Stigma in Practice

Abstract This chapter describes how stigma affected one particular company in practice, from the viewpoint of the CEO who was hired to, in essence, lead a damaged corporation through and out of its stigma. It describes how the corporation came to have near—paralysing stigma attached to it in the court of public opinion, through a series of damaging business decisions leading to practices which undermined trust in its products and services. It describes how the corporation’s stigma was pervasive, how it spread externally from customers, into communities, to the media through to key stakeholders in government and broader society. It describes the author’s decision to tackle the job of transforming the corporation by attempting to rehabilitate the stigma associated with its products and services. It describes what working in a stigmatised corporation meant for its people, with respect to what they experienced and how it felt. It also describes how, through the process of transforming the corporation, stigma still felt the strongest in the public domain, despite progress being made with harsh critics and key stakeholders behind closed doors. It also describes how, ultimately, stigma contributed to key stakeholders ‘abandoning’ the cause in the public domain despite otherwise successful strides in transforming the corporation.