“I have to go the extra mile”. How fat female employees manage their stigmatized identity at work

This study explores how fat female employees engage in identity work to manage stigmatizing expectations grounded in healthism and obesity discourse that construct fat people as unhealthy, stupid, unprofessional, and lazy. We interviewed 22 women who self-identified as fat, full-figured or obese. Our analysis reveals how our participants engaged in identity work strategies in order to project a professional appearance and highlight their work performances. Many strategies reproduced dominant notions about fatness such as ‘smartening up’, ‘distracting’, ‘hiding’, ‘concealing’, ‘humour’, ‘compensating’, ‘explaining’ and ‘defensive Othering’. Yet at times some participants also used strategies that challenged dominant discourses about size, such as ‘flaunting’, ‘irony’ and ‘self-acceptance’. The identity work strategies our participants engaged in were not just narrative; many involved what they did with their bodies. We therefore argue the need for further theorizing embodied identity work, specifically with regards to how size matters in the context of employment.     

Extracting Legitimacy: An Analysis of Corporate Responses to Accusations of Human Rights Abuses

Journal of Business Ethics - We ask what type of neutralization techniques corporations apply to allegations of human rights abuses. We proceed by undertaking a Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA)...     

Children's Responses to Advertising in Social Games

This study explored children's (ages 9 through 12) level of persuasion knowledge and peer influence susceptibility concerning advertising in social games and investigated how these variables affect children's desire for the brands advertised in these games. Results showed that (1) children have a fairly good knowledge of the advertising in social games yet hold uncritical attitudes toward it and claim to be not very susceptible to peer influence; (2) the most important predictors of children's desire for the advertised brands are a low critical attitude and high peer influence susceptibility; and (3) recognition and understanding of advertising in social games is effective in reducing advertised brand desire only for children who are familiar with social games.