Essays on Managing Contested Social Evaluations

My dissertation is concerned with understanding how individuals and organisations can manage contested social evaluations. To do so, my dissertation to date consists of two project: on the one hand I am exploring the tenant management organisation sector after the Grenfell Tower tragedy to understand how similar innocent organisations are dealing with and managing the negative consequences in the aftermath of the incident. On the other hand I am engaging with a social enterprise that is helping ex-offenders gain employment to understand how such stigmatised individuals become part of a business. I will be exploring this both from the perspective of the employing organisations and what practices and process they (have to) engage in to successfully integrate the ex-offenders as well as from the perspective of the ex.offenders themselves and how they move from being an ex-offender to being a successful employee in a business.

Both projects are aimed at providing new theoretical insights into the literature around negative social evaluations as well as providing some practical implications for how to manage such inherently complex and difficult situations