Kang, J., DesJardine, M. & Pollock, T.G. “Stigma by association? How activist hedge fund affiliations affect directors’ careers” Under Second Review at Academy of Management Journal

Abstract: How does stigma by association shape career outcomes in elite governance settings, and under what conditions can it be mitigated or amplified? We explore this question by examining the post-appointment trajectories of directors who affiliate themselves with activist hedge funds (AHFs), a controversial type of investor incumbents often see as challenging boardroom norms. While prior research emphasizes how human and social capital enable upward mobility in the director labor market, we shift focus to the reputational consequences of taking on stigmatized roles. Using a matched sample of AHF-sponsored and conventionally elected directors, we find that an AHF affiliation’s relationship with the prestige of future board appointments is far from uniform. Directors’ outcomes vary based on who they are, what they did in the role, and who appointed them. These findings extend research on stigma, director labor markets, and board governance by highlighting how associational stigma is experienced—and in some cases mitigated—at the top of the corporate hierarchy.

Kim, T. & Pollock, T.G. “The American idol next door: Conforming behavior, media attention, and achieving celebrity” Under Second Review at Organization Science

Abstract: We draw on the celebrity and categories 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 affect their influence. We use data on competitors during the first fifteen seasons of American Idol to explore how the extent to which competitors’ song and costume choices conform to their initial musical genre and costume 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 and consistency in their costume choices 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 non-conforming behavior.

Beorchia, A., Gras, D. & Pollock, T.G. “Riding the wave: Entrepreneurial responses to social movements” Revise and Resubmit at Journal of Management

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.

Beorchia, A., Gras, D. & Pollock, T.G. “Strength in numbers? The contingent effects of social capital on ethnic business outcomes” Under Second Review at Entrepreneurship and Regional Development

Abstract: In this study, we ask if the relationships between an ethnic minority population’s size, ethnic minority business ownership and ethnic minority employer business ownership differ based on economic, political, and cultural community characteristics. We analyzed Latino-owned businesses across counties in the United States and found that the relationship between a community’s ethnic minority population and ethnic minority business ownership and becoming an employer business differ—and are contingent upon—the economic, cultural, and political community characteristics in complex ways. We highlight how a community’s characteristics relate to an ethnic minority population’s association with business ownership and employing others. This study provides further knowledge about the interplay between ethnic minority businesses and the environments in which they exist.

Pollock, T.G., Beorchia, A., Crook, T.R. & Samba, C. “Sound and fury, signifying little? A meta-analysis assessing whether status is an accurate firm performance signal”

Abstract: Our knowledge about how status uniquely relates to firm performance outcomes is limited because scholars have not yet theorized or explored how differences in the way this social evaluation creates value can shape these outcomes. Building on theory explaining how status creates value, we meta-analyze and compare its relationship with accounting returns, market returns, and growth. We find that status has positive and similarly-sized relationships with accounting and market returns, yet it is not related with growth. We also find that reputation and status have super-additive, complementary firm performance effects. These results are stable across a variety of measurement and sampling distinctions.

Mmbaga, N., Lashley, K., Williams, D. & Pollock, T.G. “Hurts so good: Stigma balancing in the payday loan industry” Revise and Resubmit at Organization Science

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, 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.

 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.