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A double-edged sword: cultural entrepreneurship and the mobilisation of morally tainted cultural resources

Elena Dalpiaz & Valeria Cavotta

To cite this article: Elena Dalpiaz & Valeria Cavotta (2018): A double-edged sword: cultural entrepreneurship and the mobilisation of morally tainted cultural resources, Innovation, DOI: 10.1080/14479338.2018.1479188

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14479338.2018.1479188

Published online: 14 Nov 2018.

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A double-edged sword: cultural entrepreneurship and the mobilisation of morally tainted cultural resources Elena Dalpiaza and Valeria Cavottab

aImperial College Business School, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, UK; bFree University of Bolzano,School of Economics and Management, Piazza Università 1, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

ABSTRACT We aim to highlight a type of cultural entrepreneurship, which has received scant attention by prior scholarship, and consists of deploy- ing morally tainted cultural resources, i.e., resources that some audi- ences assess as going against accepted principles of morality. We argue that this type of cultural entrepreneurship is a double-edged sword and explain how it may ignite active opposition of offended audiences, as well as attract supportive audiences. We delineate a research agenda to shed light on whether, how, and with what consequences cultural entrepreneurs navigate such a tension – in particular how they (1) mobilise morally tainted cultural resources and with what effect on offended audiences; (2) deal with the con- sequent legitimacy challenges; and (3) transform moral taint into ‘coolness’ to enhance their venture’s distinctiveness.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 20 October 2017 Accepted 16 May 2018

KEYWORDS Cultural entrepreneurship; morality; legitimacy; distinctiveness; cultural resources

Introduction

Cultural entrepreneurship consists of the deployment of cultural resources to start up new ventures or pursue new market opportunities in established ventures (see Gehman & Soublière, 2017 for a recent review). Cultural resources are meaning systems such as ‘stories, frames, categories, rituals, practices’ and symbols that constitute the culture of a given societal group (Giorgi, Lockwood, & Glynn, 2015, p. 13). In line with Swidler’s (1986) conceptualisation of culture as a toolkit, prior studies highlighted that entrepreneurs use cultural resources flexibly, either alone or combined, to develop new strategies of action (Weber & Dacin, 2011). For example, entrepreneurs have been said to draw concepts and identity categories from different registers such as the arts, the crafts, and psychoanalysis, to develop new ideas about values and functions of industrial products, and new product lines (Rindova, Dalpiaz, & Ravasi, 2011). Entrepreneurs can also recombine institutional logics (i.e., sets of guiding principles and legitimate practices in a given field) to devise and implement new organisational practices that enable them to search for and target new market opportunities (Dalpiaz, Rindova, & Ravasi, 2016).

Prior studies also suggested that cultural entrepreneurs can use stories and other linguistic means to convey a venture’s distinctiveness within an established category of firms (Lounsbury & Glynn, 2001) and construct the identity of an emerging category of

CONTACT Elena Dalpiaz e.dalpiaz@imperial.ac.uk

INNOVATION https://doi.org/10.1080/14479338.2018.1479188

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Figure 1. The trademark of the Spanish franchise in 2014 Source: https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/07/5d/e8/11/la-mafia.jpg

Figure 2. The T-shirt line designed by KA Design in 2017 Source: http://jewishbreakingnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/screenshot.jpg

2 E. DALPIAZ AND V. CAVOTTA

firms (Wry, Lounsbury, & Glynn, 2011). For example, grappa producers crafted stories to detach their product from existing understanding of grappa as a low-class spirit (Delmestri & Greenwood, 2016), and satellite radio producers deployed linguistic frames and metaphors that linked the unfamiliar, emerging category of satellite radio to better understood ones (Navis & Glynn, 2010).

By illuminating the positive function of cultural resources for cultural entrepre- neurship, prior research seems to assume that cultural resources are intrinsically good, and that their deployment for entrepreneurial purposes is consequently legit- imate. In contrast to the established perspective, we argue that cultural entrepreneur- ship can be a highly controversial phenomenon when the mobilised cultural resources are morally tainted, i.e., considered offensive and conflicting with the principles of moral behaviour that some societal groups uphold. An example is offered by ‘La Mafia se sienta a la mesa’ (‘The Mafia sits at the table’), a fast-growing restaurant franchise that serves Italian-style dishes in Spain and that constructed its identity and distinctiveness around mafia-related symbols and stories. While the venture’s use of such cultural resources has been met with growing support by customers and industry associations in Spain, it sparked a fierce opposition in Italy – the country where the mafia originated and still operates, and where mafia activities are perceived to go against the basic moral norms of society. Such an opposition ultimately jeopardised the venture’s sustainability and led the entrepre- neurs to water down several elements of the venture’s distinctiveness.

We contend that mobilising morally tainted cultural resources offers a double-edged sword for entrepreneurs as it may enhance the venture’s distinctiveness among some audiences but spark fierce opposition amongst offended social groups. Our intent is to bring such a phenomenon to the attention of scholars interested in cultural entrepre- neurship because whether and how cultural entrepreneurs can harness this tension, and with what consequences, is still unknown. Exploring this phenomenon is not only important to advance knowledge about cultural entrepreneurship. Investigating the consequences of using morally tainted resources promises to advance also extant understanding of organisational stigma, i.e., the perception of a fundamental, deep- seated flaw that discredits an organisation (Devers, Dewett, Mishina, & Belsito, 2009; Helms & Patterson, 2014). Prior work indicated that organisations can be stigmatised when their core activities are considered morally tainted – as in the case of gay bathhouses (Hudson & Okhuysen, 2009), mixed-martial arts organisations (Helms & Patterson, 2014), and the first company to offer travel to the masses (Hampel & Tracey, 2017) – or when organisations associate themselves to morally tainted people – e.g., immigrants (Tracey & Phillips, 2016). Yet, prior studies did not highlight whether and how moral taint attributed to the cultural resources an organisation mobilises, rather than attributed to its core activities, associated people, or events, can be a source of stigma. Nor did they investigate whether and how such forms of moral taint can also be a source of an organisation’s distinctiveness that elicits support among non-offended audiences. Thus, this essay paves the way also to new scholarly investigation about the origin and consequences of organisational stigma.

This essay is organised as follow. First, we provide some illustrative cases and then discuss specific aspects, challenges and opportunities of morally tainted cultural entre- preneurship. We conclude by delineating a research agenda.

INNOVATION 3

Some illustrative cases

To exemplify the phenomenon of cultural entrepreneurship mobilising morally tainted cultural resources we present three illustrative cases (see Table 1 for a summary): the restaurant franchise ‘La Mafia se sienta a la mesa,’ the ‘Jack the Ripper Museum,’ and a controversial clothing designer ‘KA Design’. What these ventures have in common is that they use symbols and stories that are part of a society’s culture but are nonetheless considered offensive and insulting by some societal groups; the use of such resources for either defining the venture’s identity (in the case of the restaurant chain and the museum) or developing new products (in the case of the clothing company); and the fierce opposi- tion mounted by critical audiences that force the ventures to take corrective action.

‘La Mafia se sienta a la mesa’ and the mobilisation of cultural elements related to the mafia

‘La mafia se sienta a la mesa’ is a restaurant franchise serving Italian-style dishes in Spain. Since its founding in Zaragoza in 2002, it has grown to 42 outlets throughout the country. In 2016, it reported 36.5 million euros in revenues and employed 700 people. At the time of writing, most restaurants were rated with four (out of five) stars in TripAdvisor, which signals a very positive evaluation from customers in a highly competitive industry. Until 2014, the venture deployed a plethora of symbols associated with the Italian mafia to build a distinctive identity. For example, the trademark ‘La Mafia se sienta a la mesa’ was associated to the red rose worn by Vito Corleone in the iconic Godfather movie (Figure 1); numerous pictures of characters and places featured in the Godfather’s trilogy decorated the indoor space; mobsters’ names were inscribed on chairs and walls; baby high-chairs were embellished with pictures of a lookalike of Vito Corleone eating spaghetti; and candies wrapped in black paper and labelled ‘La Mafia’ were available to children.

Symbols and stories of the mafia are certainly part of the Western culture, especially since they became popularised by iconic Hollywood movies such as ‘The Godfather’ trilogy, ‘Scarface,’ ‘Al Capone,’ and ‘The Untouchables.’ Yet, mobilising such resources for constructing a restaurant’s identity turned out to be deeply offensive for the Italian people. Following a report by the Italian daily La Repubblica in 2014, a restaurant guidebook de-listed the restaurant, the Italian media covered extensively and negatively the franchise, and the matter was brought to the attention of the Parliament and the Italian Anti-Mafia Commission. Eventually, the Republic of Italy filed a complaint to the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) to remove the trademark ‘La Mafia se sienta a la mesa’ on the grounds that it was deeply offensive for the Italian people and trivialised a brutal and still contemporary criminal organisation.1

In response to such a powerful opposition, the venture’s communication manager explained that ‘everything is inspired by the Godfather movie’ and that the use of mafia- related references is core to the venture’s distinctiveness as ‘the mafia is an absolute brand, it calls the attention, everyone remembers this name’ (La Repubblica, 2014). Yet, refer- ences to real mafia mobsters were removed from existing restaurants and excluded from new openings (Heraldo, 2014); other symbols, such as the red rose in the visual trademark, were also removed. In 2016, the EUIPO declared the nullity of the trademark for being

4 E. DALPIAZ AND V. CAVOTTA

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13 .0 00

si g n at ur es .

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n th e m us eu m .

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b oy co tt .

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ri va l ex h ib it io n

n ex t to

m us eu m .

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p lo ye es

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ev al ua ti on

on Tr ip A d vi so r (4 /5

st ar s fo r m os t

re st au ra n ts ).

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ap p ea l in

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INNOVATION 5

contrary to accepted principles of morality. The venture appealed the decision, and the General Court confirmed the EUIPO’s ruling (cancellation decision) in March 2018.

‘Jack the Ripper museum’ and the mobilisation of sexual violence stories

The Jack the Ripper museum opened its door in east London in 2015. On an ongoing soundtrack of women screaming, the museum re-enacts and vividly explains how and where the notorious serial-killer, dubbed Jack the Ripper, who lived in Victorian London, brutally murdered and eviscerated his female victims. In 2015, on occasion of Halloween celebration, the museum also offered visitors the chance to pose for a photo with actors playing the serial killer next to mutilated victims.

The story and the mystery surrounding the nineteenth century serial-killer is unde- niably part of London’s popular culture. More than a century after the events, his brutal murders have been the subject of several movies such as ‘Pandora’s Box’, ‘Murder by Decree’, ‘The Lodger’, ‘Hands of the Ripper’, and ‘From Hell’ only to mention the top five according to The Telegraph (2002); the murder locations in east London have become the destination of popular touristic tours, and the identity of the killer and his motives are still investigated and debated in the media (BBC, The Telegraph, etc.).

Yet, feminist groups, human rights advocates, academics, and the media furiously opposed the museum’s opening as they viewed the celebration of a serial-killer’s endeavours as morally repugnant. More than 13.000 people signed a petition calling for its planning permission to be revoked and the backlash in the media was also intense. For example, journalists accused the museum of glamourising sexual-violence in a ‘grotesque subversion’ of moral values and of ‘diminish[ing] the gendered nature of fatal male violence against women’ (Guardian, 2015). A year later, the museum’s employees reportedly were still ‘physically attacked, pelted with eggs, harassed and sworn at’ and ‘under constant siege and fear of being targeted’ (Standard, 2016). In 2016, the museum was refused retrospective planning permission for the shop front and it had to take down the sinister black façade with blood-red lettering. Despite the fierce and persistent opposition from some audiences, the museum turned out to be quite popular among visitors, as evidenced by a four out of five stars rating in TripAdvisor, more than 400 reviews, and a TripAdvisor’s Certificate of Excellence for 2017.2

The museum reacted to the outcry by claiming that its intent was to celebrate the female victims and their stories rather than the killer, hired an all-female advisory board, and noted that in any case Jack-the Ripper did not sexually assault his victims – a comment later retracted. The museum also appealed to the High Court in a bid to overturn the refusal of the planning permission, but the appeal was refused. The mayor of Tower Hamlet, the London borough where the museum is located, expressed his frustration for the museum survival: ‘Sadly, the “museum” itself will remain’ (Standard, 2016) and encouraged the public to boycott it (Wharf, 2016).

‘KA design’ and the mobilisation of a genocide symbol

In 2017, KA Design released a line of T-shirts featuring a swastika on a rainbow background, with the words ‘love,’ ‘peace,’ and ‘zen’ underneath (Figure 2). The swastika was the notorious symbol of Hitler’s Third Reich, and has since become the

6 E. DALPIAZ AND V. CAVOTTA

symbol of the genocide of millions of Jews, homosexuals, and ethnic minorities that the Nazis perpetrated in the 1940s. The rainbow is the symbol of pride of the LGBT communities around the world, and by extension it also became a symbol of tolerance and peace.

The release of the product line sparked fury across the world. For example, the Israeli-Jewish Congress denounced the KA Design’s clothing line as ‘obscene and disgusting’ (@Ostrov_A) and international media such as BBC, Daily Mail, and Al Jazeera condemned the new product line vehemently. Others instead, while not con- doning Nazism, defended the ancient positive meaning the swastika holds in their own, Asian cultures. In response to such a clamour, KA Design explained that the swastika was also a 5,000 year old auspicious symbol that is part of Hindu and Buddhist iconography and that ‘the aim of the project was to share the beauty of a symbol detached from the hatred associated to it’ (Mail Online, 2017). It also released a modified version of the T-shirt line in which the swastika was crossed over. As the outcry continued, KA Design withdrew the product line and apologised publicly.

Moral taint as a socially constructed evaluation

The examples offered in the prior section illustrate an important feature of cultural resources – that while they can be perceived as morally tainted, i.e., offensive, distasteful and insulting, by some audiences, they can be perceived as non-morally tainted by other audiences. In other words, the evaluation of given cultural resources as morally tainted is socially constructed and as such it may vary across audiences, time, and locales.

Moral taint is a relative judgment as there is ‘social and historical variability in the way people understand the good and the bad, the right and the wrong’ (Hitlin & Vaisey, 2013, p. 58), and what is morally forbidden (Haidt & Graham, 2009). Thus, cultural resources are not inherently morally tainted but can be constructed as such by given societal groups at a given point in time. For example, in their study of male bathhouses in the USA, Hudson and Okhuysen (2009) suggest that the assessment of bathhouses varied widely among different audiences even within the same State, as members of the heterosexual public diverged on whether sex between men, associated practices and meanings were morally wrong or not, and even members of the homosexual commu- nity diverged on whether casual sex was morally wrong or not.

Further, different historical and cultural trajectories provide audiences located in different countries with different understandings of moral taint and repertoires for evaluating a venture’s actions (Lamont & Thévenot, 2000). The following quote uttered by a Spanish waiter in one of the ‘La Mafia’ restaurants makes this point vividly: ‘I understand [the indignation] of the Italian people. [Spanish people] would be very offended too if in Italy there was an ETA-themed restaurant3’ (La Repubblica, 2014).

Finally, not all morally tainted cultural resources are equally tainted. In other words, some stories and symbols may be more offensive than others. For example, an online reviewer commented about the swastika-themed T-shirt line that ‘there are some symbols and ideas that are too abhorrent to ever be considered for “rehabilitation”’ (Npr, 2017). The existence of different shades of moral taint is coherent with work on

INNOVATION 7

‘dirty’ occupations (see Ashforth & Kreiner, 2014 for a review), which pinpoints to dirty and ‘dirtier’ occupations (e.g., gun store ownership is less morally tainted than corpse brokering, which is less morally tainted than prostitution).

In conclusion, our view of morally tainted cultural resources highlights multiple contingent factors that may affect audiences’ evaluation of the cultural resources used by entrepreneurs and as such it reinforces the need to examine more closely the underexplored role played by different audiences in cultural entrepreneurship (Giorgi et al., 2015). The social construction of moral taint poses a distinctive set of challenges to cultural entrepreneurs, which we discuss next.

Heightened legitimacy challenges

A central concern in organisational and entrepreneurship literature is how organisa- tions attain legitimacy, i.e., audiences’ perception that their activities are ‘desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions’ (Suchman, 1995, p. 574). Attaining legitimacy is especially crucial for new ventures, as legitimacy is necessary to attract the resources needed for survival and growth (Fisher, Kotha, & Lahiri, 2016). The assessment of an organisa- tion’s legitimacy is multifaceted as it encompasses pragmatic, cognitive and moral evaluations (Suchman, 1995). An organisation attains pragmatic legitimacy when audi- ences deem it worthy of exchanging resources with it; cognitive legitimacy when audiences understand or take for granted the organisation’s activities; and moral legitimacy when audiences evaluate the organisation’s outcomes, procedures, or actions as rightful within a given system of norms. Attaining any of these types of legitimacy is a formidable task because it implies managing the expectations of multiple audiences that may evaluate the new venture’s appropriateness using different criteria (Ruef & Scott, 1998; Tracey, Dalpiaz, & Phillips, 2018). We contend that, ceteris paribus, cultural entrepreneurs that mobilise morally tainted cultural resources face heightened legiti- macy challenges compared to entrepreneurs that do not mobilise such resources. This is because in addition to the challenges to attain pragmatic and cognitive legitimacy, which every venture needs to acquire fundamental resources from customers, investors, employees etc., they are more likely to face insidious challenges that are triggered by the use of morally tainted resources and that jeopardise the venture’s moral legitimacy. We articulate such specific challenges next.

The possibility that some audiences within the venture’s country or in different countries evaluate the mobilised cultural elements as running against accepted princi- ples of morality exposes the venture to a peculiar threat, i.e., the threat of active opposition, rather than just resource withholding. In addition to denying support to the venture, offended audiences may indeed attack and dispute the venture through boycotts, picketing, legal battles, negative press and social-media coverage. The cases of ‘La mafia se sienta a la mesa’ and the ‘Jack the Ripper museum’ are suggestive of how far offended audiences may be willing to go to jeopardise a venture’s existence or force it to change its identity.

Further, cultural entrepreneurs may be caught off-guard and thus be unprepared to deal with such legitimacy fall-outs. Behavioural ethics research suggests that the wider the social consensus is (or perceived to be) about the immorality of a given issue, the

8 E. DALPIAZ AND V. CAVOTTA

more an individual’s actions will be aligned with moral principles (Jones, 1991; O’Fallon & Butterfield, 2005). It follows that if cultural entrepreneurs are not cognizant of whether societal groups consider the mobilised cultural elements morally tainted and of how wide the social consensus about it is, they may neither act to prevent the opposition nor be prepared to deal with it. For example, the communication manager of ‘La Mafia se sienta a la mesa’ declared that they did not foresee such a powerful opposition, as only few Italian customers had complained on social media until La Repubblica’s report triggered the Italian government’s legal action (Heraldo, 2014). Importantly, by mobilising morally tainted cultural resources, cultural entrepreneurs may discover audiences that they did not expect. To continue with the example above, the Spanish restaurant franchise thought that the Republic of Italy was ‘not a relevant trade circle’ of theirs (EUIPO, 2016, p. 3). Thus, deploying morally tainted cultural resources can mobilise (and stir the ire of) societal groups that entrepreneurs did not consider relevant and that otherwise would not have held any interest in the venture.

Further, different shades of moral taint may spark opposition of different intensity. We may expect that the more repugnant and offensive cultural resources are perceived to be, the fiercer the opposition might be. Recent work on organisational infamy, for instance, suggests that the more salient and socially significant the perceived incon- gruence of the organisation’s identity with audiences’ personal identities is, the more the audiences develop negative emotions about the organisation (Zavyalova, Pfarrer, & Reger, 2017).

Relatedly, the way in which ventures use morally tainted resources may aggravate audiences’ perception of how offending the use of such resources is. In the case of the Spanish franchise, the Republic of Italy argued that the trademark should be cancelled not only because explicit references to mafia-related names and symbols are in contrast to basic norms of society, but also because the semantic associations of mafia-related names, stories and symbols to the positive values of family and conviviality trivialise the negative meaning of the mafia4 (EUIPO, 2016). Similarly, in the case of KA Design, audiences found particularly insulting the juxtaposition of a symbol of genocide (the swastika) to symbols of peace and reconciliation (the rainbow and words like ‘love’ and ‘peace’) as the semantic association diminishes the negative meaning of the swastika. In the case of the Jack the Ripper museum, journalists’ ire was directed instead at the spectacularisation of male violence against women through the use of a soundtrack of female screams, dismembered female models, etc., and the glamourisation of the male perpetrator, turned into a ‘cult figure’ also through visual merchandise where ‘Jack the Cult Figure stands tall and menacing under the lamppost. . .and the women he killed are reduced to a smudge of blood at his feet’ (Guardian, 2015).

Opportunities for distinctiveness

There is another side of the story though. Despite posing complex challenges, mobilis- ing morally tainted cultural resources can also offer opportunities. As previously shown, while some audiences vehemently object and jeopardise the venture’s survival or its new product’s success, other audiences may strongly support the use of the very same resources. For example, while the Italian government and media ardently oppose ‘La mafia se sienta a la mesa,’ the fast growth in number of outlets and customers’ positive

INNOVATION 9

online ratings suggests that Spanish customers assess the venture very positively. This may indicate that the strategic deployment of morally tainted cultural resources may actually be an effective source of distinctiveness that is rewarded by audiences who do not feel offended by them.

Further, in and by itself, public controversy about the use of morally tainted cultural resources may bring notoriety to the venture and attract positively predisposed audiences. For example, the press coverage about the controversy surrounding the opening of the Jack the Ripper museum has arguably increased the visibility of an otherwise marginal touristic venue, and in turn attracted a higher number of visitors than it would have otherwise. Importantly, public controversy may also trigger a selection process, by which mainly individuals that do not feel offended by the resources mobilised decide to confer their resources to the controversial venture. In turn, this mechanism may increase the chances of resource providers being positively predisposed towards the venture and its offering, and thus more likely to evaluate it positively. For example, those who visited the Jack the Ripper museum despite the arguments for boycotting it may be individuals that did not share the critical audiences’ view that the museum glamourised sexual violence against women. The self-selection of positively predisposed visitors may explain the highly positive rating the museum received on TripAdvisor.

In sum, we propose that mobilising morally tainted cultural resources is a double- edged sword for cultural entrepreneurs: it can unleash the (more or less) fierce opposi- tion of offended audiences, as well as increase visibility and draw the favour of others. Yet, how and with what consequences cultural entrepreneurs can navigate such a tension is unknown. We delineate below a research agenda to shed light on these issues.

A research agenda for cultural entrepreneurship leveraging morally tainted cultural resources

We outline three interesting areas of research that could shed some light on the phenomenon of entrepreneurship mobilising morally tainted cultural resources: (1) investigating the strategies for mobilising morally tainted cultural resources and their effect on different audiences; (2) exploring the strategies for reacting to the legitimacy challenges posed by critical audiences; (3) understanding how morally tainted cultural resources can be made ‘cool’ to enhance the venture’s distinctiveness.

Strategies for mobilising morally tainted resources

An interesting area of investigation concerns how cultural entrepreneurs mobilise morally tainted cultural resources, and whether different strategies elicit different reactions by different audiences. The examples we offered suggest that multiple strate- gies may be employed. For example, the Spanish restaurant franchise mobilised mafia- related symbols and stories that were mainly divulgated in famous Hollywood movies. Conversely, the Jack the Ripper museum dramatised stories and symbols of sexual violence perpetrated against real women. KA Design did something again different, as it associated symbols of antithetical meanings (hate and love).

While our examples are only suggestive, future work could theorise what strategies new ventures mobilise to deploy cultural resources that some audiences consider morally

10 E. DALPIAZ AND V. CAVOTTA

tainted. It could be that some strategies are more successful than others in attenuating the moral taint that some audiences associate with the mobilised resources or that some strategies exacerbate how much offence given societal groups feel. Future research could also fruitfully investigate how different strategies affect internal perceptions, i.e., to what extent different strategies shield organisational members from identity crises that the use of morally tainted resources may trigger (Tracey & Phillips, 2016).

Strategies for reacting to legitimacy challenges

Recent organisational work on organisational stigma has begun to investigate how organisations deal with the challenges to moral legitimacy posed by some audiences. In their study of Keystone, a social enterprise supporting immigrants, Tracey and Phillips (2016) suggested that challenged organisations may engage in advocacy to build internal support and justify the organisation’s alignment with the source of stigma (in this case: Eastern European immigrants), and valorisation to help orga- nisational members to see the pride in the organisation’s activities. Similarly, Helms and Patterson (2014) found that mixed martial arts organisations (MMA heretofore) coopted negative labels to gain the awareness of supportive audiences and corrected negative evaluations held by critical audiences through altering those activities that were the focus of negative evaluations and persuading critical audiences to more positively evaluate the MMA organisations. Finally, Hampel and Tracey (2017) found that Thomas Cook, the travel agent that invented organised tours for the masses in Victorian Britain and was stigmatised by the elites who saw its activities as ‘morally object,’ eradicated the stigma by showing that the organisation’s activity was not harmful to the dominant upper-class and in fact played a positive role in society.

In the case of cultural entrepreneurs mobilising morally tainted cultural resources, different strategies may be required. While prior studies have focused on organisations in which stigma originated from moral taint associated to their core activities (in Thomas Cook and MMA organisations) or the people the organisations associated with (in Keystone), the examples we have offered suggest that the enterprises mobilising morally tainted cultural resources had at their core non-morally tainted activities (e.g., a restaurant, a museum, a clothing design) and lacked any actual association with morally tainted actors (e.g., no relationship with actual mobsters, serial-killers and genocide- perpetrators, respectively).

On the one hand, such different characteristics may shield enterprises mobilising morally tainted cultural resources from some of the serious fall-outs affecting organisations like Thomas Cook and Keystone. For example, showing the benefits to society, a strategy employed by Thomas Cook to legitimate its activity, may be unnecessary in the case of enterprises leveraging morally tainted cultural resources because the morality of these ventures’ activities is not questioned. On the other hand, such features may call for different strategies all together or for adapting existing ones. For example, future research could investigate how the strategy correcting negative evaluation, mobilised by the MMA organisations to change the mind of external critical audiences, can be enacted to change audiences’ perception of what is morally tainted.

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Finally, scholars could examine whether different shades of moral taint require ventures to engage in different strategies for dealing with associated fall-outs. It might be the case that some cultural elements cannot be rehabilitated, as for example, the swastika. But others may not be strongly and unequivocally opposed, such as the Hollywood interpretations of mafia stories. Similarly, there might be variability in the number and power of critical audiences. Again, the use of swastika seems to be objected to almost unanimously in the Western world, with the exception of neo-Nazi groups. On the contrary, the only audiences feeling offended by the trivialisation of mafia- related names, stories, and symbols in the Spanish franchise were the Italian people. Future work could examine whether and how such variability affects audiences’ opposi- tion and how cultural entrepreneurs can react effectively.

Making moral taint distinctive

Finally, an intriguing area of investigation concerns not only how cultural entrepre- neurs mobilise morally tainted resources and deal with associated fall-outs, but also how they can transform morally tainted resources into something attractive and cool that underpins the venture’s distinctiveness.5 Coolness is a positive evaluation of an entity associated either to nonconformity to established norms (e.g., Heath & Potter, 2004) or to conformity to norms of particular subcultures that deviate from generally accepted norms (O’Donnell & Wardlow, 2000). More generally, coolness relates to the extent to which one shows ‘willingness to pursue one’s own course irrespective of the norms, beliefs and expectations of others’ (Warren & Campbell, 2014). Making pro- ducts cool has been shown to help organisations distinguish themselves effectively from peers, as in the cases of Harley Davidson (Holt, 2004) and Apple (Interbrand, 2014).

In some instances, organisations have transformed products from tainted to cool. An example is offered by producers of grappa that transformed a spirit previously asso- ciated with working classes and drunkenness and thus perceived as morally tainted, into a cool spirit ‘associated with Italian subalpine culture’ that upper classes came to enjoy and paid a premium for (Delmestri & Greenwood, 2016, p. 521). Such a transformation has significant consequences for organisations. In the example of grappa, a whole new category of grappa producers emerged, the so-called ‘purists’ that distinguished them- selves effectively from others through creating distilling standards and lobbying for their collective interests.

Future research could investigate to what extent cultural entrepreneurs can transform morally tainted resources into a cool organisational offering and identity. The Spanish restaurant franchise could be described as ‘cool’ by some audiences – certainly this was the first reaction of some of our non-Italian colleagues when we described the franchise’s identity. The extent to which this is possible may depend on how offensive the mobilised resources are perceived to be, and therefore it relates to the shade of taint and the ways in which ventures mobilise such resources (discussed above). Understanding these processes may be a particularly intriguing avenue of investigation as it promises to shed new light on a central issue for entrepreneurship, which is how ventures attain optimal distinctiveness by balancing the need for attaining legitimacy among multiple audiences with the need for being distinctive (Navis & Glynn, 2010; Tracey et al., Forthcoming).

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Notes

1. The cancellation of the trademark undermines the legal protection of its distinctive traits, thus allowing competitors to replicate them.

2. By comparison, the Science Museum in London, which was established in 1857, has the same rating and less than 7.000 reviews.

3. ETA was a terrorist Basque separatist organization that killed more than 800 people in Spain between 1968 and 2017. It announced a definitive cessation of its armed activities in April 2017.

4. For example: ‘The association of the name “Mafia” with the text “se sienta a la mesa” (in English “Mafia sits at the table”) is an attempt at giving an attribution of kindness to the name of the most dangerous and brutal organization which ever existed in Italy. It trivialises the negative meaning of such word.’ (EUIPO, 2016, p. 2).

5. We consider ‘coolness’ as one possible path to firm distinctiveness among many others.

Acknowledgments

We thank our associate editor and two anonymous reviewers who made a significant contribu- tion to the development of our work. We are also indebted to Sven Mikolon, Christian Hampel and Yuri Mishina from Imperial College Business School, who offered many valuable insights and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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