the evolution of issue interpretation within ......building on hirsch (1986), hoffman (2001a: 146)...

r Academy of Management Journal2017, Vol. 60, No. 3, 986–1015.https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2013.0156

THE EVOLUTION OF ISSUE INTERPRETATION WITHINORGANIZATIONAL FIELDS: ACTOR POSITIONS, FRAMING

TRAJECTORIES, AND FIELD SETTLEMENT

JEAN-BAPTISTE LITRICOQueen’s University

ROBERT J. DAVIDMcGill University

In this study, we seek to understand how actors’ interpretations of contentious issuesevolve over time within organizational fields and how these interpretations may lead tofield settlement. Empirically, we examine how groups of actors in the field of civilaviation interpreted the environmental issues of noise and emissions during the period1996–2010. Actors employed various cultural frames to interpret these issues as theyrose and fell in prominence within the field. We develop a framework to track actors’framing trajectories over time; in particular, the extent to which these frames revealactors’ stance toward buffering versus integrating issues into their core operations. Wereveal four prototypical framing trajectories and find that actors’ framing trajectorieswere influenced by the extent to which these actors were directly linked to issues insocietal discourse and had direct contact with concerned audiences. Based on ouranalysis, we build theory of how actor framing of issues evolves over time and leads tofield settlement of contentious issues.

U.K. low-cost carrier Flybe blasted environmentalactivists who staged protests yesterday atManchesterairport, which the airline labeled as “selfish” behav-ior. “Contrast the actions of seven with the 30,000who will travel with Flybe in and out of Manchesterairport this week and it’s plain where public supportrests,” COO Mike Rutter said.

(Aviation Daily, October 9, 2007)

[EasyJet] CEOAndy Harrison called for a mandate foraircraft that bring about a 40% cut in carbon dioxide[CO2] output. . . . “Ifwe get cleaner aircraft and groundthe old smokers, we can reduce the industry’s overallemissions and tackle climate change head on.”

(Aviation Daily, December 1, 2009)

Contemporary accounts of organizational fieldshighlight how contentious issues—such as thosepertaining to the environment, corporate gover-nance, or social equity—can galvanize attention andlead to pressure on organizations to change aspectsof their behavior. While early statements of neo-institutional theory emphasized the development ofcommon understandings within fields (DiMaggio &Powell, 1983; Tolbert & Zucker, 1983), current orga-nizational scholarship highlights processes of realityconstruction andmeaning contests (Ansari,Wijen, &Gray, 2013; Kaplan, 2008; Purdy & Gray, 2009). Re-centwork has uncovered considerable heterogeneityin how issues are interpreted within fields, as wellas the potential intractability of contentious issues(e.g., Bundy, Shropshire, & Buchholtz, 2013; Hoffman,2001a; Lewicki, Gray, & Elliott, 2003; Lounsbury,2001). As the quotes above illustrate, complex issuesmay be cast in profoundly divergent ways, creating

We thank associate editor Tima Bansal and three anon-ymous reviewers for their insightful and constructiveguidance throughout the revisions of this paper. We alsothank Dror Etzion, Ann Langley, Mary Dean Lee, SakuMantere, Ilya Okhmatovskiy, Ayse Saka-Helmhout,Suzanne Staggenborg, Frank Wijen, and seminar partici-pants at Cornell University, Drexel University, ESSECBusiness School, INSEAD, ITAM,KeioUniversity, and theAcademy of Management and the European Group forOrganizational Studies conferences for helpful commentson prior versions of this article. We are grateful for thegenerous support provided by the Fonds Quebecois deRecherche sur la Societe et la Culture, the Social Sciencesand Humanities Research Council of Canada – McGillSubcommittee, the Cleghorn Faculty Scholar Award, andthe Smith School of Business at Queen’s University. Fi-nally, we are indebted to the informants who shared theirinsights with us.

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https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2013.0156

debates and contention within organizational fields.In fact, some scholars define fields as “centers of de-bates inwhich competing interests negotiate over issueinterpretation” (Hoffman, 1999: 351).

Issues can be “defined or ‘framed’ in any numberof ways . . . depending on the perspective of thosedoing the framing” (Mahon & Waddock, 1992: 19).Differences in issue interpretation have variouslybeen explained by organizational-level factors suchas culture, identity, and intra-organization dynam-ics (Dutton, Ashford, O’Neill, & Lawrence, 2001;Howard-Grenville, 2006; Tilcsik, 2010), by the struc-ture of organizational fields (Levy & Rothenberg,2002), and by cognitive factors at the individuallevel (Bansal & Penner, 2002; Bundy et al., 2013;George, Chattopadhyay, Sitkin, & Barden, 2006).Relatedly, scholars have explored “menus” of cul-tural frames or “socially and culturally availableinterpretations” employed by actors in the framingof issues (Meyer & Hollerer, 2010: 1259). Despitethe insights offered by this prior research, muchremains to be learned about variation in issue in-terpretation across actors and over time, particu-larly in the “presence, scale, and meaning” of thecultural frames employed in interpreting complexissues (Gray, Purdy, & Ansari, 2015; Hoffman, 2001a:151). Although issue framing is an evolving process,we know little about howandwhy actors’ framing ofissues may change over time. Understanding het-erogeneity in and evolution of actors’ interpretationof contentious issues is important because suchheterogeneity may preclude reaching agreement ontangible action to deal with socially relevant yetcomplex issues. Indeed, it is the “backdrop of widelydivergent interests and views” surrounding emis-sions that contributes to making climate changeone of the “most intractable issues of our times”(Ansari, Gray, & Wijen, 2011: 70). Debates overcontentious issues may (or may not) subside andmay (or may not) be replaced by new issues andnew debates. We study this dynamic, and askthe following question: How does issue interpre-tation evolve over time, and how do organiza-tional fields reach settlement around contentiousissues?

The context for our study is environmental issuesin the field of civil aviation. Environmental man-agement is the subject of intense conceptual elabo-ration by various actors across a number of fields.Within civil aviation, environmental managementconstitutes a “meta issue” comprising a number ofmore specific sub-issues. We chose civil aviation asthe context of our study because of the vigorous

debate surrounding environmental issues withinthis field. Civil aviation has evolved from a praisedicon of globalization to, for some, a despised symbolof environmental degradation in a surprisingly shorttime (Randles & Mander, 2009). Aviation has re-ceived growing scrutiny and criticism by environ-mentalists and other observers (Walker & Cook,2009), generating much debate within the field andmaking it a promising context for our study. Usingfieldwork and content analysis of industry dis-course, we tracked evolution in the interpretation oftwo highly contentious environmental issues withincivil aviation from 1996 to 2010—the issues of noiseand emissions. Debate over these issues evolveddrastically over this period, and we observed a simi-lar temporal pattern of issue interpretation acrossthe two issues as they moved from emergence tosettlement.

Drawing on our findings, we make three contri-butions to the current literature on issue inter-pretation and settlement within fields. First, wedevelop a conceptual framework and methodologyto track longitudinally the framing trajectories thatdescribe the evolution of actor interpretations of is-sues within fields. We propose the categories ofbuffering versus integrating frames to describe the“stance” that actors take toward issues, capturing theextent to which actors deny (thereby, buffering) oraccept (integrating) these issues as part of the coreoperations of the field. Using this framework, wedescribe four prototypical framing trajectories: (1)integrating dominant, (2) buffering dominant, (3)mixed, and (4) buffering to integrating. Our frame-work and typologyadd to current conceptualizationsof framing by identifying patterns of change in frameusage over time.

Second, we offer a novel way to conceptualizeactors’ position within fields, and posit that thesepositions influence actors’ framing trajectories.Specifically, we differentiate between “front-stage,”“middle-stage,” and “backstage” positions, based onthe extent to which actors are directly linked to is-sues and the extent towhich they have direct contactwith concerned audiences. Our resulting conceptu-alizationof actorpositiondiffers frompriorwork thatlocates position in resource endowments (Leblebici,Salancik, Copay, & King, 1991), social identities(Creed, Scully, & Austin, 2002; Meyer & Hollerer,2010), status hierarchies (Phillips & Zuckerman,2001), or in socially constructed “categories ofidentity” negotiated through discourse (Maguire &Hardy, 2009). Explaining how actors’ positions arereconfigured around salient issues, and how these

2017 987Litrico and David

positions influence framing trajectories, allows us tobetter understand the evolution of framing activitywithin organizational fields.

Third, we identify a path to field settlement sur-rounding contentious issues. Unlike prior researchthat has examined the antecedents of settlement atthe organizational level (Helms, Oliver, & Webb,2012), we focus on processes leading to settlement atthe level of the field. “Field settlement” occurswhenfield actors agree on a common framework to dealwith the issue, thereby allowing the field to returnto a “generalized sense of order and certainty”(Fligstein & McAdam, 2011: 10). We contend thatfield settlement is more likely to happen when theactors most exposed to an issue (front-stage actors)shift from buffering to integrating frames. Put an-other way, without a shift by front-stage actors tointegrating frames, we would not expect field set-tlement to occur but rather contestation to continue.In this way, we intimately link field-level settlementto actor-level interpretations and thereby avoid re-ifying or disembodying issues from actors.

Immediately below, we provide additional theo-retical background andmotivation for our study.Wethen describe in detail our empirical context andmethods. Next, we present our findings, followed byour theoretical insights. We conclude with a discus-sion of the implications of our work, its limitations,and some avenues for further research.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

In a general sense, “issues” can be defined as“developments, events, or trends” that are deemedconsequential for organizations (Bansal & Penner,2002; Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Dutton & Jackson,1987). Although early research tended to reify issuesand dissociate them from the actors that deal withthem (e.g., Downs, 1972; Wartick & Mahon, 1994),more recent formulations conceive of issues as “so-cially constructed disruptions of an institutional or-der that structures purposeful exchanges betweenactors” (Lamertz, Martens, & Heugens, 2003: 82). Is-sues entail “episodes of contention/crisis” involvinga “shared sense of uncertainty” among field actors(Fligstein & McAdam, 2011: 9–10). Considerable re-search has focused on how corporate actors respondto such “disruptions,” which may entail regulatorypressure (Hoffman, 1999, 2001a; Okhmatovskiy &David, 2012), legitimacy threats (Elsbach, 1994),and/or protests by activists or social movements(King & Soule, 2007; Waldron, Navis, & Fisher,2013). Following Oliver’s (1991) landmark work,

organizations are no longer depicted as passive“responders” facing a dichotomous choice tocomply or not with top-down demands from theenvironment. Rather, organizations are seen asenacting their environment as much as they areenacted upon by other actors in that same envi-ronment (Greenwood, Raynard, Kodeih,Micelotta,& Lounsbury, 2011). As such, issues entail an“ongoing sense-giving battle” (Lamertz et al., 2003:82) in which actors “filter and alter environmentaldemands” and “transmit their interests back to-wards the field” (Wooten & Hoffman, 2008: 136).

Because issues do not have an objective meaningattached to them (Bansal & Penner, 2002; Duttonet al., 2001; Gray, 2003), they are given meaningthrough “framing,” a process of reality constructionconsisting of the labeling of a specific present expe-rience using frames and categories derived from pastexperience (Cornelissen & Werner, 2014; Weick,1995). “Frames” are cognitive schemes that guide theattribution of meaning to specific social situationsand guide future action (Benford & Snow, 2000;Brummans, Putnam, Gray, Hanke, Lewicki, &Wiethoff, 2008; Kaplan, 2008; Rao, Morrill, &Zald, 2000). Early research emphasized the in-terpretative function of frames, and their role insupporting the classification of new experiences inestablished meaning categories and in guiding in-dividual decision making (Tversky & Kahneman,1981). Scholars have focused on the organization’sinternal environment (Dutton& Jackson, 1987) or onindividual cognition (George et al., 2006; Tversky &Kahneman, 1981) to explain variation in issue in-terpretation, and ultimately to explain variability inorganizations’ responses to issues. Accordingly,much of the research on issue interpretation hasexamined the extent to which organizations (ortheir members) interpret issues as important,pressing, or as opportunities or threats (Dutton &Jackson, 1987; George et al., 2006; Kennedy & Fiss,2009).

Building on Hirsch (1986), Hoffman (2001a: 146)advanced a related conception of framing as the in-vocation of cultural symbols, and proposed thatissues—inhis study, environmental protection—canbe seen as “a composite of many cultural frames.”Such frames are drawn from the cultural environ-ment and are invoked by actors in specific contexts,allowing them to assign meaning and create sharedunderstanding of ongoing experiences and events(Goffman, 1974; Hirsch, 1986; Hoffman, 2001a). Inthis perspective, issue framing involves not simplyassessing the importance and urgency of an issue,

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but, rather, constructing the very nature of the issueitself (Gray, 2003; Hoffman, 2001a).

Hoffman (2001a) listed eight “cultural frames”through which pressures for environmental pro-tection are interpreted by organizational actors:regulatory compliance, social responsibility, oper-ational efficiency, risk management, capital acqui-sition, market demand, strategic direction, andhuman resource management. He postulated thattwo of these frames—regulatory compliance andsocial responsibility—have been most commonlyused byorganizations, and that these frames cast theissue of environmental protection as “external tobusiness interests—a threat or an unwanted re-straint on corporate affairs from sources separatefrom the keydrivers of themarket system” (Hoffman(2001a: 138). In these frames, “corporations will beexpected to do little to protect the environmentunless the government forces them or activistsshame them” (Hoffman (2001a: 138). The six othercultural frames (operational efficiency, risk man-agement, capital acquisition, market demand, stra-tegic direction, and human resource management),however, cast environmental protection as an op-portunity, and “something that is central to the coreobjectives of the firm” (Hoffman (2001a: 138). Im-portantly, each group of actors within a field “em-ploys its own language and cultural frame forunderstanding the issue being debated within thefield, [such that] the form of institutional pressurebecomes equally diverse in its form and frame”(Hoffman, 2001a: 136).

Other scholars have taken a more strategic view offraming, and emphasize its purposeful aspects. Forsocial movement scholars, in particular, framing is“an active, process-derived phenomenon that im-plies agency and contention at the level of realityconstruction” (Snow & Benford, 1992: 136). In thisview, frames are negotiated collectively, resultingin meaning contests and periods of heated debate(Benford, 1993; Kaplan, 2008; Meyer & Hollerer,2010; Zietsma & Lawrence, 2010). During such “ep-isodes of contention,” all field actors “can be ex-pected to propose and seek to mobilize consensus”through framing activity (Fligstein&McAdam, 2011:10). Much of the research adopting this perspectivefocuses on when, or whether, contestation subsides.“Field settlement” occurswhen a “generalized senseof order and certainty” returns within a field(Fligstein & McAdam, 2011: 10), and when actorsdevelop sufficiently aligned views to allow forcommon frames to arise even in the absence ofcomplete consensus on issue interpretation (Ansari

et al., 2013). This situation contrasts with cases ofintractable conflict, where the same frames “recurrepeatedly” and issues remain “frozen into a pat-tern” that changes little over long periods of time(Elliott, Gray, & Lewicki, 2003: 410).

While the research reviewed in this section rep-resents a remarkable break from the view of fieldsas isomorphic “iron cages” populated by over-socialized actors (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), note-worthy possibilities for enhancing our knowledgeremain. First, the emphasis noted above on the stra-tegic use of framing neglects the constraints on issueinterpretation that exist beyond the level of the in-dividual or the organization. By portraying framingas a skillful and strategic activity, scholars fail todescribe how the framers may be constrained orenabled by the social context in which they areembedded (Meyer & Hollerer, 2010; Morris &Staggenborg, 2004; Rhee & Fiss, 2014). Frames“are not tools that actors [can] deploy at will”(Kaplan, 2008: 737), and we need to better un-derstand how actors’ framing is constrained by theirsocial environment.

Second, current models of issue interpretation fallshort of capturing the potential complexity sur-rounding actors’ framingof issues. Inparticular,withrespect to issues that are complex and contentious,actor framing is likely to exhibit more ambiguity(Eisenberg, 1984; Giroux, 2006) than recognized bycurrent models. For example, Sonenshein (2010)showed that the narratives developed by organi-zational actors to make sense of organizationalchange combined dialectically opposite framesand categories such as significant–insignificant, orpositive–negative. Similarly, in situations of un-certainty created by complex issues, actors mayrely on ambivalent and strategically ambiguousframing that mixes opposed categories, rather thanon unequivocal categorizations (Dutton & Jackson,1987). And, despite Hoffman’s (2001: 136) exhor-tation to attend to the diversity of cultural framesemployed by “subpopulations” within fields, welack understanding of what drives differences inframing across field actors. As a result, field com-plexity is often depicted as arising from macrologics circulating at the societal level, away fromactors’ reach.

A third, related issue concerns the temporal evo-lution of actor interpretations, and how this evolu-tion might be related to issue settlement withina field. As Ansari et al. (2013: 1018) have noted,“Little attention has been given to what processmechanisms underlie shifts in actors’ frames to


enable consensus around field frames.” Field set-tlement surrounding an issue happens when fieldactors accept it as part and parcel of the field anda common framework for addressing the issueemerges (Fligstein & McAdam, 2011; Rao & Kenney,2008). Helms et al. (2012: 1135) have called forresearch:

[. . .] tracking how multiple perspectives on an issueover time reach a potential tipping point in which thepossible antagonism of multiple perspectives beginsto serve as the means and the knowledge base formaking a more informed consensual decision ona contested issue.

In other words, we need to better understand howconflicting actor interpretations around contestedissues may eventually give way to settlement in or-ganizational fields. If, as a number of scholars haveargued, issue interpretation is an important pre-cursor to tangible action (Bansal &Penner, 2002: 313;Barr, Stimpert, & Huff, 1992; George et al., 2006;Tilcsik, 2010), then understanding how the in-terpretations of actor subgroups within fields evolveover time can shed light on how fields might reachsettlement on contentious issues.

Progress in addressing the lacunae raised aboverequires research that (a) examines the intra-fieldcomplexity involved in issue interpretation, and(b) tracks issue interpretations over time. In whatfollows, therefore, we ask: How do actors’ in-terpretations of issues within fields evolve over time,and what implications do these shifts have for fieldsettlement of the issue?

EMPIRICAL CONTEXT

Civil aviation has experienced continued growthsince its inception, with passenger traffic increasingthreefold over the last 25 years alone, and this trendis predicted to continue (Bows,Anderson,&Mander,2009; Chapman, 2007).1 Yet, while aviation was stillseen as a valued icon of globalization in the early2000s, the industry has become, within a strikingly

short time, a highly visible symbol of environmentaldegradation and a target of environmental activists(Walker & Cook, 2009). In spite of continuous in-cremental efficiency gains made by the industry, theprojected growth in both passenger and freight trafficindicate that the overall contribution of aviation toclimate change emissions will probably increasesignificantly in the future (Bows et al., 2009;Chapman, 2007; Cohen, 2010), leading to claims thataviation is “the most unsustainable mode of trans-port currently available” (Chapman, 2007: 361).

Growing pressures on aviation to mitigate itsenvironmental impact are emanating from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), governments,and the general public, particularly in North Amer-ica andEurope (Engau, Sprengel, &Hoffmann, 2008).Protest campaigns against the expansionof the sectorhave been pursued by large generalist NGOs, such asGreenpeace or Friends of the Earth, and by smallerNGOs targeting the transport sector or aviation spe-cifically, such as AirportWatch, the Aviation Envi-ronment Federation, or the European Federation forTransport and Environment (Boons, van Buuren, &Teisman, 2010; Griggs & Howarth, 2004; May & Hill,2006). Governments’ actions to promote the “green-ing” of aviation have ranged from supporting carbonoffsetting programs offered by airlines (Cohen, 2010;Gossling et al., 2007) to the establishment of new fueland ticket taxes (Cohen, 2010), and to inclusion ofaviation in national or regional emissions tradingschemes (e.g., Buhr, 2012). Normative pressurearising from environmental issues in aviation ema-nates from the general public as well. Controversialstatements such as the Archbishop of London’sdeclaration that “flying on holiday [. . . is] a symptomof sin” (The Guardian, 2006) have fueled a debatethat has received much attention and echo in thegeneral media (Randles & Mander, 2009) and hasbeen characterized by growing contention. Persist-ing protest campaigns organized by local environ-mental groups, largely over noise and air quality,have constrained the expansion of airports, for ex-ample, in highly publicized cases such as HeathrowAirport’s new terminal controversy (Griggs &Howarth, 2004).

Environmental issues thus represent a complexchallenge for this industry (Bows et al., 2009;Walker& Cook, 2009). The field of aviation is characterizedby a diversity of actors, including national and localgovernments, international regulators, airlines, air-ports, air traffic control organizations, airframe andengine manufacturers, as well as other supplierfirms, resulting in what some observers have called

1 In this study, we focus on the scheduled passenger air-transport sector,whichwe shorthand “civil aviation.”Thisincludes national and regional airlines, public airports,aircraft manufacturers, suppliers, and air traffic-controlorganizations. Military and defense aviation, as well asprivate jet manufacturers or operators, are not part of thisstudy. Our regional focus is limited to the Western world(North America and Europe), which is the area covered byour data sources.


an “unwieldy amalgamof organisations” (Lawrence,2009: 80) among which coordination is slow anddifficult. It is now widely accepted that addressingenvironmental issues in aviation cannot be achievedby any “silver bullet,” but will instead require col-laborative actions by multiple actors on variousfronts (Bows et al., 2009; Chapman, 2007; Green,2009; Lawrence, 2009).

In sum, the complexity of environmental issues inaviation means that, at any given time, several formsof action are being discussed by an array of differentactors (Walker & Cook, 2009). As contended by Gray(2003: 15), environmental conflicts are rich empiri-cal contexts throughwhich to study framing contestsbecause “parties in a dispute or those confrontingenvironmental hazards develop considerably dif-ferent frames about what the dispute is about andwhat should be done about it and by whom.” Avia-tion now represents one such “interpretive battle-ground,” where the formation of “shared meaningsin environmental discourses . . . is complicated bythe interface of climate science, operational man-agement, economics, and engineering, among otherdisciplines” (Walker & Cook, 2009: 7). These char-acteristics make aviation an ideal terrain in which toobserve how actors’ framing of environmental issuesevolves over time.

METHODS

Weseek to buildwhat Edmondson andMcManus(2007: 1165) call “intermediate theory”— theorythat “draws on prior work to propose new con-structs and/or provisional theoretical relation-ships.” We adopted an inductive approachbuilding on two related stages of data collectionand analysis. The first stage of research consisted offieldwork, and was used to define a set of in-terpretive frames used by aviation actors aroundenvironmental issues. In a second stage, a contentanalysis of the trade journal Aviation Daily wasperformed to track the usage patterns of thoseframes over time, as explained below. A mixedmethod approach such as this is particularly wellsuited to study framing (Brummans et al., 2008):fieldwork methods present the advantage of mov-ing closer to the micro-level context of meaningconstruction to better understand how and whyactors frame issues (Kaplan, 2008; Cornelissen &Werner, 2014), while the systematic analysis ofarchival data allows us to track changes in framingover time and across actors without relying on in-formants’ memory.

First Stage: Fieldwork

Observation at industry events. In the initialphase of the study, the first author collected data asan observer at four practitioner-oriented conferenceson aviation and the environment.2 Events such asindustry conferences and summits represent a privi-leged opportunity to study meaning construction(Lampel & Meyer, 2008; Zilber, 2007). The eventschosen gathered aviation industry specialists, in-cluding representatives from airports, airlines, airtraffic control organizations, and suppliers, as wellas regulators and observers. The author collectedobservational data describing the setting, speeches,keynote presentations, and PowerPoint presenta-tions, and conducted informal interviews with par-ticipants. The observational data and relateddocumentation collected at industry events wereanalyzed inductively for recurrent themes thatstructured industry discourse surrounding the en-vironment.Aircraft carbonemissions andnoisewerecentral topics in those conferences, while other en-vironmental issues such as local air quality or waterpollution were more peripheral.

Interviews. The observational data were com-plemented by semi-structured interviews conductedbetween 2008 and 2009 with 35 informants repre-senting various actors in aviation, including airlinerepresentatives, airport representatives, air traffic-control organizations, regulatory actors, aircraftmanufacturers, suppliers, and NGOs. Interviews,which lasted on average an hour, were meant toidentify which environmental issues the industryfaced in the past and present, how the industry hasaddressed those issues, and to elicit from in-terviewees their perception of how the debate onaviation’s environmental impact as well as industryactions and discourse had evolved in recent years.Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatimfor subsequent analysis. The first author also wrotea reflective memo immediately following each in-terview. We requested feedback from study partici-pants on a report presenting preliminary findings, to

2 Those events were a one-day international workshopon sustainability and ground infrastructure organized byairport and air traffic-control organizations; a two-day, bi-annual summit on aviation and the environment organizedby the major trade associations in aviation; a two-dayconference on carbonmarkets in aviation organized by theInternational Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO); anda three-day workshop on aviation and alternative fuelsorganized by ICAO.


ensure the trustworthiness of our interpretations(Bansal, 2005; Patton, 2002).

Analysis of fieldwork data and identification offrames.Ourapproach to analyzing our fielddatawasmotivated by the theoretical model proposed byHoffman (2001a). Taking Hoffman’s list of culturalframes as a starting point, our goal was to createa revised list that was tailored to our context in thetime period considered (Sonpar & Golden-Biddle,2008). We first coded our data by searching for ideaelements that form the “building blocks” of frames,including catch phrases, problem definitions, state-ments of cause and effect, statements of solutions,and appeals to principle (Creed et al., 2002). Usingconstant comparative analysis (Brummans et al.,2008; Glaser & Strauss, 1967), we then searched forcommon themes as well as inconsistencies or con-tradictions within and across interviews and in ourfieldnotes. Frameswere then identified by searchingfor the “unifying structures that held idea elementstogether” in a coherent conceptual package (Creedet al., 2002: 482). Definitions for each frame weredeveloped and refined iteratively during data anal-ysis. Finally, we performed a validity check by sub-mitting our list of frames and their definition to anexperienced industry informant and asking forfeedback.

Ultimately, this process led to the identification ofsix frames: (1) regulatory compliance, (2) imagemanagement, (3) economic burden, (4) operationalefficiency, (5) systemic efficiency, and (6) techno-logical innovation.3 Whereas Hoffman (2001a)grouped his list of cultural frames into the cate-gories of “threat” versus “opportunity,” our own in-terpretive coding led us to differentiate frames on thedistinct, although related, dimension of “buffering”

versus “integrating.” Buffering frames cast environ-mental issues as external sources of disruption fromwhich the core business activity needs to be buffered(Thompson, 1967). These frames thus express a formof resistance. Three of our six frames fell in thatcategory. The economic burden frame depicted en-vironmental protection as costly andas an additionaldraw on the scarce resources of industry actors, asillustrated by an aviation consultant who noted:

“Because we have thin financial resources in that in-dustry, if you have to focus on security and you havetomaintain safety and some sense of customer serviceand amenities and so on and so forth, how muchmoney is left to worry about environment?”

The regulatory compliance frame emphasized newor reinforced regulation as the means to reduce avi-ation’s environmental impact, as when a govern-mental representative stated that:

“For us, one of the advantages of an emissions tradingscheme isprecisely that thismechanismallows [us] tomitigate the impact of aviation on the environment,[as] well [as] to mitigate emissions of CO2, withouttouching significantly the growth.”

The image management frame highlighted theneed to redress the misperceptions of the publicabout aviation’s real environmental impact. For ex-ample, an airports trade association representativenoted:

“. . . there is a great deal of misinformation and mis-conception out there about the actual contributionthat the aviation makes to the problem . . . We’respending a lot of time, individual time, and a lot ofresources, not trying to hide from the problem, nottrying to say we’re not guilty, that’s not what we’retrying to do . . .However,what you gotta understand isthat you’re getting the basic information wrong. So,let’s start from the right base. So, we’ve been doinga lot to try to correct that, whether it’s been talking toICAO, or it’s been in public forums, whatever, we’vebeen spending an awful lot of efforts doing that.”

Integrating frames, on the other hand, cast envi-ronmental issues as an integral component of busi-ness operations, and thus expressedmoreopenness tosubstantive change. An integrating frame indicatesacceptance of the issue as “part and parcel” of thefield, something to be integrated in normal operationsand not resisted as a “foreign intrusion.” The opera-tional efficiency frame casted environmental pro-tection as synergistic with the pursuit of efficientbusiness operations. For example, several airline

3 We found that someof the framesproposedbyHoffman(2001a) were either not used by aviation industry actors, orwere used in a somewhat different way. For example,capital acquisition and human resources managementwere almost nevermentionedby respondents.On theotherhand, Hoffman’s social responsibility frame was men-tioned, but tied closely to theperceivednecessity to correctthe “biased perceptions” held by the public about avia-tion’s “real” environmental impact. Social responsibilitywas thus intimately related to image management in ourcontext. It is useful to note that Hoffman (2001a: 138) alsopointed to this possibilitywhenhewrote that, “when facedwith such a cultural frame [of social responsibility], cor-porations delegate responsibilities to a public affairsfunction with a focus on what corporations should do tooffset these transgressions and remain legitimatemembersof society.”


representatives mentioned fuel-saving measures ascontributing to environmental protection (e.g., “If wecan reduce the fuel consumption of an aircraft, wereduce its carbon production, its [nitrogen oxides]production, we reduce contrails, we reduce a bit ofeverything”). One airport representative stated:

“It makes great economic sense to reduce the fuelburn, to find more efficient ways to fly. . . .we’re veryinterested in reducing the emissions, we’re very in-terested in reducing the noise. Why? Not only is itsustainable from a public point of view, but it’s eco-nomically smart.”

The systemic efficiency frame pointed to in-efficiencies in the system of aviation as a cause ofundue pollution. For example, an airport represen-tative stated:

“A lot of the issues that end up costing a great deal interms of greenhouse gases can be drawn back to in-efficient or ineffective air traffic control. Aircraftsspending too much time in the air, they’re having tofly circuitous routes.”

Finally, the technological innovation frame high-lighted the need for technological research and de-velopment on new engine technology and airframedesigns to address environmental issues. For exam-ple, an airport representative stated “our view is thatultimately the right answer is research, reducing thefootprint of carbon,” while an aircraft manufacturerrepresentative opined that “environmental progresswill come from technology, and it’s by emphasizingtechnological advances that we will provide an an-swer to those issues.” In sum, integrating framesdepicted environmental protection as an integralpart of core business activities in the industry.UnlikeHoffman’s opportunity frames, though, integratingframes did not necessarily imply that environmentalissues could become a source of competitive ad-vantage for firms.4

In addition to the list of frames, we also developediteratively a list of the types of field actors involved,which included the following categories: NGO/localcommunity group, airline, trade association, airport,ICAO/UN, state/politician, specialized governmental

agency, industry group/coalition, engine/aircraft man-ufacturers, and industry supplier/consultant. We alsodeveloped a list of specific environmental issues rel-evant for this industry, which included noise, carbonemissions, nitrogen oxides,water pollution, and localair quality.

Second Stage: Content Analysis ofa Trade Publication

Data source.LikeGiroux (2006) inher study of the“pragmatic ambiguity” surrounding the qualitymovement, we analyzed published texts to track theevolution of meaning surrounding environmentalissues in civil aviation. Published texts are valuableresources for researchers trying to retrospectivelystudy evolution in social systems (Mohr, 1998;Ventresca & Mohr, 2002). Texts are constitutive ele-ments of the social and cultural reality in which or-ganizational actors are embedded (Shenhav, 1995),and therefore they are well suited for use in studyingissue interpretation and framing. As Giroux (2006:1237; emphasis in original) explained:

Identifying and analyzing the particular trajectory ofcollectionsof texts is not apoor substitute for studying“the real thing”; it is the real thing—or at least a goodpart of it—the emergent, collective, inter-textual, andlinguistic processes through which ideas are articu-lated and evolve.

Trade journals, in particular, are an invaluablesource of data since they “act as a common source ofinformation, aiding in the normalization of industryperspectives” (Hoffman, 2001b: 227), and thus playan important role in meaning construction at thefield level.

We chose the trade publication Aviation Daily totrack evolution in the framing of environmental is-sues over time in the civil aviation industry.AviationDaily is a newsletter service that delivers throughpaid subscription daily tactical information, news,and market data on the global commercial airlineindustry. The publication is an important source ofbusiness intelligence and information for managersand executives in the commercial aviation industry.Chen andMacMillan (1992: 551) describedAviationDaily as the “industrymouthpiece intended to reportobjectively airlines’ announcements and actions.”Furthermore, our interviews with various experts inaviation all confirmed the prominent role of Avia-tion Daily as the most authoritative source of in-formation on the global aviation industry. Becauseof its daily publication schedule, Aviation Daily

4 For example, our systemic efficiency frame casts en-vironmental protection as deriving from greater systemiccoordination, which doesn’t translate into a competitiveadvantage for any given firm taken in isolation. Thus,while systemic efficiency is clearly a frame integratingenvironmental issues into the core business, it isn’t quitean opportunity in the sense Hoffman described.


ensures a detailed coverage of the industry that isnot offered by other trade publications. Finally,Aviation Daily articles are most often short and fo-cused on specific and narrow topics, rather than oncomprehensive reviews or analyses, and often re-port statements made by industry actors, thus rep-resenting a valuable source of data to study industryactors’ interpretations of environmental issues.

We chose 1996, one year before the signing of theKyoto Protocol, as the starting point of our codingbecause our interviews with industry participantsindicated that the nature and scope of the environ-mental debate in aviation changed drastically withthe debate over Kyoto. Our end point was 2010, oneyear after the adoption by the International AirTransport Association (IATA) of an ambitious set ofcommitments regarding carbon emissions, which(as we describe below) we take as an indicator offield-level settlement surrounding the emissionsissue.

We searched the online database Factiva (DowJones & Company, New York) for articles related tothe environment in Aviation Daily. The search waslimited to the headline and first paragraph becauseour goalwas to capture only articles thatweremainlyand explicitly about environmental issues. We in-cluded as keywords the dominant environmentalissues in aviation that had been identified throughfieldwork, in addition to words referring to the en-vironment more generally: environmental*, sustai-nab*, nois*, emission*, pollut*, green*, carbon*,*oxide, NOx, water, air quality. We then rejectedarticles that used any of these keywords in a wayunrelated to our study, orwhenever the environmentwas a peripheral topic as opposed to the central topicof the article. This search yielded 1,092 articlespublished between January 1, 1996, and December31, 2010.

Coding procedure. Choosing the appropriatelevel of analysis for coding is an important first stepin content analysis (Krippendorff, 2012). In thepresent study, we focused on the level of individualstatements attributed to a clearly identified actor.Wecoded both direct quotes attributed to specific actorsand statements reported by a journalist but explicitlyattributed to a specific actor. Aviation Daily articlesare typically very concise and to the point. Conse-quently,most articleswere found to contain only onestatement, made by one actor. Only 192 articles(18%) were coded with multiple statements. Eachstatement was linked to only one actor category;however, a given statement could be coded for sev-eral frames, as well as several environmental issues.

Table 1 provides illustrative coded statements fromAviation Daily for each frame.

Our codebook comprised a conceptual definitionof each frame as well as specific examples of state-ments. Because we were primarily interested in theinterpretations of industry actorswho are pressuredto respond to an issue, rather than those of actorswho are exerting the pressure, we coded onlystatements from airlines, airports, suppliers, andcollective industry actors.5 We included in thecodebook issues that had been identified throughfieldwork, and included a category for “other is-sues” to capture issues that had not been identifiedby informants. Thus, the data analysis reported hereincludes framing activity by fourmajor actor groups(airlines, airports, suppliers, collective actors)concerning six issues (noise, emissions, local airpollution, water pollution, NOx, other) and usingsix frames (Table 1).

The articles were coded by two research assis-tants trained in research methods. Following theprocedures used by Brummans et al. (2008), thecoders were first trained and pilot reliability testswere performed until sufficient agreement wasreached. To assess intercoder reliability, bothcoders independently coded a random sample of100 articles. First, we assessed unitizing reliabilityby computing Guetzkow’s U (Guetzkow, 1950) onthe number of units (i.e., statements) found by eachcoder (U 5 0.021, or 2.1%). Because Guetzkow’sU does not provide an assessment of the unit-by-unit agreement between coders (Folger, Hewes, &Poole, 1984), we also used Cohen’s k (Cohen, 1960),a conservative measure of interjudge reliability(Lombard, Snyder-Duch, & Bracken, 2002), to as-sess interrater agreement on the number of state-ments found in each of the 100 articles (k 5 0.71).Next, the raters coded each statement for frames,actors, and issues, and we used the benchmarksproposed by Landis and Koch (1977) to help in theinterpretation of coding reliability using Cohen’s k.We found that intercoder agreement for issues (k50.70), frames (0.80), and actors (0.76) all fell in the“substantial” (k 5 0.61–0.80) range. The codersthen reviewed and discussed cases of disagreement

5 This involved merging some actor categories with lownumbers of coded statements with conceptually similarcategories. For example, industry group/coalition wasmerged with trade associations into the new category“collective actors,” and engine/aircraft manufacturers wasmerged with industry supplier/consultant into the newcategory “suppliers.”


TABLE 1Environmental Management Frames and Examples of Coded Statements

Frame Definition Illustrative quotes from Aviation Daily articles

Integrating Frames:

Operational efficiency September 7, 2007: “There is a 1:1 correlation between reducingfuel burn and reducing emissions,” says a U.S. Department ofTransportation official.

Inefficient aircraft operationcauses both additional costand increased pollution. Operational improvementssuch as fuel-efficient procedures also contribute toenvironmental protection.

Systemic efficiency February 5, 2001: The new [U.S. Department of Transportation]secretary stated that “Airports, airlines, and [air traffic control]all ‘have to do better’ and talk to each other. The three entitiesare the ‘sun, moon, and stars’ and they are ‘out of alignment.’”

The lack of coordination among industry actors leads tosystemic inefficiencies of global aviation andincreased pollution. Infrastructural improvementssuch as flight routes optimization and air trafficmanagement improvements will reduce aviation’senvironmental impact.

Technological innovation March 29, 2011: [. . .] The group also expressed the hope that theWhitePaperwould “act as a catalyst for greater public fundingfor research into new technologies and alternative aviationfuels. [European Low Fares Airline Association] airlinesoperate the newest and most technologically advancedaircraft available, but there remains a need to furtheraccelerate the rate of progress in technological breakthroughs,to facilitate the sustainable growth of aviation with its vitallyneeded enabling socioeconomic effect on the economies ofEurope.”

Current airframe designs could be more efficient, andwe lack technological alternatives to current jet fuelengines. Progress on environmental issues will comefrom technological research and development onnew engine technology and new airframe designs.

Buffering Frames:

Economic burden November 16, 2010: As rapidly expanding Qatar Airwaysannounced its 100th destination, the airline’s outspokenCEO,Akbar Al Baker, criticized governments for implementingcharges like the [European Union’s Emissions TradingSystem]. He says airlines serve as “cash cows” to compensatefor governmental inefficiency. Speaking at the recent DohaAviation Summit in Qatar, Al Baker called for industrycollaboration to stop “unnecessary charges” and urged the[IATA] and the International Civil Aviation Organization towork collectively in the interests of airlines.

Environmental management consumes scarceresources and is costly. Industry actors lack thefinancial resources to invest in environmentalmanagement projects. Environmental taxes or levieson aviation are counterproductive.

Regulatory compliance September 30, 2005: TheEuropeanCommission, aftermonths ofconsideration, will move on a proposal to include airlines inthe EuropeanUnion’s [Emissions Trading System] as ameansto curb CO2 emissions. With demand in Europe increasing,aviation’s share of CO2 emissions—now at a modest 3%—is“growing faster than any other sector.” Bringing airlines intothe [Emissions Trading System] will allow them to limitemissions “at the least possible costs,” said EnvironmentCommissioner Stavros Dimas.

New or reinforced regulations are the vehicle to reduceaviation’s environmental impact.

Image management September 20, 2001: The European Regions Airline Association(ERA) this week launched a Positive Images campaign tocounteract what it calls “the negative attitude of Europeanpoliticians and regulators towards the regional aviationindustry.” The ERA said the campaign is aimed at promotingawareness of the crucial role regionals play in air travel inprotecting the environment and extending social andeconomic benefits to aviation throughout Europe. The ERA isplanning to make environmental issues a focus of its generalassembly scheduled for October in Athens.

Thepublic ismisinformedabout the real environmentaltrack record of the industry and overestimatesaviation’s environmental impact. Global marketingcampaigns for aviationwill solve themisconceptionsabout aviation’s environmental impact.


until a consensus on coding those cases wasreached (Lombard et al., 2002). Finally, the codersproceeded with coding the entire dataset, and dis-cussed problematic articles until a consensus wasreached.

Data analysis.The coded datawere first analyzedby drawing simple timelines for the discursiveprominence of each actor, environmental issue, andframe. We then iterated between various forms ofdata display for actors’ framing activity to guide ouremerging theory. The concept of “framing trajec-tory,” defined as the changing ratio of integratingversus buffering frames over time, emerged as animportant analytical tool allowing us to capturevariation across actors and over time. We describeour means of representing framing trajectoriesbelow.

FINDINGS

Evolution of Environmental Issues in Civil Aviation

A number of important developments surround-ing the environment occurred during the periodcovered by this study. Some of these developmentswere bounded to the aviation industry, while othersimpacted not just aviation but broader society.Figure 1 presents a summary of the major de-velopments that were mentioned by intervieweesas having particular importance during our studyperiod.

The relative salience of environmental issues incivil aviation also evolved significantly over time.Aswe described in our methods section, we codedAviation Daily articles for six environmental issues.Figure 1 also presents the salience of each of these

FIGURE 1Timeline of Major Events and Salient Environmental Issues in Civil Aviation

New noise rules adopted by EU, allowing older aircraftequipped with hushkits.

ICAO adopts new “Chapter 4’’ noise standard andabatement procedures.9/11 attacks.

Aircrafts not complying with Chapter 3 noisestandards are banned by the USA and the EU.

First IPCC Reports on Aviation and theGlobal Atmosphere.

Debates at ICAO on the bestapproach to limit aircraft noise.

Signature of the KyotoProtocol on Climate Change.

2005.emissions by half by 2050 compared togrowth by 2020 and to cutting carbonIATA commits to carbon-neutral

Aviation and Climate Change at ICAO.Creation of the Group on International

update of the Special Reports on Aviation.IPCC Fourth Assessment Reports includes an

recertified under Chapter 4.ICAO rules that older “Chapter 3’’ aircrafts will have to be

Kyoto Protocal enters into effects.The EU plans to include aviation into its Emissions Trading Scheme.

Committee on Environmental Protection.Negotiations between the EU and the USA on emissions regulation within ICAO’s

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environmental issues as measured by the number ofstatements coded in our dataset in a given year.

As Figure 1 shows, two issues—noise andemissions—were most prevalent in industry dis-course. While the dominant environmental issuefaced by aviation at the start of our study period wasaircraft noise, discussion surrounding this issue de-clined andwas eclipsed by the rising issue of aircraftemissions, which became predominant (then alsobegan to decline) toward the end of our study period.Noise and emissions therefore successively rose andfell in salience, with an interlude in between. Wefocus our analysis on these two prominent issues,which provide two different cases of issue lifecycleover the study period, and allow us to track similar-ities in framing patterns across issues (Langley &Abdallah, 2011). Prior to presenting our analysis ofthese framing patterns, we first describe how variousdevelopments bothwithin and outside civil aviationaffected the salience of the noise and emissionsissues.

Fromthe start of our studyperiod in1996until 2001,the dominant environmental issue in the industrywasaircraft noise. While the noise issue is nearly as old asthe civil aviation industry, by the 1990s, contestationaround aircraft noise had intensified and developedinto a transnational discourse made possible by thegrowing standardization of noise indicators, the riseof transnational environmental groups, and the in-creasing political attention given to notorious noisecontroversiesaroundtheglobe, includingatHeathrow,

Schiphol, Frankfurt, and Tokyo airports (Broer, 2007;Griggs & Howarth, 2004). The growing significance ofthe noise issue was further exacerbated by the stronggrowth experienced by air traffic during the 1990s,with only limited expansion possible in airport in-frastructure around many large cities.

Our fieldwork suggested that airports were on thefrontline of contestation surrounding noise, whileairlines were somewhat removed from direct con-tention. To verify this, we searched for articles pub-lished in four generalist newspapers (New YorkTimes,Washington Post, The Guardian, The Times)mentioning a given actor category (airlines or air-ports) and a given environmental issue (noise oremissions). As Figure 2 clearly shows, airports weremuch more closely associated with the noise issuethan airlines in general media discourse. Contro-versy around noise developed at locations aroundlarge airports, and airport authorities were the nat-ural frontline targets of protest; they were also thecentral actors in locally defined agreements or rul-ings to control aircraft noise.

This period of contestation over noise wasmarkedby pressure from environmental groups and gov-ernments to define more stringent noise standardswithin the arena of the ICAO (see ICAO, 1971).Manyolder aircrafts operating under the so-called “Chap-ter 2” standard of the ICAO’s Annex 16, dating from1969, were still operating, while the “Chapter 3”noise standards only applied to newer aircrafts. Atransition period to phase out older “Chapter 2”

FIGURE 2Generalist Media Coverage

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aircrafts was defined by the ICAO, allowing indi-vidual countriesmuch flexibility in thepacingof thisregulatory change, and, in 1998, the United Statesand the European Union (EU) decided concurrentlyto ban older aircrafts not complying with the“Chapter 3” standard as of 2000 (ICAO, 2014). Yet astrong controversy ensued when the EU went fur-ther and unilaterally decided to extend the ban toolder aircrafts retrofittedwith so-called “hushkits”(kits used to lower the noise levels of aircrafts),thereby triggering a legal battle with the UnitedStates. Thenoise controversy subsided in2001whena new “Chapter 4” noise standardwas introduced bythe ICAO, newnoise abatement procedureswere putin place, and the EU relented and accepted hush-kitted aircrafts on their airports (Knorr & Arndt,2002). Together, these three developments markedthe end of intense debate within the field surround-ing noise, and Chapter 4 noise standards remain inplace today as the dominant convention governingaircraft noise.6

While the debate about noise was unfoldingwithin the established forum of policy making andregulationwithin the aviation industry, discussionsregarding emissions were heating up outside ofaviation, including at the United Nations Frame-work Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)treaty negotiations at the Earth Summit in Rio deJaneiro in 1992, as well as at regional and localgovernmental levels. Emissions caused by the avi-ation sector were left out of the Kyoto Protocol(adopted in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997), and instead ICAOhad been mandated to search for a sector-specificapproach to aviation’s emissions (Buhr, 2012). Yet,the emissions issue was slow to gain traction withinthe industry. As one governmental representativerecalled:

“When they were negotiating Kyoto . . . they came upwith the idea of taking it, aviation and maritimebunker fuels, out of the main agreement . . . It wasconsidered to be too difficult because of the fact that,you know, airplanes fly A to B to C, when a BritishAirways plane is flying to Saudi Arabia with Ameri-can passengers,whose emissions are they? Samewithmaritime . . . basically, too difficult to account for.”

Although the Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange (IPCC) published a special report on Avia-tion and the Global Atmosphere in 1999, estimating

that aviation represented 2% of global anthropo-genic carbon emissions and 3.5% of total climatechange emissions, at the time this issue was notfinding an echo within the industry (Figure 1).

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 represented a water-shed event for the aviation industry, andmarked thebeginning of a period of profound economic crisisfrom which the industry only started to emerge in2006. Additionally, in the spring of 2003, the out-break of the SARS (severe acute respiratory syn-drome) pandemic further aggravated the industrycrisis. In the wake of these crises, security had be-come the leading industry priority, and environ-mental issues were relegated to the background.7 Anenvironmental activist who had participated in thediscussions within a related ICAO working groupsince the 1990s recalled, “I think everything wentrather quiet; we had 9/11 and we had the SARS ep-idemic, and, you know, a lot of environment teamswithin airlines were the first to be chopped.”

As the shocks of 9/11 and SARS subsided, the ideaof a unilateral climate change regulatory frameworkcovering aviation was progressing in Europe. Euro-pean policymakers were disappointed by the lack ofprogress of negotiationsonclimate change emissionswithin the ICAO, and political support for economicmeasures such as emissions trading was growing(Buhr, 2012). The launch of the EU Emissions Trad-ing Scheme in 2005 also cleared the path for thesubsequent inclusion of aviation’s emissions, yetdiscourse surrounding emissions remained lowwithin the field (Figure 1).

The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, publishedin 2007, marked the sudden rise of climate changeemissions as a central environmental issue for avia-tion, and led to an update of the Special Report onAviation and the Global Atmosphere originally pre-pared by the IPCC in 1999. The resonance found bythe report within the generalist media also led toincreased pressure on the industry. As a govern-mental representative recalled:

“Definitely, momentum with climate change camewith the [IPCC’s] FourthAssessment Report [in 2007].This was the issue that created a big momentum onclimate change. [. . .] since the Fourth AssessmentReport, that momentum, I have never seen anythinglike that before for climate change.”

6 Interestingly, comparing Figures 1 and 2 suggests that,while noise decreased markedly in salience in industrydiscourse, it remained at a high level in the general media.

7 Although beyond the scope of our study, this “crowd-ing out” of the environment by security suggests thatcompetition takes place between “meta-issues” just as itdoes between issues within a meta-issue.


As Figure 2 above suggests, the increasing pressuresurrounding the emissions issue was most acutely di-rected to airlines. Airlines were feeling specifically tar-getedbygrowingpublic awarenessof thecarbon impactof flying (Randles & Mander, 2009) and by the devel-opment of local carbon trading schemes in Europe,Australia, and New Zealand (Bows et al., 2009). Air-ports, on the other hand, were less directly targeted bythe growing pressure arising from the emissions issue.

By 2006, carbon emissions had eclipsed the long-standing noise issue in industry discourse (Figure 1),a situation lamented by airports representatives:

“Greenhouse gases have something of the ‘flavor ofthe month’ sort of approach, and it has allowed somepeople the luxury of saying, ‘We don’t have to worryabout those things [i.e., noise and local air quality]anymore, this is a higher priority.’”

As the pressure surrounding the emissions issuemounted, the IATA announced, in June 2009, a set ofimportant commitments, including a 1.5% averageannual improvement in fuel efficiency from 2009 to2020, carbon-neutral growth from 2020, and a 50%absolute reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. Atthe time of the announcement, The Guardian de-scribed these commitments as “a dramatic pledge”and “strategic shift” (The Guardian, 2009). In the

following year, the last of our study period, the levelof discourse within the industry surrounding emis-sions showed a significant decline.

In sum, our study period displays three distinctperiods. First, the years 1996–2001 witnessed therise, peak, and decline of the noise issue. Next, theperiod 2002–2006was a quiet one for environmentalissues, in the aftermath of 9/11 and SARS. Finally,2007–2010 sawa sharp rise indiscourse surroundingcarbon emissions, with a decline in salience at theend of this period.

Framing of Environmental Issues by Actor Groups

Following our account above of major develop-ments and broad shifts in industry attention, wenow report the findings of our content analysis ofthe frames used by industry actors in Aviation Dailyarticles. In order to better compare changes in fram-ing over time, we plotted actors’ use of buffering andintegrating frames. Figure 3 represents in two-dimensional space the ratio of integrating versusbuffering framing for a given actor group over time.Examining the ratio of integrating to buffering framesprovides an indication of the degree towhich a givenactor group would resist a given issue versus acceptthe issue as being part of business activity. The x-axis

FIGURE 3Framing Trajectories

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Notes: Panel a 5 noise period (1996–2004). Panel b 5 emissions period (2005–2010).


plots the number of buffering framesused by an actorgroup, while the y-axis plots the number of in-tegrating frames. A location on the map thus repre-sents the dominant framing of the actor group ata point in time, with the 45-degree angle line sepa-rating the buffering-dominant versus integrating-dominant zones. The line itself represents an equalmix of buffering and integrating frames. By plottingone dot for each year in sequence and linking themwith arrows, we can follow over time the framingtrajectory of a given actor group.

The top panels in Figure 3 show the framing tra-jectories during the period dominated by the noiseissue, while the bottom panels show the trajectoriesduring the emissions issue (with the quieter, interimperiod split between the two).

Contrasting four framing trajectories.We foundthat the ratio of buffering to integrating frames variedacross actor groups and over time. Some actors kepta stable tenor over the time period: collective actorsremained consistentlywithin the buffering-dominantarea of our chart (emphasizing economic burdenand regulatory compliance frames), while suppliersremainedwithin the integrating-dominant area of thechart (emphasizing technological innovation). Suchframing trajectories are not surprising, since collec-tive actors are expected to defend the status quo fortheir members, while suppliers (manufacturers, con-sultants) have an economic interest in promotingchange.

In contrast, the framing trajectories followed byairlines and airports differed according to the dom-inant issue at hand. When airports were at the fore-front of public pressure surrounding the noise issue,their initial response was characterized by bufferingframes, but, over time, their framing turned coun-terclockwise toward increasingly integrating frames(Figure 3, panel a). Airports were feeling particularlytargeted by the rising noise issue. In a surveyof the 50busiest commercial airports in the United States,“officials from 29 of the 50 airports identified noiseas theirNo. 1 environmental concern” (AviationDaily,September 11, 2000).As statedby an airport executive,“If there is one issue that airport officials regularly get‘bloodied’ for by local residents, it is noise” (AviationDaily, August 17, 2000). Airports often complainedabout “restrictive measures” imposed by local gov-ernments, “far-reaching limitations” that would “pe-nalize” their operations (AviationDaily, September25,1997) and “strangle growth,” leading to “economicsuicide” (Aviation Daily, September 17, 1997). De-spite the progressive retirement of older “Chapter 2”aircrafts between 1995 and 2000, “pressure [was]

building, especially in Europe, for even more strin-gent [noise] standards” around airports (AviationDaily, January 6, 1999). By 2000, airports began toacknowledge that existing enginenoise standardshad“clearly not been sufficient” to solve the “intractableproblem of noise” (Aviation Daily, August 17, 2000)and were speaking out for more stringent noisestandards and abatement procedures, and a “clamp-ing down” on noisier aircrafts (Aviation Daily, De-cember 12, 2000). In subsequent years, airportswere rather proudly announcing “proactive” steps(Aviation Daily, June 19, 2002) “in an attempt todiscourage night traffic” and “in reducing aircraftnoise” (Aviation Daily, June 7, 2007). In otherwords, their framing shifted from buffering, or re-sistance of the issue, to integration, or acceptanceand proactive engagement.

During the emissions debate, airlines followeda qualitatively similar counterclockwise turn to-ward more integrating framing. While airlines wereon the backstage during the noise debate, they werethrust to the front stage as public attention grewsurrounding emissions. Like airports for noise, theinitial response of airlines regarding emissionsemphasized buffering frames (Figure 3, panel b). Asa governmental representative stated in one of ourinterviews:

“Airlineshave seemed tobe indisbelief, theyhavenotbeen very effective inmyview in their lobbying effort.Because they seem to have expected that this problemwith the EU [including aviation in its EmissionsTrading Scheme] would just go away. [That] we orthat the government should make it go away, orsomeone should make it go away.”

As the issue heated up, airlines sought “support tochange the European Parliament’s proposed rules”(Aviation Daily, December 10, 2007) for inclusion ofair transport in Brussels’s EmissionTradingScheme.Airlines were becoming worried about “the growingpublic perception that airlines are enemies of theenvironment,” a subject that Star Alliance CEOcalled “the single most important question for avia-tion to deal with right now to secure sustainablegrowth in the future” (Aviation Daily, May 15, 2007).Airlines were feeling directly targeted, as expressedby British Airways’ CEO, who noted that “it is theairlines, rather than equipment manufacturers, thatare in the front linewhen it comes to public criticismof aviation’s environmental impact” (Aviation Daily,July 21, 2008). Rapidly, many airlines made ar-rangements to allow “their passengers the chance tomake donations” (Aviation Daily, September 18,


2007) to environmental groups to offset emissions—aresponse that involved no real change to airline op-erations. Some airlines rejected the emissions issueentirely, calling the behavior of environmentalists“selfish” (Aviation Daily, October 9, 2007). Withina short time, however, airlines began to announcetangible “promises to slash” their emissions and“tackle climate change head on” (Aviation Daily,December 1, 2009). Some airlines even became vo-cal advocates of progress on environmental pro-tection, as, for example, when “EasyJet reinforcedits call for aircraft makers to deliver less pollutingairliners” (Aviation Daily, December 1, 2009). Air-lines announced partnershipswith one another andwith suppliers that would both “reduce complexityand improve environmental performance”—an ap-proach that signaled perceived consistency betweencore operations and reduced emissions. In otherwords, like airports with the noise issue, airlinesshifted their framing of emissions from buffering tointegrating (Figure3, panel b).Additional quotes fromour data are provided in Table 2 to illustrate this“buffering to integrating shift” taken by airports dur-ing the noise issue, and airlines during the emissionsissue, and we theorize the mechanisms behind thisshift in the next section.

Our results reveal another similarity betweenairports and airlines. During the noise period, whileairports underwent a shift from buffering to in-tegrating, airlines tended to mix buffering and in-tegrating frames in most years (Figure 3, panel a).Similarly, during the emissions period, airportstended to mix buffering and integrating frameswhile airlines underwent the shift to integrating(Figure 3, panel b). These two actor groups thusmirror each other’s framing trajectory when the twoissues are compared.

Mechanisms underlying the buffering to integrat-ing shift. Our data suggest distinct mechanismsunderlying the shifting framing trajectory observedfor airports in the case of noise and airlines in the caseof emissions. The initial response of these actorsto pressure around environmental concerns wasdominated by buffering frames. Airlines felt unfairlytargeted by the public, as articulated by one airlinerepresentative who lamented that “people are not fairwith the industry . . . most people produce moreemissions driving their cars than when they travelby plane.” Several informants also pointed to highlevels of complexity and regulation as forces forconservatism and barriers to change. For example,the editor of an airline trade publication describedaviationasa “supertank industry”withslowresponse

times. An airport representative highlighted the“counterintuitive” fact that “the government pro-cedures and the government organizations that arerequired to approve any new project make it very,very difficult—in some cases, impossible—to makethe investments” inenvironmental impactmitigation.

Our data suggest three mechanisms explainingwhy airports and airlines eventually came to realizethat resisting pressures for change was not an effec-tive long-term strategy and thus shifted their framingfrom buffering to integrating. First, these actors werereceiving negative moral judgments from the public.During the debate surrounding emissions, aviationofficials were worried about “the dramatic and rapiddemonizing of airlines” (Aviation Daily, October 26,2007). Airlines executives realized that they were“quickly becoming pariahs in Europe for their per-ceived contribution to climate change . . . Airlineshave protested that this characterization is unfair,but ‘thatmisses the point,’ said DavidMcMillan, U.K.Transport Dept. director-general of civil aviation”(Aviation Daily, October 11, 2007). Airlines also re-alized that this pressure would not disappear, as il-lustrated by British Airways CEO Willie Walsh’sstatement that:

. . . as environmental issues gain more political andpublic currency, the U.S. aviation industry “cannotturn its face against carbon trading forever.”Plans likethe [Emissions Trading Scheme] are here to stay,Walsh said, adding that, “Emissions trading is nolonger some vague, theoretical idea for airlines. It isgoing to happen.”

(Aviation Daily, July 2, 2007)Second, an important motivation for the shift was

the looming threat of externally imposed regulation.This threat was particularly acute for emissionsregulation during the later period of our study.According to an environmental NGO representative:

“The risk that the United Nations framework men-tioned on climate change may . . . take away thatmandate and impose something on aviation, I thinkthat’s a little bit of a wakeup call . . . So [aviation is]certainly, certainly very reactive to external pressure.”

As the emissions issue continued to rise in sa-lience (Figure 1), some airline executives began toargue that “airlines should ‘lobby’ governmentsaround the world to create a global cap-and-tradesystem to mitigate the industry’s greenhouse gasemissions,” stating that, “if airlines don’t get outthere and lobby themselves for a system, it’s likely tobe imposed anyway. . . . We might as well be at the


table than not at the table” (Aviation Daily, May 15,2009). Pressure on airlines was mounting, leadingthem to change their stance:

At a certain point, we’re realists [. . .]. It appears thatCongress and the [Obama]Administration are lookingto adopt such a [market-based emissions reduction]measure, and, in that case,wewant toworkwith themto productively shape the measure.

(Aviation Daily, April 9, 2009)

Finally, the third mechanism promoting the shiftin framing was pressure from within the industry,

exerted by other organizational actors. For example,airports were among the actors pressuring airlines toaccept carbon emissions regulation in Europe (Buhr,2012: 1578), as described by an NGO representative:

“You look at the early lobbying efforts in Europe andwhenwewere still debatingwhether or not to includeaviation in the scheme, and you will find the airportcommunity and the NGOs sit side by side. And theairport, you know, they actually . . . it looked good.Yes. It’s not a selfless task. You know, they actuallysaw that their ability to handle more growth in thefuture depended on having something in place and

TABLE 2Illustrations of Shift from Buffering to Integrating Framing by Front-Stage Actorsa

Buffering Frames Integrating Frames

Airports and noiseThe Netherlands government’s noise restrictions at

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport will require “far-reachinglimitations on flights and runway usage” during 1998, theairport told the Dutch transport ministry. Submitting 1998operational guidelines, the airport said Dutch carriers willhave to reduce frequencies after April 1, when anindependent coordinator approved by the transportministry will review flight schedules for compatibilitywith the Schiphol noise limits. (November 12, 1997)

Officials from the [United Kingdom]’s Manchester Airportrecently announced major improvements in reducingaircraft noise during departures. Aircraft are required tostay on PreferredNoise Routes . . . during take-off to reducethe effects of noise on surrounding neighborhoods. Planesare allowed to deviate only when advised by air trafficcontrol. (April 22, 2003)

In an effort to cool off opposition from resident groups andGreen Party members of France’s ruling coalition, [FrenchTransport Minister] Gayssot imposed new noiserestrictions . . . “These restrictive measures will somewhatpenalize the operation of the airport,” said an ADP[Aeroports de Paris] spokesman. (September 25, 1997)

The Minneapolis Metropolitan Airports Commission . . . isproposing special departure procedures for a new runwayunder construction at the city’s airport. The procedureswould call for a 2.5-nautical-mile turn point upondeparture with aircraft routing over a river valley to divertnoise fromneighborhoods near the airport. . . .ChadLeqve,coordinator of [the Minneapolis Metropolitan AirportsCommission]’s airport noise and operation monitoringsystems, said [the Federal Aviation Administration] willeither find the new runway procedure creates nosignificant environmental effect and adopt it, or find needfor further review. “All efforts are in concert,” Leqve said,calling the runway procedure “a pretty proactive step.”(June 19, 2002)

Airlines and emissionsDiscussions under way on the global climate treaty could

“undo 20 years of deregulation with disastrous economicconsequences,” Smith said, noting that the air cargoindustrywasderegulated20years ago thismonth.Limitingfuel is “no different” than government oversight of routesand rates, he said. (November 14, 1997)

BritishAirways promises to slash its [CO2] emissions 50%by2050, using a baseline that predates the bulk of its fleetupgrade plans. The airline vows to reduce CO2 emissionsto 8 million metric tons per year, from 16 million metrictons it registered in 2005. [BritishAirways] already has putin place several fleet purchases that should help reducefuel consumption, including plans to introduce the Boeing787 and Airbus A380. (January 26, 2009)

U.K. low-cost carrier Flybe blasted environmental activistswho staged protests yesterday at Manchester airport,which the airline labeled as “selfish” behavior. “Contrastthe actions of seven with the 30,000 who will travel withFlybe in and out of Manchester airport this week and it’splain where public support rests,” COOMike Rutter said.(October 9, 2007)

In the run-up to this month’s global climate talks inCopenhagen, EasyJet reinforced its call for aircraft makersto deliver less polluting airliners. . . . It reinforced thatmessage last week when CEO Andy Harrison called fora mandate for aircraft that bring about a 40% cut in [CO2]output. . . . “If we get cleaner aircraft and ground the oldsmokers, we can reduce the industry’s overall emissionsand tackle climate change head on.” (December 1, 2009)

a Excerpts from Aviation Daily articles.


this was it. I don’t think the airlines took too kindly tobeing told what to do by airports, but that they didhave this rather stand-off debate.”

Airports were willing to put pressure on airlinesbecause, as one airport representative confessed:

“It’s convenient for airports—convenient isn’t theword—they’re not really airport emissions, they’rereally aircraft emissions so a lot of the burden ofemissions trading will fall on airlines, so it’s easy forus to support it.”

Similarly, during the debate around noise, whenairports were on the forefront of public scrutiny,airlines joined the ranks of actors requesting morestringent noise standards: “U.S. airlines, airframeand engine makers unanimously support a newnoise standard that would reduce noise eight deci-bels from current standards for aircraft in pro-duction” (Aviation Daily, January 16, 2001).

In summary, the time period covered by this studybegan with the rise of noise as the dominant envi-ronmental issue within the field. Airports were mostclearly associated with this issue in societal dis-course, and initially respondedwith (predominantly)buffering frames.By2001, airportshad shifted towardmore of an integrative stance, and the field reachedsettlement on newnoise standards and procedures. Asimilar dynamic was evident later in the decade sur-rounding emissions. This issue spiked in saliencewithin the field in 2007–2009, despite its having risento prominence in wider society some years earlier.Our analysis shows that societal discourse mostclearly associated this issue with airlines. Like air-ports in the case of noise, airlines responded at firstwith (predominantly) buffering frames. And, likeairports, theymigrated to (predominantly) integratingframes. The field reached settlement on this issue in2009–2010, as ambitious engagements were adoptedfor reducing emissions, thus signaling that the issuehad become accepted as “part and parcel” of thebusiness activity in the field.

THEORIZING FRAMING TRAJECTORIES ANDFIELD SETTLEMENT

We described above how prominent actor groupswithin civil aviation framed the environmental is-sues of noise and emissions as these issues rose andfell in prominence. In this section, we draw fromthose findings and offer a theory of framing trajec-tories and field-level settlement surrounding con-tentious issues. In other words, we theorize about

how actor-level interpretations (framing trajectories)affect a field-level outcome (settlement). We believethat settlement can occur only when actors who arecalled on to change their behavior acknowledge theissue as central to the field and consider how to in-tegrate the issue into their operations. As such, wetheorize how actors’ framing of issues changes (ordoes not change) over time, and how these changesmight lead to settlement. Like other inductive workin organizational theory, our theoretical insights arebased on a single field over a bounded time period;accordingly, we discuss the generality of our theoryin the discussion section.

We begin with the framing trajectories present inour data, shown in Figure 3. Our study revealed fourdistinct framing trajectories followed by field actorsin their discourse on environmental issues: bufferingdominant, integrating dominant, mixed buffering/integrating, and a “counterclockwise turn” frombuffering to integrating.8 We posit that the differentframing trajectories we identified result from thepositions that actors occupy in the field with respectto one another and relative to a concerned audience,as on a theater stage (Friedman, 1994; Goffman,1959). Our conceptualization of position beginswithour observation, in Figure 2, that certain groups ofactors are directly linked to certain issues in societaldiscourse. Actors linked to an issue in this way arehighly exposed to pressure from audiences con-cerned about the issue, and we term these “front-stage” actors because the spotlight is turned on them.But this is not the only position exposed to pressurerelated to the issue.We theorize that groups of actorsthat arenot directly linked to an issue, but are in closecontact with a concerned audience, will also feela degree of pressure.We term this the “middle stage”position. Even though they are not directly linked tothe issue currently dominating attention, these ac-tors, by virtue of their contact with concerned audi-ences, may be sensitized to the audiences’ concernsand may fear becoming “collateral damage” if theissue is not settled. We contrast the front-stage andmiddle-stage positions to the backstage one, occu-pied by actors not linked with the issue and withno direct contact with the concerned audience. Wewould not expect these actors to experience muchpressure related to the issue at hand. In sum,we positthat front-, middle-, and backstage actors face

8 Conceivably, other trajectories are possible, such asa “clockwise turn” from integrating to buffering; however,only the four trajectories we describe were observed in ourdata.


different levels of pressure surrounding an issue, andwill consequently have different framing trajectories.

Tounderstandhow framing trajectories are relatedto position, consider first backstage actors—thosewho are not directly linked to the issue and who arenot in direct contact with a concerned audience.9

These actors are depicted on the top row in Figure 4,which shows prototypical framing trajectories atvarious points in time over the issue cycle. In thisstudy, backstage actors included suppliers (such asconsultants and equipment manufacturers) and col-lective actors (such as trade associations).

We found that, for such actors, the tenor of issueframing remained constant even as issues rose andfell in salience. Suppliers maintained a stable, in-tegrating frame; this is not surprising, as the in-tegration of environmental issues into the coreaviation business would imply changes in processand equipment, which they supply or otherwise as-sist with. In other words, consistent with Kaplan’s(2008) notion that frames and interests are in-terrelated and define each other, these actors frameenvironmental management in a way that accordswith their commercial interests, unfettered by thepressure that comes with being directly linked toa contentious issue and/or being in direct contactwith a concerned audience.

Collective actors also maintained a consistentframing, although, this time, buffering dominant.Actors such as trade associations and industry groupsspeak and lobby on behalf of organizations or pro-fessions, and are not directly linked to environmentalissues in societal discourse (Figure 2); nor do theycome in direct contact with the concerned audiencein this case (i.e., the flying public). Their role is torepresent and defend the interests of their members(Barnett, 2013; Galvin, 2002), mostly toward regula-tors, and they have been described as “reactionaryforces rather than progressive, dedicated to pre-serving traditional entitlements and characteristics”(Abel, 1989: 131; quoted in Greenwood, Suddaby,& Hinings, 2002: 62). Without direct contact witha concerned audience, they can pursue theirmandate

freely. Thus, it is not surprising that this actor grouptakes a more resistant, or buffering, stance towardinstitutional pressure. At the very least, they can “buytime” for their members by pushing back on thepressure placed on theirmembers when issues rise inprominence. These findings lead us to propose:

Hypothesis 1. Backstage actors, or organizationsthat are not linked to an issue and that are not indirect contact with a concerned audience, main-tain either buffering-dominant or integrating-dominant framing over the issue cycle.

The trajectory depicted on the middle row inFigure 4 is characteristic of the middle-stage position:actors who are not directly targeted by the issue dom-inating the current cycle, but who are in direct contactwith a concerned audience. In our context, airlinesoccupied this position for the noise issue, and airportsoccupied it for the emissions issue. Both were in con-tact with the flying public, but airports were linked tothe noise issue and airlines to the emissions issue. Aswe described in our results section, we found thatmiddle-stageactorsusedamixed framing—a relativelyequal combination of buffering and integrating framesover time.Unlikebackstage actors, these actorswere incontact with the concerned audience, and as suchwould bemore circumspect in their framing.We arguethat these actors strive to maintain strategic ambiguity(Eisenberg, 1984; Giroux, 2006; van Dijk & Kintsch,1983) in their stance toward the current issue. Actorswho are in direct contact with a concerned audiencebut not directly linked to an issue need not “fear” theissue as much as the front-stage actors, and thus haveless need to react defensively (i.e., buffer). But, at thesame time, these actorsmay fear guilt by association inthe eyes of the concerned audience, even though theyare not called upon to respond directly to the issue(Briscoe, Gupta, & Anner, 2015). Because they are incontact with the concerned audience, to dismiss theissue entirely would be risky. We posit that thesemiddle-stage actors equivocate and “play both sides ofthe coin” by showing openness to the issue whilekeeping a distance from it, resulting in a mix of buff-ering and integrating frames. Thus:

Hypothesis 2a. Middle-stage actors, or organi-zations that are not linked to an issue but are indirect contact with a concerned audience, tendto use an equal mix of buffering and integratingframes over the issue cycle.

We posit further that this equivocation of middle-stage actors puts pressure on front-stage actors toaddress the issue proactively. When middle-stage

9 In our context, the concerned audience is the flying (orgeneral) public. This audience is concerned with the en-vironment and is a core resource holder for the civil avia-tion field. We note, however, that in other contexts otheraudiences may be more salient. For example, the con-cerned audience for a corporate governance issue such asdirector independence might be institutional investorsrather than the general public (Okhmatovskiy & David,2012).


actors express integrating frames, it creates a form ofpeer pressure from within the field that echoes thecalls for change. The actors who are more directlylinked to the issue (front-stage actors) become moreisolated in their stance, and apprehend a lack ofstrong support from middle-stage actors as the issuerises in salience.

Hypothesis 2b. The equivocation of a mixedframing bymiddle-stage actors puts pressure onfront-stage actors to adopt an integratingframing.

Finally, we consider front-stage actors themselves—those directly linked to an issue and in direct contactwith a concerned audience (bottom row of Figure 4).During the period of issue emergence, when an issueis rising in salience within a field, front-stage actorsbegin to face a threat to their legitimacy as the con-cerned audience’s attention focuses in on them. Draw-ing on the threat-rigidity hypothesis (Dutton & Jackson,1987; Staw, Sandelands, & Dutton, 1981), we posit thatactors facedwith a rapid rise in issue salience inwhich

they are the primary focus of attention will respondinitially with buffering frames. Actors confrontinga situationof threat initially tend to revert to establishedroutines andprocedures rather thanneworexploratorysearch efforts, in an effort to reduce the uncertaintylinked to the threat (Dutton & Jackson, 1987). In addi-tion, actors may not have the capabilities required forintegration, leavingbuffering as themost likely (or evenonly possible) response. This initial response was evi-dent in the framing trajectories of airports during theearly stages of the noise debate and of airlines in theearly stages of the emissions debate (Figure 3). Thisleads us to predict:

Hypothesis 3. Front-stage actors, or organizationsthat are linked to an issue and in direct contactwith a concerned audience, tend to expressbuffering-dominant frames during issue emer-gence, thereby mitigating against settlement.

Our data suggest, however, that the tenor of actorframingaroundan issuemayshift as the issuebecomesmore contested. In particular, maintaining a buffering

FIGURE 4Framing Trajectories and Actor Position

Backstage:

Middle Stage:

Front Stage:

Low exposure to

Low exposure toconcerned audience;

issue

Low exposure toconcerned audience;

concerned audience;

issue

issue

High exposure to

High exposure to

High exposure to

Buffering Buffering Buffering



P1: Integrating-dominant or buffering-dominant trajectories

P2a,b: Mixed trajectory

P4: Shifting trajectory from P5: Shifting trajectory leading tobuffering to integrating issue settlement

Issue Emergence Issue Contestation Issue Settlement

Timet2t1t0

P3: Initial buffering framing

Inte

grat

ing

Inte

grat

ing

Inte

grat

ing

Inte

grat

ing

Inte

grat

ing

Inte

grat

ing

Inte

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Inte

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stance in the face of ongoing pressure may be un-sustainable for front-stage actors, for several reasons.Denial and resistance have been shown to be poorstrategies withwhich to address legitimacy threats. AsElsbach, 1994: 73) argued, in cases of controversy:

. . . accommodative signals (i.e., acceptance of re-sponsibility, admission of the existence of a problem,and actions to remedy the situation) have provedmore effective than defensive signals (i.e., insistencethat a problem does not exist and actions to resumenormal operations).

This argument is consistentwith recent studies thathave shown that highly monitored firms are morelikely to respond substantively to institutional de-mands (Marquis & Qian, 2014; Okhmatovskiy &David, 2012). In our context, therefore, front-stageactors may realize that buffering is not assuagingconcerned audiences and that acknowledging thecentral importance of the issue and integrating it intothe business core is more effective. Second, “un-derstandings of how to achieve andmeasure complexsocial goals may improve, reducing the gap betweenspecified means and ends” (Bromley & Powell, 2012:518); in other words, the demands related to issuesmay become more clearly defined over time, and or-ganizations’ understandings of and capabilities fordealing with these demands may improve, therebymaking integration more attainable. Third, fear ofexternal regulation and peer pressure fromwithin theindustry appear to have contributed to the shift offront-stage actors from buffering to integrating. Sev-eral studies have shown that the threat of externallyimposed regulation can act as a powerful motivationfor firms to adopt voluntarily more stringent envi-ronmental protection standards (Barnett & King,2008; Reid & Toffel, 2009). Finally, the mechanismofpeerpressurehas been shown to be aneffective toolwith which to enhance firm compliance to industryself-regulation (Lenox & Nash, 2003). When facedwith the threat of external public pressure, industryleaders can themselves create pressure on industrylaggards toadopt environmentalprotection initiatives(Delmas & Toffel, 2008; King & Lenox, 2000). More-over, as discussed above (Hypothesis 2b), equivoca-tion from industry peers (middle-stage actors) cansignal to front-stage actors that they cannot count onfull support within the field for their resistance ofissues. Together, these arguments suggest that the useof buffering frames may decline and the use of in-tegrating frames may increase over time, resulting inthe counterclockwise turndepicted in the bottom rowof Figure 4. Thus, we posit:

Hypothesis 4. When faced with negative moraljudgments, the threat of external regulation, andpressure from within the industry, front-stageactors transition from buffering-dominant tointegrating-dominant framing.

What do these framing trajectories imply for thelikelihoodof fieldsettlement?“Fieldsettlement”canbesaid to occur when a “generalized sense of order andcertainty returns” to the field (Fligstein & McAdam,2011: 10), and when agreement about field rules andabout “what is at stake” has been reached (Rao &Kenney, 2008). Operationally, we conceptualize fieldsettlement surrounding an issue as occurring whena framework for action has been put in place. Prior re-search has found that “frames shape interpretations ofthe environment and subsequent strategic choices”(Kaplan, 2008: 729), and, more specifically, thatmeaning systems affect tangible responses to in-stitutional pressure (George et al., 2006; Love&Cebon,2008). We posit that the “turn to integrating” by front-stage actors is an antecedent of settlement because itsignals to all fieldmembers that the actorsmost directlytied to the issue have evolved in their stance toward it.They now frame the issue as being part of regularbusiness activitywithin the field,whichopens thedoorto the acceptance of a common framework guiding ac-tion. This does not mean total agreement has beenreached: even as front-stage actors are tilting towardintegrative framing, other field actorsmay still be usingbuffering-dominant frames around the issue, such thata unified consensus on issue framing is not required forsettlement to occur (Ansari et al., 2011; Fligstein &McAdam, 2011). Moreover, in this study, we observeda time lag between the shift to integrating frames byfront-stage actors and the decline in the volume ofdiscourse around the issue across all actors. In otherwords, the turn to integrating frames by front-stage ac-tors is an antecedent to the development of a broader,field-wide framework on how to address the issuetangibly. This reasoning suggests:

Hypothesis 5. A shift by front-stage actors frombuffering to integrating frames is an antecedent tofield settlement surrounding a contentious issue.

DISCUSSION

Taken together, our findings expand current un-derstandings of issue framing and settlement withinorganizational fields. We found that actors’ framing ofenvironmental issues within civil aviation followedvaried trajectories that dependedon actor positionwithrespect to the dominant issue in the field. Our study


thus contributes to the growing body of research thatexplores the heterogeneity and complexity of organi-zational fields (Greenwood et al., 2011; Lounsbury,2001, 2007; Wooten & Hoffman, 2008) and responds torecent calls for attention to meaning constructionwithin organizational theory (Barley, 2008; Gray et al.,2015; Powell & Colyvas, 2008; Suddaby, Elsbach,Greenwood, Meyer, & Zilber, 2010). Below, we ex-pandon themain theoretical contributionsof this studyand explore avenues for future research.

Framing Trajectories and Issue Interpretation

Our first contribution isournovel approach to issueframing. While there exists a long tradition of study-ing issues from a public policy and public attentionperspective (e.g., Downs, 1972; Felstiner, Abel, &Sarat, 1981; Hilgartner & Bosk, 1988), issue lifecyclemodels within this tradition have been dominated bya “natural history” perspective that describes socialissues as evolving through prototypical career stages(Bigelow, Fahey, & Mahon, 1993). This perspectivetends “to reify social problems by granting them anexistence that is quasi-independent from actors whodeal with them and the cultural institutions in whichthey are embedded” (Lamertz et al., 2003: 83). Ourresearch builds on more recent formulations thatpropose that issues cannot be disassociated from the(at times, competing) interpretations advanced byfield actors, and that the meaning of an issue is ac-tively constructed using cultural frames (Gray et al.,2015; Hoffman, 2001a; Lamertz et al., 2003).

Specifically, we provide a framework to describevariation in framing (i.e., buffering vs. integrating)over time, in the form of a framing trajectory. An ad-vantage of the concept of framing trajectory is tomovebeyond the “cooperation–competition dichotomy”that has characterized prior studies of framing strug-gles (Cornelissen & Werner, 2014: 211; Fligstein &McAdam, 2011; Rao & Kenney, 2008).10 At any giventime, actors’ framing activity may include contra-dictory or opposite frames that create ambiguity

(Eisenberg, 1984; Giroux, 2006; Sonenshein, 2010).For example, our framework captures framing ac-tivity that uses concurrently buffering and in-tegrating frames (as illustrated in the “mixedframing trajectory” shown in the middle row ofFigure 4), highlighting the important framing be-havior of actors who “mediate between the variouspolitical interests of other actors and groups,” andthereby provide “a basis for a possible new fieldsettlement” (Cornelissen & Werner, 2014: 211).

The concept of framing trajectory also contributesto a dynamic conceptualization of framing behavior.Existing research on framing has been criticized foradopting a static perspective on meaning work,thus prompting recent calls for research to “ex-plore framing as dynamic processes of meaningconstruction within and across groups and orga-nizations” (Cornelissen & Werner, 2014: 222). Ourempirical description of framing trajectories sug-gests that changes occurring over time in actors’framing activity may follow recognizable patterns,and provides a framework with which to concep-tualize framing evolution. Few prior studies haveused graphical representations of actual data tocapture meaning evolution (e.g., Meyer & Hollerer,2010; Weber, 2005; Zilber, 2006), yet visual toolsare well suited to capture synthetically how complexinterpretations evolve over time. In particular, themapping of framing trajectories used in Figure 3 al-lows for a novel way to depict framing evolutionaround specific issues. Further empirical and theo-retical research is needed to explore other suchframing trajectories, and to examine the dynamic in-teractionhappeningbetweenactors thatmayunderliesuch trajectories.

Actor Position and Issue Framing

Our second contribution is to show how framingtrajectory is influenced by actors’ shifting exposureto a contentious issue and to a concerned audience.Scholars have long emphasized that actor positionsin a field constrain how they interpret issues andlimit the types of frames that they can strategicallyadopt (Creed et al., 2002; Kennedy & Fiss, 2009;Meyer &Hollerer, 2010; Phillips &Zuckerman, 2001;Rhee & Fiss, 2014). But, in prior conceptualizations,actor positions were often defined in structuralterms, and seen as relatively static over long periodsof time. For example, Leblebici and colleagues (1991)conceptualized position (center vs. periphery) as re-source dependent and suggested that central actorsface stronger institutionalized expectations while

10 Additionally, our distinction between buffering andintegrating framing categories (each encompassing multi-ple frames) provides a way of conceptualizing actors’ in-terpretations of issues without relying on notions ofcompetitive advantage or disadvantage. Unlike the “op-portunity frame” used in prior work, an “integratingframe” does not necessarily interpret the environment asa source of relative competitive advantage. Similarly,“buffering frames” need not be tied to notions of compet-itive threat.


fringe actors (smaller players with fewer resources)were more likely to introduce radical innovations.More recent conceptualizations of actor positionhave emphasized status or reputational hierarchies(McDonnell & King, 2013; Phillips & Zuckerman,2001; Sherer & Lee, 2002) or social identities (Creedet al., 2002; Meyer & Hollerer, 2010), perspectivesthat implicitly depict position as hard to change. Inrelated work, discourse scholars define “subjectpositions” within a field as socially constructed“categories of identity,” and highlight the attemptsof actors to negotiate and manipulate these subjectpositions through discourse (Maguire & Hardy,2009: 150; Maguire, Hardy, & Lawrence, 2004). Inthe conceptualization advanced here, in contrast,the position (i.e., front, middle, or backstage) oc-cupied by actors changes according to the shiftingfocus of pressure linked to the rise, fall, and re-placement of issues. In other words, rather thanconceive of the front/middle/backstage distinction asdriven either by relatively static organizational char-acteristics, social identities, or structural positions,we show how framing activity within a field can beinfluenced by position determined by exposure toa salient issue (see alsoWooten&Hoffman, 2008: 140)and to a concerned audience.

In this way, we contribute to previous work thathas emphasized the interaction between core andperipheral actors in the evolution of organizationalfields (e.g., van Wijk et al., 2013; Zietsma &Lawrence, 2010). While Zietsma and Lawrence(2010) have shown that peripheral actors can en-gage in boundary work to contest and redefinefield boundaries, we show that not all incumbentsare similarly exposed to the pressure resultingfrom such contestation around issues, and thatpressure for change may also emanate from otherorganizational actors within the field.We thus callfor increased scholarly attention to the shiftingexposure of organizational actors to institutionalpressures within fields (Okhmatovskiy & David,2012), whichmay be channeled by the discourse ofvarious organizational actors both within andoutside the field.

Issue Framing and Field Settlement

Building on these first two contributions, ourthird contribution is to explicate a path to issuesettlement within organizational fields. In theirstudy of eight cases of “intractable environmen-tal conflict,” Elliott et al. (2003: 435) found that“frames can remain remarkably stable . . . thereby

reinforcing conflict dynamics over time and ren-dering conflicts intractable.” These authors spec-ulated, conversely, that frame shifts could makeconflicts more tractable, but cautioned that such“reframing” was difficult. While their focus wason specific environmental disputes rather than onbroader environmental issues, our results build ontheirs and suggest one path through which framechange (and ensuing field settlement) can occur.Other recent work has looked at how opposingviews (e.g., anchored in conflicting institutionallogics) may create tensions within and betweenorganizations (Battilana & Dorado, 2010; Besharov,2014; Jay, 2013; Pache & Santos, 2010). Our workbuilds on recent studies that have brought atten-tion to the processes through which opposingviews may coexist in dynamic tension over time(Dunn and Jones, 2010; Smets, Jarzabkowski,Burke, & Spee, 2015). We have shown that the in-terpretations of organizational actors may evolve,such that the perceived intractability of an issue (orthe perceived irreconcilable nature of conflictingviews) is itself subject to social construction andmay change over time. But, in contrast to studiesthat have pointed to hybridization as a path towardthe resolution of conflicting interpretations (York,Hargrave, & Pacheco, 2016), we highlight the im-portance of frame shifts by front-stage actors, orthose at the center of a contested issue, as an ante-cedent to field settlement around an issue. Moreover,we suggest a set of conditions that precipitate theframe shift of front-stage actors: public moral judg-ments, threat of regulation, and peer pressure fromother industry actors. This contrasts with the mecha-nisms for frame shifts suggested by Elliott et al. (2003);namely, changes in actor identity and conflict medi-ation. While not discounting the potential of suchmechanisms, we suggest that other mechanisms canalso come into play. Like Elliott et al. (2003: 435), webelieve that examining how and why frames shift canhelp us better understand when issues are likely to besettled versus remain intractable.

It is important to note that field settlement aroundan issue does not imply definitive resolution. Fieldactorsmay come to collective agreement aboutwhatcan and should be done in response to an issue(e.g., the new noise standards or ambitious targetsfor emissions reductionwitnessed in our study), butthis does not mean that stakeholders in larger so-ciety (governments, activists) will consider the is-sue resolved. Thus, issues considered settled byactors within the field may once again becomethe subject of intense debate (Bigelow et al., 1993;


Zietsma & Lawrence, 2010).11 Another possibility isthat field actors agree upon and adopt a generalframework to address an issue, but technical solu-tions are lacking. The issue would thus be settledbut practically unresolvable, creating a situationthat could lead to a return to contestation in thefuture. Furthermore, while we have described em-pirically one possible path to issue settlement at thefield level (through a shift from buffering to in-tegrating frames), we recognize that other outcomesfor the field are conceivable. A given issue may beeclipsed by new events, such that the level of debateand controversy within the field surrounding theissue may decline without front-stage actors everexperiencing the shift in framing from buffering tointegrating. This would lead to “dormancy”: a situ-ation where the debate recedes but the issue is notintegrated into the core of the field. This form ofcrowding-out between issues (e.g., meta-issuessuch as the environment or security) presents aninteresting avenue for future research.

Finally, we believe the buffering versus in-tegrating distinction is also useful because it can bepredictive of action toward an issue. As Mahon andWaddock (1992: 25; emphasis added) noted, “the‘stance’ that a stakeholder takes with regard to anissue involves the extent to which the stakeholderaccepts the need to deal with the issue or not.” Bydefinition, buffering frames express a resistancestance to issues, while integrating frames express anacceptance of issues as “part andparcel” of businessactivity in the field. As numerous authors have ar-gued, interpretative processes precede response toinstitutional pressure (George et al., 2006; Grayet al., 2015; Tilcsik, 2010: 1475). While not dis-counting the possibility of superficial response, wesuggest that the relativepresence of buffering versusintegrating frames in a field can be an importantindicator of substantive action toward an issuewithin the field.

Limitations and Avenues for Future Research

The limitations inherent in our chosen contextand methodology suggest possible scope condi-tions to our theorizing as well as opportunities forfuture study. First, we studied only one organiza-tional field, which necessarily places limits on thegenerality of our findings. Aviation is highly

regulated, which implies that pressures for con-formity and legitimacy may arguably be higherthan in less regulated industries (Kennedy & Fiss,2009). The highly regulated nature of aviationmaycreate more incentives for actors to preemptivelyreach settlement on issues through self-regulation.At the same time, we find it noteworthy that sig-nificant heterogeneity and contestation are pres-ent in such a highly regulated context, given thestrong mimetic forces that accompany regulation(DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Scott, 2001). Finally,because we studied only one organizational field,the typology of framing trajectories that we un-covered may be idiosyncratic and/or incomplete.We expect that researchers will discover addi-tional trajectories in other fields, which will pro-videmore evidence of possible scope conditions toour theorizing.

A second limitation is linked to the source ofarchival data used in this study. While we usedextensive fieldwork to better understand theframing activity of actors, we relied on a singletrade publication to track actor framing shifts overtime, which arguably represents a source of po-tential bias. However, the specific tactical nature ofthis publication and its status as official source ofinformation for various actors in the field serves tomitigate this potential bias. Aviation Daily is alsolikely to underrepresent actors such as NGOs orregulators, who exert an important influence in thefield. Accordingly, we focused our study on theframing of those actors who are the recipients ofpressure (airlines, airports, suppliers, collectiveactors) rather than those exerting the pressure(such as NGOs, social movements, or regulators).Future research could, for example, examine themechanisms by which industry actors are pro-pelled to the “front stage” by NGOs or activists.Finally, it is also likely that Aviation Daily under-represents aviation actors outside of North Amer-ica and Europe, and, as such, our findings applybest to these latter contexts.

Third, our research did not address directlywhether changes in issue interpretation lead tochange in firm behavior within this industry. Al-though prior research posits that interpretation isantecedent to action (Bansal & Penner, 2002: 313;Barr et al., 1992; George et al., 2006; Kaplan, 2008;Tilcsik, 2010) and the standards and targets weidentify as indicative of settlement are clear andquantifiable, we cannot rule out the possibility thatthe interpretive shift toward more integrative dis-course may prove to be largely ceremonial. Future

11 Aircraft emissions and noise, for example, are un-likely to be solved once and for all, and may reoccupy thecenter of industry discourse periodically.


research should examine specifically whether in-tegrative framing is associated with better environ-mental performance.

We conclude by reiterating the need for a deeperengagement of institutional theory with the litera-ture on issue interpretation and framing. Behindthe variation in structures and practices that dif-fusion studies have recently revealed lies diversityin how actors interpret and frame issues and thepressures associated with them. As Powell andColyvas (2008: 266) have argued, “macro lines ofanalysis” such as institutional theories of fieldchange require models that “attend to enaction,interpretation, translation, and meaning.” Envi-ronmental issues do not simply exist “out there” inreified fashion, but are instead constructed and re-constructed through interpretive activity.We haveendeavored to contribute to understanding of thisprocess by mapping how field actors interpret is-sues in their field. We believe that the utility of thetheory presented here resides in its capacity torepresent changing actor interpretations of con-tentious issues, and to suggest how issues becomepart of a field’s social order. In this way, we con-tribute to bridging the “micro/macro gap” andbuild understanding of how actor-level framingcan lead to field-level conventions (Gray et al.,2015: 116). Beyond its theoretical importance,moreover, understanding how field actors come toadopt an integrative stance toward environmentalissues will help us understand how improvedenvironmental performance comes about. Man-agers, activists, and policy makers alike may useour framework to map the shifting positions ofstakeholders around an issue. Yet, because no onemodel of issue evolution can fully capture thecomplexities associated with ongoing societaldebates (Lamertz et al., 2003: 91), we hope that ourwork opens avenues to further studies examininghow organizational fields move toward weavingimportant social issues into the fabric of theirdaily activities.

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Jean-Baptiste Litrico ([email protected]) is an associateprofessor and Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Strategy atthe Smith School of Business, Queen’s University (Can-ada). His research interests include institutional change,the evolution of organizational fields, and the diffusion ofmanagement models and practices across organizations.He received a PhD inmanagement fromMcGill University.

Robert J. David ([email protected]) is professor ofstrategy and organization, Brodje Faculty Scholar, and thedirector of the Centre for Strategy Studies in Organizationsat the Desautels Faculty of Management of McGill Uni-versity. He studies the evolution of management practices,organizational forms, and organizational fields from aninstitutional perspective. He received a PhD from CornellUniversity in 2001.


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the evolution of issue interpretation within ......building on hirsch (1986), hoffman (2001a: 146)...

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