Managing repugnance: how core-stigma shapes firm behavior

This symposium is based on a workshop organized (online) on 24–25 February 2021 and sponsored by World Interdisciplinary Network for Institutional Research (WINIR). In this introduction, we stress the institutional dimension of repugnance, and show how it is dealt with in the papers gathered in the symposium. Kimberly Krawiec analyses repugnance in connection with externalities, and shows that contrary to what the ‘corruption theorists’ say, creating repugnant markets does not undermine social values. Peter Cserne shows that, in order to ensure a fully efficient regulation of repugnant behaviours, a transversal view combining the economic and legal approach to repugnance is necessary. The last two papers focus on entrepreneurship. Erwin Dekker and Julien Gradoz analyse the management of repugnance: how two firms, producing goods considered repugnant, adopt strategic behaviour to offset the costs generated by repugnance. Darcy W. E. Allen, Chris Berg and Sinclair Davidson take the analysis one step further and examine how ‘evasive entrepreneurs’ use repugnance as profit opportunity. Their innovations challenge social norms and the boundaries of what is viewed as repugnant in the society at large.

Section: Managing Repugnancementioning

confidence: 99%

Repugnance and institutions: an introductory essay

Daou

Marciano

2023

“…More marginal innovations in repugnant markets also occur within firms, partly to manage the negative moral meaning attached to their activities (Dekker and Gradoz, 2021). These innovations are curious because they are not directly the result of the levers of innovation policy.…”

Section: Evasive Altering or Abiding?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Repugnant innovation

Allen

Berg

Davidson

2022

Repugnant innovation is a form of evasive entrepreneurship that occurs in repugnant markets. Repugnance is an informal institution – controlled by long-lived norms, attitudes, customs and traditions – and repugnant innovation acts to shift institutions at the lowest level of the institutional stack. The paper considers three examples of repugnant innovation: e-cigarettes, online gambling, and webcam modelling. Each repugnant innovation challenges the complex mixture of material and moral concerns that contributes to repugnance in their respective markets. The paper adds to and expands on a body of evidence about innovation in apparently unsupportive institutional environments.

“… 4 An important point, suggested by one of the reviewers, must be noted here. The costs can be manipulated or influenced (in particular by firms or entrepreneurs who may want to exploit repugnance to increase their profits; on entrepreneurship and repugnance, see Allen, Berg and Davidson, 2022; Dekker and Gradoz, 2022). As a consequence, these costs can be maintained artificially high (or low) and therefore affect what individuals find repugnant or not.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Repugnance, externalities and subjectivism: a comment on Krawiec

Daou

Marciano

2023

In her ‘Markets, repugnance, and externalities’ (2022), Kimberly Krawiec notes that the so-called corruption theorists fail to provide evidence that the adoption of repugnant behaviours or commodification destroy social values. She adds that, the values repugnant behaviours are supposed to destroy may even be reinforced after a market has been created. The explanation she explores is that the creation of a market never goes without debates that allow the society to ponder the values it stands for. We suggest an alternative view on the lack of evidence Krawiec identifies. Our starting point is Krawiec's interpretation of repugnance in terms of externalities. We claim that an analysis of repugnance based on externalities requires a characterization of what an externality is, which is rarely done. We show that economists use two opposed definitions of externalities, an objective and a subjective one, and then show what it implies for an analysis of repugnance and justify why the corruption thesis is not always verified empirically.