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As the framing perspective has evolved, there has been growing recognition that framing processes cannot be adequately understood apart from the broader enveloping contexts in which those processes occur. One such context recently has been conceptualized as discursive opportunities or the DOS. To date the concept has been examined most closely and carefully in relation to the media, most notably in Koopmans research on how the strategies of the German radical right have evolved partly in response to various media reactions and constraints (Koopmans, 2004) and in Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, and Rucht's (2002) comparison of abortion discourse in the U.S. and Germany (between 1970 and 1994) via the media. Koopmans provides the most straightforward and researchable conception of discursive opportunities, defining them in terms of three selection mechanisms that affect the probability of a proffered message or framing being picked-up and diffused. They include “visibility (the extent to which a message is covered by the mass media), resonance (the extent to which others – allies, opponents, authorities, etc. – react to a message), and legitimacy (the degree to which such reactions are supportive)” (Koopmans, 2004, p. 367).

In this paper, we investigate how digital technology disruptors and the incumbents who stand to be disrupted by them frame their arguments to transform or sustain existing institutional frameworks to enable or deter the market entry of these technologies. Using a longitudinal, comparative case analysis of three digital technologies – namely, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), cloud antenna, and over-the-top (OTT) technologies – we explore how stakeholders use public interest frames for this purpose. We find that entrepreneurs use three specific frames to drive institutional change for the successful adoption of digital technologies in the presence of established incumbents and powerful regulators: frames that emphasize the broad public appeal of the new digital technology; frames that emphasize efficiency, democracy, and technological advancement; and frames that emphasize present as well as future benefits to the public. We find that constructing interpretations of what serves the public interest is the primary tactic used by disruptors to gain market entry, and an equally popular weapon for incumbents to block the entry of new digital technologies. These interpretations lead to a framing contest aimed at influencing regulators and obtaining a more favorable institutional environment. Our empirical findings illustrate that new digital technologies themselves are not the sole contributors to institutional change. Rather, institutional outcomes associated with the introduction of new digital technologies are shaped by how disruptors and incumbents use public interest frames and how regulators react to these frames.

Through an analysis of the leaders of the 1960s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) this paper highlights the importance of individual identity work, and argues for an expanded theoretical treatment of social movement identity processes that takes account of partial identity correspondence (a partial alignment between an individual identity and the movement identity) to include degrees of identity congruence. Actors can embrace a movement, but remain in a state of conflict regarding some dimensions of its identity. Extending James Jasper's ((1997). The art of moral protest: Culture, biography, and creativity in social movements. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press) identity classifications, the data suggest that participants engage in identity justification work when incongruence among personal identity (biographical), collective identity (ascribed, i.e. race, gender), and movement identities exist. This work may not reflect the organization's efforts to frame or reframe the movement identity. This study finds that individuals manage incongruence with organizational and tactical movement identities by employing three identity justification mechanisms: (1) personal identity modification of the movement's identity; (2) individual amplification of the common cause dimension of collective identity; and (3) individual amplification of the activist identity through pragmatic politics. Rather than dismantling the past, as Snow and McAdam ((2000). In: S. Stryker, T. J. Owens, & R. W. White (Eds), Self, identity, and social movements (pp. 41–67). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) propose, actors incorporate their biographies as a mechanism to achieve feelings of community and belonging. It is not so much an alignment with the organization's proffered movement identity as it is a reordering of the saliency hierarchy of their identities. Unlike Snow and McAdam's conceptualization of identity amplification, the reordering of an identity hierarchy and the amplification of certain identities is precipitated by the actor's, not the organization's, efforts to align her/his personal identity, collective identity, and movement identities.

Social problems researchers have documented the role of science in identifying, typifying and shaping policy responses with respect to a variety of new social problems. Researchers have given less attention, however, to the role of science in ongoing debates over problems that are well established and contentious. This paper examines the influence of mainstream scientific knowledge concerning the deterrent effects of the death penalty on a death penalty debate in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Mainstream scientific opposition to the deterrence hypothesis is found to influence the claims-making strategies of death-penalty proponents, leading them to draw heavily on common sense, to scale-back and qualify their claims concerning deterrence, and to reframe the debate in terms of just retribution. These effects are attributed to the cultural rules that structure debate in a legislative decision-making body.

Recent institutional scholarship has discovered new possibilities for change in both the accumulation of incremental transformations and in the skillful action, institutional work, and creative activities of political and institutional entrepreneurs. Lurking behind stability and change lie actors who can act reflexively within and with existing institutions, and who do so on a routine, rather than exceptional basis, redeploying, recombining, and transposing extant systems to solve problems of identity and control. This paper probes the potentials and limits of those possibilities – and the prospects for reform in American banking – via a case study of the Bank of North Dakota and efforts to transpose its hybrid model of state and community logics into other states. The analysis first finds a full range of institutional labors and skillful activities emphasized by recent work as the foundation for transposition. It finds crisis; the presence of multiple logics; the mobilization of boundary spanning networks; the use of conferences and theorization to sustain independent discourse and collective identities; skillful framing; and substantial editing and recombination to fit the model with receiving states’ institutions. It then juxtaposes these conditions with outcomes in the states, developing some implications for actor-centered institutionalisms, current preoccupations with mechanisms, and state-level strategies for financial reform.

Originally developed by the Japanese firm Toyota in the 1950s, the core innovation of lean production is to reorient all organizational activity around continuous improvement and the elimination of waste. We use the case of lean production in two healthcare organizations to explore the process of translating management models into new environments (Czarniawska & Sevón, 1996; Mohr, 1998). We draw on insights from organizational sociology and social movement theory to understand the strategies of actors as they attempt to overcome opposition to model transfer (Battilana, Leca, & Boxenbaum, 2009; Friedland & Alford, 1991; Snow, Rochford, Worden, & Benford, 1986). We examine two attempts to export lean production to healthcare organizations: Riverside Hospital, a research and teaching institution, and Lakeview Associations, a managed health provider. We use these cases to illustrate two ways that management models can get lost in the process of institutional translation: model attenuation, and model decoupling.