VALUES AGAINST VIOLENCE: INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE IN SOCIETIES DOMINATED BY
ORGANIZED CRIME
Author(s): ANTONINO VACCARO and GUIDO PALAZZO
Source: The Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 58, No. 4 (August 2015), pp. 1075-1101
Published by: Academy of Management
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® Academy of Management Journal
2015, Vol. 58, No. 4, 1075-1101.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amj.2012.0865
VALUES AGAINST VIOLENCE: INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE IN
SOCIETIES DOMINATED BY ORGANIZED CRIME
ANTONINO VACCARO
IESE Business School
GUIDO PALAZZO
University of Lausanne
Institutions that are controlled by organized crime are particularly change resistant.
Sicilian society, for instance, has been dominated by the Mafia for more than 150 years,
and our paper presents the results of a longitudinal study of Addiopizzo, an anti- Mafia
organization founded in Sicily in 2004. We examine how a group of young activists used
values to successfully challenge one of the key institutions of Sicilian society: pizzo, or
the practice of paying protection money to the Mafia, a central pillar of the Mafia's
territorial power. Our study demonstrates the performative power of values in contexts
where institutions are highly resistant to change.
INTRODUCTION
and, in some cases, assassination (Buscetta &
Lodato, 2007; Gambetta, 2009; Ravveduto, 2012).
Organized crime is one of the great scourges of
modern society, and both controls and promotes
most illegal businesses, from drugs to human trafficking. It also deeply infiltrates numerous legal
industries - from construction to waste management - in many countries, and has a considerable
presence in global financial markets. Based on vio-
Libero Grassi ran a clothing factory with some 100
employees in Sicily. While roughly 90% of Sicilian
business owners pay "protection money" - known,
in Italian slang, as pizzo , and a key pillar of the
Sicilian Mafia system that Mafia organizations have
successfully imposed on "their" territories for more
than 150 years - Grassi announced his refusal to do
so in an open letter to a local newspaper in late
1990, and invited others to follow his example. He
soon appeared on TV and became a symbol of the
lence, it destroys trust in and so weakens the rule of
law (Gambetta, 2009; Varese, 2011). However, societal contexts dominated by criminal organizations
such as the Sicilian Mafia are often remarkably resistant to change. Despite its negative impact on
society, pizzo has flourished in Sicily for 150 years.
How can this be explained? While the use of vio-
fight against the Mafia. However, rather than being
supported by his peers, Grassi was criticized for
damaging the image of Sicily. He was threatened,
progressively isolated, and finally gunned down by
a Mafia killer (Ravveduto, 2012).
Unfortunately, his story is not an isolated example. An extensive literature has documented how
lence plays a significant role, it would be too simple
to accept this as the only reason for its persistence.
Many Sicilians consider paying protection money to
the Mafia as perfectly legitimate - Libero Grassi
found no support among his peers because his decision to challenge the practice publicly was perceived as inappropriate in his social context.
Our study examines the Sicilian anti-Mafia initiative Addiopizzo, and analyzes how a group of
young activists successfully challenged pizzo, one
of the key institutions of Sicilian society. While
earlier attempts such as Libero Grassťs had often
ended with the death of those who refused to pay,
more recently, Addiopizzo has been successful in
almost everyone who has tried to fight the Mafia has
met social isolation, physical assaults, intimidation,
We thank all of Addiopizzo's activists, and in particular
Pico di Trapani, Dario Riccobono, Francesca Vannini
Parenti, and Laura Nocilla. A special acknowledgment
to Tommaso Ramus, Fabrizio Ferraro, Federica Massa
Saluzzo, Daniel Waeger, Sébastien Mena, Shaz Ansari,
Juliane Reinecke, Gary Weaver, Stefano Brusoni, and Dror
Etzion for their valuable comments. This project was
supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and
Technology [Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia).
We also thank the three anonymous reviewers, and associate editor Tima Bansal for her supportive guidance
throughout this manuscript's revision process.
mobilizing economic actors and civil society in
Sicily to resist paying pizzo. Our research on the
1075
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1076 Academy of Management Journal August
Addiopizzo initiative was motivated by the following question: How can institutional change succeed
in social contexts that are dominated by organized
crime? We follow a recent call by Creed, Dejordy,
and Lok (2010; see also Lok, 2010), who have argued
that we need to better understand "the antecedent
micro-processes" of institutional change. In our
study of Addiopizzo, we examine such bottom-up
micro-processes (understood as repeated microlevel activities that form particular recognizable
patterns), and find values - which can be defined as
"desirable, trans-situational goals, varying in importance, that serve as guiding principles in people's lives" (Schwartz, 1996: 2) - to be an important
driving force of such processes. They represent
on "post-heroic" institutional change (Battilana,
Leca, & Boxenbaum, 2009). Change is often presented as the result of the heroic initiatives of certain actors who try to modify the behavior of other
(largely passive) actors, often by forming coalitions
with other powerful stakeholders. The Addiopizzo
case shows how change in difficult social contexts
can be post-heroic - how it can unfold as a slow,
incremental transformation driven by an un-
expected coalition of powerless actors - in our case,
undergraduates and unemployed graduates, small
shop owners, consumers, and young school students.
The paper is organized as follows. First, we
present our theoretical orientation, and then introduce our study's empirical setting: the Sicilian
a key construct of institutional theory, relevant for
Mafia's pizzo system and the emergence of the
both institutional stability (Hardy & Phillips, 1999)
and institutional change (Suddaby & Greenwood,
2005). However, research on values has often been
too static (Gehman, Trevino, & Garud, 2013), ignoring their potentially "malleable and dynamic"
character (Maurer, Bansal, & Crossan, 2011: 438).
The role that values can play in institutional change
processes has largely been neglected in the past; as
Gehman and colleagues (2013: 84) have argued, we
need a "performative understanding of values as
Addiopizzo initiative. This is followed by a discus-
situated in networks of practices." They propose the
concept of "values work," which describes how
values emerge and become performative over time.
Our study goes beyond the observation of emerging
values practices by showing how change agents can
use values strategically to transform a highly resistant institutional setting. Maurer and colleagues
(2011) discussed this idea of using values strategically to highlight normative tensions and drive
change. Our study connects these two arguments by
empirically deconstructing and theorizing a strategic use of values that leverage their performative
power in institutional change processes, and our
analysis shows that values can be highly effective
for co-opting, uniting, and engaging critical stake-
holders around an initiative for change against
prevailing institutions.
We make two important contributions to the dis-
cussion on institutional change. First, we explain
institutional change as the result of a strategic use of
values following a series of highly effective micro-
processes. By using the performative power of
values, Addiopizzo first "hooks" stakeholders individually, and then unites them in a single antiMafia movement that develops its own momentum
over time, independent of Addiopizzo itself. Second, our study contributes to the emerging debate
sion of our research methodology; in particular, our
case selection, data gathering, and data analysis.
The subsequent section presents our findings, after
which we theorize the idea of the strategic use of
values work. Finally, we conclude by discussing our
contribution to the literature and drafting perspectives for further research.
THEORETICAL CONTEXT
Organized Crime and Institutional Stability
Organized crime has been defined as "any longterm arrangement between multiple criminals that
requires coordination and involves agreements that,
owing to their illicit status, cannot be enforced by
the state" (Leeson, 2007: 1052). It takes many different forms: it exists in well-protected and seem-
ingly impermeable niches such as prison gangs
(Skarbek, 2010), street gangs (Sobel & Osoba, 2009),
and pirates (Leeson & Rogers, 2012), while it also
infiltrates societies on a broad scale, including, for
example, the Italian Mafia, the Japanese Yakuza
(Gragert, 1997), and the Mexican drug cartels
(O'Neil, 2009). Organized crime manages or protects
illegal businesses such as drugs (Sandberg, 2012)
or arms trafficking (Raab & Brinton Milward, 2003),
but also infiltrates legal economies. Mafia organizations operate in markets such as toxic-waste processing, construction, renewable energies, banking,
and agriculture, and sometimes control significant
portions of these markets.
What is of particular importance for our analysis
in this study is the influence that Mafia organizations have over the institutional contexts in which
they operate, or the taken-for-granted values,
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2015 Vaccaro and Palazzo 10 77
beliefs , and practices that prevail in given social
contexts (Thornton & Ocasio, 2008; Thornton,
Ocasio, & Lounsbury, 2012). Institutions provide
meaning (Thornton & Ocasio, 1999), structure the
attention of actors (Lounsbury, 2007), signal appropriateness (Thornton & Ocasio, 2008), and define
the rules of play (Dunn & Jones, 2010). The Mafia's
institutional impact is manifest, for instance, in its
ability to infiltrate the political system and corrupt
its representatives (Misangyi, Weaver, & Elms,
2008), and to destroy trust in and so weaken the rule
of law. In fact, Mafia organizations often "act as
quasi-governments, protecting property rights and
enforcing contracts when legitimate governments
are not capable or willing to do so" (Skarbek, 2010:
3). In the context of our study, we examine the
protection-money system known as pizzo - a defining institution that the Mafia has created and
imposed on Sicilian society. For more than 150
years, the Sicilian Mafia has successfully defended
pizzo, and the beliefs and values aligned with the
practice of paying "protection" money to local
Mafiosi, against all attempts to bring about institutional change: the culture'of pizzo has proved
extremely change resistant.
Attempts to transform or replace prevailing
institutions are never easily realized. Any deviations from the institutional "rules of play" can be
both risky and costly, because they provoke resistance. Change agents may find themselves operating in a "hostile normative environment" (Hiatt,
Sine, & Tolbert, 2009: 641) because the actors whom
their initiatives target are deeply embedded in
dominating institutions, and perceive the prevailing
values, beliefs, and practices as legitimate (Battilana
et al., 2009). They draw their identity from those
institutions (Rao, Monin, & Durand, 2003: 796)
risk. The use of violence, therefore, makes institutional change in such contexts particularly
difficult. However, as Misangyi et al. (2008) argue, it
would be too simple to explain the perpetuation of
corrupt, repressive, and criminal institutions and
the failure of reform efforts as merely the results of
violence. What Selznick (1957) has claimed for
institutions in general is also true for institutions
imposed by organized crime: they are necessarily
infused with values. Indeed, research has pointed to
the fact that Mafia organizations can be so deeply
embedded in society that the practices they impose
on that society are perceived as unchangeable and
even as morally appropriate (Deephouse & Suchman,
2008). As Kay and Friesen (2011) have shown, for
instance, even if people perceive the legitimacy of
their institutional order as doubtful, they will tend
to defend it if they believe that their situation is
inescapable. Thus - as, for example, in the case of
pizzo - prevailing institutions will continue to exist and dominate, regardless of whether or not
more legitimate and more efficient alternatives are
available. However, even if such institutions might
be perceived as unchangeable by actors exposed to
their prescriptions, they represent a social phe-
nomenon and thus can never become fully de-
terministic: in principle, even institutions that
have remained stable for more than 150 years must
be open to change.
Institutional Change and the Role of Values
Institutional change occurs when taken-forgranted values, beliefs, and practices are transformed or defeated and replaced (Battilana et al.,
2009). Such change processes obviously require
agency - someone has to destabilize the prevailing
institutions and propose and advance alternatives.
and profit by the maintenance of the status quo
(DiMaggio, 1988), and may thus refuse to counte-
However, it is not yet sufficiently clear what exactly
practical implications of an institutional shift (Lok,
agency means with regard to change processes. Two
aspects of the debate about agency are problematic.
2010).
First, institutional change is typically interpreted as
nance the alternative identity prescriptions or
Bourdieu (1977: 196) described institutions'
overall pressure for compliance as "symbolic violence," because it represents a "gentle, hidden form
which violence takes when overt violence is impossible." However, in social contexts dominated
by organized crime, institutions are often defended
a process in which change is driven by coalitions of
powerful actors. The reason for this is obvious: as
noted above, change can be risky and costly, so
change agents need the support of other actors who
are already perceived as legitimate (Galaskiewicz,
1985), who possess higher status within the system
by violence in a literal sense, as demonstrated by the
(Battilana, 2006), and who can "make inroads
ations from the prevailing values, beliefs, and
among elites, who represent more legitimate sources for providing alternative frames" (Wolfsfeld,
practices would not only be "foolish" (Lepoutre &
Valente, 2012), but can create considerable physical
powerful actors are normally those who profit from
case of Libero Grassi. Under such conditions, devi-
1997: 29). The problem, however, is that those
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1078 Academy of Management Journal August
the status quo and have no interest in changing it,
while those who do desire change are generally
marginalized actors who lack the resources to drive
it (Battilana, 2006).
The second problem with regard to agency has
been labeled "the paradox of embedded agency"
(Battilana et al., 2009). If actors' values, beliefs, and
practices are determined by the context in which
they are embedded, how can they escape that
1996; Rao & Dutta, 2012) has highlighted the rele-
vance of what different authors have labeled
"havens" (Rao & Dutta, 2012), "free spaces" (Rao &
Dutta, 2012), or "safe spaces" (Gamson, 1996) that
help "to smuggle dissent into the open" (Rao &
Dutta, 2012: 626).
Institutional scholars have highlighted the importance of values for institutional change. Suddaby
and Greenwood (2005: 39), for instance, claimed
pressure and change the very context that shapes
their thinking and behavior? The dominating re-
that the success of institutional alternatives depends
sponse to this paradox is to assume that some agents
higher-order societal values or to core values within
can rise above their own context, and "disembed"
themselves so as to be able to make change happen
for the other actors who remain "imprisoned" by the
institutions. This notion characterizes actors either
as "heroes" who succeed in transforming institutions, or as "dupes" who passively accept estab-
lished institutions (Battilana et al., 2009). Some
recent authors have deemed this approach to be too
rational and simplistic, and have highlighted the
need to develop more subtle discussions of in-
stitutional change (Lok, 2010) that move away from
a heroic view of change agents'.
To date, institutional change processes have been
discussed from two main perspectives. Scholars
have either studied how material changes of practices and artifacts can drive changes in deep beliefs
and values (Greenwood, Suddaby, & Hinings, 2002;
Smets, Morris, & Greenwood, 2012), or they have
examined how changes in beliefs and values can
promote new practices (Rao et al., 2003). This latter
approach, for instance, manifests itself in a discursive competition about theorizations (Greenwood
et al., 2002; Maguire, Hardy, & Lawrence, 2004),
cultural codes (Weber, Heinze, & DeSoucey, 2008),
or analogies (Etzion & Ferraro, 2010) in which prevailing institutions are either defended or chal-
lenged. In the ideal case, institutional change
processes reshape actors' identities and bind them to
alternative values, beliefs, and practices (Greenwood
et al., 2002; Lok, 2010; Rao et al., 2003). The importance of the material aspects is, for instance, visible
in the idea that the discursive transformation of
beliefs and values requires "spaces for experimentation" (Zietsma & Lawrence, 2010) in which institu-
tions can be challenged and possibly changed
on their ability to connect "through language to
the organizational field," while Etzion and Ferraro
(2010; see also Leca & Naccache, 2006) argued that
change initiatives may succeed if they resonate with
the values prevailing in the targeted institutional
context. Being both shared socially (Parsons, 1991)
and important for the individual sense of identity
(Hitlin, 2003), values influence the formation of
institutions (Rao et al., 2003) as well as the behaviors of individual actors (Hitlin & Piliavin, 2004;
Maio, Pakizeh, Cheung, & Rees, 2009). They are, at
the same time, a source of meaning (Rokeach, 1973)
and a yardstick for the selection of "modes, means,
and ends of actions" (Kluckhohn, 1951: 395). Values
motivate action (Bansal & Roth, 2000; Gehman et al.,
2013), and so are able to drive behavioral changes as
well (Hitlin & Piliavin, 2004; Rokeach, 1973): thus,
activating values has been discussed as a promising
strategy for driving change processes (Maurer et al.,
2011; Schwartz, 2004; Verplanken & Holland,
2002).
In particular, values have been examined in the
form of inventories, rankings, or typologies (Hofstede,
2001; Rokeach, 1973; Schwartz, 1992). This type of
research on values, however, has been criticized as
being too static (Gehman et al., 2013) and for
building on the assumption that values are "given
and already objectified phenomena" (Gehman
et al., 2013: 86) while, in reality, they are "mal-
leable and dynamic" (Maurer et al., 2011: 438).
Only a very few studies have empirically examined
the role that values play in institutional change
processes in this sense. Sine and Lee (2009)
showed that the introduction of new values can
help frame a new institutional offer for a particular
audience; Weaver, Trevino, and Cochran (1999)
(Maguire & Hardy, 2009). Particularly in potentially
discussed how compliance- versus integrity-inspired
dominated by organized crime), this material aspect
might be highly important, as spaces for experi-
values influence corporate ethics programs; and,
more recently, Gehman and colleagues (2013) proposed a performative understanding of values and
mentation are limited. Research on the promotion of
introduced the concept of "values work" to describe the
dissent in repressive political systems (Oberschall,
processes involved in the emergence and performance
repressive and violent contexts (such as those
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2015 Vaccaro and Palazzo 1079
of value-laden practices that shape organizations'
normative realities. Given the importance of values
for social processes, further examination of the use
of values for institutional change and maintenance
payments can vary from €60, for a stall in a street
market, up to €10,000 for a construction company
(Vaccaro & Ribera, 2011).
It is worth noting that, while the Mafia might
is required.
make much more money from its other activities, it
Building on this discussion of the place of values
in driving institutional change, our study examines
pizzo , a particular social institution imposed by the
Mafia that has affected the Sicilian economy for
over 150 years. We focus on the following research
question: How can institutional change initiatives
succeed in social contexts that are dominated by
organized crime?
is the pizzo that embeds the organization into the
day-to-day fabric of Sicilian life (Buscetta & Lodato,
2007). It represents one of the most important forms
of control by local Mafia bosses over "their" territory, and many Sicilians see pizzo as a legitimate
form of (private) regulation (Buscetta & Lodato,
2007), which is evidence of the alignment of the
local society's values to those of the Mafia. Indeed,
several studies argue that a significant proportion of
RESEARCH CONTEXT
the entrepreneurs who pay pizzo and collaborate
with - or, at least, do not resist - the Mafia, strongly
The Pizzo Institution and the Sicilian Mafia
believe that their behavior is morally appropriate
(Buscetta & Lodato, 2007). Moreover, since pizzo is
The Sicilian Mafia represents a system of private
protection and regulation that emerged during
a period of political instability during the 19th
a central pillar of the Mafia's sovereignty, those who
century, when governmental efforts to resolve dis-
putes and social problems were largely ineffective
decide to challenge it face three risks. First, they risk
a violent reaction by the Mafia (Gambetta, 1993,
2009; Varese, 2011): numerous entrepreneurs, such
as Libero Grassi, who refused to pay, have been
(Varese, 2011). From then on, the Mafia successfully
killed. Second, business actors who fight against the
captured control of Sicilian society (Cavadi, 2010),
and, in particular, has been very effective in imposing its own interpretation of values such as
honor, dignity, respect, or justice (Cavadi, 2010).
For example, "dignity" is associated with a person
pizzo risk significant economic loss: their shops and
factories may be burned down, and their products
and projects are exposed to vandalism and sabotage
(Gambetta, 1993, 2009). Finally, they risk social
isolation, because other entrepreneurs, their cus-
who conforms to the Mafia's rules (Buscetta &
Lodato, 2007). Consequently, it has been argued that
the organization's embeddedness in the overarching
regional cultural context is so strong that implementing a successful struggle against the Mafia
would require a cultural transformation (Cottino,
1999).
All Sicilian businesses, from small newspaper
kiosks to large construction companies, are exposed
to the same Mafia-created pressure - the private,
violence-based regulation that manifests itself in the
practice of businesses paying protection money
[pizzo] to local Mafia clans, thereby signaling their
acceptance of and respect for the Mafia and gaining
tomers, their friends, and their neighbors may dis-
tance themselves from them in order not to be
perceived as supporters of anti-pizzo initiatives.
Such social isolation is often the first step in the
escalating use of violence (Violante, 2002). In addition, entrepreneurs assume that the ability and
willingness of the police and the local and national
governments to protect them are limited.
Leading the Revolution: The Emergence of
Addiopizzo in Sicilian Civil Society
Addiopizzo emerged in June 2004 as a result of
a provocative campaign organized by a group of
its protection for their premises and staff (Gambetta,
seven friends - final-year students and new entrants
1993). Although pizzo is illegal, the government has
not been able to bring about an end to the practice
(Varese, 2011). According to the Italian anti-Mafia
police, 90% of Sicilian entrepreneurs paid pizzo in
2004 (the first year analyzed in our study). In this
into the job market. On the night of June 28, they
pasted the walls of downtown Palermo with hundreds of posters carrying the short message: "A
society that pays the pizzo is a society without dig-
context, the term "entrepreneur" is used to describe
to voice their frustration and to provoke Sicilian
society, which had long persisted in ignoring the
problems caused by the Mafia (interview, activist;
see Data Collection, below). The seven friends were
small- and medium-sized business owners, and, in
particular, shop owners who are exposed to the
same pressure to pay pizzo to the Mafia. Monthly
nity. " At the time, they had no other intention than
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1080 Academy of Management Journal August
surprised by the public attention their initiative received: it became a dominant topic in the local media
and the Palermo City Security Committee organized
an emergency meeting to investigate the instigators
of the campaign. Initially, the young activists decided to keep their identity a secret for security rea-
sons. After a few days, they sent two anonymous
letters to a local and a national newspaper explaining
their reasons: "Our action seeks to stop the silence. It
is an act of rebellion against the Mafia subculture
and a way of dissociating ourselves from the outrageous silence that has consolidated around the
problem of Mafia extortions." (Letter, Addiopizzo).
In May 2005, having revealed who they were, the
activists launched the Addiopizzo movement with
their first initiative, " Against the bribe! Change your
consumption ģ" The aim was to convince consumers to
buy products only from shops that did not pay pro-
tection money: once Addiopizzo had garnered 3,500
declarations of support from consumers, they presented the list to the press. In a second step, Addiopizzo covertly worked for a year to find entrepreneurs
willing to be part of a list of certified pizzo-iree
shops - again, as soon as 100 affiliated entrepreneurs
were found, the movement disclosed this information
to the public. The activists also created an antiprotection money certificate and a banner to be posted
on shop fronts, and developed a process to ensure that
certified firms did not collaborate with the Mafia.
First, they created a commission that (a) interviewed
entrepreneurs requesting Addiopizzo certification,
and (b) used documents from the Chamber of
Commerce when making decisions on new members. Second, Addiopizzo asked the government's
anti-Mafia directorate, the Direzione Investigativa
Antimafia (DIA), for information on potentially
suspicious activities undertaken by any of the firms
on the list. As a result, for example, Addiopizzo
expelled a construction company in August 2009
when its technical director and some board members were sentenced for Mafia-related crimes.
Toward the end of 2007, Addiopizzo initiated
activities in Sicilian schools, proposing educational
programs to discuss the Mafia and its negative
consequences, and promulgated their actions by
organizing public events and supporting entrepreneurs threatened by the Mafia. In 2008, these efforts
led to the creation of a new initiative, Libero Futuro,
which is directly managed by those entrepreneurs
in collaboration with Addiopizzo members. Libero
Futuro helps entrepreneurs who want to resist
paying pizzo to connect to other entrepreneurs,
lawyers, and the anti-Mafia police. Table 1 lists the
TABLE 1
Timeline of Addiopizzo 's Key Activities
June 29-30, 2004 First stickers on the walls of Palermo's center
May 2005 Launch of the list of responsible consumers
May 2 006 Launch of the list of responsible entrepreneurs
January 2006 Launch of projects with schools
November 2007 Launch of Libero Futuro (anti-protection
racket association)
January 2009 Launch of the participations in criminal
trials against Mafia members
January 2010 Launch of anti-protection racket organizations
of professionals (engineers, etc.)
most significant activities launched by Addiopizzo
and its related institutions between June 2004 and
June 2012.
According to several experts, Addiopizzo is the
most successful anti-protection racket initiative
ever mounted in Sicily (Forno, 2011; Vaccaro, 2011;
Expert Interview, 2012). While very few entrepreneurs had dared to resist the pizzo system in the
past - and often paid a high price if they did -
within a few years, Addiopizzo became a broad
societal movement. Between 2004, when the initiative began, and the end of 2011, reports to the
police about extortion attempts increased by 146%
(from 178 in 2004 to 260 in 2011). By June 2012,
in just the Province of Palermo (the area where
its activities are mainly concentrated), Addiopizzo
could count on the support of 56 activists, 10,143
consumers, 154 schools, 29 local associations (e.g.,
the Sicilian branch of Confindustria, the highly influential Confederation of Italian Industry), and
more than 700 affiliated firms (over 10% of the
entrepreneurs in the Province of Palermo). Although this still represents only a small percentage
of the local economy, Addiopizzo's success signifies an unprecedented achievement for the antiMafia cause, and has proved that the pizzo is not as
irremediably stable as Sicilians had believed for
more than 150 years.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Case Selection
This study relies on the tradition of the inductive
theory building of case studies, and, in particular,
on research methodologies that focus on deep, longitudinal, micro-level analyses of single exceptional
cases (see, e.g., Etzion & Ferraro, 2010). It focuses
only on Addiopizzo, for several reasons. First, it is
an organization that has succeeded in influencing and partly changing - an institution that the Mafia
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2015 Vaccaro and Palazzo 1081
has imposed on Sicilian society, and which had
previously proved highly resistant to change
(Gambetta, 1993). Addiopizzo is a uniquely suc-
Mafia groups. Aspects of the findings were also used
cessful organization, growing from a small group of
2011).
sive network of affiliated organizations and part-
Data Collection
Ribera, 2011). For the purposes of the study, this
means that it was possible to analyze and explore
the multiple activities of a relatively complex but
structured organization (in contrast to other, simi-
Our data cover a period from the second half of
2004 to mid-2012: actual data gathering started in
activists to reach a remarkable size with an exten-
ners (Forno, 2011; Vaccaro, 2011; Vaccaro &
lar, bottom-up anti-Mafia initiatives, which are still
to write a teaching case that was published as an
IESE Business School case study (Vaccaro & Ribera,
June 2006 and finished in June 2012. During this long
period, we adopted a recursive, four-step, theoretical
sampling strategy; that is, we iterati vely and strate-
we had unique and continuous access to the
in the embryonic stages of development). Second,
gically looked for information sources that could
provide us with the new information needed to de-
organization's activities and to stakeholders asso-
velop novel theoretical ideas (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).
ciated with the initiative. During the data-gathering
We began by analyzing publicly available data.
We gathered articles published in the first and second best-selling Sicilian newspapers ( Giornale di
Sicilia and La Sicilia ), in two of the major national
newspapers ( Corriere della Sera and Repubblica ), in
magazines, and from other public sources (e.g.,
video interviews with Addiopizzo activists, anti-
period, one author had full access (as an observer)
to the activists' internal meetings, as well as to their
meetings with entrepreneurs, students, and teachers. We both also had full access to Addiopizzo's
internal communications (e.g., e-mails) and documents (e.g., meeting reports, strategic plans, etc.),
as well as to written communications between the
activists and critical stakeholders, such as entre-
preneurs, school principals, teachers, and students. Addiopizzo activists also granted us full
availability for interviews, and, when necessary,
facilitated connections with other people or
organizations we were interested in contacting. As
part of the data-gathering process, we tried to reduce the risk of being biased by the interaction
between data gatherers and the object of analysis
(i.e., Addiopizzo and their stakeholders). For example, we presented our work in generic terms as
a study about "contemporary anti-Mafia ini-
tiatives" and avoided any comments or feedback
on the organization's practices or any particular
issue that arose until our data gathering was completed. This allowed us to conduct a very detailed,
micro-level, longitudinal analysis of the organization's internal and external activities, and the
impact they had on Sicilian society between its
creation and mid-2012.
Part of the database for this research was also used
for another project (Vaccaro, 2011), which analyzed
Addiopizzo's information disclosure strategies over
the period 2004-2009. More specifically, the earlier
study considered how those strategies (e.g., reporting detailed information about the use of available
financial resources, disclosing monetary compensations to volunteers working full-time for the organization) helped the organization gain legitimacy
and resist the demoralizing attacks organized by
Mafia experts, and politicians commenting on
Addiopizzo's initiatives). Second, we interviewed
both entrepreneurs who collaborated with Addiopizzo and those who preferred not to. Third, we
conducted direct data gathering within the
Addiopizzo network, conducting open and focused interviews with the founders and activists
responsible for all of its important strategic initiatives (e.g., meetings with entrepreneurs) and
with all of the relevant stakeholders who emerged
(e.g., consumers, students, teachers). Fourth, information from anti-Mafia experts was obtained
through interviews with officials from the antiMafia police, anti-Mafia judges, Mafia experts, and
via access to (sometimes confidential) databases.
After each data-gathering session, we analyzed the
material collected (see below) and prepared further data-gathering activities.
Data gathering and data analysis were reiterated
until the authors reached the "crystallization"
(Janesick, 2000; Richardson 1994) of "an in-depth
understanding of the phenomenon in question"
(Denzin & Lincoln, 2000), when the acquisition of
new material confirmed previous insights without
providing new relevant indications for the development of a novel theory. In particular (as
explained below), we ceased further data gathering
when we had completed the identification of the
micro-processes (i.e., hooking, anchoring, activating, securing, and uniting) associated with Addiopizzo's value work practices.
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1082 Academy of Management Journal August
Overall, our data gathering included 84 interviews (35 with activists, 9 with entrepreneurs collaborating with Addiopizzo, 7 with entrepreneurs
refusing to collaborate, 8 with consumers, 11 with
students, 7 with teachers and school principals, 5
with anti-Mafia experts and police officials, and 2
first category of questions concerned information
about the Sicilian context in general, and the role
and activities of the Mafia in particular (e.g., "How
is the Mafia doing during this period?", "Who is
silently opposing Addiopizzo initiatives?"), as well
as Addiopizzo's initiatives and the related outcomes
(e.g., "What is Addiopizzo currently doing?", "What
with politicians). We also collected 114 official
Addiopizzo documents, including 80 of their internal documents and 21 reports, and conducted
did you achieve as a result of this effort?"). A second
category of questions focused on the processes associated with Addiopizzo's initiatives (e.g., "How
are you managing this situation?", "How are you
trying to increase the number of affiliated entrepreneurs?"). We also questioned interviewees about
the intentions/objectives of Addiopizzo's initiatives
and related processes, or their perceptions about
them (e.g., "Why have you chosen this strategy?",
"Why do you think that Addiopizzo's volunteers
have chosen such a strategy?").
approximately 20 days of direct observation. Table 2
gives more details about our data sources, the kinds
of information collected, and number of documents
acquired from each source.
While the questions used for interviews varied
over time and according to the type of interviewee
(e.g., volunteer, entrepreneur), we used a threedimensional framework to generate an overall map
of Addiopizzo's activities and environment. The
TABLE 2
Sources of Information and Type and Amount of Data Obtained in Each Category
How data were used in the study
Reports 21 reports (approx. 7,000 pages) Development of a historical account of the evolution of the Mafia and anti-Mafia
initiatives before Addiopizzo
Characterization of the Sicilian institutional environment (high stability, moral
distortion, etc.)
Development of a detailed chronological account of Addiopizzo's initiatives
Characterization of perceptions about Addiopizzo's initiatives by external stakeholders
Analysis of the impact of Addiopizzo's activities on the pizzo practice
Articles from the media, Addiopizzo messages Characterization of the perceptions of civil society about Addiopizzo's initiatives
434 documents (approx. 430 pages) Analysis of Addiopizzo's communications
Analysis of official reactions by critical stakeholders to Addiopizzo's communications
Analysis of the evolution of Addiopizzo's position (and perceived position) in the field
Posters, brochures, books 114 documents Characterization of the semantic and symbolic strategies used by Addiopizzo
(approx. 310 pages) Identification of Addiopizzo's plan of activities
Identification of the self-representation strategies adopted by Addiopizzo
Characterization of the opinions of critical supporters of Addiopizzo
Interviews 31 open, 53 focused Characterization of strategies adopted to hook and anchor critical stakeholders
(approx. 130 pages) Characterization of strategies adopted to provide new meaning to values
Characterization of perceptions held by critical stakeholders about Addiopizzo's
activities
Characterization of strategies adopted to combine discursive strategies with symbolic
and substantive actions
Analysis of interactions between the discursive three-step strategy and symbolic and
substantive actions
Internal documents 80 internal documents Analysis of Addiopizzo's strategic plans and activities
(approx. 280 pages) Characterization of Addiopizzo's perceptions about threats, opportunities, etc.
Analysis of the perceived importance of values, and strategies adopted to leverage them
Analysis of perceived differences between pro-Mafia and anti-Mafia institutional
logics, etc.
Analysis of interactions between the discursive three-step strategy and symbolic and
substantive actions
Direct observation approx. 20 days' direct Characterization of strategies adopted to hook and anchor critical stakeholders
observation Characterization of strategies adopted to provide new meaning to values
Identification of the self-representation strategies adopted by Addiopizzo
Characterization of the perceptions of critical stakeholders about Addiopizzo's activities
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2015 Vaccaro and Palazzo 1083
Data Analysis
In order to fully comprehend Addiopizzo's story
and its impact on Sicilian society, we organized the
data into condensed chronological accounts (Miles
& Huberman, 1994), keeping full extracts from the
originals and dividing the material according to
each information source. Thus, for each time period
considered, we prepared brief descriptions of the
organization's activities (e.g., entrepreneurs' en-
a specific moment right through to the end of our
data gathering. For example, in the May 2005-May
2006 period, the value "security" was used with the
objective of recruiting entrepreneurs to the list of
responsible entrepreneurs, as an interviewed activist
explained:
"We understood that associating security with the
entrepreneurs' list [the list of responsible entrepreneurs] was the best way to convince them to enroll. "
rollment initiatives) and the results we had obtained
(e.g., the numbers of new entrepreneurs enrolling on
Addiopizzo's list). Data analysis focused on two
(Interview, activist)
Similarly, from 2006 onwards, the value "critical
central considerations. The first was the description
consumption" was used with the intention of
and characterization of Addiopizzo's story, activities, and impact on Sicilian society, while the second concerned the values and the micro-processes
associated with those values that the organization
adopted in its efforts to achieve social change.
We soon realized, during our first data analysis
phases, that first-order concepts such as "dignity,"
boosting purchase levels in certified shops, and thus
"union," "solidarity," and "community" were
emerging in our codes. For example, the analysis of
the 71 documents related to the period June 2004May 2005 showed that, during that time, Addiopizzo focused on "dignity" - in fact, the construct
appeared persistently in each document. Activists
repeatedly used the slogan "A society that pays the
pizzo is a society without dignity," and their communications and interactions continuously referred
to the importance of Sicilians' dignity. Similarly,
during the May 2005-May 2006 period, Addiopizzo
volunteers focused on the value of "security" in
their communications and interactions with entrepreneurs. We realized these terms were intended to
have moral connotations, since the activists used
them to distinguish between desirable and undesirable activities and goals (Rokeach, 1973;
Schwartz, 1996). This led us to identify secondorder themes of "values," and to set up an identification strategy based on the definition of values as
"desirable, trans-situational goals, varying in importance, that serve as guiding principles in people's lives" (Schwartz, 1996: 2).
We soon discovered that the activists used specific values ("dignity," "union," "security," "legality") to engage one or more stakeholder categories
with the strategic objectives of either promoting
particular anti-Mafia attitudes or activities, or of
creating new links between different stakeholders.
In some cases, a value was used primarily during
a specific period to achieve a specific objective,
while, in others, a value was used starting from
for creating stronger links between supportive con-
sumers and entrepreneurs. The value was described
by one activist in the following terms:
" The idea of critical consumption was conceived not
only to convince people to buy in certified shops but
also to help in creating relationships between responsible consumers and responsible entrepreneurs. "
(Interview, activist)
Table 3 provides a complete map of stakeholders
and objectives.
Once we discovered that the use of values was
central in activating one or more stakeholder cate-
gories, we started questioning how Addiopizzo
volunteers were able to drive change. A closer
analysis of the data enabled us to identify the activities that characterized how the movement's
volunteers interacted with their critical stake-
holders. Put differently, while values changed
according to the target stakeholder involved and the
objective to be achieved, the way in which those
values were used with different stakeholders - for
example, consumers, entrepreneurs, and stu-
dents - followed common patterns (see Figure 1 and
Table 4). For example, when approaching entrepreneurs to convince them to enroll on the supportive entrepreneurs' list, activists tried to focus
the discussion on the importance of "security", and,
when approaching students, they focused the discussion on the importance of "legality" - but they
used the same approach in both cases. While the
values they emphasized varied between stake-
holders, our data showed that, in both cases, activists' first interactions with a stakeholder aimed to
(a) create trust between Addiopizzo and the stakeholder (relating to our first-order concepts "distrust," "trust-building dialogue," and "trust") and
(b) move the stakeholder from a stance of moral
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1084 Academy of Management Journal August
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2015 Vaccaro and Palazzo 1085
disengagement to paying attention to Mafia-related
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we labelled "hooking" (i.e., gaining stakeholders'
attention), which was identical across the various
values and stakeholders. Figure 1 presents the
study's first-order concepts, second-order themes,
and aggregate dimensions.
We then proceeded to identify and characterize
the other recurrent micro-processes that activists
used to interact with critical stakeholders. In
addition to "hooking," we identified four further
micro-processes, which we labeled "anchoring,"
"activating," "securing," and "uniting." Once again,
we discovered that activists used each of these
micro-processes consistently in order to leverage
one or other value in their interactions with one or
more stakeholders. Our data also showed that these
micro-processes were systematically connected:
thus, activists generally only started the anchoring
process when two conditions had been met: (1) a
trust-based relationship had developed between
them and the target stakeholder, and (2) the target
stakeholder had developed some moral attention
with respect to the Mafia issue (see Figures 2a and
2b). This phase of the analysis helped us to understand why a micro-process took more time in
some situations (e.g., some stakeholders found it
difficult to appreciate the full impact of Mafia activities on Sicilian society), while, in others, it was
relatively easy to gain a stakeholder's engagement
(e.g., when they understood the Mafia's impact on
the local economy much more quickly).
At the end of this phase of the data analysis, we
identified six second-order themes: the use of values
plus the five micro-processes (hooking, anchoring, activating, securing, and uniting). We then continued with
coding the patterns of responses (Miles & Huberman,
1994: 69-72), seeking to verify the links between the
values and the five micro-processes. We created a matrix that reported the nine values (see Table 3) in rows
and the five micro-processes (see Table 4) in columns, together with extracts from the coding that
illustrated how each value (e.g., "community") was
used to hook, anchor, activate, secure, or unite.
We also identified two aggregated dimensions.
Our analysis showed that the activists either targeted individual stakeholders (in a dimension we
labelled "moralizing") or groups of stakeholders
and groups across stakeholder categories (in an
"integrating" dimension) (see Figure 1). We observed
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1086 Academy of Management Journal August
FIGUREI
Analytical Coding Process
lst-Order Concepts 2nd-Order Themes Aggregate Dimensions
Í Community
-Dignity, Unity, Security, Critical
a ■ Consumption, Legality, Solidarity, Values
I1' -Discussing
- -Trust
Moral attention r
consequences ^
l'
-Distrust
' V '- Moral
disengagement riooKing ^
In -Trust-building dialogue
j' -Acknowledging the importance of values
'' -impact
^
/
Operationalization °
V "^a¥ng COIļļPariAS(?Iī? . Anchoring
iHSSfilÄXTÄ "^a¥ng COIļļPariAS(?Iī? . ^ 1
Vi ' "Idealizing I Activating ° /
' - Plan of action new anti-Mafia behavior
' - New meaning of values ^
l' - Creating safe spaces
I ' - Attracting stakeholders into safe spaces Securing v
'' - Creation of new ties between people in
1 ' - Launch new anti-Mafia initiatives IHI^F ' T . . .
V -Reinforcing new meanings W
' the same stakeholder category
' stakeholder categories y
' - Creation of new ties between different WtKÈÈÈ^^^
- Creating a new anti-Mafia network
- Minimizing the daily risks of anti-Mafia
Behavior
that the first three micro-processes ("hooking,"
"anchoring," and "activating") were used repeatedly in interactions with individual stakeholders, while the latter two ("securing" and
"uniting") were always group oriented (see Figures
1, 2a, and 2b). Finally, at the end of the data analysis, we presented and discussed the study's results
with key informants (volunteers and anti-Mafia
experts) in one-to-one sessions and at a meeting
with a selected group of Addiopizzo volunteers.
through the five micro-processes (see Table 3 for the
different values and Table 4 for the micro-processes).
The first micro-process, which we called hooking ,
seeks to sharpen the awareness of normative or
cognitive tensions among critical stakeholders
(customers, entrepreneurs, etc.), opening a discussion about a critical value. Institutional scholars
consider highlighting tensions to be an important
starting point for successful change processes
(Battilana et al., 2009). We labelled the second micro-
process anchoring : using values to anchor their
ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
In this section, we describe Addiopizzo's success
as it emerged from our data, starting with a summary of our findings. That success can be described
as a values-based change process based on five wellconnected micro-processes, in which activists use
the same value (e.g., legality) to engage a category of
stakeholders (e.g., students) and conduct them
change initiative in the wider Sicilian society,
Addiopizzo activists credibly highlighted the legitimacy of their own proposition and the illegitimacy of
pizzo , so promoting a normative discussion about
these tensions. We called the third micro-process
activating : relying on the engaging power of values,
the activists provided an alternative understanding
of the targeted value and progressively involved different stakeholders in their initiative. This micro-process
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2015 Vaccaro and Palazzo 1087
FIGURE 2A
Hooking, Anchoring, and Activating
V y ļ behavior </
A
ll Vnini ctm«»
of anti-Mafia
actiraX 1
ctm«» ylļļ /Understanding
( Trust } YAddiopizzo's biplan
role/1 ( n('w
Hooking
I Anchoring j | ^ L| Activating
/' / ' /U^ta¡dü5'j /' /^New meaning '
Q^ngagonu^) J ( atteLn^) z" / ' VcuUuraltap^ J
Trust-building Acknowledging consequents H comptons Idealizing Operationalization
dialogue importance of values H
promotes the ability to translate these considerations
of values into alternative behaviors. In a fourth micro-
might, for instance, result from performance prob-
lems of given practices, new technologies, or the
process - which we called securing - the Addiopizzo
fragmentation of a given normative consensus. Sim* ilarly, the literature on social movements shows that
initiative tried to create favorable conditions for new
broad institutional changes normally occur when
advantageous political opportunity structures exist
for an institutional alternative (McAdam, 1996;
Tarrow, 1998). Both literatures assume that change
anti-Mafia behaviors. Its objective was to create safe
spaces that protected stakeholders from the risks connected with their deviance from the dominating institution. Finally, in the fifth micro-process - uniting -
activists connected stakeholders to one another,
weaving new social ties to reduce the risks to indi-
agents use the momentum of institutional instability.
In our case, it cannot be denied that strong tensions existed between the pizzo system and the
overall democratic order of the country - and, indeed, Addiopizzo activists used these tensions to
advance their initiative. But tensions between the
vidual stakeholders and help them to enact new antiMafia behaviors. Our analysis shows that the success
of the Addiopizzo initiative results from the careful
enacting of combinations of these micro-processes
Mafia and the democratic rule of law in Italy have
existed for more than 150 years, and - as our data
(see Figures 2a and 2b). We now describe these microprocesses in more detail, with illustrative quotations
as they emerged from our data, beginning with an
show - 2004 was not a year in which the fight
evaluation of the initiative's starting point.
against the Mafia could draw support from any
The Initial Situation in 2004
pizzo was largely undisputed among Sicilian
entrepreneurs. As anti-Mafia police documents
particular institutional instability: on the contrary,
B
Oliver (1992) assumed that institutional change
showed, the pizzo system was unwavering at that
time (Ministero dell'Interno, DIA report, 2004, 2nd
requires some instability as a starting point - which
FIGURE 2B
Securing and Uniting
f Launch new antiA ļ
'Mafia initiatives J ( Creating new anti-
Securing J Uniting | ^
ļ Reinforcing
I new meanings J / ' f Minimizing risks
anti-Mafi
// '' '.in
V daily
behavior
>
Ak Securing J I ļ new Reinforcing meanings J / / / Uniting ' ' ' | ^ ' f '.in V Mafia Minimizing daily behavior network anti-Mafi
Creating safe Attracting
spaces stakeholders Creating new ties creating 8 new ties
to to safe safe spaces sDaces between people in the ¡" creating 8
to to safe safe spaces sDaces between same st^older people in the between ¡" different
category stakeholder categories
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1088 Academy of Management Journal August
TABLE 4
Extracts of the First-Order Codes Associated with the Five Interventions
Hooking
Trust-building dialogue: " I cannot imagine how many times he went to my shop to speak . . . but all those discussions created some trust
between us. Of course, I did not trust him at the beginning, but since I really spoke with him a lot, I got to know him . . . and, in the end, I
trusted him." (Interview, entrepreneur)
Acknowledging the importance of values: "I agree with you that security is the most important thing for you and your family." (Direct
observation)
Distrust: "Here, you cannot trust people you don't know." (Interview, consumer)
Moral disengagement: "The problem is that I never seriously thought about the Mafia." (Interview, entrepreneur)
Trust: "All those meetings really created some unique trust between us. " (Interview, entrepreneur)
Moral attention: "I finally realized that pizzo is a serious issue, and that hiding the problem was not the solution." (Interview, consumer)
Anchoring
Discussing consequences: "Are you really sure that pizzo affects only entrepreneurs?" (Direct observation)
Making comparisons: "What I generally do is to ask them to make a comparison between Sicily and Germany or another civilized country. "
(Interview, activist)
Understanding Addiopizzo's role: "I finally understood what those guys [Addiopizzo's activists] were trying to do. " (Interview, entrepreneur)
Understanding the Mafia's cultural impact: "It's not so simple to understand how the Mafia affects the way you think, but I finally got a clear
understanding of their influence." (Interview, entrepreneur)
Activating
Idealizing: "What would security be like in an ideal world?" (Direct observation)
Operationalization: "He asked me how I could apply what I just understood about the Mafia and its influence on me and my business."
(Interview, entrepreneur)
Plan of action for new anti-Mafia behavior: "They prepared a plan of anti-Mafia activities" (Interview, high school teacher)
New meaning of values: "At that point, I started to understand that security, real security, is something else." (Interview, entrepreneur)
Securing
Creating safe spaces: "We worked a lot to create the right conditions for students to think independently about legality and propose new
solutions against the Mafia. This is not simple because they are always influenced by society." (Interview, activists)
Attracting stakeholders into safe spaces: "At that point, we did our best to attract entrepreneurs to those meetings." (Interview, activist)
Launching new anti-Mafia initiatives: " Those meetings helped to organize new initiatives against the Mafia guys, like the brochure on how to
unblock sealed keyholes. " (Interview, entrepreneur)
Reinforcing new meanings: "We also developed a new way of seeing and naming things, a way that was ultimately anti-Mafia. " (Interview,
student)
Uniting
Creation of new ties between people in the same stakeholder category: "At this point, it's very important that we put all the entrepreneurs who
are with us into contact with each other. " (Internal communication)
Creation of new ties between different stakeholder categories: "We understood that we had to create new contacts that previously were
unthinkable: between entrepreneurs and the police, between entrepreneurs and consumers, between entrepreneurs and students."
(Interview, activist)
Creating a new anti-Mafia network: "We are creating a new, alternative network of people that is intrinsically anti- pizzo and anti-Mafia."
(Internal communication)
Minimizing the risks in daily anti-Mafia behavior: "Their strategy to group people together and to work with multiple networks is very
successful in minimizing the risk of Mafia attacks." (Interview, anti-Mafia expert)
semester), and nor was the overall political context
in Sicily particularly supportive of anti-Mafia ini-
tiatives. The Mafia operated more or less un-
government in 2004, but is currently in jail for
Mafia-related crimes. The activists thus started their
disturbed by the political system, to which it was, in
initiative in a highly stable, hostile, and changeadverse environment.
fact, well connected. Influential Sicilian politicians
had strong ties with organized crime in the early
the job market, the Addiopizzo activists were well
Furthermore, as students and recent entrants into
2000s, as is easily shown by the example of Salvatore
aware of the fact that they had neither the legitimacy
Cuffaro, who was the president of the Sicilian regional
nor the required resources to affect the Mafia and
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2015 Vaccaro and Palazzo 1089
its activities: "We are nothing ... we cannot go on
television to talk about this , because nobody will
listen to us. " (Interview) They knew from the very
beginning that it would not be an easy task to get
widespread public support for their initiative especially as it challenged an exceptionally powerful and well-embedded social institution.
In our study, interviews and direct observation
showed that the trust-building process was mainly
based on value-driven discussions about Sicilian
society. The following quote illustrates how an
activist used the value of security to hook
entrepreneurs:
"Here [in Sicily] people distrust other people; if we
don't get their confidence , there's nothing we can do.
Values-Based Micro-Processes against the Pizzo
Given the broad acceptance of the payment of
We generally first open with a discussion about
Sicilian problems, and we try to focus on what matters for people, but we already know what entrepre-
protection money among Sicilians, the activists were
neurs will say - security is generally the big problem
convinced that their fight against pizzo would be "a
for them. Discussing security is generally an oppor-
slow and difficult process " (Interview), and that involving various stakeholders would be a key factor for
future success. Previously, it had been easy for citi-
tunity to create a first bridge, and to speak for some
zens to morally disengage (Bandura, 1999) from the
problems related to pizzo. Business owners often
perceived it as a legitimate practice, established
generations ago, or as a problem to be solved by the
government, but not by them. Moreover, consumers
tended to perceive pizzo as a problem between corporations and the Mafia. The change process initiated
by Addiopizzo to challenge the dominance of the
Mafia can be divided into five different values-based
micro-processes, which are discussed further in this
section. Table 3, above, details the values deployed
by Addiopizzo between June 2004 and June 2012.
Micro-process 1: Hooking stakeholders with
values . In a context of fear and mutual distrust,
getting a dialogue started is the first hurdle. The
activists used values to create a point of connection
between Addiopizzo and the stakeholder(s) it targeted. The "hooking" values-based micro-process
was associated with two activities: first, starting a
trust-building dialogue (i.e., a discussion aimed at
generating trust between Addiopizzo activists and
the stakeholder), and, second, acknowledging the
importance of values (i.e., highlighting that Addio-
pizzo understood the relevance of a particular
value, such as security or legality) to a stakeholder.
This initial value-centered dialogue was extremely
important for building relationships with targeted
stakeholders, since it gave Addiopizzo volunteers the
opportunity to create a point of contact with them.
This activity produced two important outcomes: (1) it
broke down the distrust toward institutions that were
alternatives to the Mafia (Gambetta, 1993, 2009),
creating a trust-based relationship between Addiopizzo activists and the stakeholder, and (2) it shifted
the stakeholder from a state of moral disengagement
(Bandura, 1999) to one of moral "attention" (Nussbaum,
1985) regarding pizzo and Mafia-related issues.
time . . . speaking about security is a good way to get
some trust from them."
(Interview, activist)
Once a minimum level of trust had been established, activists encouraged the stakeholder(s) to
enter into more detail, deepening the value-focused
discussion by stressing the value's importance:
" I generally visit the entrepreneur again, sometimes
two [or] three times, and I repeat the previous conversation . . . and deepen the issues that emerged in
the previous meeting. Entrepreneurs talk a lot about
security, and I encourage them to talk about this
problem - I want to show that their security is very
important for us. "
(Interview, activist)
The repetition of these discussions centering on
the value of security helped the entrepreneur to
understand that they were morally disengaged, and
to move to a state of moral attention:
"He kept on talking about security; my security, the
security of my family, the security of my company. I
did not know what he wanted from me in that discussion, but, after various meetings, I realized that I
had to think more seriously about security and the
role of the Mafia in this issue. We generally avoid
thinking and speaking about the Mafia. Those very
long discussions were useful because they forced me
to understand that I should be more careful and
think more about how the Mafia affects my life. "
(Interview, entrepreneur)
Interactions with other stakeholders centered on
other values (see Table 3), but followed the same
strategy. For example, the discussion about "union"
allowed Addiopizzo activists to engage a consumer
in a discussion to create a preliminary trust-based
relationship, and to acknowledge the importance of
"union" and move them to a state of moral attention:
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1090 Academy of Management Journal August
"He approached me several times. I don't like
speaking with strangers, so the first time I was polite
but I did not give him any confidence. Here, we have
a lot of strangers trying to sell you something, so, the
first [few] times I saw him in front of the supermarket,
I tried to avoid him [as] I had no reason to trust him . . .
but he was very good in convincing me to stop and
speak with him . . . step by step, all these discussions
about the importance of being united against the
Mafia convinced meĒ I was surprised the first time he
told me how important the idea of union against the
Mafia was. I don't know why but that story convinced
me and I started trusting him because what he said
made sense to me. He kept telling me that being part
of a union against the Mafia was very important for
me as a person, and I never think about it in my daily
life. He made me think about the way I think about the
Another strategy adopted by the activists was
based on making comparisons with more developed
countries so as to create an awareness of the morally
problematic character of pizzo and the Mafia. A
typical question activists used was "How would this
value be understood in Germany or in Switzerland?" For example, the quote below is an extract
from an interview with a high school student who
attended an Addiopizzo program. It shows how the
value of legality was used to make comparisons:
"I had already spoken to her a couple of times, but I
was probably tired then, so I was not following her
[the volunteer] too much while she was speaking.
After some time, she started questioning me: 'Do you
think that the idea of legality is the same here and in
Germany? Or in Sweden?"'
(Interview, student)
Mafia and I had to admit to myself that I did not think
too much about the Mafia ... so I promised to myself
to consider more about Mafia-related situations. "
(Interview, consumer)
Micro-process 2: Anchoring. Volunteers started
this micro-process when they felt that they had de-
veloped a trusting relationship with a stakeholder
whose moral attention about the Mafia issue had
already been achieved.
"If they don't trust us and they are not concerned
about the Mafia, there is nothing we can do."
(Interview, activist)
Our data show that this micro-process sought to
attain two objectives: anchoring an alternative understanding of the Mafia's overall impact on Sicilian
society in general, and that of pizzo in particular, as
well as of Addiopizzo's role in this context. Activists generally used two anchoring strategies to
support a new understanding of the Mafia's impact
on society, and to introduce the role of Addiopizzo
as a change initiative. The first was based on analyzing the consequences of Mafia-imposed behavior: for example, the following excerpt shows how
an activist deployed the value of dignity during
a discussion with a citizen:
"No, that's not a slogan when we repeat that ' people
who pay pizzo have no dignity,' we just want to say
that Sicilians don't think about the real consequences
of the Mafia's presence. Here in Sicily, we used to say
that a person has dignity if they don't speak to the
police and they help the Mafia guys. But what are the
consequences of this way of thinking? That we normalize what isn't normal and we educate our kids to
call this dignity when it is really the opposite. "
(Direct observation)
These value-centered discussions proved very
effective, since they helped critical stakeholders
think more carefully about the Mafia's impact on
Sicily and to understand the role of Addiopizzo in
the fight against the Mafia.
"I enjoyed the meeting with the Addiopizzo activist.
These guys are really cool because they are really
trying to fight pizzo and the Mafia culture. Speaking
about legality in the way he did helped me understand that, here, the Mafia decides how we think.
After that meeting, I started noticing that my parents'
way of seeing things is affected by the Mafia. I believe
that they don 't even think about what legality really is. "
(Interview, student)
Micro-process 3-Ē Activating a new behavioral
option . Activists operationalized this third microprocess - "activation" - when they were sure that
a stakeholder had understood the Mafia's impact on
Sicily and the role of Addiopizzo.
"Before talking about starting initiatives, we have to
be sure they are aware of who we [Addiopizzo] are,
and what we are doing, but also what the Mafia has
done to our society and to our culture. "
(Interview, activist)
This third micro-process focused on achieving
two important objectives: action plans for a new
anti-Mafia behavior, which the citizens could enact
in their various roles as entrepreneurs, consumers,
students, or teachers, and the development of a new
meaning for the value used previously to hook and
anchor the stakeholder. These two objectives were
achieved through two key activities (see also
Table 4). First, Addiopizzo engaged its stakeholders
in an idealization process - that is, a dialogue about
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2015 Vaccaro and Palazzo 1091
how the value (e.g., security for entrepreneurs; legality for students) would be understood and enacted in an imaginary "ideal world," which allowed
them to keep a distance from the Sicilian perspective. The following is an extract of a conversation
between an activist and a consumer that shows how
"It's difficult to say, but, before, security meant for us
[entrepreneurs] working continuously to satisfy the
Mafia, which meant paying pizzo and closing our
eyes when we saw something we were not supposed
to see. Security meant having Mafia guys satisfied
with our [entrepreneurs'] behavior. Addiopizzo is
imposing a new sense of security: getting protection
from dangers is being with the government, collaborating with the police, doing exactly the opposite of
the "critical consumption" value was used in this
"ideal world" exercise:
"Don't think about Sicily for the moment Tell me
what critical consumption would mean in an ideal
what we used to do. "
(Interview, entrepreneur)
world . . . no, this is important , because, if we do not
understand what critical consumption means in
a perfect world, we will continue to be biased by the
Table 5 provides further information about the
"old" and the "new" meanings of values identified
by Addiopizzo during the activating process.
As already indicated, Addiopizzo activists also
opened dialogues about alternative behaviors by
Mafia culture. "
(Direct observation)
Interviews confirmed that this "idealizing" strategy was extremely effective in supporting new
discussing how a value's new meaning could be
operationalized in daily life. This was important,
because it allowed stakeholders to plan changes to
their current behavior and to think about the opportunities associated with new relationships with
meanings of values consonant with a broader societal
perspective, as the following extracts of interviews
with a Mafia expert and with an entrepreneur show:
" They have changed the meaning of important
words, such as dignity, security . . . For example,
when they came out with the list of entrepreneurs,
other anti-Mafia stakeholders. The following extract
from one of our study's interviews shows how an
Addiopizzo activist used the value of "solidarity" to
support the development of a new action plan for
they were very good at convincing entrepreneurs that
security meant the opposite of what people generally
intend; that is, collaborating with the Mafia and
anti-Mafia behavior for an entrepreneur:
obstructing the police. "
"He asked me how I could put this idea of solidarity
into practice. I couldn't say anything because, when
(Interview, anti-Mafia expert)
TABLE 5
The Mafia's versus Addiopizzo's Meanings of Values
Value The Mafia's meaning Addiopizzo's meaning
Dignity "A person has dignity if he/she does his/her own "You have dignity if you oppose the Mafia. " (Direct
business, and if he/she does not look at others' observation)
businesses - in particular , the Mafia business. " "People who pay pizzo have no dignity. " (Document)
(Interview)
Union "All of us united to support Mafia people. " (Interview) "The only union that is possible is that against the Mafia. "
(Interview)
Security "Only the Mafia can guarantee your security; if you "Security is an issue that is the responsibility of the
want to be secure, the only thing you have to do is Government. The only possible security is through the
pay pizzo." (Interview) Government and the police." (Document)
Critical "Buying from the friends of the friends; that is, from "Buying from those who fight against Mafia. " (Document)
consumption those who are close to the Mafia." (Interview) "It's a diffused form of the fight against the Mafia." (Press
release)
Legality "The law is not that of the Government, but that of the "Legality means the uncompromised respect for the state. "
person [the Mafia guy] who makes sure that things (Document)
get done. " (Document)
Solidarity " Solidarity only for those who cooperate with the "Solidarity is only for those who fight against the Mafia. "
Mafia family. " (Document) (Document)
Community "The local Mafia family creates and controls the local "A community of honest people that fights against the
community. " (Interview) Mafia and supports the government. " (Communication)
Denunciation "Denunciation as an instrument against the "Denunciating the Mafia and its collaborators." (Interview)
Government, to hinder the police. " (Interview)
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1092 Academy of Management Journal August
another entrepreneur has problems with the Mafia,
other colleagues stay away from him. Solidarity was
something that never crossed my mind . . . but I
started to think about it, about how I could put this
idea of solidarity into practice."
(Interview, entrepreneur)
And this shows how such an effort could result in
a plan that an entrepreneur intended to operationalize:
"It wasn't easy to think about it. I probably thought
about it for a while, but I decided to start looking at
other entrepreneurs threatened by the Mafia as potential new suppliers, because this is a way to help,
and I also thought that, the next time a colleague in
our street experiences problems, instead of ignoring
the situation, I will go and speak with him."
(Interview, entrepreneur)
Micro-process 4: Securing. This micro-process
starts when Addiopizzo activists are sure that one or
more groups of stakeholders have developed their
own action plans for new anti-Mafia behaviors, and
have matured new anti-Mafia meanings for the values
involved. By way of example, the following extract
describes the decision to start the securing microprocess in association with the "community" value:
"We generally start doing things in a group when we
are sure that each person already has their own
anti-Mafia agenda . . . and has digested all those
discussions about the meaning of community . . .
otherwise, we are putting people into the group who
can create problems."
(Interview, activist)
This and the following micro-process (which is
associated with collective action) were extremely
important for Addiopizzo's success. Indeed, activists understood that simply delegitimizing pizzo
and promoting alternative values and behavioral
options were not necessarily enough to trigger
change: rather, it was necessary to propose a model
for collective action that was distinct from the "he-
roic" model of anti-Mafia activism:
"We are normal people leading normal lives. We do
not need bodyguards. Nothing has changed in our
lives. And we cannot change Sicily by thinking that
entrepreneurs have to behave like heroes; so, we are
normal, just like our affiliated entrepreneurs. "
(Interview, activist)
"We cannot ask an individual citizen, or a shop
owner, to immolate themselves for this cause. There
is no need for heroes or martyrs. "
(Interview, activist)
More specifically, "securing" was operationalized by creating safe spaces (Rao & Dutta, 2012)
and attracting stakeholders to those safe spaces
(see also Table 4). These values-based activities
provided two kinds of outcome. First, stakeholders could reinforce their new meanings of
values through discussion with other Addiopizzo supporters. Second, safe spaces supported
the emergence of new ideas and the launch of
new anti-Mafia programs. But, while such discussions were conducted with the direct support
of Addiopizzo activists in the previous (activating) phase, in the securing phase, the initiative
was increasingly taken by the stakeholders
themselves.
Our data show that the values deployed by
Addiopizzo were of utmost importance for the creation of safe spaces - places where stakeholders
could meet without having to worry about external
scrutiny. For example, Addiopizzo activists used
the value of legality to create "laboratories of legal-
ity" within school buildings. These areas (generally,
rooms devoted to the initiative) were created to allow school students to meet and speak freely about
pizzo and other Mafia-related problems, while, at
the same time, guaranteeing them protection from
the scrutiny of teachers and parents. The use of the
legality value was of outmost importance for the
creation of such areas:
"When we started thinking about the creation of
protected areas, we had to convince the principal,
the teachers, and of course the students. We knew
that it was not going to be easy, because schools in
Sicily have no money and no space. So, we asked
ourselves: 'How can we convince them all?' And we
thought that a laboratory of legality was a good way
to express what we wanted and to convince them to
do it . . . because these areas will provide everyone
with what they really need. "
(Interview, activist)
In the case of entrepreneurs, safe spaces were
created that took into consideration the value of
security. Among other initiatives, Addiopizzo organized secret meetings with entrepreneurs - in the
So, the activists promoted situations in which
their stakeholders could meet without being pres-
pre's office (the local representative of the govern-
sured by the Mafia and its supporters.
spaces - to discuss pizzo :
ment), in an activist's house, and in other safe
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2015 Vaccaro and Palazzo 1093
"At that time, we used any space available: our
houses, the sacristy of a church, a room in the university, etc. We were moving silently, organizing secret meetings because we wanted to guarantee the
entrepreneurs' security fully, and I think that they
would have never taken part in those meetings
without that guarantee. "
"I am very happy with these laboratories of legality.
We were worried at the beginning because we had no
control, but then we saw the results. Speaking with
them [the students], I realized that they had clearly
understood what legality really is, and, moreover,
they organized dinners in the restaurants that were
certified by Addiopizzo. "
(Interview, high school teacher)
(Interview, activist)
" The Addiopizzo guys were very good at presenting
these meetings as secure meetings for what we had
discussed with them before, the security of entrepreneurs who want to fight against the Mafia. "
(Interview, entrepreneur)
Values were also used to attract other stakeholders to the free spaces. For example, activists
created a room at the organization's headquarters to
hold meetings with people interested in supporting
Addiopizzo. Thus, since June 2010, while they used
the value of "community" with the aim of creating
an anti-Mafia community, they also used this same
value to convince people - previously hooked, anchored, and activated - to visit the headquarters and
meet with activists and other supporters. The following two extracts are from conversations between
an activist and two people interested in Addiopizzo:
" Why do you never visit us? How many times do I
have to tell you? We need you, because we want you
to help us build a community against the Mafia and
your help is more important than you can imagine!"
(Direct observation)
"We cannot create an anti-Mafia community without
everybody's support. I know you are very busy, but it
only takes half an hour. You pass by, meet with the
other volunteers, and it's done. "
(Direct observation)
Safe spaces proved to be very effective in boosting
divergent change. As already noted, they enabled
the reinforcement of new meanings, as well as the
operationalization of new anti-Mafia initiatives. An
entrepreneur described the outcome of a secret
meeting with Addiopizzo as follows:
"During that meeting, I decided to sign on [the list of
certified shops] and that was, for me, the beginning
of everything . . . that day, I signed in a new life in
which security had nothing to do with the Mafia."
(Interview, entrepreneur)
Similarly, the school "laboratories of legality"
helped students to launch new anti-Mafia activities
and reinforced their understanding of legality:
Micro-process 5: Uniting. This last micro-process
was generally undertaken by activists once one or
more groups of stakeholders had already launched
new anti-Mafia activities.
"Networking makes sense when people are really
doing something tangible against the Mafia. Other-
wise, you connect people who are wasting their
time. "
(Interview, activist)
Addiopizzo used this "uniting" micro-process to
create new social networks that linked stakeholders
in the same category (e.g., consumers) as well as
stakeholders across different categories. This helped
activists to achieve two important objectives: first, to
minimize the risks associated with daily anti-Mafia
behavior, and, second, to create an alternative antiMafia network where new practices could be enacted
(see also Table 4).
For example, Addiopizzo worked to build strong
new ties between the police and affiliated shop
owners (thus creating a link between these two different stakeholder categories), leveraging the impor-
tance of the value of security. This led to an
unprecedented level of interaction between business
owners and the anti-Mafia police:
"That was one of the most difficult moments: when
we had to put entrepreneurs in contact with the police. We understood that the only way that this could
be done was by insisting on the importance of their
security. "
(Interview, activist)
"I did not like the idea of having a direct contact with
the police. We [entrepreneurs] generally try to stay
away from any kind of police, but I agreed to do it
because I understood that it was necessary for my
security and that of my family. In the end, if the
police check on me every day, this means that, in
some way, I am reducing the risk of being attacked by
the Mafia. "
(Interview, entrepreneur)
Similarly, during the preparation for and in the
months following the public launch of the list of
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1094 Academy of Management Journal August
certified shops, Addiopizzo activists used the value
find new friends, people who have strong values.
of security to create further ties between groups of
Now I try to do everything through Addiopizzo contacts. "
"clean" entrepreneurs:
(Interview, student)
"The problem is always convincing people to do
something they have never done before. We
explained to them [the entrepreneurs] that they had
to meet and get to know each other because their
security was based on that as well. "
(Interview, activist)
As already noted, our data show that these uniting
efforts resulted in two main outcomes. First, they
minimized the risks in daily anti-Mafia activities, as
an anti-Mafia expert explained:
"This idea of grouping people is very smart, because
Mafia guys have problems in attacking large groups.
Moving large groups of entrepreneurs, consumers,
students, etc., puts Mafia guys in a difficult situation,
because the Mafia first isolates and then kills. Here,
Addiopizzo is creating large groups of people that
prevent Mafia guys from attacking their opponents. "
Addiopizzo activists only succeeded in achieving
the involvement of stakeholders when all of the
above-described micro-processes were managed
well. For example, the extracts below show how
failures in anchoring can cause lack of un-
derstanding among the targeted stakeholders, while
errors in activating are associated with their limited
(or non-existent) engagement in the Addiopizzo
initiative:
"I was unable to seriously discuss with him that the
problems in Sicily are just a consequence of the
Mafia's activities. It was as if I was unable to help
him think. I visited him several times but without
success. It's sad to say, but he does not understand
how the Mafia manipulates and affects his life, so he
cannot understand what we [Addiopizzo volunteers]
are trying to do. "
(Interview, volunteer)
(Interview, anti-Mafia expert)
The stakeholders involved- (e.g., entrepreneurs,
consumers, students, etc.) were aware of this riskminimization strategy:
"They create groups and do everything within the
group because this way it's very difficult for the Mafia
to attack. "
(Interview, entrepreneur)
"Addiopizzo activists insisted on creating group activities and on relating with other similar groups in
other schools. That is a good idea because it prevents
attacks on isolated people . . . if they move in groups,
there are no problems. "
(Interview, high school teacher)
Second, they created an anti-Mafia network that
supported and helped people willing to oppose the
Mafia, thus developing an alternative solution to the
Mafia-supporting network:
"Staying and collaborating with Addiopizzo opened
doors to a new world of people who fight against the
Mafia. Here, you find everyone you need: students,
teachers, entrepreneurs, professionals ... I can say
that I now work and also spend my free time with
people that I like because they are clearly against the
Mafia. "
(Interview, entrepreneur)
"I had problems at my school because there you find
a lot of people who like and support the Mafia, even
if they don't say it out loud. Addiopizzo helped me to
"It's my fault [that] we lost him [the entrepreneur] for
a long period. It was a very busy time for me and I did
not visit him as much as I was supposed to. Instead of
working on a plan about his contribution against the
Mafia, I kept the conversation too generic about
Sicilian problems and the conversation remained
where it was, without any real commitment on his
part."
(Interview, volunteer)
THEORIZING THE STRATEGIC USE OF VALUES
WORK
We started this paper by highlighting the research
question that motivated our project: How can
change initiatives succeed in social contexts that
are dominated by organized crime? The case of
Addiopizzo provided two important answers to this
question, which mark our paper's contribution.
First, we found that the Addiopizzo activists used
five well-aligned, values-based micro-processes in
their fight against pizzo . They promoted an institutional change process in which the different
stakeholders not only developed alternative practices as entrepreneurs, students, or consumers, but
also updated their beliefs about pizzo , the Mafia
regime in general, and the trustworthiness of other
actors in their social context. They changed their
understanding of values that were important for
them and built new links with other stakeholders.
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2015 Vaccaro and Palazzo 1095
By using the performative power of values, Addiopizzo first hooked stakeholders individually and
then united them in a single anti-Mafia movement,
which in turn developed its own momentum over
time, independent of Addiopizzo itself.
Second, in addition to conceptualizing this strategic use of values work, our study delivered some
insights for the emerging debate on post-heroic institutional change. In particular, we showed the
importance of the neutralization of risks for successful change strategies. In forming an unexpected
coalition between powerless actors - in this case,
either at the individual or the group level. Moraliz-
ing described the individual transformation of
actors targeted by the Addiopizzo activists, and
consisted of three interventions: hooking, anchor-
ing, and activating (see Figure 2a). Integrating
described the second phase of broader social transformation, and was associated with securing and
uniting activities (see Figure 2b).
Moralizing via hooking, anchoring , and
activating. Institutionalized practices may lose
their moral significance over time in favor of other
(e.g., economic) forms of meaning, a process that has
sumers, and young school students - and providing
been described as "demoralization" (Toulmin,
1990), "amoralization" (Crane, 2000), and "adia-
them with the safe spaces required for their partic-
phorization" (Bauman, 1995). These concepts de-
ipation, Addiopizzo showed the profoundly antiheroic character of change processes in contexts
where change had previously been perceived as an
relevant" (Bauman, 1995: 149). This normative
unemployed students, small shop owners, con-
scribe the process of "making certain actions,
or certain objects of action, morally neutral or ir-
neutralization of practices can provoke moral disengagement (Bandura, 1999) and thus contribute to
(impossible) task for heroes.
The Strategic Use of Values Work
Our study extends our understanding of the
performative power of valueá. Callón (2007: 316)
argued that something is performative "if it contributes to the construction of the reality that it
describes." The performative power of values has
been demonstrated, for instance, in a recent contri-
bution by Gehman and colleagues (2013). They examined how values are practiced in organizations,
how they emerge, and how they are performed over
time - and they defined this as values work. Our
study goes beyond the observation of emerging values
the stability of a given institutional order. Our study
describes an example of the reverse process, in
which institutional change results from (re-)moralizing practices and beliefs through values. Values
normally "exist in a dormant state" (Maurer et al.,
2011: 438), but Creed and colleagues (2010) showed
they can be used to highlight institutional contradictions, and argued that increased reflexivity can
amplify the cognitive distance from dominating
institutions, which can enable and motivate actors
to develop new meanings and new forms of action.
Our study described how such increased reflexivity
was achieved through values-based moralizing of
practices. As Maurer and colleagues (2011) argued,
values can be used strategically to highlight normative tensions and drive change, and the Addiopizzo
the taken-for-granted pizzo practice. Through mor-
case demonstrates this strategic use of values work in
an institutional change process. Our study thus con-
engaged them in a normative debate on the pizzo
nects these two arguments by proposing that the
sulated from competition as an institution. Addiopizzo used values as a "moral compass" (Hitlin &
Piliavin, 2004: 362) to involve entrepreneurs, consumers, students, and teachers, and to transform
them into allies in their struggle against the in-
performative power of values work can be used stra-
tegically by change agents in institutional change
processes. The Addiopizzo case study demonstrates
how activists engaged in values work and successfully challenged the taken-for-granted nature of pizzo .
As a result, their anti-Mafia initiative has taken root in
Sicily, where such a change was unthinkable until
recently.
More specifically, our analysis shows that
Addiopizzo activists used five well-aligned, valuebased micro-processes to fight against the pizzo
system. These micro-processes can be differentiated
into two basic categories - we labelled them moralizing and integrating - that address stakeholders
alizing, the activists gained the trust and moral attention of potential change agents, and involved and
system, which had been previously largely in-
stitution of pizzo . Importantly, they did not use the
same values to gain the moral attention of all of
these stakeholders, but tailored their messages and
used those values that were of particular relevance
for the respective stakeholders.
Through values-based moralizing, the activists
motivated the various actors they targeted, one by
one, to reframe their understanding of a taken-for-
granted practice and to develop and activate alternative behavioral options. This latter aspect is of
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1096 Academy of Management Journal August
particular importance. Research shows that identification with new institutions is not necessarily
sufficient for their adoption (Lok, 2010): Simply
convincing key audiences that pizzo was a morally
problematic practice that deviated from the values
those audiences considered important was not
enough - Addiopizzo had to invent and provide
alternative behavioral templates. The activists succeeded in telling a unifying, coherent story about
moral change, and transmitting this story through
different values. Values-based moralizing seems to
be a promising way to unfreeze highly stable insti-
institutional practice had regularly ended with the
death of the dissidents. Safe spaces protecting dissenters from Mafia reprisal did not exist, they had to
be constructed. Haug (2013) recently argued that we
need a better understanding of how social change
arenas can be constructed interactively. Our case
study showed how the activists created safe spaces
for their stakeholders in order to "immunize" (Lepoutre & Valente, 2012) them against the pressure of
the prevailing institutions. In our setting of exceptional change resistance, this isolation seems to have
tutions such as the pizzo system. The strategic use of
been a precondition for a successful change process:
only within the safe space can values become per-
values work, as practiced by Addiopizzo, starts with
formative, not just in the sense of the transformation
the attempt to change individual stakeholders,
of individual cognition, but in terms of becoming
helping them to transform their beliefs and values
and to develop alternative behaviors.
Integrating via securing and uniting. Moralizing
describes the values-based interactions between the
a broad institutional transformation. The strategic use
Addiopizzo activists and individual stakeholders in
our study. However, such isolated individual transformations do not lead to institutional change - change
agents have to be connected in order to build new
networks in which they can enact alternative values, beliefs, and practices and mutually reinforce
those enactments. We defined this stage as integrating. Especially in conditions of extreme hos-
tility to change - as is the case in contexts
of values work requires an active reconfiguration of
social networks - the strong and potentially violent
resistance of change opponents means that such
networks will not emerge by themselves.
The strategic use of values work by Addiopizzo
began with convincing individual stakeholders, but
it continued with the creation of new social networks in which the transformed perceptions of
pizzo could be enacted and secured. Again, values
were decisive in this stage. As Fligstein (1997) emphasized, broad institutional change depends on the
alignment and aggregation of values and interests of
different stakeholders, but what exactly such a mo-
dominated by organized crime - change agents and
their followers need "spaces for experimentation"
where they can develop shared meaning and col-
bilization of stakeholders across diverse contexts
Spaces for the formation of dissent in the context of
how Addiopizzo wove new social ties between
lective awareness (Zietsma & Lawrence, 2010).
strong institutions, with potentially violent reactions to deviant ideas and practices, are scarce. In
such cases, change agents need access to safe
spaces, in the sense of protected physical environments. Research on change in repressive regimes
has, for instance, found that churches (Oberschall,
1996) and religious festivals (Rao & Dutta, 2012)
have been used as safe spaces where dissenters
might look like is not sufficiently clear (Battilana
et al., 2009; Weber et al., 2008). Our data showed
stakeholders in the same category (e.g., entrepreneurs) and between different categories of stakeholders that had previously been distant from one
another (e.g., entrepreneurs and the police) or
morally disengaged (consumers, students). The
resulting collaboration would have been unthinkable a few years earlier. The integrating stage of the
could organize themselves and receive credible sig-
change process built strongly on the same values
that drove individual change: Values were used to
nals from others who were also willing to engage in
frame the meetings, guide the discussions, motivate
potentially costly and highly risky actions. However,
in those studies, dissidents already shared values and
interests but had difficulties in getting organized. In
stakeholders, create new social ties, and neutralize
the physical, economic, and social risks and the
our study's case, Sicilians neither had the space nor
the shared anti-Mafia identity necessary to launch
pizzo were exposed.
a movement against pizzo successfully, given that the
system was resolute and enduring, many people
perceived it as legitimate (or at least inescapable), and
the overall context was characterized by distrust, si-
lence, and collusion. Earlier attempts to change the
normative insecurity to which actors refusing to pay
Post-Heroic Institutional Change
As we argued above, the discussion on institutional change has been criticized for presenting
actors either as heroes who rise above the power of
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2015 Vaccaro and Palazzo 1097
their context and change it, or as dupes who accept
existing or new institutions passively (Battilana
et al., 2009). Van Wijk, Stam, Elfring, Zietsma, and
Den Hond (2013) recently shed some light on the
importance of interactions between individual- and
social network-level processes for institutional
change. However, the question of how effective
change strategies operate at the level of the individual actor remains largely unexamined (Gehman
et al., 2013). As Creed and colleagues (2010: 1338,
see also Lok, 2010) argued, we need to understand
better "the antecedent micro-processes" of institutional change, and how they affect the agency of
actors exposed to the pressure of institutions. This
critique is well aligned with Battilana and col-
leagues' (2009) post-heroic argument. Those actors
targeted by change initiatives need at least some of
the characteristics of the initial change agents
themselves: their enactment of new institutions
requires some engagement, some reflexivity, some
independence, and some courage.
Paradoxically, the post-heroic argument is of
particular relevance for the context of the present
study, in which most people would assume that
change requires heroism. In recent decades, numerous police officers, judges, and journalists have
sacrificed their lives in the fight against the Mafia
(Buscetta & Lodato, 2007). Very few people want to
be heroes like Libero Grassi, who was killed because
he refused to pay pizzo . The Addiopizzo activists,
as we have shown, were well aware of this important issue. They explicitly refused to be heroes
themselves, and did not want their stakeholders to
have to become heroes either. Their initiative was
interpretations of values, activists built bridges
(Maurer et al., 2011) between existing and new
institutions, thus dealing effectively with the para-
dox of institutional embeddedness and turning
other actors into active change agents. Various
stakeholders, who previously had been unconnected, were united and mobilized through
appeals to their own values. Values drove the engagement of the various stakeholders who did not
simply accept new institutions, but actively engaged in a process that changed their own thinking
and their own behaviors about pizzo . The change
resulted from many small changes by many differ-
ent actors, demonstrating how values helped relax
the pressure of prevailing institutions. This active
involvement of stakeholders provided an alternative to the criticized separation between heroic
change agents and passive dupes who simply adapt
to institutional pressure.
The Addiopizzo case demonstrates why the mobilization of different types of actors is so important,
as it neutralizes the significant physical, economic,
and social risks to which change agents are exposed.
The stakeholders were well aware of Addiopizzo's
effort to reduce their risk, and understood that, as
entrepreneurs, consumers, and students, they did not
need to be particularly courageous to participate in
the initiative. Our study revealed three types of
actors: the Addiopizzo activists who initiated the
institutional change; the entrepreneurs whose takenfor-granted practice of paying pizzo was targeted by
those change agents; and a range of supportive actors
(in this case, consumers, students, teachers, and the
profoundly non-heroic - but, at the same time, it
police) who were necessary to create a context in
which the entrepreneurs were able and willing to
required more than just the passive support of other
change. The latter category of actors was activated in
Sicilian actors.
Our analysis shows how Addiopizzo activists
support of the entrepreneurs, and, while they were
exposed to the same micro-processes of values work,
used values to undertake a change process that relied on the sum of the non-heroic anti-Mafia activities of a multitude of different actors. In this
their role was largely instrumental: they had to
change in order to make the entrepreneurs change.
All the activists' interventions revolved around the
context, Addiopizzo used values to first convince
payment of pizzo by business owners.
In this case, institutional change became "ordinary," in the sense that it was driven by an unexpected coalition of powerless actors - unemployed
students, small shop owners, consumers, and young
school students. Our study demonstrates the power
of powerless actors when united - together, they
succeeded in removing seemingly insurmountable
obstacles. Our case demonstrates the "banality" of
post-heroic institutional change, with almost the
reverse effect of what Hannah Arendt (1963) described as the "banality of evil."
their stakeholders to take ownership of the problem
and to stop morally disengaging from it, and then to
embed them in a secure social context in which the
resistance against paying pizzo become either normal (for consumers and students) or considerably
less risky (for entrepreneurs). The Addiopizzo initiative, which targeted a fundamental change of
a highly change-resistant institution, was not based
on extreme actions, but on the more elaborate and
patient transformation of taken-for-granted meanings of values (see Table 5). By offering alternative
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1098 Academy of Management Journal August
PERSPECTIVES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
This paper's findings open several new avenues
for further research: here, we discuss briefly three
that seem the most promising. First, our study
demonstrates the performative power of values in
institutional change processes. Our analysis might
help understanding bottom-up change processes in
contexts that are particularly hostile to change. A
better understanding of change processes in social
contexts dominated by organized crime is of interest
for institutional scholars and criminologists, but
also in relation to the emerging debate on terrorist
networks (Schoeneborn & Scherer, 2012; Stohl &
Stohl, 2011) and the discussion on path dependency
that deals with extremely rigid social structures
(Sydow, Schreyögg, & Koch, 2009).
Second, as Rokeach (1973) emphasized, the concept of values can be applied to all levels of social
analysis. The combination of amoral practices and
a lack of safe spaces can also be found at the mesóle vel of deviant organizations or industries, and so
our analysis might also help to improve the understanding of how the waves of corporate fraud
scandals that return periodically might be fought
more effectively. While scholars have developed
a better understanding of how social contexts can
promote immoral and illegal practices (Arnand,
Ashforth, & Joshi, 2004; Palazzo, Krings, & Hoffrage,
2012), more research is needed to understand how
individuals, organizations, and institutions can be
better protected against such compliance risks.
Third, further research could elaborate on the role
of values in struggles over institutional dominance.
It would be interesting to explore how the ability of
values to promote or block institutional change
varies across different institutional contexts (e.g.,
emerging, fragmented, or mature fields). Maurer
et al. (2011) recently argued that social movements
use values when attacking corporations, and propose that corporations could engage in a similar
cultural process to defend themselves against such
value-driven attacks. Future research could examine the clashes between the strategic use of values
work by those who challenge institutions and those
who defend them.
We have described Addiopizzo's activities as
a successful example of institutional change. It is
true that a vast majority of Sicilian businesses still
pay pizzo , but the success of Addiopizzo does not
lie in the destruction of the practice - its success lies
in the ability to establish and anchor an alternative
practice in a social context that has been maintained
by violence and moral distortion for more than 150
years. The Mafia is still there, but Addiopizzo has
shown it to be a social phenomenon that can be
challenged - and even defeated.
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Antonino Vaccaro (avaccaro@iese.edu) is an associate
professor of the Department of Business Ethics and of
EESE's Negotiation Unit at IESE Business School. He received a PhD in Industrial Engineering and Management
(1ST, Lisbon) and two Post Doctoral Research Fellowships
respectively in Ethics and Technology Policy (Carnegie
Mellon University) and in Information Ethics (University
of Oxford). His research focuses on corporate transparency, hybrid organizations and organized crime.
Guido Palazzo (guido.palazzo@unil.ch) is a professor of
the Department of Strategy, Globalization and Society at
the Faculty of Business and Economics of the University
of Lausanne. He earned his PhD in philosophy from the
University of Marburg in Germany. His research focuses
on Corporate Social Responsibility, Democratic Theories,
Corporate Citizenship, Corruption and Organized Crime
and Supply Chain Management.
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