Defensive Practice Adoption in the Face of Organizational Stigma: Impression Management and the Diffusion of Stock Option Expensing
研究了安然丑闻后，企业为应对与公司越轨相关的挑战而采纳有争议的会计实践（股票期权费用化）的过程，发现媒体和股东活动家将其理论化为解决欺诈和治理问题的防御工具，且受污名威胁的企业更可能采纳。
Abstract Although most diffusion research focuses on firms adopting new practices to maintain their legitimacy, this paper examines a setting in which firms adopted a controversial practice to defend themselves against challenges relating to corporate deviance. We argue that understanding defensive adoption requires attending to both the dynamics of organizational stigma and impression management, and test our theoretical claims by analysing the diffusion of an accounting practice, stock option expensing ( SOPEX ), following the E nron scandal. We first provide evidence that the media and shareholder activists transformed the practice into a defensive device by theorizing it as a solution to problems relating to corporate fraud and corporate governance. Using event history analysis, we then show that corporations that became targets of stigma‐inducing threats were more likely to adopt SOPEX and that the media were a key force channelling these threats.