Strategic Frames

Fundamentals

It is important to distinguish frame and framing from two other cognitive concepts: schema and sensemaking. We believe that there is necessary overlap among these concepts, but confusion has been created by changes in academic emphasis over time and overlapping definitions that blur important distinctions.

Helpful clarification comes from linking the academic definition of a frame to the way the word is used in day-to-day conversation. A picture frame protects and draws attention to something interesting and valuable. The frame of a new building establishes its dimensions and is a scaffold to which other components are added over time. Speeches, political publications, and other communications are said to be more or less successful in framing convincing arguments. Many people reframe their plans as they consider such appeals, perceive changes in available resources, or analyze outcomes of their own and others’ activities.

Organizational actors similarly protect and advance individual and group interests by proactively framing issues and events. Over time, the proffered frame is elaborated in an effort to more effectively influence other actors’ activities. As with physical structures, it is difficult to change such strategic frames, but it is possible. Some frames are adopted and further developed by others, while many other efforts languish. Thus, framing is an ongoing strategic process, made complex and interesting by the interaction of purposeful intellectual activity with other phenomena (content decisions, social structures, available resources, emotions, etc.) of interest to researchers in strategic management and other areas of management research.

While early work sometimes defined frames and framing as delimiting attention and leading to bias in a way that is consistent with research on schema, recent research on frames and framing in different disciplines has emphasized agency. In the authors’ view, this effort to define frame theory is still in process, but a promising metalogic is being developed across fields of inquiry that can be applied at different levels of analysis with varied methods. Those interested in the creation of social movements, for example, are paying attention to how frames are developed and aligned to mobilize individuals and groups with varied interests. The ethics and impact of framing by the media is an important topic in communication research and journalism. In addition, activists interested in affecting political decision making have used ideas about framing to change public and legislator opinions.

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