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We review the 2019 documentary Untouchable, directed by Ursula Macfarlane, about the allegations against Harvey Weinstein. (The film was made and released before Weinstein’s trial and conviction in early 2020.) Macfarlane, by examining the terrifying stories of the Weinstein’s accusers, provides a platform for women to voice their stories and stand in solidarity against sexual harassment in the workplace.

Scandals regularly sweep through organizational fields: they wreak havoc in markets, vaporize billions of dollars in firm value, bring down giant corporations, get CEOs fired, alter the evolution of technologies, and trigger major changes in society. In spite of their significance for organizational life, scandals have received remarkably limited attention in management research. I build on the social sciences’ sparse but growing stream of research on scandals to explore the concept beyond its usual representation as a discrete event. I propose that an organizational scandal may be understood as an interactional process associated with the disclosure of alleged organizational misconduct that involves: a public struggle between alleged perpetrators and social control agents over the framing of organizational misconduct; moralizing by audience members; collective effervescence at the societal level; and the potential rewriting of the moral rules applicable to organizations and their members.

Purpose: This project examines both the media practice of covering perp walks and the discourse of perp walks as performative rituals, with the goal of understanding how grounded practice shapes meaning.

Methodology/approach: This project combines ethnographic observation and interview research to explore the grounded experience of perp walk participants, including journalists, law enforcement, and defendants.

Findings: The analysis suggests that perp walks are constructions that serve the interests of the state and that their resulting images are not neutral documents. Visual journalists are managed by law enforcement through embodied gatekeeping in practice and experience pressure from newsrooms to capture a particular moment. Defendants report feeling violated because they are unable to control the discourse of their recontextualized image.

Research limitations: As a qualitative-research project using a non-representative sample, the study results cannot be generalized, but they instead offer a rich understanding of embodied practice.

Originality/value: Because this study offers the subjective perspectives of three sets of stakeholders, including journalists, law enforcement, and defendants, it offers a unique and in-depth analysis of perp walks as media ritual.

In the space of just a few months or so, there has been nothing short of a tectonic shift in the expected approach to sexual harassment allegations especially where the alleged harasser is in a position of power in relation to the accuser. The allegations against Harvey Weinstein, MPs and other public figures together with the #metoo campaign arguably mark a step change in public perception. HR professionals are no strangers to this issue. The authors look at what, if anything, has changed when handling sexual harassment complaints in the workplace.

The authors examine whether this is just a media news story or is it backed up by evidence. They look at statistics from a Trades Union Congress (TUC) survey and the Everyday Sexism Project. The authors define “what is sexual harassment” from a legal view point and provide advice to HR professionals in dealing with such complaints and in examining risk to their organisation.

There are solid business and ethical reason to stamp out discriminatory practices. Organisations with good equality and diversity practices are in a good position but should guard against complacency.

The allegations against Harvey Weinstein, MPs and other public figures together with the #metoo campaign arguably mark a step change in public perception. HR professionals are no strangers to this issue. Time spent examining your organisation’s vulnerability to such claim and refreshing your knowledge could be time well spent when considering the potential costs and reputational damage of a case.

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to demonstrate an understanding of:

The theories of diffusion.

Diffusion and social movements.

Diffusion and the #MeToo campaign.

This chapter address how critical feminist organization studies can shed light on the dominance of masculinist logics in TM theorizing in both theory and practice and open up opportunities to review TM systems that stress inclusion and equity. The exclusive approach is most worrisome given that contemporary events such as the prosecution of Harvey Weinstein the global ‘#metoo campaigns and the Sustainable Development Goals have highlighted the importance of equality agendas. We draw on transnationalism, intersectionality and postcolonialism approaches to illustrate how TM reinforces inequalities. Our contribution questions the elite logics, and the white Global North males that dominate both TM theorizing, and TM practitioners and denies many stakeholders voices and contributions to organization life. We also question the longevity of the elite mantra of MNCs’ HRM policy given that the Sustainable Development Goals are increasingly being advocated by the business community, and contradict entirely an organizational ethic premised on valuing the elite.