Organizations as Stages: A Dramaturgical Theory of the Societal Integration of Stigmatized Groups

This paper theorizes how organizations enable the societal integration of stigmatized groups. Drawing on Goffman’s relational perspective on stigma and his dramaturgical metaphors, we conceptualize organizations as “stages” on which stigmatized groups are presented to diverse audiences. We identify two fundamental forms of staging—concealing and normalizing—through which organizations can reduce sanctions from stigmatizing audiences and elicit acceptance among more supportive ones, thereby ultimately enabling societal integration. Our model specifies the structural antecedents that shape the likelihood of each form of staging, offering a nuanced understanding of when organizations adopt them as well as the tensions that may arise from doing so. Based on this, we extend research on organizations’ management of stigma by advancing a dramaturgical theory of the societal integration of stigmatized groups. Whereas prior work has largely assumed that managing the stigmatized attributes of groups is central (and often sufficient) for their broader integration, we demonstrate that integration ultimately depends on the management of audiences and must therefore be understood as an inherently audience-focused process.