Working Paper Abstracts

Mmbaga, N., Lashley, K., Williams, D. & Pollock, T.G. “Hurts so good: Stigma balancing in the payday loan industry” Under First Review at Academy of Management Journal

Abstract: We explore how a core stigmatized industry navigates the benefits and emerging threats of multiple core stigmas in ways that provide it long-term access to the benefits they provide, while minimizing their associated threats. We conducted an inductive field study using grounded theory and participant observation techniques to understand how this dynamic process unfolded in the payday loan industry. This industry’s environment changed drastically over several decades; environmental shifts, the industry’s actions and its various audiences’ responses created new challenges the industry responded to with different levels of success. We find that the industry used an evolving portfolio of actions to influence different audiences’ perceptions of its immoral practices and impoverished customers—the sources of the industry’s stigmas—even while reinforcing its core customers’ stigma to maintain their resource value to the industry. This messy and multifaceted stigma balancing process highlights how industry actors employing multiple strategies to influence audience reactions and attempts to achieve a favorable balance of between the condoning and contesting of their stigmatized customers and practices. Our study has implications for research on stigma management.

Han, J-H, Pollock, T.G. & Paruchuri, S. “Public enemies? Reputation and celebrity as interpretive frames in the scandalizing of organizational misconduct” Conditionally Accepted at Strategic Management Journal

Abstract: In this study we focus on how reputation and celebrity influence whether a firm’s misconduct is scandalized. We argue that the analytical processing mode high reputation stimulates will increase the likelihood misconduct is scandalized when the misconduct severe, and reputation’s constant updating will reduce the duration of reputation’s influence on scandalization. In contrast, the affective processing mode celebrity evokes enhances the likelihood that less severe misconduct is scandalized, and celebrities’ newsworthiness leads to no diminishment in celebrity’s influence over time. Our findings based on corporate data breaches support our theory. We contribute to the social evaluations and organizational misconduct literatures by suggesting differences in social approval assets’ sociocognitive content is an important yet overlooked antecedent of scandals.

Seo, Y., Pollock, T.G. & Park, C. “Mirror, mirror: Using impression management to influence media reactions to potentially image-enhancing acquisitions” Revise and Resubmit at Strategic Organization

Abstract: We draw on the acquisitions, image, and impression management literatures to examine how acquirers’ anticipatory and post-announcement impression management tactics influence the media’s responses to potentially image-enhancing acquisitions. We test our hypotheses using acquisitions in the North American food processing industry from 2007 to 2012. Our results suggest that using language consistent with the target’s more socially desirable image at the time of and following the acquisition leads to more positive media coverage when acquisition targets have even a moderately more desirable image. We also find the media reacts more positively when acquirers announce that the targets will retain their operational autonomy, regardless of whether the target has a socially desirable image. Our study sheds light on how image can shift for conventional firms acquiring more social value-driven firms, and has broader theoretical implications for the literatures on acquisitions and impression management.

Pollock, T.G., Beorchia, A., Crook, T.R. & Samba, C. “Which matters more? A meta-analysis of reputation, status and firm performance” Revise and Resubmit at Strategic Management Journal

Abstract: Status and reputation research has been plagued by overlapping theoretical definitions and empirical measurements, limiting our understanding of how they influence organizational performance. Building on theory explaining the different ways they create value, we meta-analyze the relationships among firm reputation, status, and three types of performance (accounting returns, market returns, and growth), assess whether one social evaluation has a greater influence than the other, and whether possessing high levels of both social evaluations has complimentary effects. We find that reputation has positive effects on all three performance dimensions, whereas status yields more varied relationships; that reputation’s effects are larger than status’s effects; and that they have complimentary effects on performance. These results do not differ across a variety of measurement and sampling distinctions.

Beorchia, A., Gras, D. & Pollock, T.G. “Riding the wave: Entrepreneurial responses to social movements”

Abstract: We explain how entrepreneurs are affected by identity movements—either adopting or abandoning a social mission to help solve a social movement problem. We use the extent to which entrepreneurs identify with and are embedded in a social movement community to propose three social movement-driven entrepreneur archetypes (i.e., originals, converts, and opportunists). We develop a framework explaining how different framing tasks used across a social movement’s life cycle affect entrepreneurs’ balancing of economic and social logics within their business.

Kim, T. & Pollock, T.G. “The American idol next door: Conforming behavior, media attention, and achieving celebrity”

Abstract: We draw on the celebrity, categories, and optimal distinctiveness literatures to explore how unknown actors’ conforming and non-conforming behaviors affect their ability to advance in a celebrity certification contest, the media’s role in this process, and how the timing of their conforming and nonconforming actions affects their influence. We use data on competitors during the first fifteen seasons of American Idol to explore how the extent to which competitors’ song choices conform to their initial musical genre affects their ability to advance in the competition. We also explore how this relationship is affected by the media coverage they receive, and when the behaviors and coverage occur. We find that conforming to a certain genre increased the likelihood they advanced in the competition. However, this base relationship was influenced by both the individual’s media visibility and the timing of when it occurred. We found evidence that media visibility attenuates, and can even reverse, the effect of conformity, but only during the early phase of audiences’ exposure to the actor. Our study contributes to our understanding of celebrity’s antecedents, how conforming behavior can enhance celebrity, and the importance of temporal considerations when assessing distinctiveness.

Beorchia, A., Gras, D. & Pollock, T.G. “Strength in numbers? The contingent effects of social capital on ethnic business outcomes”

Abstract: We ask the questions: How does ethnic social capital influence ethnic minority business ownership and business growth? And how do other community factors (economic, political, and cultural characteristics) strengthen or weaken ethnic social capital’s effect on these business outcomes? Based on an analysis of Latino-owned businesses in all U.S. counties, we find that the effects of ethnic social capital on ethnic minority business ownership and business growth differ—and are contingent on—the economic, cultural, and political environment in complex ways. Through this study, we contribute to the social capital literature by highlighting how a community’s environment can influence ethnic social capital’s efficacy for specific business outcomes, providing an important step in understanding the interplay between ethnic minority businesses and the environment in which they exist.

Han, J-H, Paruchuri, S. & Pollock, T.G. “The (un)usual suspects: Status, celebrity, and misconduct spillovers to bystanders”

Abstract: Organizational misconduct can create negative and positive spillovers to uninvolved bystander firms. We argue that the perpetrators’ and bystanders’ status and celebrity, and their distinctive sociocognitive content, influence the direction and magnitudes of misconduct spillovers by creating perceptions that the routines associated with the misconduct are systemic or isolated to the perpetrator. Bystanders’ status and celebrity create their own interpretive frames, further shaping spillovers by enhancing or reducing interpretive uncertainty depending on their congruence or incongruence with the perpetrator’s interpretive frame, and on which actor possesses which asset. Our findings based on 24,765 corporate data breach pairs in 2018 showed that bystanders’ status amplified the positive spillover from celebrity firms’ data breaches, while their celebrity attenuated the negative spillover from high-status firms’ breaches and amplified the positive spillover from celebrity firms’ breaches. We contribute to research on misconduct spillovers by offering a generalizable framework that incorporates both positive and negative spillovers, and informs the range to which spillovers occur. We contribute to the social evaluations literature by showing how actor dyads’ social approval asset combinations can generate frame (in)congruence that affects outcomes in different ways.

Jung, J., Pollock, T.G., Smith, A.D., & Rindova, V.P. “Kitchen Invasion: Restaurants’ business model innovations during teh COVID-19 crisis”

Abstract: We explore how and why firms facing the same exogenous threats react differently, leading to different business model innovation (BMI) processes. Given the significant impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the restaurant industry, we conducted a longitudinal, inductive comparative case study of 14 restaurateurs in the same geographic region to explore how they responded to the pandemic and how their BMI unfolded over time. Through the analyses, we identified a new theoretical lens to explain how restaurateurs engage in BMI during a crisis: sensemaking. Using different sensemaking frames (opportunity and threat), restaurateurs in this study undertook different patterns of BMI actions. Specifically, those who adopted an opportunity sensemaking frame made significant changes to their business models, which we refer to as “leap.” Those who interpreted their environmental and organizational conditions through a threat sensemaking frame either “experiment” with their business models by making often short-term changes, or chose to maintain the “status quo” by taking no actions or removing prior changes. Thus, this study contributes to our understanding of BMI actions and processes by identifying the factors affecting BMI and explicating the dynamic processes BMI can take.

Han, J-H & Pollock, T.G. “Eyes wide shut: The competing effects of information availability and visibility enhancement on post-IPO media coverage”

Abstract: Building on the literature on media behavior, we examine the differential effects of cumulative attention—availability cascades—and dramatic events or prominent affiliations—visibility enhancements—on receiving media coverage. Specifically, we argue visibility-enhancing factors have a chronic priming effect that overwhelms availability cascade dynamics, due to their higher saliency to the media. However, when it comes to evaluative judgments, we argue that only dramatic events will have a priming effect, and prominent affiliations will not affect evaluation-based availability cascades. Discrete-time event history analyses on the post-IPO media coverage of 225 initial public offerings supports our arguments.

 Yan, J., Williams, D., Hunt, R. & Pollock, T.G. “Exploring the unknown requires leveraging uncertainty: A real options perspective on patterns and performance of entrepreneurial firms’ internationalization”

Abstract: Especially in this era of increasing trade tensions, uncertainty plays a major role in both entrepreneurial and internationalization processes. Yet, prior entrepreneurship and internationalization literature has not fully accounted for the nature of high and changing levels of host country uncertainty when predicting entrepreneurial firms’ internationalization patterns and outcomes. From a real options (RO) perspective, we re-conceptualize firms’ internationalization patterns, processes, and outcomes as the result of active uncertainty-management in the face of elevated and ever-changing levels of host-country institutional and economic uncertainty. Utilizing a representative sample of 680 new U.S.-based firms that exported goods to 147 different host countries from 2009 to 2019, we find that host country uncertainty positively relates to firms’ choice of “real options” entry (i.e., low initial investment combined with high collaboration). Importantly, although not all firms choose RO entry, those that do achieve superior performance under high uncertainty. In addition, firms employ RO entry enable relatively faster entries, enter more distant destinations, and allow flexibility to exit markets over time.

Lashley, K., Pollock, T.G. & Misangyi, V. “Weed, words and winning: Entrepreneurial storytelling in a stigmatized industry”

Abstract:

  Chan, R., Rindova, V.P., Pollock, T.G., Gomulya, D., Boeker, W. & Mitchell, T.R. “Breaking ranks: How different sources of status affect the likelihood financial analysts will take bold actions”