Thomas Roulet | University of Cambridge (original) (raw)

Papers by Thomas Roulet

Research in the Sociology of Organizations

When organizations engage in misconduct, social control agents play a crucial role in sanctioning... more When organizations engage in misconduct, social control agents play a crucial role in sanctioning them to show the enforcement of societal norms and reduce the risk of future deviance. We study the interaction between the government and the media, two key social control agents, in the evaluation organizational misconduct. While past work has focused on the influence of the media on the government, we theorize the influence of the government on the media. The government is a social control agent with supreme formal authority to punish misconduct, and thus its actions are of particular interest to the media in their evaluation of misbehaving organizations. However, the government, tied by conflicting demands, sometimes turns a blind eye to misconduct and supports misbehaving organizations for the greater societal good, instead of punishing them. How is the media’s perception of misbehaving organizations affected by such government reactions? We explore this question by looking at the case of the 2008 government bailout of investment banks in the US, after those were caught red-handed for their involvement in the sub-prime financial crisis. Carrying out a content analysis of newspaper reporting (2007-2011), we show that the negative perception of investment banks and their misconduct is attenuated when they receive government support. Our work contributes to the emerging literature on the social construction of organizational misconduct and illuminates the interaction between government and media in the evaluation of behavior as organizational misconduct.

How do individuals choose to conceal a stigmatized attribute and what are the consequences of suc... more How do individuals choose to conceal a stigmatized attribute and what are the consequences of such choice? We answer this question by looking at how gay and lesbian employees make sense of their homosexuality in the highly normative context of audit firms. As a first step, we unveil the subtle pressures exerted on those who possess concealable stigmatized identities. Homosexual auditors engage in partial or full concealment of their sexuality. They live in the fear of being misjudged and casted out of a context in which male values are tantamount. However, the efforts required to conceal create a situation of unrest, which eventually interferes with their social integration at work. We draw on rich ethnographic material in French audit firms, benefitting from the exogenous shock of a gay marriage bill. The study's findings shed new light on audit as a gendered profession and the cost of concealing stigmatized invisible identities.

Does corporate philanthropy have an indiscriminately positive effect on recipients? Our baseline ... more Does corporate philanthropy have an indiscriminately positive effect on recipients? Our baseline argument asserts that relationships with stakeholders outside the field, such as corporate donors, can be perceived as a deviation from the dominant logic at the industry level, and thus as a negative signal by peers. How can recipients mitigate this adverse effect on social evaluations? To answer this question we study how corporate benefaction affects the process of peer recognition in the context of Russian theaters (2004-2011). Firstly, we engage in a qualitative exploration of our setting to contextualize our hypotheses and understand how relationships with corporate donors, depending on their characteristics, affect peer recognition. We then quantitatively test our hypotheses and confirm that the salience of the relationship with extraneous stakeholders - operationalized as the number of corporate donors - has a negative effect on peer recognition. This effect however can be mitigated if theaters choose to limit the breadth, depth and negative valence of the relationship. We contribute to both the institutional logics and stakeholder literature by bringing in a signaling perspective: we show that peer recognition, upon which the maintenance of a dominant logic lies, is directly impacted by the nature of relationships with extraneous stakeholders.

In this essay, we propose a recursive model of institutional change building on the Annales Schoo... more In this essay, we propose a recursive model of institutional change building on the Annales School, one of the 20th century's most influential streams of historical research. Our model builds upon three concepts from the Annales—mentalities, levels of time, and critical events—to explore how punctual disruptions affect different dimensions of institutional logics and exert short-or long-range influences. On these bases, organizations make choices, from decoupling to more radical shifts in logics, leading to severe institutional changes that become a matter of history. As much as organizations are influenced by their times and the prevalent institutional logics, their choices trigger macro-level changes in a recursive manner. More broadly, we comment on how fruitful it our approach to historicize organization studies.

Management International, 2015

Le « Bas de la Pyramide » (BdP), est-il le nouvel Eldorado pour les entreprises, ou seulement un ... more Le « Bas de la Pyramide » (BdP), est-il le nouvel Eldorado pour les entreprises, ou seulement un miroir aux alouettes ? L’examen des activités « BdP » existantes montre que les entreprises ont beaucoup de mal à gagner de l’argent en offrant aux populations les plus pauvres de la planète des produits et des services qui sont censés contribuer à la résolution de problèmes sociaux ou environnementaux. Cet article suggère cependant que les entreprises doivent persévérer dans leurs efforts. Nous proposons des solutions pour surmonter les obstacles économiques, sociaux et politiques des projets « BdP » et discutons le rôle de ces initiatives en matière d’innovation et de croissance.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Is "why be good?" the wrong question to ask? The various theoretical approaches to corporate soci... more Is "why be good?" the wrong question to ask? The various theoretical approaches to corporate social action have persistently been trying to motivate firms' engagement in such practices by demonstrating their rational soundness and financial effectiveness. We argue that the quest for instrumental justification distracted managers and scholars from the initial intention and as a consequence inadvertently weakened corporate contribution to social welfare. Corporate social action can hardly generate a long-term positive social impact if it's designed with instrumental motives in mind. Although the stakeholder approach has made an effort to reconcile instrumental and normative visions by stressing out the salience of stakeholders' needs and their power over corporate actors, we show that stakeholders' ranking on the basis of their influence implied in stakeholder models, is morally dubious. We conclude on the need to revive valid normative approaches to corporate social action.

Academy of Management Review

This article develops a theoretical model to explain how public opinion can lead to the deinstitu... more This article develops a theoretical model to explain how public opinion can lead to the deinstitutionalization of a practice. Our model draws upon the ‘spiral of silence’ theory, that originated in the mass communication literature, and which suggests that social actors tend to support majority views. At the micro level, this behavior triggers a spiral of silence that leads to homogenous public opinion. We use analogical reasoning to posit the existence of a spiral of silence at the institutional field level. When public opinion becomes hostile to a particular practice, institutional fields tend to resist this external opposition. Insiders face the dilemma of whether to align with the majority view expressed by public opinion, or to comply with the one expressed at the field level. After discussing the mechanisms by which insider voices mediate and diffuse the hostility of public opinion at the field level, we discuss the boundary conditions applicable to our analogy. Our paper advances the understanding of nested and connected climates of opinion and bridges the gap between insider- and outsider- driven deinstitutionalization.

Le « Bas de la Pyramide » (BdP), est-il nouvel Eldorado pour les entreprises, ou seulement un mir... more Le « Bas de la Pyramide » (BdP), est-il nouvel Eldorado pour les entreprises, ou seulement un miroir aux alouettes ? L’examen des activités « BdP » existantes montre qu’il est difficile de gagner de l’argent en offrant aux populations les plus pauvres de la planète des produits et des services à finalité sociale ou environnementale. Cet article suggère que les entreprises ont intérêt à persévérer dans leurs efforts. Nous proposons des solutions pour surmonter les obstacles économiques, sociaux et politiques des projets « BdP » et discutons le rôle de ces initiatives en matière d’innovation et de croissance.

The concept of organizational stigma has received significant attention in recent years. The theo... more The concept of organizational stigma has received significant attention in recent years. The theoretical literature suggests that for a stigma to emerge over a category of organizations, a “critical mass” of actors sharing the same beliefs should be reached. Scholars have yet to empirically examine the techniques used to diffuse this negative judgment. This study is aimed at bridging this gap by investigating Goffman’s notion of “stigma-theory”: how do stigmatizing actors rationalize and emotionalize their beliefs to convince their audience? We answer this question by studying the stigma over the finance industry since 2007. After the subprime crisis, a succession of events put the industry under greater scrutiny, and the behaviors and values observed within this field began to be publicly questioned. As an empirical strategy, we collected opinion articles and editorials that specifically targeted the finance industry. Building on rhetorical analysis and other mixed methods of media content analysis, we explain how the stigmatizing rhetoric targets the origins of deviant organizational behaviors in the finance industry, that is, the shareholder-value maximization logic. We bridge the gap between rhetorical strategies applied to discredit organizations and ones used to delegitimize institutional logics by drawing a parallel between these two literatures. Taking an abductive approach, we argue that institutional contradiction between field and societal-level logics is sufficient but not necessary to generate organizational stigma.

The intentions with which the road is paved: Attitudes to liberalism as determinants of greenwashing, Feb 25, 2014

Previous literature has shown contradictory results regarding the relationship between economic l... more Previous literature has shown contradictory results regarding the relationship between economic liberalism at the country level and firms’ engagement in corporate social action. Because liberalism is associated with individualism, it is often assumed that firms will engage in mostly symbolic rather than substantive social and environmental actions; in other words, they will practice ‘greenwashing’. To understand how cultural beliefs in the virtues of liberalism affect the likelihood of greenwashing, we disentangle the effects of the distinct and co-existing beliefs in the virtues of economic liberalism. We begin by conducting an exploratory qualitative analysis of managers’ sentiments on this matter, based on a focus group methodology. We then use these investigative elements to articulate a comparison of the conflicting theoretical arguments: in liberal contexts, are firms, as social entities, inherently selfish or pro-active when it comes to corporate social actions? We empirically test our hypotheses on a large-scale dataset. Finally, we show paradoxically that in countries where beliefs in the virtues of competition are strong, firms are more likely to greenwash, while in countries where beliefs in the virtues of individual responsibility are prominent, firms are more likely to focus on concrete actions. These findings suggest that in contexts where weak governments are seen as ideal, firms might feel the need to step in to fill institutional voids, in contexts in which competitive mindsets dominate, this tendency is counterbalanced.

Journal of Social Business, No. 2, July 2011, Jan 1, 2011

In developing countries, entrepreneurial skills would play an essential role in the creation of s... more In developing countries, entrepreneurial skills would play an essential role in the creation of successful social businesses. Because there are no better people than existing entrepreneurs when developing new businesses, we argue that governments and multilateral organisations should rely on them to promote the concept of social business. But, are existing entrepreneurs ready to turn into social entrepreneurs? In this article we analyse the characteristics of entrepreneurs in developing countries, provide insight into their mindset toward social entrepreneurship, and produce policy recommendations that may help persuade them to become social entrepreneurs.

Regards croisés sur l'économie, Jan 1, 2009

Quels sont les principaux pays émetteurs de GES ? ... Versions papier et électronique : le numéro... more Quels sont les principaux pays émetteurs de GES ? ... Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible immédiatement en ligne. ... Versions papier et électronique : les numéros sont expédié par poste au fur et à mesure de leur parution. ...

Regards croisés sur l'économie, Jan 1, 2010

Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible im... more Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible immédiatement en ligne. ... Versions papier et électronique : les numéros sont expédié par poste au fur et à mesure de leur parution. Tous les numéros en ligne sont immédiatement ...

Regards croisés sur l'économie, Jan 1, 2010

Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible im... more Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible immédiatement en ligne. ... Versions papier et électronique : les numéros sont expédié par poste au fur et à mesure de leur parution. Tous les numéros en ligne sont immédiatement ...

Regards croisés sur l'économie, Jan 1, 2009

Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible im... more Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible immédiatement en ligne. ... Versions papier et électronique : les numéros sont expédié par poste au fur et à mesure de leur parution. Tous les numéros en ligne sont immédiatement ...

Regards croisés sur l'économie, Jan 1, 2008

Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible im... more Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible immédiatement en ligne. ... Versions papier et électronique : les numéros sont expédié par poste au fur et à mesure de leur parution. Tous les numéros en ligne sont immédiatement ...

Research in the Sociology of Organizations

When organizations engage in misconduct, social control agents play a crucial role in sanctioning... more When organizations engage in misconduct, social control agents play a crucial role in sanctioning them to show the enforcement of societal norms and reduce the risk of future deviance. We study the interaction between the government and the media, two key social control agents, in the evaluation organizational misconduct. While past work has focused on the influence of the media on the government, we theorize the influence of the government on the media. The government is a social control agent with supreme formal authority to punish misconduct, and thus its actions are of particular interest to the media in their evaluation of misbehaving organizations. However, the government, tied by conflicting demands, sometimes turns a blind eye to misconduct and supports misbehaving organizations for the greater societal good, instead of punishing them. How is the media’s perception of misbehaving organizations affected by such government reactions? We explore this question by looking at the case of the 2008 government bailout of investment banks in the US, after those were caught red-handed for their involvement in the sub-prime financial crisis. Carrying out a content analysis of newspaper reporting (2007-2011), we show that the negative perception of investment banks and their misconduct is attenuated when they receive government support. Our work contributes to the emerging literature on the social construction of organizational misconduct and illuminates the interaction between government and media in the evaluation of behavior as organizational misconduct.

How do individuals choose to conceal a stigmatized attribute and what are the consequences of suc... more How do individuals choose to conceal a stigmatized attribute and what are the consequences of such choice? We answer this question by looking at how gay and lesbian employees make sense of their homosexuality in the highly normative context of audit firms. As a first step, we unveil the subtle pressures exerted on those who possess concealable stigmatized identities. Homosexual auditors engage in partial or full concealment of their sexuality. They live in the fear of being misjudged and casted out of a context in which male values are tantamount. However, the efforts required to conceal create a situation of unrest, which eventually interferes with their social integration at work. We draw on rich ethnographic material in French audit firms, benefitting from the exogenous shock of a gay marriage bill. The study's findings shed new light on audit as a gendered profession and the cost of concealing stigmatized invisible identities.

Does corporate philanthropy have an indiscriminately positive effect on recipients? Our baseline ... more Does corporate philanthropy have an indiscriminately positive effect on recipients? Our baseline argument asserts that relationships with stakeholders outside the field, such as corporate donors, can be perceived as a deviation from the dominant logic at the industry level, and thus as a negative signal by peers. How can recipients mitigate this adverse effect on social evaluations? To answer this question we study how corporate benefaction affects the process of peer recognition in the context of Russian theaters (2004-2011). Firstly, we engage in a qualitative exploration of our setting to contextualize our hypotheses and understand how relationships with corporate donors, depending on their characteristics, affect peer recognition. We then quantitatively test our hypotheses and confirm that the salience of the relationship with extraneous stakeholders - operationalized as the number of corporate donors - has a negative effect on peer recognition. This effect however can be mitigated if theaters choose to limit the breadth, depth and negative valence of the relationship. We contribute to both the institutional logics and stakeholder literature by bringing in a signaling perspective: we show that peer recognition, upon which the maintenance of a dominant logic lies, is directly impacted by the nature of relationships with extraneous stakeholders.

In this essay, we propose a recursive model of institutional change building on the Annales Schoo... more In this essay, we propose a recursive model of institutional change building on the Annales School, one of the 20th century's most influential streams of historical research. Our model builds upon three concepts from the Annales—mentalities, levels of time, and critical events—to explore how punctual disruptions affect different dimensions of institutional logics and exert short-or long-range influences. On these bases, organizations make choices, from decoupling to more radical shifts in logics, leading to severe institutional changes that become a matter of history. As much as organizations are influenced by their times and the prevalent institutional logics, their choices trigger macro-level changes in a recursive manner. More broadly, we comment on how fruitful it our approach to historicize organization studies.

Management International, 2015

Le « Bas de la Pyramide » (BdP), est-il le nouvel Eldorado pour les entreprises, ou seulement un ... more Le « Bas de la Pyramide » (BdP), est-il le nouvel Eldorado pour les entreprises, ou seulement un miroir aux alouettes ? L’examen des activités « BdP » existantes montre que les entreprises ont beaucoup de mal à gagner de l’argent en offrant aux populations les plus pauvres de la planète des produits et des services qui sont censés contribuer à la résolution de problèmes sociaux ou environnementaux. Cet article suggère cependant que les entreprises doivent persévérer dans leurs efforts. Nous proposons des solutions pour surmonter les obstacles économiques, sociaux et politiques des projets « BdP » et discutons le rôle de ces initiatives en matière d’innovation et de croissance.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Is "why be good?" the wrong question to ask? The various theoretical approaches to corporate soci... more Is "why be good?" the wrong question to ask? The various theoretical approaches to corporate social action have persistently been trying to motivate firms' engagement in such practices by demonstrating their rational soundness and financial effectiveness. We argue that the quest for instrumental justification distracted managers and scholars from the initial intention and as a consequence inadvertently weakened corporate contribution to social welfare. Corporate social action can hardly generate a long-term positive social impact if it's designed with instrumental motives in mind. Although the stakeholder approach has made an effort to reconcile instrumental and normative visions by stressing out the salience of stakeholders' needs and their power over corporate actors, we show that stakeholders' ranking on the basis of their influence implied in stakeholder models, is morally dubious. We conclude on the need to revive valid normative approaches to corporate social action.

Academy of Management Review

This article develops a theoretical model to explain how public opinion can lead to the deinstitu... more This article develops a theoretical model to explain how public opinion can lead to the deinstitutionalization of a practice. Our model draws upon the ‘spiral of silence’ theory, that originated in the mass communication literature, and which suggests that social actors tend to support majority views. At the micro level, this behavior triggers a spiral of silence that leads to homogenous public opinion. We use analogical reasoning to posit the existence of a spiral of silence at the institutional field level. When public opinion becomes hostile to a particular practice, institutional fields tend to resist this external opposition. Insiders face the dilemma of whether to align with the majority view expressed by public opinion, or to comply with the one expressed at the field level. After discussing the mechanisms by which insider voices mediate and diffuse the hostility of public opinion at the field level, we discuss the boundary conditions applicable to our analogy. Our paper advances the understanding of nested and connected climates of opinion and bridges the gap between insider- and outsider- driven deinstitutionalization.

Le « Bas de la Pyramide » (BdP), est-il nouvel Eldorado pour les entreprises, ou seulement un mir... more Le « Bas de la Pyramide » (BdP), est-il nouvel Eldorado pour les entreprises, ou seulement un miroir aux alouettes ? L’examen des activités « BdP » existantes montre qu’il est difficile de gagner de l’argent en offrant aux populations les plus pauvres de la planète des produits et des services à finalité sociale ou environnementale. Cet article suggère que les entreprises ont intérêt à persévérer dans leurs efforts. Nous proposons des solutions pour surmonter les obstacles économiques, sociaux et politiques des projets « BdP » et discutons le rôle de ces initiatives en matière d’innovation et de croissance.

The concept of organizational stigma has received significant attention in recent years. The theo... more The concept of organizational stigma has received significant attention in recent years. The theoretical literature suggests that for a stigma to emerge over a category of organizations, a “critical mass” of actors sharing the same beliefs should be reached. Scholars have yet to empirically examine the techniques used to diffuse this negative judgment. This study is aimed at bridging this gap by investigating Goffman’s notion of “stigma-theory”: how do stigmatizing actors rationalize and emotionalize their beliefs to convince their audience? We answer this question by studying the stigma over the finance industry since 2007. After the subprime crisis, a succession of events put the industry under greater scrutiny, and the behaviors and values observed within this field began to be publicly questioned. As an empirical strategy, we collected opinion articles and editorials that specifically targeted the finance industry. Building on rhetorical analysis and other mixed methods of media content analysis, we explain how the stigmatizing rhetoric targets the origins of deviant organizational behaviors in the finance industry, that is, the shareholder-value maximization logic. We bridge the gap between rhetorical strategies applied to discredit organizations and ones used to delegitimize institutional logics by drawing a parallel between these two literatures. Taking an abductive approach, we argue that institutional contradiction between field and societal-level logics is sufficient but not necessary to generate organizational stigma.

The intentions with which the road is paved: Attitudes to liberalism as determinants of greenwashing, Feb 25, 2014

Previous literature has shown contradictory results regarding the relationship between economic l... more Previous literature has shown contradictory results regarding the relationship between economic liberalism at the country level and firms’ engagement in corporate social action. Because liberalism is associated with individualism, it is often assumed that firms will engage in mostly symbolic rather than substantive social and environmental actions; in other words, they will practice ‘greenwashing’. To understand how cultural beliefs in the virtues of liberalism affect the likelihood of greenwashing, we disentangle the effects of the distinct and co-existing beliefs in the virtues of economic liberalism. We begin by conducting an exploratory qualitative analysis of managers’ sentiments on this matter, based on a focus group methodology. We then use these investigative elements to articulate a comparison of the conflicting theoretical arguments: in liberal contexts, are firms, as social entities, inherently selfish or pro-active when it comes to corporate social actions? We empirically test our hypotheses on a large-scale dataset. Finally, we show paradoxically that in countries where beliefs in the virtues of competition are strong, firms are more likely to greenwash, while in countries where beliefs in the virtues of individual responsibility are prominent, firms are more likely to focus on concrete actions. These findings suggest that in contexts where weak governments are seen as ideal, firms might feel the need to step in to fill institutional voids, in contexts in which competitive mindsets dominate, this tendency is counterbalanced.

Journal of Social Business, No. 2, July 2011, Jan 1, 2011

In developing countries, entrepreneurial skills would play an essential role in the creation of s... more In developing countries, entrepreneurial skills would play an essential role in the creation of successful social businesses. Because there are no better people than existing entrepreneurs when developing new businesses, we argue that governments and multilateral organisations should rely on them to promote the concept of social business. But, are existing entrepreneurs ready to turn into social entrepreneurs? In this article we analyse the characteristics of entrepreneurs in developing countries, provide insight into their mindset toward social entrepreneurship, and produce policy recommendations that may help persuade them to become social entrepreneurs.

Regards croisés sur l'économie, Jan 1, 2009

Quels sont les principaux pays émetteurs de GES ? ... Versions papier et électronique : le numéro... more Quels sont les principaux pays émetteurs de GES ? ... Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible immédiatement en ligne. ... Versions papier et électronique : les numéros sont expédié par poste au fur et à mesure de leur parution. ...

Regards croisés sur l'économie, Jan 1, 2010

Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible im... more Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible immédiatement en ligne. ... Versions papier et électronique : les numéros sont expédié par poste au fur et à mesure de leur parution. Tous les numéros en ligne sont immédiatement ...

Regards croisés sur l'économie, Jan 1, 2010

Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible im... more Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible immédiatement en ligne. ... Versions papier et électronique : les numéros sont expédié par poste au fur et à mesure de leur parution. Tous les numéros en ligne sont immédiatement ...

Regards croisés sur l'économie, Jan 1, 2009

Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible im... more Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible immédiatement en ligne. ... Versions papier et électronique : les numéros sont expédié par poste au fur et à mesure de leur parution. Tous les numéros en ligne sont immédiatement ...

Regards croisés sur l'économie, Jan 1, 2008

Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible im... more Versions papier et électronique : le numéro est expédié par poste. Il est également accessible immédiatement en ligne. ... Versions papier et électronique : les numéros sont expédié par poste au fur et à mesure de leur parution. Tous les numéros en ligne sont immédiatement ...