Incumbents Under Pressure: Frame Inversion as Legitimacy Balancing Act During Issue Salience

TY - CHAP

T1 - Incumbents Under Pressure: Frame Inversion as Legitimacy Balancing Act During Issue Salience

AU - Schupfer, Hannah

AU - Soppe, Birthe

PY - 2024

Y1 - 2024

N2 - The salience of global issues initiates a shift in legitimacy that puts organizational fields and their legacy incumbents under pressure to engage in substantial change efforts. Yet, a multiplicity of expectations prevails that might contrast each other and threaten different dimensions of legitimacy. Through an inductive, longitudinal analysis of field and organizational-level data in the Norwegian oil and gas (O&G) industry (2007 to 2022), we develop a model of frame inversion that illuminates how contested field incumbents can balance contradicting legitimacy dimensions through discursive and substantial business changes. Specifically, we show how O&G incumbents acknowledge the issue of climate change by integrating it into an issue-induced ‘low-carbon’ frame alongside the established ‘profitable growth’ frame. Our findings suggest that organizations navigate issue salience by serving both contested and sustainable business areas, legitimated by frame inversion. Frame inversion employs the issue-induced frame to re-legitimate contested lines of business while inversely rewiring the pre-existing frame to sustainable ones. Our findings contribute to a dynamic perspective of framing by highlighting dynamics around symbolic and substantial change efforts and the management of opposing legitimacy dimensions during times of change.

AB - The salience of global issues initiates a shift in legitimacy that puts organizational fields and their legacy incumbents under pressure to engage in substantial change efforts. Yet, a multiplicity of expectations prevails that might contrast each other and threaten different dimensions of legitimacy. Through an inductive, longitudinal analysis of field and organizational-level data in the Norwegian oil and gas (O&G) industry (2007 to 2022), we develop a model of frame inversion that illuminates how contested field incumbents can balance contradicting legitimacy dimensions through discursive and substantial business changes. Specifically, we show how O&G incumbents acknowledge the issue of climate change by integrating it into an issue-induced ‘low-carbon’ frame alongside the established ‘profitable growth’ frame. Our findings suggest that organizations navigate issue salience by serving both contested and sustainable business areas, legitimated by frame inversion. Frame inversion employs the issue-induced frame to re-legitimate contested lines of business while inversely rewiring the pre-existing frame to sustainable ones. Our findings contribute to a dynamic perspective of framing by highlighting dynamics around symbolic and substantial change efforts and the management of opposing legitimacy dimensions during times of change.

M3 - Conference paper

BT - Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings

PB - Academy of Management

ER -