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

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” Under Second Review 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.

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” Under First Review at Academy of Management Journal

Abstract: Our knowledge about how status uniquely relates to firm performance 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, but 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.

Pollock, T.G. & Rindova, V.P. “When opposites don’t attract: The new media environment, polarization, and what happens to social evaluations when “the world goes to hell in a handbasket”?” Revising for Journal of Management Studies

Abstract: New information technologies have enabled fundamentally new forms and pathways of information creation and dissemination, but have also had several unintended consequences, chief among them increased polarization, that can affect social evaluations research. We consider five types of social evaluations—legitimacy, reputation, status, celebrity/infamy and stigma/esteem, and discuss the implications of the information shifts and increased polarization for their value, churn, and durability. We then consider the implications for theorizing about and empirically studying social evaluations in an ever more polarized world.

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

Abstract: Prior research on industry core stigma has examined stigma primarily as either a constraint to manage or an opportunity to leverage, but not how industries navigate the ongoing tension when stigma simultaneously creates both effects. We conducted an inductive field study of the payday lending industry to explore how stigmatized industries navigate constraints from engaging in stigmatized practices while accessing market opportunities from serving vulnerable populations. We combined grounded theory, process, and participant observation techniques to understand how this dynamic unfolded over three decades and the mechanisms driving the process. We develop a three-phase process model of stigma balancing—political and moral justification, cosmetic transformation, and constructing alternatives—showing how the industry used an evolving portfolio of leveraging and mitigating mechanisms to access market opportunities even as their stigmatized practices drew increasingly negative attention from multiple audiences. The effectiveness of stigma balancing required the industry to respond to growing audience intolerance while ensuring market access. This process of stigma balancing reveals that stigma is neither exclusively an opportunity to leverage nor a constraint to eliminate, but an ongoing tension requiring continuous 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. “Cooking under pressure: How restaurants fought, survived or waited out the pandemic crisis”

Abstract: Entrepreneurs navigating prolonged uncertainty need to interpret shifting environments and decide when and how to act. Prior research emphasizes that entrepreneurs frame their situations as opportunities or threats, shaping their strategic actions. Yet, this sensemaking frame alone does not fully explain why entrepreneurs with similar sensemaking frames act differently. Through an inductive, multi-case study of 14 restaurateurs responding to the Covid-19 pandemic, we explore how entrepreneurs’ risk orientation—their willingness to act despite uncertain outcomes—interacts with their sensemaking frames to drive different actions. Our findings reveal that even entrepreneurs employing similar sensemaking frames—whether opportunity or threat—may pursue different actions, ranging from bold strategic moves to cautious operational adjustments, or even no action, depending on their risk orientations. Also, entrepreneurs continuously recalibrate sensemaking frames and risk orientations as uncertainty unfolds, environmental cues evolve, resources shift, and prior actions provide feedback. This ongoing change shapes their trajectories of strategic or tactical actions over time. Thus, our study contributes to research on sensemaking and strategic decision-making under uncertainty by demonstrating how the interplay between cognitive interpretation and risk-taking willingness dynamically influences entrepreneurial responses under prolonged uncertainty.

 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.