Positively Deviant: Identity Work Through Certification
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Transcript of Positively Deviant: Identity Work Through Certification
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The WellWiki Project
Joel GehmanAssistant ProfessorStrategic Management & Organization
Positively Deviant: Identity Work Through Certification
Matthew Grimes, Joel Gehman, Ke Cao
B Corp Academic Community Roundtable
Rotman School of Management
October 4, 2017
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Motivation
Early research on social entrepreneurship often treated social entrepreneurs as a homogenous group.
More recent studies, however, highlight the potential for important identity (Battilana, Dimitriadis, Lee, & Ramarajan, 2017) and contextual differences (Gehman & Grimes, 2016), which might lead to differences in organizational action.
We investigate such differences in the context of the B Corp certification by asking: Why and under what conditions do businesses choose to obtain sustainability certification?
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Identity differences
Societal gender expectations can affect one’s orientation toward pro-social and pro-environmental causes (Dietz et al., 2002; Eagly, 2009; Hyde, 2014; Zelezny et al., 2000).
Contemporary values-based differences between genders lead to greater representation of women among social entrepreneurs (Hechavarria et al., 2012); women social entrepreneurs more likely to forego commercial activities to support their growth (Battilana et al., forthcoming).
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Contextual differences
Social entrepreneurship spans different industrial and regional contexts, which also vary in their support (or lack thereof) for social and environmental values (Dacin et al., 2011; Gehman and Grimes, 2017; Moroz and Hindle, 2012).
Such differences regarding sustainability values are likely to render the adoption of the B Corp certification as more or less deviant (i.e., non-conforming) relative to a social enterprise’s regional and industrial context.
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Core proposition
Identity work refers to “people being engaged in forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening or revising the constructions that are productive of a sense of coherence and distinctiveness” (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003, p. 1165).
Actors pursue sustainability certifications not as a means for overcoming deficits in legitimacy but rather as a form of identity work that affirms those actors’ values which are perceived as contextually distinctive.
We call this positive deviance: “intentional behaviors that significantly depart from the norms of a referent group in honorable ways” (Spreitzer and Sonenshein, 2004: 841).
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Hypothesis 1
Hypothesis 1: Woman-owned businesses are more likely to obtain environmental, social, and governance (ESG) certification than non-woman-owned businesses, all else being equal (i.e., “the identity effect”).
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Moderating Hypotheses 2-4
Woman-owned businesses are more (less) likely to obtain ESG certification in contexts where: Hypothesis 2, sustainability norms are weaker (stronger); Hypothesis 3, the prevalence of Certified B Corporations is lower (higher); Hypothesis 4, fewer (more) woman-owned businesses operate.
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Moderating Hypotheses 2-4
Woman-owned businesses are more (less) likely to obtain ESG certification in contexts where: Hypothesis 2, sustainability norms are weaker (stronger); Hypothesis 3, the prevalence of Certified B Corporations is lower (higher); Hypothesis 4, fewer (more) woman-owned businesses operate.
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Moderating Hypotheses 2-4
Woman-owned businesses are more (less) likely to obtain ESG certification in contexts where: Hypothesis 2, sustainability norms are weaker (stronger); Hypothesis 3, the prevalence of Certified B Corporations is lower (higher); Hypothesis 4, fewer (more) woman-owned businesses operate.
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Data and method
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Key variables
DV: Certified B Corporation = 1 if the business became certified following assessmentH1: Woman Owned = 1 if the business reported being “woman-owned” on the BIAH2: Weak Sustainability Norms = mean number of ESG concerns for public companies in a given context H3: B Corp Mimesis = count of Certified B Corps in a given contextH4: Prevalence of Woman-Owned Businesses = count of woman-owned businesses in a given context
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A note about “context”
CASE B Lab data are de-identified, but inspired by Porac et al’s (1995) Scottish knitwear study, we coded each business into 5 regions and 18 industry groups, resulting in 90 possible region-industry dyads
Following Gehman & Grimes (2016), for H2 we collected data from MSCI ESG STATS, providing sustainability norms for each region-industry
For H3, we tabulate the number of Certified B Corps for each dyad using the CASE B Lab data
For H4, we collected data from the U.S. Census Bureau Survey of Business Owners
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Control variables
Revenue (log) = self reported annual revenueEmployees = self reported number of employeesSeeking funding = 1 if seeking outside financingBenefit corporation = 1 if incorporated as a benefit corporation or benefit LLCSurvey completion = averages 98%, range 70-100Public companies = count of publicly-traded companies in a given context Region dummiesIndustry dummies
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Model estimation
Our sample includes 1,251 U.S. businesses “at risk” for becoming Certified B Corps, but only businesses scoring ≥80 points on the BIA are eligible to become certified.
Accordingly, we model this choice using Heckman’s (1979) two-stage procedure using Stata’s Heckprobit command
• In Stage 1, a probit regression predicts the likelihood that a business will qualify for certification (≥80 points on the BIA)
• In Stage 2, we model the likelihood a business will become certified, conditional on qualifying to do so
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Results: Heckprobit
DV: B Corp
Certification
H1: Woman-Owned Business (Identity Effect)✔
H2: Woman-Owned Business
x Weak Sustainability Norms ✔
H3: Woman-Owned Business
x Low Mimetic Pressure ✔
H4: Woman-Owned Business
x Low Prevalence of Woman Owned Businesses ✔
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H2: Identity Effect xWeak Sustainability Norms
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H3: Identity Effect xLow Mimetic Pressure
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H4: Identity Effect xFew WO Businesses
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Contribution 1
How Women “Jumpstart” the Field of Social Entrepreneurship
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Contribution 2
The Importance of Contextual Distinctiveness and Organizational Standards for Understanding Owners’ Identity Work
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Contribution 3
Extending Scholarly Understanding of Early-Stage Certification Adoption
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by grants from the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council;
Office of the Vice President of Research at the
University of Alberta; Canadian Centre for Corporate
Social Responsibility; Alberta School of Business; and
University of Alberta Killam Research Fund.
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Extras
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3 robustness checks
1. Instead of Heckman models, we simply dropped 232 observations which scored <80 on the BIA and tested probit models. All 4 hypotheses were supported
2. We ”saturated” and “simplified” our Stage 1 selection specification, adding all interaction terms and using only our controls, respectively. All 4 hypotheses were supported in both cases
3. We dropped 415 observations with no reported revenues. These were assumed to be true $0 in the prior analysis; here we assume they are missing. All 4 hypotheses were supported.
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