Bojovic, Neva and Cheded, Mohammed and Garud, Raghu (2020) Bringing sex back in: Performative performances of stigmatized products within and across field-configuring events. In: 36th EGOS Colloquium, 2020-07-02 - 2020-07-04, University of Hamburg.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Management and organizational scholars interested in stigmatized organizations, industries and categories have been studying how actors in such settings cope with stigma. In this paper, we explore the relationship between stigma and field-configuring events (FCEs), a relationship that remains undertheorized. We conducted a multimodal, longitudinal study of events that unfolded involving actors of a stigmatized industry (sex tech) and the consumer electronics show (CES)—a prestigious FCE in the consumer electronics industry. Data show how the retraction of an award given to an already stigmatized sex-tech product, Osé, could have deepened the core stigma for the category. Instead, it led to the stigmatizer (CES) risking stigmatization. Eventually, the interactions between the various actors led to the reconfiguration of both the CES and the sex-tech product category around Osé. In our model of the performative performance of stigmatized products, we examine the relationship between core and event stigma of products and FCEs, and in this way contribute to both the literatures.