Will social networks always work in mitigating courtesy stigma

After firms become trapped in major scandals, their top executives are often stigmatized by the audience, known as courtesy stigma. One research topic is to explore how stigmatized executivesi¯ social networks mitigate courtesy stigma. From the perspective of social network as information pipe, we divide the social networks of stigmatized executives into two types with different social ties: bridging ties and embedding ties. We find that bridging ties mitigate the courtesy effect, while embedding ties tend to amplify the courtesy effect. Our proposed hypotheses are supported by the data collected from a Chinese sample of listed firms during the period from 2005 to 2015. Our study contributes to the literatures on social network and courtesy stigma by exploring their hidden links.