Strategic change: a dynamic perspective on the framing of strategic initiatives

This paper elaborates the role of managerial framing activity during processes of strategic change in order to build the critical level of support across coalitions of competing interests to mobilize collective action towards change. Through a longitudinal 21-year qualitative study we examine the creation of a new business school through five strategic initiatives. Drawing on a Social Movement Organization perspective we analyze how frames are used by protagonists and antagonists to influence the development of the change initiatives over time. We develop a model that exposes the dynamics of diagnostic, prognostic and motivational framing in collective action frame development within specific strategic change initiatives, but also how the frames of new change initiatives are linked with and develop from previous framings.