These slides accompanied a talk I gave at the 2016 Ivey Sustainability Conference on November 4, 2016, at the Ivey Business School in London, Ontario, Canada.

1. The WellWiki Project
Joel Gehman
Assistant Professor
Strategic Management & Organization
Hidden Badge of Honor:
How Contextual Distinctiveness
Affects Category Promotion
Among Certified B Corporations
Joel Gehman & Matthew Grimes
Ivey Sustainability Conference
November 4, 2016

2. 2

3. The hurdle for membership
1. Score ≥ 80 out of 200 points on B Impact
Assessment of sustainability (governance,
workers, community, and environment)
2. Amend corporate charter to require officers
and directors to “consider the interests of all
stakeholders, not just shareholders”
3. Sign “Declaration of Interdependence” and
pay annual fee of $500 to $25,000
3

6. Hidden badge of honor?
“B Corp status has become a badge of honor.” –
Entrepreneur magazine
“I’m not sure our clients know that we are a B
Corp. It’s just not something that we bring up.”
– 2015 interview with a B Corp executive
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7. Why would organizations
pursue category membership
and yet forego opportunities
to promote the category*?
*…organizational efforts to associate with
or champion the labels or cultural
artifacts signifying the category
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8. Our solution to the puzzle
The “same” category can have different
meanings, depending on the context.
We call this a category’s contextual
distinctiveness, defined as the degree to which
a particular categorical association provides an
organization with technical, material and/or
symbolic resources for distinguishing itself from
other members of the basic category

9. Hypotheses
The greater a subordinate category’s contextual
distinctiveness relative to basic category
members within a region (H1) or industry (H2),
the greater the category promotion by members
More subordinate category members within a
region (H3) or industry (H4) will amplify the
effect of a subordinate category’s contextual
distinctiveness on category promotion

10. Scrape B-Corp text promotion
Step 1
Scrape B-Corp image
promotion
Step 2
Mturk to append addresses
Step 3
Data sources
D&B to append $, FTEs, & SIC
Step 4
Texas A&M Geocode
Step 5
Append MSCI ESG data
Step 6
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11. Our DVs: text and images
(captured in Oct/Nov 2015)
B Corp*
Certified B Corp*
B Lab, benefit corp*
B Impact Assessment
B Impact Report
Declaration of
Interdependence
Global Impact Investing
Rating System, GIIRS
The Change We Seek
11

14. Our IVs and CVs
(captured on or before Dec 2013)
Independent Variables
Reg. context distinctiveness (=
mean ESG concerns by state)
Ind. context distinctiveness (=
mean ESG concerns by
industry)
Reg. category peers (# of B
Corps by state)
Ind. Category peers (# of B
Corps by industry)
Control Variables
# of Words or Images
Revenue, Employees,
Company Age
Category founder, Born B
“Best in Class” winner
Social media presence
# Months certified
# Publicly traded firms by
state/industry
Census region dummies
Service sector dummy
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15. Results
DV 1:
# of Text Promotions
DV 2:
# of Image Promotions
H1: Distinctiveness
by region ✔ ✔
H2: Distinctiveness
by industry ✔ ✔
H3: Regional peers
x Distinctiveness ✔ ✔
H4: Industry Peers
x Distinctiveness ✔ ✔

16. 14 sets of robustness checks
• Alternative DVs (# of pages and pixel area)
• Control for legitimacy effects/omitted variables
with lagged DV (from Mar/Apr 2014)
• Alternative measures of region (75 km radius)
and industry (Waddock & Graves)
• Alternative measures of Internet marketing
competency (Twitter followers), alone and with
social media presence
• Alternative moderating effect using Twitter
followers

17. Qualitative interviews
• To further validate our proposed mechanisms,
we conducted 29 semi-structured interviews,
and drew on 20 published interviews
• We sought to understand why a company
chose to become certified, and what factors
influenced the extent of its promotion

18. Drivers of B Corp membership
1. Alignment with a Company’s Mission,
Purpose, Values or Identity
2. Validating and Legitimating a Company’s
Sustainability Commitments
3. Innovation and Practice Improvement
4. Membership as Gateway into a Likeminded
Community

20. Drivers of B Corp promotion
1. Conveying Distinctiveness vs. Category
Nonmembers
2. Drawing Strength from the B Corp
Community

22. Contributions
1. Promotional forbearance driven not just by
stigma (e.g. ,Hudson & Okhuysen 2009), but
by contextual distinctiveness. May explain
other findings (e.g., Delmas & Grant 2014)

23. Contributions
2. Prior work assumes distinctiveness vis-à-vis
contrast in features/practices. But what if
certified members and nonmembers fully
resemble one another? We show how
distinctiveness can stem from situated and
relational category structure. An organization
can both fit in via basic categories and
standout via subordinate categories.

24. Practical implications?
• RE Organizational hybrids: shift in focus from
internal profit-purpose tension to the external
competitive distinctiveness challenge, especially
as hybrid proliferate, meaning this is no longer a
point of difference
• RE Certification providers: possible tension
between gaining members (which may be easiest
in similar contexts), and gaining promotion
(which we find is higher in dissimilar contexts)

25. Thank You!

26. EXTRAS