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2025 AOM Annual Meeting

DEI

OMT

SIM

24848: Breaking Barriers: Navigating Stigma, Identity, and Opportunity for Justice- Involved Workers

Monday, July 28, 2025
17:15 - 18:45 CEST (GMT+2)
Location: Bella Center: MR7
Session Type: Symposium (panel)
Orientation: Practice,Research,Diversity
Highlight: Showcase Symposium
Shareable link: https://cdmcd.co/3RpEnX
Justice-involved individuals, those with criminal records, face significant and persistent barriers to employment, often exacerbated by stigma and structural inequities. Despite organizational scholars’ growing interest in understanding labor market inequalities, research has largely focused on race and gender, leaving the unique challenges of this population underexplored. This symposium brings attention to the systemic barriers encountered by justice-involved individuals while examining how stigma interacts with organizational structures, hiring practices, and individual strategies for reintegration. The presentations in this symposium cover diverse dimensions of these challenges. One study investigates how justice-involved individuals navigate the complexities of digital-era job searches, where their criminal records are easily accessible online. Another explores how justice-involved entrepreneurs strategically frame their criminal records in narratives to mitigate stigma and build trust with investors. A third presentation examines hiring managers’ contradictions between their stated support for second- chance hiring and their exclusionary practices, highlighting organizational barriers to equity. The fourth focuses on how incarcerated women reconstruct their professional identities within prison-based work environments, leveraging organizational respect and mentorship to foster resilience and empowerment. Finally, the symposium concludes with a study on how gender moderates the stigma of criminal records in hiring evaluations, revealing compounded penalties for justice-involved women. This symposium seeks to advance theoretical understanding of labor market inequality by centering justice-involved individuals, a historically marginalized population, in organizational research. By offering actionable insights into individual strategies and organizational practices, the symposium provides a foundation for creating more inclusive and equitable labor markets.