The Pennsylvania State University the Graduate School the Mary
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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School The Mary Jean and Frank P. Smeal College of Business ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN A STIGMA: IN SEARCH OF AUDIENCE SUPPORT IN THE MEDICAL CANNABIS INDUSTRY A Dissertation in Business Administration by Kisha Lashley © 2015 Kisha Lashley Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2015 The dissertation of Kisha Lashley was reviewed and approved* by the following: Timothy Pollock Farrell Professor of Entrepreneurship Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee Forrest Briscoe Associate Professor of Management & Sociology Glen Kreiner Associate Professor of Management Susan Strauss Associate professor of Applied Linguistics, Asian Studies, Education, Linguistics Ted Baker Special Member Professor of Management & Global Business George F. Farris Chair in Entrepreneurship (Rutgers Business School) Brent Ambrose Smeal Professor of Real Estate Director, Smeal College of Business Ph.D. Program *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School ii ABSTRACT In this two-essay dissertation I employ complementary methodologies to study the efforts by entrepreneurial firms to remove the stigma associated with their activities. I look at firms in the emerging but core-stigmatized medical cannabis industry, and examine how those firms use substantive and symbolic actions in an attempt to influence audience perceptions. For entrepreneurial firms that contend with the liabilities of newness (Stinchcombe, 1965) and smallness (Aldrich & Auster, 1986), core stigma creates an additional burden that further threatens their survival. Core stigma is the “negative social evaluation by some audience(s) of an organization because of certain organizational attributes, such as core routines, core outputs, and/or core customers” (Hudson, 2008: 252). As such, core-stigmatized organizations find it either difficult or impossible to sufficiently transform themselves to gain mainstream approval (Hudson & Okhuysen, 2009), since the stigma challenges central attributes such as their identity and projected image (Hudson, 2008). Only a few studies have considered the actions of firms operating in core-stigmatized industries (e.g., Hudson & Okhuysen, 2009; Vergne, 2012), and even fewer have considered the strategic actions that are necessary to reduce core stigma (e.g. Helms & Patterson, 2014). Hudson and Okhuysen’s (2009) study of bathhouses showed that their survival efforts centered on safeguarding stakeholders from stigma transfer, while Vergne (2012) found that organizations managed core stigma by straddling both stigmatized and non-stigmatized categories, thereby diverting attention from their contested activities. These studies conceptualized core stigma as an organizational reality to be managed instead of removed. Conversely, Helms and Patterson (2014) counter-intuitively argued that some organizations benefit from stigma. They demonstrated that mixed martial arts organizations co-opted stigmatizing labels to draw public attention and iii support, then engaged in “constructing practices” to change the specific factors that lead to their negative evaluations. Collectively, these studies inform our understanding of core stigma, but also make salient that much remains unknown about organizational stigma, particularly for entrepreneurial firms. This dissertation contributes to this lacuna. I explore the strategic actions of entrepreneurs who are building enterprises around a plant that not only has a negative public perceptions built over decades, but that is also federally illegal. In the first essay I use a qualitative methodology to examine how entrepreneurial firms attempt to destigmatize. I show that they do so through morality infusion, where they use narratives and substantive actions to connect themselves and their industry to an alternative set of values, and to create an identity and image that resonates with important audiences. In the second essay, I combine content analysis with fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to analyze how firms configure their narratives to account for the resources that they have at their disposal, and the ultimate effectiveness of those configurations. This study is situated in the context of nascent firms that are applying for licenses to operate medical cannabis dispensaries in newly legal Massachusetts. Overall, I develop theory to explain the entrepreneurial de-stigmatization and legitimation processes, thus contributing to the literatures on entrepreneurship and core stigma. Furthermore, I also contribute to the literature on entrepreneurial storytelling. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables ........................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... vii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. viii Chapter 1 .................................................................................................................................. 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2 FROM CANNABIS PAST TO CANNABIS PRESENT ....................................... 10 Chapter 3 .................................................................................................................................. 20 ESSAY 1: WAITING TO INHALE: HOW MEDICAL CANNABIS ENTREPRENEURS ARE DESTIGMATIZING THEIR INDUSTRY .......................... 20 Literature Review ..................................................................................................... 23 Methods .................................................................................................................... 32 Findings .................................................................................................................... 37 A Model of the Destigmatization Process ................................................................ 53 Discussion ................................................................................................................ 59 Future Research Directions ...................................................................................... 64 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................ 65 Chapter 4 ESSAY 2: WEED, WORDS AND WINNING: ENTREPRENEURIAL STORYTELLING IN A STIGMATIZED INDUSTRY ................................................. 67 Literature review ...................................................................................................... 69 Research Context ...................................................................................................... 73 Methods .................................................................................................................... 74 Sample ...................................................................................................................... 75 Results ...................................................................................................................... 90 Discussion ................................................................................................................ 95 Limitations and future research ................................................................................ 97 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 98 Chapter 5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ..................................................................... 99 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................ 101 Appendix A – TABLES ................................................................................................... 114 Appendix B - FIGURES .................................................................................................. 129 Appendix C: Interview Protocol ...................................................................................... 133 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Representative Quotes and Underlying Second Order Themes ................................. 104 Table 2. State Legalization of Medical Cannabis. ................................................................... 109 Table 3. Timeline of the Massachusetts Medical Marijuana Legalization Process. ................ 110 Table 4. Dictionaries for Narrative Categories ........................................................................ 111 Table 5. Calibration of Measures and Sample Descriptives for Language Categories and Firm Resources. ............................................................................................................... 114 Table 6. Firm Resources Sufficient for Success ...................................................................... 115 Table 7. Rhetorical categories Sufficient for Succes. ............................................................. 116 Table 8. Entrepreneurial Storytelling combined with Firm Resources - Sufficient for Success. ............................................................................................................................ 117 Table 9. Entrepreneurial Storytelling combined with Firm Resources - Sufficient for Failure