How and when does engagement with a stigmatized organization lead to the transfer of its stigma to organizations and individuals associating with it? To answer this question, we conduct an inductive study of the process of stigma transfer and the conditions determining social actors’ susceptibility to such courtesy stigma. We build our process model using interview and archival data on two art exhibitions engaging with Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC) Norway. Our study identifies purposeful shaming as a key element in the stigma transfer process, and shows that shaming attempts take on different forms at the individual and organizational levels. We also illustrate that contestation of shaming attempts through impression management tactics is conditional upon the status of the stigma ‘target’. This provides novel insights into when and how status moderates the stigma transfer process.
How do social audiences negotiate and handle stigmatized organizations? What role do their heterogenous values, norms and power play in this process? Addressing these questions is important from a business ethics perspective to improve our understanding of the ethical standards against which organizations are judged as well as the involved prosecutorial incentives. Moreover, it illuminates ethical concerns about when and how (the exploitation of) power imbalances may induce inequity in the burdens imposed by such social evaluations. We address these questions building on two event-based case studies involving Hells Angels Motorcycle Club Norway, and contribute to organizational stigma theory in three ways. First, social evaluations of a stigmatized organization by multiple audiences are found to interact, collide and combine in a labelling contest. Second, we show that labels employed in this contest are pushed to either negative extremes (‘moral panic’) or positive extremes (‘moral patronage’). Finally, we show when and how power represents a double-edged sword in social evaluation processes, which can be wielded either to the benefit or to the detriment of the actors under evaluation.
Building heavily on the Health in All Policies (HiAP) approach, Norway implemented the Public Health Act in 2012 to reduce social inequalities in health. Local public health coordinators (PHCs) at municipal levels were seen as tools to provide local intersectoral public health work. In this study, we examine factors related to intersectoral agency and if intersectoral work is understood as relevant to securing social justice in local policy outcomes. A national web-based survey in 2019 of all Norwegian PHCs (n = 428) was conducted with a response rate of 60%. Data were analysed through multiple linear regression, hierarchical regression modelling and structural equation modelling. Neither factors relating to community contexts nor individual characteristics were associated with intersectoral agency. Organisational factors, especially position size, being organised at the top level and having a job description, were significantly associated with perceptions of intersectoral agency. PHCs seeing themselves as intersectoral agents also found themselves able to affect annual budgets and policy outcomes. We conclude that municipal PHC positions can be important HiAP tools in local public health policies. However, organisational factors affect how PHCs perceive their influence and role in the municipal organisation and thereby their possibilities to influence local policymaking through intersectoral agency.
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