1453–1484.
25.
HudsonBA (2008) Against all odds: A consideration of core-stigmatized organizations. Academic of Management Review33(1): 252–266.
26.
HudsonBAOkhuysenGA (2009) Not with a ten-foot pole: Core stigma, stigma transfer, and improbable persistence of men’s bathhouses. Organization Science20(1): 134–153.
27.
HudsonBAPattersonKDWRouletTJ, et al. (2022) Organizational stigma: Taking stock and opening new areas for research. Journal of Management Studies59(8): 1899–1914.
KennyKHaughHFotakiM (2020b) Organizational form and pro-social fantasy in social enterprise creation. Human Relations73(1): 94–123.
30.
KennyKM (2010) Beyond ourselves: Passion and the dark side of identification in an ethical organization. Human Relations63(6): 857–873.
31.
LashleyKPollockTG (2020) Waiting to inhale: Reducing stigma in the medical cannabis industry. Administrative Science Quarterly65(2): 434–482.
32.
LincolnYSGubaEG (1985) Naturalistic Inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
33.
MackeownH (2007) Wholesaling and wholesaling research: A practitioner’s viewpoint. International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research17(4): 413–422.
34.
MichelSPardoC (2012) La spécificité du commerce BtoB : quelques repères historiques. Management & Avenir51(1): 156–166.
35.
PetriglieriGPetriglieriJL (2020) The return of the oppressed: A systems psychodynamic approach to organization studies. Academy of Management Annals14(1): 411–449.
36.
PiazzaAPerrettiF (2015) Categorical stigma and firm disengagement: Nuclear power generation in the United States, 1970–2000. Organization Science26(3): 724–742.
37.
PollockTGLashleyKRindovaVP, et al. (2019) Which of these things are not like the others? Comparing the rational, emotional, and moral aspects of reputation, status, celebrity, and stigma. Academy of Management Annals13(2): 444–478.
38.
RouletT (2015) ‘What good is wall street?’ Institutional contradiction and the diffusion of the stigma over the finance industry. Journal of Business Ethics130(2): 389–402.
39.
RouletT (2020) The Power of Being Divisive: Understanding Negative Social Evaluations. Stanford, CA: Stanford Business Books, an imprint of Stanford University Press.
40.
RülingC-CSadeghiYOguguoP (2018) Leveraging hope to manage stigma: Strategies of emotion in the development of immunotherapeutic cancer treatments. In: Sub-theme 10. ‘Shock and surprise: Responses to the unexpected, the deviant and the stigmatized in social life’, Tallinn, 2018.
41.
SédillotR (1964) Histoire des marchands et des marchés. Paris: Fayard.
42.
ShantzABoothJE (2014) Service employees and self-verification: The roles of occupational stigma consciousness and core self-evaluations. Human Relations67(12): 1439–1465.
43.
SlayHSSmithDA (2011) Professional identity construction: Using narrative to understand the negotiation of professional and stigmatized cultural identities. Human Relations64(1): 85–107.
44.
StavrakakisY (2008) Subjectivity and the organized other: Between symbolic authority and fantasmatic enjoyment. Organization Studies29(7): 1037–1059.
45.
StranglemanT (1999) The nostalgia of organisations and the organisation of nostalgia: Past and present in the contemporary railway industry. Sociology33(4): 725–746.
46.
TraceyPPhillipsN (2016) Managing the consequences of organizational stigmatization: Identity work in a social enterprise. Academy of Management Journal59(3): 740–765.
47.
VergneJ-P (2012) Stigmatized categories and public disapproval of organizations: A mixed-methods study of the Global Arm Industry, 1996-2007. Academy of Management Journal55(5): 1027–1052.
48.
VinceR (2002) The politics of imagined stability: A psychodynamic understanding of change at Hyder plc. Human Relations55(10): 1189–1208.
49.
VinceR (2019) Institutional illogics: The unconscious and institutional analysis. Organization Studies40(7): 953–973.
50.
VoronovMVinceR (2012) Integrating emotions into the analysis of institutional work. Academy of Management Review37(1): 58–81.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
