Aminat Muibi

Topic

Crossing the Line: Sacrality, Interaction Rituals, and Stigma in Organizational Life

Gustavson School of Business

Date & location

• Thursday, October 8, 2026
• 9:00 A.M.
• Clearihue Building, Room B017

Examining Committee

Supervisory Committee

• Dr. Stacey Ritzsimmons, Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria (Supervisor)
• Dr. Sara R. S. T. A. Elias, Gustavson School of Business, UVic (Member)
• Dr. Karen Patterson, Ellis School of Business Leadership, University of New Mexico (Outside Member)

External Examiner

• Dr. Olga Khessina, Gies College of Business, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Ben Nadler, Department of Mechanical Engineering, UVic

Abstract

This dissertation examines how actors and organizations engage with meanings that define what is sacred or stigmatized in organizational life. Research on interaction rituals and organizational stigma offers rich explanations of how such meanings are produced and managed, yet important questions remain about their persistence and change. I address these questions across three studies that examine how sacredness can weaken while rituals continue, how individuals resist stigma through relationships with evaluative audiences, and how organizations can contribute to stigma persistence while seeking to challenge it. The first study is conceptual and extends Interaction Ritual Theory by developing the concept of sacrality drift. Sacrality drift occurs when an interaction ritual continues in recognizable form while the sacred force of its protected center weakens. The study then theorizes resacralization as interactional work unfolding across linked encounters as participants and ritual stewards respond to drift. This account shifts attention from the continuation of ritual form to the ongoing work required to sustain or restore the sacrality that gives a ritual its force. The second study is empirical and draws on a multi-sited qualitative study of gambling kiosks in Lagos, Nigeria. It examines how intermediaries positioned at the boundaries of a stigmatized industry use interaction rituals to engage evaluative audiences and disrupt stigma transfer. Gambling attendants and community members repeatedly engage in rituals that build social bonds and make attendants meaningful figures within their communities. These encounters produce symbolic anchoring, through which attendants gain audience support that inhibits stigma transfer from the gambling industry. The third study is empirical and uses an abductive qualitative approach to examine MSI Nigeria, a reproductive and sexual health organization offering stigmatized services. It asks how organizations reinforce the stigma surrounding their services while seeking to challenge it. The study develops mission separation to explain how MSI Nigeria distinguishes its social mission of challenging stigma from its operational mission of delivering services. This separation enables the organization to vary its responses according to the operational access it requires from different actors. MSI Nigeria can therefore challenge stigma publicly while adopting operational responses that preserve or reinforce conditions through which stigma continues to operate. The study also shows that stigma can persist even as some of its social force which has the capacity to restrict service access. Together, the studies show that the persistence of sacredness and stigma cannot be inferred simply from whether observable practices change. Rituals can continue after their sacred force has weakened, while stigma can persist even when its ability to constrain action has diminished. The dissertation contributes to organizational theory by explaining the processes through which actors and organizations participate in the endurance or alteration of morally charged meanings.