Journal article
How organizations move from stigma to legitimacy: The case of cook's travel agency in Victorian Britain
CE Hampel, P Tracey
Academy of Management Journal | Academy of Management | Published : 2017
Abstract
Based on an in-depth historical study of how Thomas Cook's travel agency moved from stigmatization to legitimacy among the elite of Victorian Britain, we develop a model of organizational destigmatization. We find that audiences stigmatize an organization because they fear that it threatens a particular moral order, which leads them to mount sustained attacks designed to weaken or eradicate the organization. Our model suggests that an organization that experiences this form of profound disapproval can nonetheless purge its stigma and become legitimate through a two-step process: first the organization engages in stigma reduction work designed to minimize overt hostility among audiences by sh..
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Awarded by Economic and Social Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
Wewould like to thank JohnAmis, ShazAnsari, Royston Greenwood, Jennifer Howard-Grenville, Thomas Keil, Jochem Kroezen, TomLawrence, Sucheta Nadkarni, Rowena Olegario, Wendy Smith, Trin Thananusak, Rene Wiedner, participants at the 2014 European Group for Organizational Studies Colloquium (especially Markus Hollerer and Charlene Zietsma), the 2015 Edinburgh Writing Workshop, and the 2014 and 2015 Academy of Management Annual Meetings for their helpful feedback. We also thank the historians who offered their valuable insights, especially Piers Brendon and Paul Smith. Finally, we would like to express our particular gratitude to associate editor Scott Sonenshein and the three reviewers for their extremely constructive guidance and suggestions throughout. This research was supported by a scholarship from the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number: 1162930).