Organizational Stigma

The purpose of this Element is to provide a comprehensive overview of organizational stigma research development and to identify future research directions, focusing specifically on the organization as the level of analysis. It provides a historical and contemporary review of the organizational stigma literature, identifies the most essential topics of discussion when researching organizational stigma, and moves through them to highlight the most salient topics for future research. Organizational stigma is a multidimensional and multidirectional conception.

While attached to the organization, organizational stigma is developed based on the evaluation of an attribute, characteristics, or behavior of the organization by an organizational audience. In other words, the stigma is in the eye of the beholder, a result of the sociocognitive processes of heterogenous audiences. The authors hope to illustrate the important role that stigma and other social evaluations play in organizations and their inherently inseparable role in society.