I do research on how frames shape organizations and technologies. My interests are in meaning systems within organizations and also understanding how meaning systems at the field level interpenetrate in organizations. While I have mainly focused on firm level interpretive processes, I am increasingly interested in understanding the collective frames that shape organizations, and how organizations contribute to the field level frames. My research questions seek to unpack the role of framing in the evolution of technologies, heterogeneous organizational response to discontinuities and strategy making inside organizations. In order to focus on the specific research questions, I move up and down levels, looking at issues from multiple angles.

Copies of selected papers available on the CV page.

Approach to social science research

My approach to social science research is reflective of my decade of experience as a management consultant prior to entering academia. When counseling executives on strategic choices, I had to help them cope with the uncertainties posed by the unknown nature of the future. I did not have the benefit of “20-20 hindsight” in guiding choices about what strategies to pursue. As a scholar, I wanted to place myself precisely in this same position. I did not want to explain which actors made the “right” or “wrong” choices in hindsight, but rather understand how their frames of their internal and external environment shaped the choices that they made. As such, there are several features that characterize my work on how framing shapes organizations and technologies outcomes.

Set in periods of discontinuity. Discontinuities are radical disjunctures that break down existing routines, heuristics and frames of reference. They place firms and other actors in a setting of particularly intense Knightian uncertainty which leads them to make sense of the world in new ways and makes deliberation and choice possible.

Prospective and longitudinal. My studies are concerned with actors’ frames as they are constructed prospectively, that is to say, before the outcomes are known. It is therefore necessary to avoid any form of retrospective bias in accounts of what was known at the time strategic choices were being made, a particularly important feature given the uncertainties created by discontinuities. A longitudinal approach allows me to watch as these interpretations unfold and change over time.

Multi level and multi method. To understand the dynamics associated with framing processes, I look at them at multiple levels (industry level, firm level and within the firm), focus on multiple units of analysis (technology, firm, project) and use multiple methods (ethnography, case studies and regression analysis). The quantitative studies validate that interpretive processes are important and sort out contextual elements, while the qualitative studies uncover the micro-dynamics behind the patterns identified in the quantitative research. By triangulating across these various perspectives, I hope to build a deeper understanding of the underlying dynamics.

Projects and research streams

I have translated my scholarly agenda into three related research streams: explaining the evolution of technologies, mapping heterogeneous organizational response to discontinuities and understanding strategy making inside organizations. While these streams are all related, they each have a different outcome to explain and each bracket some dynamics in order to explore others in more depth. The research on the evolution of technologies focuses on technological outcomes such as the degree of variation in the era of ferment or the emergence of a dominant design. Because it operates at the technology level of analysis, it brackets the activities that might be going on inside individual organizational actors. The research in heterogeneous organizational response to discontinuities treats the technical change as an exogenous force (thus bracketing the dynamics explored in the research on the evolution of technologies) in order to examine how frames can explain organizational differences while controlling for meaningful alternatives. The research on strategy making again treats the external environment as exogenous and forsakes concerns about statistical controls for alternative explanations in favor of in-depth explorations of the internal organizational dynamics that produce predominant frames and strategic choices. Over time, as I continue to cycle through these different optics on frames and framing, I hope to develop a more complete theoretical perspective on the dynamics that connect the macro to the micro.

Applying a cognitive framing lens to understanding the evolution of technologies

In understanding the evolution of technologies, I explore the role of multiple actors in shaping the development of the trajectory. In a theory paper (“Thinking about Technology” with Mary Tripsas), we find that the interactions of the technological frames and interpretive systems of producers, users and institutional actors with one another and with the technology affect outcomes in a co-evolutionary process. Different actors each use their own technological frames in making sense of the technology. Because the frames of actors are likely to differ, in particular during periods of uncertainty, each actor will likely take distinct actions. These actions in turn will influence how others interpret the technology, and the collective set of actions taken by various actors will shape the evolution of the technology. We show that movement along a technological trajectory represents a resolution of both competing technologies and competing frames about the technology. By implication, the collective technological frame is something that is achieved over time during the evolution of a technology, being diffuse during the era of ferment, solidifying in conjunction with the achievement of a dominant design, structuring inquiry during the era of incremental change and eventually breaking down in the context of a new discontinuity. I explore these dynamics in the empirical setting of the evolution of the biotechnology industry from 1973-1993 in “Technology, Organizations & Institutions in the Construction of Economic Value: The Case of Biotechnology,” with Fiona Murray. We find distinctively different interpretations of the biotechnology discontinuity made by entrepreneurs throughout the period and describe the eras in which different interpretations held sway. We show that even with regard to the same underlying technology, approaches to the economic configuration of biotechnology varied widely. On the basis of this historical analysis, we propose that the discontinuity is a social process in which entrepreneurs develop different economic logics (or frames) for a breakthrough technology. This economic logic encompasses more than recognition of a new market opportunity. It is the entire economic configuration: application, boundaries of the firm, R&D intensity. We analyze the types of evidence that various actors bring to bear as they attempt to shape the economic logic. We argue that the evidence is more social than technical and acts to establish legitimacy and resolve uncertainty among the players. We identify different uncertainties that economic actors respond to and shape: government institutions whose decisions define appropriability, financial markets placing value on technologies well before any products materialized, scientists producing technical evidence on viability, and firms making sense of the technology and its commercial applications. The findings show that in the case of biotechnology, the discontinuity is best understood as not just shaped by a technical logic, but also, and unavoidably, an economic logic which is social in its construction.

Understanding the role of frames in shaping heterogeneous organizational response to discontinuities

In understanding heterogeneous organizational response to discontinuities, my results show that the degree of senior managers’ attention to a technology helps explain a firm’s strategic actions, separate from other organizational characteristics. Three quantitative papers in this stream use panel datasets to identify patterns across firms and over time.  “Discontinuities and Senior Management,” (with Fiona Murray and Rebecca Henderson) looks at incumbent pharmaceutical firms’ responses to the emergence of biotechnology. “Cognitive Frames, Capabilities and Incentives” and “Incumbent Entry into a Radical New Product Arena,” (joint with JP Eggers) explore these issues in the context of communications technology firms responding to the fiber optic revolution. In each of these papers, I exploit a unique word count methodology for capturing top managers’ interpretations of the new technology. Specifically, I test for an association between cognitive frames as measured by word counts in the Letter to Shareholders from company Annual Reports and subsequent strategic choices about investment as represented by patenting patterns or entry timing into a new product arena. The results suggest that CEO cognition, organizational incentives and organizational capabilities all have important independent effects in shaping subsequent patenting patterns. A firm will be more likely to respond to technical change if there is a strong alignment between these factors. However, an examination of interaction effects suggests that if firm-level capabilities or incentives are missing, CEO attention to the new technology can compensate for this gap. Alternatively, if substantial related capabilities or incentives are present, the effect of changes in CEO attention is moderated. These findings are robust to varying time structures (where lags of one to four years are used between attention and strategic action). To alleviate concerns that CEO cognition might simply be a codification of concurrent investment activities, I test the relationship “in reverse” and find no significant association between prior patenting behavior and subsequent attention to optics. The implication of these studies is that CEO cognition may be a critical arbiter in determining the degree of firm response to technical change. In particular, a CEO can counteract the negative consequences of poorly aligned incentives or mismatched competences by directing attention to the new technology. This work suggests that, while capabilities built up over time shape outcomes, managers’ context-specific interpretations and decisions that unfold over time are part of the equation. One implication is that neither industry context nor capabilities present themselves to firms in an unproblematic way; instead, they are subject to interpretation. A firm can move in different directions, even with the same capabilities, if managers’ interpretations of the situation differ. Another implication is that researchers cannot look at the firm as a unified whole; the internal dynamics associated with both organizational and managerial capabilities matter.

Using a practice lens to understand the role framing in strategy making inside organizations

The quantitative analyses reported above are appealing in that they establish a systematic relationship between cognitive frames and organizational outcomes and controls for alternative explanations. But, they are limited in their ability to capture the underlying mechanisms that connect frames with strategic action and to explain how frames are interrelated with incentives and capabilities. Using ethnographic evidence from a field study in one communications technology firm, I unpack these dynamics inside the organization. In “Framing Contests,” I examine the ways actors attempted to transform their own cognitive frames of a situation into predominant frames through a series of interactions. Actors each had cognitive frames about the direction the market was taking and about what kinds of solutions would be appropriate. Where frames about a strategic choice were not congruent, actors engaged in highly political framing practices to make their frames resonate and to mobilize action in their favor. Those actors who most skillfully engaged in these practices shaped the frame which prevailed in the organization. This framing perspective suggests that frames are not only instrumental tools for the ex post justification of actions taken through power but rather are an ex ante part of the political process that produces decisions. Uncertainty opens up the possibility for new actors to gain power, and contesting frames is a way of changing the power structures in the organization. A principal contribution of the framing contests model is to locate a middle ground between cognitive and political models of strategy making, one in which frames are both constraints and resources and outcomes can be shaped by purposeful action and interaction to make meaning.

In “Projecting the Future” (joint with Wanda Orlikowski), I explore the ways that managers project into the future when faced with the uncertainties created by a discontinuity. The canonical strategy literature has a good deal to say about what aspects of the future are critical (the environment, competitive position, capabilities, competitor actions – this is the content of strategy). And, there is a large managerial literature suggesting that managers should use forecasting or scenario planning techniques. But, much less is known about how managers look into the crystal ball. Investigating the micro processes of ongoing strategy making through the lens of temporal dynamics focused our attention on how agentic projections of the future were linked to past repertoires of knowledge accumulations as well as provisional actions based on present contingencies. We found that as actors attempted to deal with the multiple and disparate influences of these temporal domains, they engaged in a number of bridging practices — problematizing, imagining, deliberating, and experimenting — that helped them navigate these differences. Over time, actors’ performance of these bridging practices enacted particular strategic trajectories of action that projected particular futures. To the extent these strategies were acted on, particular organizational outcomes — continuity or change — were produced. This perspective thus helps explain how everyday strategy practices shape organizational futures, and has implications for our conceptualizations of path dependence.

I have examined some specific arenas where framing processes unfold: in the use of strategy tools and frameworks (with Paula Jarzabkowski) and in the use of PowerPoint. In “Using Strategy Tools in Practice,” we help to shed light on the recent debate about the usefulness of strategic management education and implicitly about strategy tools and frameworks. We argue that this debate is taking place in the absence of detailed knowledge about how, or indeed, whether, managers use the theoretical tools that they learn. The paper addresses this gap by taking a practice perspective to look at how strategy tools are engaged by different actors in mediating interpretive processes. We explore how an actor’s search for rationality and objectivity through the use of tools is actually a political, symbolic and socially interactive process. We interpret strategizing as a socially situated practice, in which context and vested political interests play an important role in defining what is strategic, how strategy should be operationalized, and whose views count. We provide a conceptual framework for analyzing strategy tools as key mediators of these frames and political interests. In “Strategy and PowerPoint,” I show how PowerPoint technology is both the medium and outcome of strategizing activities. Consistent with many recent critiques of PowerPoint, this paper shows how the technology constrains actions, often serving as a tool for the strategic manipulation of information to conform to an individual’s own frames and the exercise of power. On the other hand, I find that PowerPoint also enables individual and collaborative work and operates as a boundary object for negotiating shared meanings which ultimately shape strategic decisions. These two papers are explorations of the micro-processes by which interpretive processes play out in organizations.

I have also stepped back from the empirical work on strategy making to reflect on how it can be used to understand forces for continuity and change. In a theory paper (“Inertia and Incentives,” with Rebecca Henderson), we used recent research on incentives in organizational economics as our foil to develop an integrated view of how cognitive frames and incentives interact in producing both forces for continuity and change. In the analysis of incentives, we highlight the ways in which incentives and cognition, while being analytically distinct concepts, are phenomenologically deeply intertwined. We suggest that incentives and cognition coevolve so that organizational competencies or routines are as much about building knowledge of “what should be rewarded” as they are about “what should be done.” As a result, the degree of a firm’s inertia may be affected by the degree to which managers’ frames change, but that these effects depend crucially on other elements of the organizations architecture – organizational incentives and capabilities. This paper contributes to our understanding of organizational response to change by unpacking the underlying mechanisms that comprise the organizational architecture and showing at a micro level why it is so difficult to create and manage the “ambidextrous organization.”

Future research directions

I plan to extend the themes developed in my research through several different explorations of the emergence of nanotechnology. The field of nanotechnology is in its infancy and thus I have the opportunity to examine how emergence takes place as it takes place. The initial focus will be on evolving patterns of interpretation of various nanotechnologies (starting first with carbon nanotubes) and how these relate to other factors shaping the evolution of the technology.

Research