When the saint falls: audience reactions to the shadow of a leader in the Abbé Pierre scandal
2 Jun 2026
12:30 -14:00
Times are shown in local time
Open to: All
Room W4.05 (Cambridge Judge Business School)
Trumpington St
Cambridge
CB2 1AG
United Kingdom
Join our Organisational Theory and Information Systems seminar
Speaker: Dr Mélia Arras-Djabi, IAE Paris-Sorbonne
About the seminar topic
While research on stigma, deviance, and scandal documents diverse audience reactions, the psychological mechanisms underlying these reactions and their temporal dynamics remain underexplored. Drawing on Jung’s notion of the shadow, this article develops a psychodynamic account of audience responses to leader deviance. An inductive, processual analysis of secondary data examines the Abbé Pierre affair, focusing on four audiences: victims, the Catholic Church, the official organisation, and local communities. The findings reveal a continuum of reactions ranging from denial, repression, and external projection to integration, shaped by perceived risks, contextual triggers, and perceived complicity. We advance the concept of organisational shadow regulation, highlighting how collective responses to deviance reproduce defenses while opening possibilities for recognition, accountability and organisational transformation.
Speaker bio
Mélia Arras-Djabi is an Associate Professor (HDR) in Management at IAE Paris-Sorbonne (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne). Her research focuses on roles at work, including socialisation, role tensions, mechanisms of role assignment and role-playing. She conducts qualitative and processual research on sensitive fields and is actively engaged in research-intervention approaches.
Register
No registration required. If you have any questions about this seminar, please email Luke Slater.