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Sub-theme 05: [SWG] Social Evaluations Within and Across Cultural Contexts

Convenors:
Thomas Roulet
University of Cambridge, UK
Kisha Lashley
University of Virginia, US
Anastasiya Zavyalova
Rice University, US

Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Social evaluations have been recognized as a critical resource for organizational success and survival (Fombrun & Shanley, 1990; Podolny, 1993). Until recently, however, most social evaluations have been studied within the confines of one culture, yet culture and social evaluations are deeply intertwined as many of the social evaluations are culturally idiosyncratic (Pollock et al., 2019), expressing themselves very differently across cultures (Ferrin & Gillespie, 2010; Roulet, 2020). Cultural differences, thus, provide a critical lens for advancing our understanding of organizational social evaluations (e.g., Chan & Makino, 2007; Ritvala et al., 2021). Culture can be helpful to manage social evaluations (Zhou & Wang, 2020) . Culture can directly affect the convergence of audiences (De Jong et al., 2021) and the distribution of social evaluations across borders (Deephouse et al., 2016). The role of culture is also crucial to understanding how social evaluations are constructed and managed within national contexts: cultural systems can drive the existence of institutional stigma (Raj et al., 2024) and how codes of conduct translate into organizational legitimacy (Wolfgruber & Einwiller, 2025). Despite this emerging body of work, there is limited effort to holistically look at the intersection of social evaluations and culture, and in particular how different social evaluations are affected by the cultural context and in return affect the cultural context.

Beyond national cultures, organizational culture has rarely been studied through the lens of social evaluations. Yet, social evaluations are dependent upon audiences’ perceptions, whether they are negative (Roulet & Tracey, 2026) or positive (Sauder et al., 2012), and organizational culture is a strong driver of audience perceptions as it affects beliefs, values and assumptions within organizations (Giorgi et al., 2015; Lodge et al., 2026). Because culture manifests at different levels, it can affect both the formation and the processing of social evaluations. For example, organizational culture can be a source of a distinctive identity not necessarily at odds with legitimacy at the institutional level (Pedersen & Dobbin, 2006).

Some of the questions we would cover in this sub-theme:

  • How do national cultures drive the formation and management of social evaluations? How do they matter to their outcomes?

  • How are choices about culture (e.g. international expansion and integration) driven by social evaluations implications?

  • How are social evaluations shaping the national and organizational cultures? How are different cultures socially evaluated?

  • At the team level and within organizations, how do intercultural relationships drive, or are driven by, social evaluations?

  • How do national cultures drive the emergence and persistence of social evaluations from a systemic perspective (e.g. what comes to be judged legitimate by stakeholders, how evaluations such as stigma become institutionalized)?

  • How does organizational culture impact social evaluations and their implications?

  • How do organizations contend with social evaluations when their organizational culture and national culture diverge?

  • How do organizations navigate conflicting social evaluations from audiences embedded in different cultural contexts?

  • How do organizational social evaluations operate in cultural contexts that have been underrepresented in the literature, such as collectivist, high-power-distance, or non-Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies?

  • How do colonial histories and post-colonial dynamics shape the social evaluation of organizations operating across cultures?

  • Are the dominant theoretical frameworks around reputation, legitimacy, and status, stigma, etc. exportable across cultures?

References
  • Chan, C. M., & Makino, S. (2007). Legitimacy and multi-level institutional environments: Implications for foreign subsidiary ownership structure. Journal of International Business Studies, 38, 621–638.
  • De Jong, B., Gillespie, N., Williamson, I., & Gill, C. (2021). Trust consensus within culturally diverse teams: A multistudy investigation. Journal of Management, 47(8), 2135–2168.
  • Deephouse, D. L., Newburry, W., & Soleimani, A. (2016). The effects of institutional development and national culture on cross-national differences in corporate reputation. Journal of World Business, 51(3), 463–473.
  • Ferrin, D. L., & Gillespie, N. (2010). Trust differences across national-societal cultures: Much to do, or much ado about nothing. In M. N. K. Saunders, D. Skinner, G. Dietz, N. Gillespie, & R. J. Lewicki (Eds.), Organizational trust: A cultural perspective (pp. 42–86). Cambridge University Press.
  • Fombrun, C., & Shanley, M. (1990). What’s in a name? Reputation building and corporate strategy. Academy of Management Journal, 33(2), 233–258.
  • Giorgi, S., Lockwood, C., & Glynn, M. A. (2015). The many faces of culture: Making sense of 30 years of research on culture in organization studies. Academy of Management Annals, 9(1), 1–54.
  • Lodge, J., Helms, W. S., Roulet, T., & Tracey, P. (2026). Organizations as stages: A dramaturgical theory of the societal integration of stigmatized groups. Journal of Management. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063261421506
  • Pedersen, J. S., & Dobbin, F. (2006). In search of identity and legitimation: Bridging organizational culture and neoinstitutionalism. American Behavioral Scientist, 49(7), 897–907.
  • Podolny, J. M. (1993). A status-based model of market competition. American Journal of Sociology, 98(4), 829–872.
  • Pollock, T. G., Lashley, K., Rindova, V. P., & Han, J. H. (2019). Which of these things are not like the others? Comparing the rational, emotional, and moral aspects of reputation, status, celebrity, and stigma. Academy of Management Annals, 13(2), 444–478.
  • Raj, P., Roulet, T. J., & Bapuji, H. (2024). It’s not who you know, but who you are: Explaining income gaps of stigmatized-caste business owners in India. PLOS ONE, 19(8), e0307660.
  • Ritvala, T., Granqvist, N., & Piekkari, R. (2021). A processual view of organizational stigmatization in foreign market entry: The failure of Guggenheim Helsinki. Journal of International Business Studies, 52, 282–305.
  • Roulet, T. J. (2020). The power of being divisive: Understanding negative social evaluations. Stanford University Press.
  • Roulet, T., & Tracey, P. (2026). Stigma dynamics. In The Oxford Handbook of Organisational Social Evaluations (pp. 201-218). Oxford University Press.
  • Sauder, M., Lynn, F., & Podolny, J. M. (2012). Status: Insights from organizational sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, 38, 267–283.
  • Wolfgruber, D., & Einwiller, S. (2025). Culture matters: Cultural variability in corporate codes of conduct as a means to foster organizational legitimacy. Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, 34(4), 1642–1661.
  • Zhou, N., & Wang, H. (2020). Foreign subsidiary CSR as a buffer against parent firm reputation risk. Journal of International Business Studies, 51(8), 1256–1282.


Thomas Roulet is Professor of Organisational Sociology and Leadership at the Judge Business School and King's College, University of Cambridge. His work builds on institutional and stakeholder perspectives to approach negative social evaluations (stigma, scandal). He is a senior editor at 'Organization Studies'. His book 'The Power of Being Divisive: Understanding Negative Social Evaluations' (2020) was runner up for the AOM George Terry Best book award. He has published in the 'Academy of Management Journal', 'Academy of Management Review', 'Organization Science', 'Organization Studies', 'Journal of Management Studies' and 'Journal of Management'.
Kisha Lashley is the Frank S. Kaulback Associate Professor of Commerce at the McIntire School of Commerce and a Shannon Fellow at the University of Virginia. Professor Lashley is also an International Fellow at Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation. She is a field researcher who studies contentious practices within organizations and industries. Her research focuses on the dynamics of organizational social evaluations, encompassing areas such as stigma, reputation, and status to understand how organizations and their stakeholders negotiate shared meanings over time. Kisha’s research has examined industries such as healthcare, the cannabis industry, and payday lending.
Anastasiya Zavyalova is the Associate Dean for degree programs and Associate Professor of strategic management at Rice University, an International Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation, and served as an Associate Editor at the Academy of Management Review during the 2023-2026 term. She received her Ph.D. in strategic management from the University of Maryland, Robert H. Smith School of Business. Anastasiya’s research focuses on strategies that build, damage, and repair organizational social evaluations.