Shelter or Ghetto? Polyphonic Narrative as Stigma Management in the Creation of an LGBT Retirement Home

Research Seminar

Management & Human Resources

Speaker: Thomas Roulet

University of Cambridge, Judge Business School

room Bernard Ramanantsoa

Abstract:

How do organizations acquire essential resources when satisfying one key audience inevitably alienates another? Stigmatized organizations have to manage a polyphony of conflicting voices – those emanating from both sympathetic and stigmatizing audiences. Narratives emerge as a crucial tool to navigate these tensions, providing a platform to accommodate different voices flexibly. In this study, we explore how this polyphony can be orchestrated to manage stigma and secure essential resources. We track the project of developing the first retirement home dedicated to the LGBT community in France in a four-year, longitudinal, qualitative, in-depth case study. Through our analysis, we observed how the stigmatizing voices were progressively brought into the organization’s narrative. Our findings show how stigmatized organizations can craft a harmonious polyphonic narrative through a stepwise process: first playing on ambiguity to satisfy conflicting audiences; subsequently translating these voices to foster empathy; and finally articulating them into a causal synthesis where "exclusion" fosters "inclusion.". We contribute to the organizational stigma literature by showing how multiple stigmatizing audiences can be co-opted to maintain support from audiences, challenging the conventional understanding of organizational stigmatization as a linear and unidirectional process. Furthermore, our case adds important research on organizational narratives by highlighting how apparently contradictory voices can be reconciled into one effective polyphonic narrative.

Co authors: Romain Vacquier (U of Toulouse), Bryant Hudson (IESEG)