Focusing on Strengths or Highlighting Deficits?: How Social Mission-Driven Organizations Take Strengths-Based Approaches to Destigmatization

Abstract

This dissertation examines how social mission-driven organizations (SMDOs) pursue destigmatization by enacting strengths-based beliefs – a set of shared beliefs that view stigmatized individuals as capable of growth, development, and self-determination, rejecting the idea that stigma reflects an inherent deficit or incapacity. Through a two-year ethnographic study of Elevate (a pseudonym), a local SMDO serving blind individuals, I found that sustaining strengths-based beliefs in SMDOs requires ongoing organizational effort, especially in environments dominated by deficit-based beliefs. Elevate’s strengths-based beliefs served as both a guide for practice and a counter to dominant deficit-based beliefs. These beliefs helped develop blind individuals as agents of destigmatization, but their implementation generated recurring tensions around how to best represent blindness to the public, how much to protect students from deficit-based beliefs, and how to balance high expectations with structural realities. Organizational members responded with tension management strategies that not only managed these tensions but also reinforced belief alignment over time. Ultimately, this process amplified Elevate’s belief system, buffering the collective from ongoing threats of dominant deficit-based beliefs in their industry and society. This study contributes to research on destigmatization, strengths-based beliefs, social mission-driven organizations, and positive organizational scholarship by offering insights into the complexities of sustaining strengths-based beliefs in pursuit of destigmatization.