Governing Through Stigma: Stigma Power and Organisational Control in English Housing Associations, a seminar by Professor Amanze Ejiogu (Sheffield Hallam University) and Dr Mercy Denedo (Durham University)

Governing Through Stigma: Stigma Power and Organisational Control in English Housing Associations

By Professor Amanze Ejiogu (Sheffield Hallam University) and Dr Mercy Denedo (Durham University)

Abstract

Organisational stigma research has largely examined how organisations become stigmatised, how stigma transfers across relationships, and how stigmatised actors manage or resist discrediting evaluations. Less attention has been paid to organisations as actors that produce and deploy stigma in their relationships with others. Drawing on the concept of stigma power, this study examines how housing associations in England use stigma as a mechanism of organisational governance. Based on 45 interviews and 29 focus groups with more than 200 participants, including tenants, frontline staff, directors, board members, and sector stakeholders, we develop a three-stage model of governing through stigma. First, wider political, media, and welfare narratives about social housing tenants are internalised by housing association actors as a deficit mindset. Second, this deficit mindset is institutionalised into a stigmatised tenant identity through label-making, documentary encoding, and assumption structures embedded in organisational routines and service designs. Third, this stigmatised identity is deployed across the landlord–tenant relationship through deficit and aspirational modes of governance. Deficit governance contains and disciplines tenants by treating them as risky, dependent, troublesome, or undeserving. Aspirational governance corrects and elevates tenants through programmes of support, responsibilisation, and upward aspiration. We show that these modes are not opposites but two expressions of the same stigma power, as both begin from the premise that tenants are deficient. The study contributes to organisational stigma research by shifting attention from organisations as targets of stigma to organisations as stigmatisers, and by showing how stigma power can operate through benevolent as well as punitive repertoires.

About the speakers

Amanze Ejiogu is a Professor of Accounting, Society and Accountability at the Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam University. His research focuses on how accounting interfaces with societal issues and spans areas including sustainability, extractive industry, housing, prisons and gambling. He also co-developed the Tackling the Stigma Journey Planner, a framework designed to support housing providers to address the stigma associated with social housing.

Mercy Denedo is an Associate Professor of Accounting at Durham University Business School. Her research examines social and environmental issues from a critical perspective. Mercy has co-investigated stigma in social housing, analysing its intersectionality and its impact on the quality of life and opportunities for tenants. She co-developed the Tackling the Stigma Journey Planner, a framework designed to assist housing providers in addressing the stigma associated with social housing.