Administrative Science Quarterly

We seek to understand the distinctive process of state-led category destigmatization, extending an emergent stream of research on category destigmatization that has so far focused on the efforts of stigmatized members of categories. When a category conflicts with a prevailing ideology, internal actors may face such substantial barriers to destigmatization that the state—often motivated by the pragmatic benefits of that category’s success—must take a proactive role in the effort. Focusing on an extreme case, we explore the revival of the private business category in China through a longitudinal case study. We develop a grounded process model that highlights the interplay among the state, category members, and the public as a framework for understanding this type of destigmatization process. Our model also addresses dynamics that can emerge within the state when political power is divided between category proponents and opponents with competing ideological stances. Our study highlights the need for the state to balance destigmatization efforts with maintaining legitimacy, prompting iterative strategic adjustments based on local feedback, evolving public opinion, and intrastate competition between political factions. Our findings show that such adjustments may be needed even in authoritarian states, which are typically more coercive. In addition, we find that states can effectively use backstage strategies (e.g., regulatory leniency) and frontstage strategies (e.g., legislative change) in complementary ways to advance destigmatization while safeguarding the state’s legitimacy. Finally, we show that starting a category destigmatization effort by emphasizing the category’s pragmatic values (prior to advocating for moral reevaluation of the category) can mitigate ideological conflict and increase chances of successful destigmatization.

As rankings of organizations have proliferated in recent decades, much research has focused on organizational efforts to maintain a high position in rankings. A common theme in this literature is that changes in rank affect evaluations by external audiences and, consequently, organizational outcomes. Yet, accumulating evidence suggests that rankings sometimes have little effect on audience assessments and organizational outcomes, a finding that calls into question the power of rankings. Instead of asking whether rankings matter, this study adopts a contingency approach and investigates when rankings matter. I develop theory about contextual and organizational factors that shape the salience and information value of shifts in rankings: the direction of the change, the availability of information from other intermediaries, the sophistication of the audience, and the focal organization’s previous ranking position. Panel data analysis and a natural experiment focused on the Fortune 500 rankings support this theory. This article provides a framework to help scholars understand the contingent and asymmetric consequences of rankings on organizational outcomes, with implications for research on evaluation systems.

Despite continued research on workers’ quit behavior, questions remain on how race influences voluntary departure. To make progress on this topic, in this study I treat race as a structural position with respect to resources in order to develop a theoretical frame on why members of racial groups leave jobs. I argue that Black workers are more apt than White workers to voluntarily depart for reasons related to a lack of resources, such as a lack of health or transportation, whereas White workers are more likely than Black workers to depart for reasons that require resources, such as to start a new business or to take a new job. Using a nationally representative cohort sample spanning a period of two decades, I find support for my theory. The results indicate that Black workers are more likely than White workers to voluntarily depart their jobs due to resource constraints, and White workers are more likely than Black workers to voluntarily depart their jobs for reasons that require resources. This study suggests ways to reconceptualize the constraints and opportunities underlying voluntary departure and why such departure varies across racial groups.

According to the Carnegie School tradition of experiential learning, learning processes are driven by interpretations of experience relative to an observable goal. While prior research has considered how ambiguity may complicate interpretation, it has seldom considered how ambiguous experience emanating from the enactment of hidden goals may complicate the interpretive process. Drawing on a 13-month inductive study of CryptoTradingGroup (CTG), a distributed financial organization, and its interactions with MajorCryptoCommunity (MCC), a cryptocurrency investment community, we examine how actors engage in effective interpretation and learning when they face hidden goals and ambiguous experience. We examine how perpetrators in CTG plotted a hidden market manipulation goal in a backstage secret chatroom while simultaneously targeting MCC with invalid information enacted in the frontstage. Our analysis unpacks the dynamics of how MCC deciphered the hidden market manipulation goal and stopped the fraud through a process that we label inferential interpretation. In shifting away from a model of effective learning with statistical inference, in which interpretation is rarely examined, inferential interpretation shows how heterogeneous actors construct understandings from cues embedded in ambiguous experience during the learning process. Our study makes interpretation, i.e., the construction of meaning, central to conceptions of experiential learning when reality, causality, and intentionality are obscured.

This article explores how policies that reduce barriers to entrepreneurship impact underrepresented groups differently depending on local norms and cultural beliefs. While prior studies suggest that underrepresented groups should benefit more than other groups do from policies lowering entry barriers, the empirical evidence is mixed. We argue that the absence of normative and cognitive support can undermine the effectiveness of these policies for underrepresented groups. To explore this, we leveraged the staggered rollout of a policy that reduced entry barriers to entrepreneurship in Mexico. The results show that while the policy increased the number of businesses founded by men, it had a small and statistically insignificant impact for women, thus exacerbating the gender gap in entrepreneurship. Further analyses suggest that while women were not more likely to become involved in entrepreneurship as founders, they did become engaged in alternative roles within new ventures, often leaving other forms of employment to enter unpaid work in businesses founded by men in their household. The effects of the policy on the gender gap in entrepreneurship and unpaid work were more pronounced in areas with a strong patriarchy logic and among married individuals. This research highlights the need to consider context in the design of policies intended to encourage entrepreneurship.

A substantial body of research examines the relevance of hiring as a source of gender disparities in organizations. However, there is limited evidence on how different sets of key organizational decision makers contribute to gender disparities in hiring outcomes. To address this research gap, we exploit the staggered adoption of a new hiring process in a multinational corporation, which transferred from hiring managers to HR departments the task of shortlisting: narrowing a large pool of candidates to a more manageable set before final decision making. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that the transfer of shortlisting responsibility increased the share of newly hired women. Additional tests based on quantitative and qualitative data are largely consistent with our finding that the transfer of shortlisting from hiring managers to HR departments led to fewer gender disparities in hiring outcomes given the increased expert knowledge in evaluating candidates and reduced opportunity costs for conducting such evaluations. Our setting offers a unique opportunity to help isolate key organizational decision makers’ role in contributing to gender disparities in hiring outcomes, and our findings have implications for how to alleviate gender disparities in employment.