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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.

This chapter aims to understand whether and how impact investment, a novel approach to financing social and sustainable entrepreneurship, is aligned with, and contributing to, the sustainable development goals (SDGs). We theorise the SDGs as a ‘field-level frame’, a cultural template guiding social and environmental change. We analyse performance data of impact investors both in Australia and globally and map this impact data to the 17 SDGs. We find that impact investors are engaging with language consistent with the SDGs a possible field-level frame to guide impact strategy and measurement. To date, impact investors measure social outcomes more frequently than environmental outcomes; this may be explained, in part, by our analysis that reveals some SDGs create greater points of leverage to generate layers of impact across SDGs. This chapter explains how impact investors are engaging with the pursuit of the SDG agenda.

Despite increasing interest in digital services and products, the emergence of digitalization in the logistics and supply chain (L&SC) industry has received little attention, in particular from organizational theorists. In response, taking an institutionalist view, the authors argue that the emergence and adoption of digitalization is a socially constructed phenomenon.

This paper shows how actor-level frameshifts contribute to an emergence of an overarching “digitalization logic” in the L&SC industry at the field level. Building on a longitudinal analysis of field actors' frames and logics, the authors track the development of digitalization over the last 60 years in the L&SC sector.

The authors classify specific time periods by key field-configuring events, describe the relevant frameshifts in each time period and present a process that explains how and why digitalization has emerged, been adopted and manifested itself in the L&SC industry.

The findings of the study provide insights about the evolution of a digitalization logic and thus advance the institutional view on digitalization in the L&SC industry.

Entrepreneurs frequently tout how their ideas and innovations will become the “next big thing.” Yet, many such innovations – after the initial excitement and an upsurge in expectations – may experience a bust following the initial boom. We develop a conceptual framework to theorize how entrepreneurs may attract attention and garner support from wider stakeholders through the use of framing strategies. Yet, these framing activities will also invite more diverse participants and lead to an increasingly incoherent and imbalanced frame at the collective level, making it challenging to maintain resonance among key stakeholders, in turn hampering the healthy development of the nascent market in the long run. Looking beyond just the positive and short-term effects of cultural entrepreneurship on market emergence, we offer a more balanced view by examining the potential downsides of entrepreneurial legitimacy-building strategies.

Although management scholars have embraced grand challenges research, in many cases, grand challenges have been treated as merely a context for exploring extant theoretical perspectives. By comparison, our approach – robust action – provides a novel theoretical framework for tackling grand challenges. In this invited article, we revisit our 2015 model, clarifying and elaborating its key elements and taking stock of subsequent developments. We then identify three promising directions for future research: scaffolding, future imaginaries, and distributed actorhood. Ultimately, our core message is remarkably simple: robust action strategies – participatory architecture, multivocal inscription and distributed experimentation – jointly provide a means for tackling grand challenges that is well matched to their complexities, uncertainties, and evaluativities.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate food supply chain stakeholders’ intention to use Industry 5.0 (I5.0) drones for cleaner production in food supply chains.

The authors used a quantitative research design and collected data using an online survey administered to a sample of 264 food supply chain stakeholders in Nigeria. The partial least square structural equation model was conducted to assess the research’s hypothesised relationships.

The authors provide empirical evidence to support the contributions of I5.0 drones for cleaner production. The findings showed that food supply chain stakeholders are more concerned with the use of I5.0 drones in specific operations, such as reducing plant diseases, which invariably enhances cleaner production. However, there is less inclination to drone adoption if the aim was pollution reduction, predicting seasonal output and addressing workers’ health and safety challenges. The findings outline the need for awareness to promote the use of drones for addressing workers’ hazard challenges and knowledge transfer on the potentials of I5.0 in emerging economies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to address I5.0 drones’ adoption using a sustainability model. The authors contribute to existing literature by extending the sustainability model to identify the contributions of drone use in promoting cleaner production through addressing specific system operations. This study addresses the gap by augmenting a sustainability model, suggesting that technology adoption for sustainability is motivated by curbing challenges categorised as drivers and mediators.

This book explores the interaction between entrepreneurship and UN sustainable development goals (SDGs). Our existing knowledge of how entrepreneurship can contribute to the SDGs and how their implementation can transform enterprises is limited. This is due to several factors including the recent launch of the SDGs and the rapidly growing and changing global economic, social and environmental challenges. Entrepreneurship, however, can be the engine for transforming our world and overcoming the diverse nature of these global challenges. Beyond the rationale of this book, the organisation and structure of the book is presented. All chapters are introduced and their key points highlighted. At the end of this chapter, the editors provide concluding remarks, future research avenues and policy implications arising from this collective volume.

We examine the emergence of an organizational form, charter schools, in Oakland, California. We link field-level logics to organizational founding identities using topic modeling. We find corporate and community founding actors create distinct and consistent identities, whereas more peripheral founders indulge in more unique identity construction. We see the settlement of the form into a stable ecosystem with multiple identity codes rather than driving toward a single organizational identity. The variety of identities that emerge do not always map onto field-level logics. This has implications for the conditions under which organizational innovation and experimentation within a new form may develop.

In this paper, we explore how corporations use visual artifacts to translate and recontextualize a globally theorized managerial concept (CSR) into a local setting (Austria). In our analysis of the field-level visual discourse, we analyze over 1,600 images in stand-alone CSR reports of publicly traded corporations. We borrow from framing analysis and structural linguistics to show how the meaning structure underlying a multifaceted construct like CSR is constituted by no more than a relatively small number of fundamental dimensions and rhetorical standpoints (topoi). We introduce the concept of imageries-of-practice to embrace the critical role that shared visual language plays in the construction of meaning and the emergence of field-level logics. In particular, we argue that imageries-of-practice, compared to verbal vocabularies, are just as well equipped to link locally resonating symbolic representations and globally diffusing practices, thus expressing both the material and ideational dimension of institutional logics in processes of translation. We find that visual rhetoric used in the Austrian discourse emphasizes the qualities of CSR as a bridging concept, and facilitates the mediation of inconsistencies in several ways: By translating abstract global ideas into concrete local knowledge, imageries-of-practice aid in mediating spatial oppositions; by linking the past, present, and future, they bridge time; by mediating between different institutional spheres and their divergent logics, they appease ideational oppositions and reduce institutional complexity; and, finally, by connecting questionable claims with representations of authenticity, they aid in overcoming credibility gaps.