Stigmatising Events and Their Relationships to Positive Social Evaluations

Abstract Social evaluations arise from stakeholders’ perceptions of organisational processes, structures, and/or outcomes. Social evaluation scholars have long focused on how positive social evaluations, such as celebrity, reputation, and status, can elicit social and financial benefits. More recent work has explored how certain negative social evaluations, such as organisational stigma, manifest in social disapproval and other social and financial penalties. Because social evaluations develop from past or current behaviours or outcomes, stakeholders tend to expect those actions to continue, and for organisations to maintain their positive or negative social evaluations. Yet, we have a limited understanding of what happens when an organisation with a positive evaluation, such as status, celebrity, or reputation, is threatened by stigma. This chapter explores the extent to which positive social evaluations shield or expose organisations from negative judgements. It contends that the effects of combinations of positive and negative evaluations are not simply additive but dependent on the nature of the specific social evaluation. The chapter explores whether and how a stigmatising event may accentuate or attenuate organisational status, celebrity, and reputation. We further provide concrete recommendations for scholars interested in studying the interrelations between stigma and positive social evaluations.