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Framing Change:
A Comparative Case Study
of IT-enabled Organizational Change
Santi Furnari
Cass Business School
106 Bunhill Row
London EC1Y 8TZ, UK.
Phone: +44 020 7040 5132
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Structuring Frames for Change:
A Comparative Case Study
of IT-enabled Organizational Change
Abstract
This paper examines how two organizations used information technologies (IT) to introduce
the same type of IT-enabled organizational change with radically different outcomes.
Building on a grounded theory comparative analysis of the two cases, the paper develops a
process model of IT-enabled organizational change centered on the interaction of two factors:
1) the templates (i.e. cognitive frames) used by the organizational change‟s key players to
interpret the strategy, implementation, and nature of the change; 2) the environmental and
organizational context in which the change occurs. The organizational context and the
relative number of issues contained in a cognitive frame (i.e. frame breadth) are found to
jointly influence the evolution of actors‟ cognitive frames during the process of change,
thereby shaping change outcomes. Narrow frames are found to hinder change in highly
formalized organizations, whereas broad frames facilitate change in less formalized
organizations.
Keywords: organizational change; information technology; cognition; cognitive frame;
distributed work.
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1. Introduction
Over the last decades, businesses worldwide have embraced information technologies
(IT) as a source of increased efficiency and productivity. Yet, the literature on IT adoption is
replete with stories of unfulfilled potential (e.g. Davenport and Stoddard, 1994; Davidson,
2002; Robey and Sahay, 1996; Zuboff, 1988). This is often the case when managers
explicitly plan to change a firm‟s organizational structure and processes via the introduction
of information technologies, what is often called “IT-enabled organizational change” (e.g.
Robey and Sahay, 1996). In these cases, limited IT use and organizational resistance often
hinder the realization of the beneficial outcomes expected from IT adoption (Markus, 2004;
Orlikowski, 2000), although radical organizational changes can also be successfully achieved
(Orlikowski, 1993). These mixed findings continue to attract the attention of scholars and
practitioners on the factors explaining the success of IT-related organizational change.
Socio-cognitive research has long demonstrated that individual and group cognitive
frames influence the outcomes of organizational change (Bartunek, 1984; Bartunek and
Moch, 1987; Fiol, 1994), the implementation and evolution of technologies (Acha, 2004;
Kaplan and Tripsas, 2008; Orlikowski and Gash, 1994), and how companies adapt to
environmental changes (Kaplan, 2008; Kiesler and Sproull, 1982). Cognitive frames are the
templates that organizational members use to organize their interpretations of events and
organizational phenomena (Weick, 1979). They serve as the means by which actors make
sense of the ambiguities and uncertainties inherent in any change (Kiesler and Sproull, 1982).
Actors‟ actions and reactions around change are influenced by how they notice and interpret
change via their cognitive frames (Daft and Weick, 1984). Consequently, aligning people‟s
cognitive frames around a change initiative is essential for the successful implementation of
change and innovation within organizations.
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If the key role of cognitive frames for change and innovation is not disputable, the
approach through which frames have been predominantly analyzed in the literature is
characterized by two important gaps, which are tackled in this paper.
First, most socio-cognitive studies analyze cognitive frames from a static perspective,
providing “point-in-time snapshots” of frames (Davidson, 2006), without taking into account
the temporality of framing as an ongoing interpretive process unfolding over the different
phases of a change program. A more dynamic perspective is consistent with Orlikowski and
Gash (1994)‟s claim that “frames are flexible in structure and content, having variable
dimensions that shift in salience and content by context and over time” (ibidem, p. 176). For
example, a few studies have provided evidence that the breadth of a frame and the level of
optimal “cognitive diversity” featured in groups‟ frames vary across the phases of a decision-
making process (Kilduff et al., 2000; Walsh et al., 1988). More recently, Kaplan (2008) has
introduced a dynamic model of framing, in which political interests and framing practices
interact to determine which frames comes to predominate over others, thereby influencing the
direction of strategic decision-making. Despite the contribution of these studies, more
comparative studies are needed to systematically understand how processes of framing can be
contingent on factors such as the phases of an IT-related organizational change program
(Davidson, 2006), organizational structure, or larger contextual issues (Creed et al., 2002;
Kaplan 2008). The important practical implication of filling this gap is that, by better
understanding how framing processes evolve in planned change initiatives, managers can
learn how to guide and time these interpretative processes, and the organization members‟
actions resulting from them, so to improve the actual outcomes of the change.
Relatedly, a second important gap in the literature is that cognitive frames have been
analyzed in isolation without explicitly taking into account the organizational context in
which frames are produced and concretely used and in which a change initiative is unfolding.
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This is particularly important in relation to formal organizational structure, which has proven
to be a crucial factor influencing managerial cognition (Davidson, 2002; Krackhardt, 1990;
Lin and Silva, 2005; McGovern and Hicks, 2004; Newman and Sabherwal,1996). Indeed, we
know that actors‟ interpretations of organizational situations are deeply intertwined with
power and political action (Kaplan, 2008; Weick et al., 2005) and that actors‟ position in the
formal structure of an organization is one important source of power and legitimacy (e.g.
Pfeffer, 1981). However, despite repeated calls to focus attention on the contextual and
situated nature of cognition in organizations (Elsbach et al., 2005; Lant, 2002), we face the
paradox that precise relationships between specific features of an organizational context and
framing process have yet to be identified.
This paper responds to these calls for more dynamic analysis of cognitive frames in
context, by shifting the attention from frames as static and objectified “entities” to framing as
a dynamic and situated process, that is, the process through which individuals shape, maintain
and change their cognitive frames in situation. Thus, the research question addressed in this
paper is: how do the framing processes enacted by the individuals and groups involved in an
IT-enabled organizational change influence the effectiveness of change?
This paper contributes to an emerging dynamic and situated perspective on cognitive
framing (e.g. Kaplan, 2008) by taking simultaneously into account both the dimensions of
frame content and frame structure. Frame content defines the domains of knowledge
characterizing a given frame, the substantive areas on which people focus their attention for
interpretation and sense-making (e.g. the motivation for adopting a new technology vs the
conditions for implementation and use of the technology; for review see Davidson, 2006).
Frame structure identifies “the way people construct their argument or viewpoint, regardless
of its content” (Fiol 1994, p. 405). Frame structure represents a more dynamic component of
cognitive frames, referring to how something is expressed in communications, which, in turn,
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reflect the “schemata of interpretation” used by individuals or groups to make sense of a
situation (Bartunek, 1984; Gray et al., 1985). Specifically, building on Fiol (1994) and on
previous research (Bartunek et al., 1983; Davidson, 2006; Weick and Bougon, 1986), I
emphasize two elements of frame structure: the breadth of a frame, i.e. the number or scope
of issues attended to in a frame (Walsh et al., 1988) and the rigidity/flexibility of a frame, or
the degree of certainty and confidence conveyed in a frame, which also indicates the extent to
which a frame is likely to be broadened/narrowed to resolve or emphasize differences and
contrasts among individual or groups‟ viewpoints (Bettenhausen and Murnighan, 1991).
While most research on cognitive frames primarily focuses on frame content (for review see
Elsbach et al., 2005; Walsh, 1995), analyzing also frame structure is fundamental to
understand how frames change over time, uncovering potentially new counter-intuitive
findings on the process of framing and organizational outcomes (e.g. Fiol, 1994).
To answer the research question above, this paper reports the findings of a grounded
theory comparative analysis of two organizations which implemented the same type of IT-
enabled organizational change with radically different results. In one organization, the results
of the planned change have been fully achieved; while in the other organization, the change
was not embraced by organization members, jeopardizing the effects of information
technologies. Building inductively from these two field studies, the paper provides a process
model documenting how the structure and content of the cognitive frames adopted by change
participants evolved during the respective change initiatives. The model also shows how
cognitive frames interact with the different organizational contexts characterizing the two
organizations to influence the final outcomes of the IT-enabled change.
The specific IT-enabled organizational change considered is the introduction of IT-
enabled distributed work practices in traditionally collocated organizational structures.
IT-enabled distributed work practices are defined as “the new organizational processes and
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routines designed to allow employees performing their work in a location different from their
organization‟s main conventional office via the use of information technology” (Illegems and
Verbeke, 2004). These practices can include the organizational procedures and routines
connected to the introduction of different forms of telework (for review see Bailey and
Kurland, 2002); to the set-up of geographically dispersed virtual teams (O‟Leary and
Mortensen, 2010); or to the running of global product development activities (Orlikowski,
2002). The relevance of this phenomenon is testified by firms‟ accelerating interest and
investment in distributed work arrangements: 33.7 million people in the U.S. worked
remotely from their organization‟s main office in 2008, a 43% increase in a five-year-period
(Dieringer Research Group, 2009). At the same time, research on IT-enabled distributed work
and virtual teams –as research on IT adoption more in general- has shown mixed and
contradictory findings on the benefits of distributed work (e.g. Hinds and Kiesler, 2002),
devoting less attention to the dynamics through which physically-collocated organizations
can successfully move towards a distributed work configuration. Thus, an additional aim of
this paper is to tackle this gap in distributed work research.
This paper is structured as following. First, I describe the research methodology, data,
and data analysis procedures adopted in the empirical study; second, I illustrate the model
generated from the data, describing in detail the process of IT-enabled organizational change
in the two organizations and how framing and organizational context interact to shape this
process; last, implications for future research and practice of IT-enabled organizational
change are discussed.
2. Research Methods and Data
2.1 Research Methodology
I used a grounded theory methodology (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) for two reasons.
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First, the grounded theory approach fits well the interpretive orientation of this
research. The aim here is not to explain the phenomenon under study (i.e. IT-enabled
organizational change) in terms of causality, testing hypotheses derived from theory. Rather,
the aim is to develop a context-based and process-oriented model about the phenomenon,
starting from the situated understandings (i.e. cognitive frames) of the actors concretely
experiencing organizational change. Grounded theory methodology is germane to this end, as
“it is most suited to efforts to understand the process by which actors construct meaning out
of their inter-subjective experience” (Suddaby 2006, p. 634), by analyzing “the actual
production of meanings and concepts used by social actors in real settings” (Gephart 2004,
p. 457). This aim can be effectively achieved using grounded theory methodology, as
demonstrated by several exemplary studies (e.g. Gersick, 1988; Orlikowski, 1993).
Second, grounded theory is particularly appropriate when there is a lack of systematic
theoretical formulation on the topic addressed (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). As discussed,
although there has been substantial research on the topic of frames and change in general
(e.g. Bartunek, 1984), we are far from having a systematic understanding of the possibly
different processes of framing, especially concerning how framing dynamics can interact
with features of organizational context to produce different trajectories of organizational
innovation. Grounded theory is appropriate in these cases when there is a need of generating
new theory on under-developed aspects of existing theories (Suddaby 2006, p. 635).
It is worth noting here that the concept of cognitive frames itself was not anticipated
at the outset of the empirical research, but rather emerged as important key concept from my
interviews. As discussed in section 2.4., data analysis led me to search into a literature –i.e.
the literature on cognitive frames- different from the literature that I initially used to approach
the topic, mostly concerned with the implementation of IT and organizational change.
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2.2. Case Selection
Following Glaser and Strauss (1967)‟s theoretical sampling, the two organizations
were selected for their similarities as well as for their differences (Eisenhardt, 1989; Gersick,
1988; Orlikowski, 1993). Theoretical sampling requires paying attention to both theoretical
relevance and purpose. With respect to relevance, this sampling method ensures that the
substantive area addressed –e.g. here the IT-enabled organizational change analyzed- is kept
similar (Eisenhardt, 1989). Thus, both the organizations chosen for this study had adopted IT-
enabled distributed work practices starting from a physically collocated work organization.
With respect to purpose, because the aim of this research is to generate a model applicable
across different contexts, identifying possible contingencies and contextual factors on the
process of framing and change, I decided to select polar types of organizations, as previous
studies did (e.g. Gersick, 1988). As Harris and Sutton (1986, p. 8) point out, “similarities
observed across a diverse sample offer firmer grounding for propositions about the constant
elements of a model, than constant elements observed in a homogeneous sample”. As a
result, the two selected organizations differ significantly on important dimensions, such as
industry, location, size, structure and culture. In addition, they represent a successful and
unsuccessful case of IT-enabled organizational change.
The first field study was conducted in Alpha, one of the largest county government
organizations in Italy, employing 4,340 full-time employees at the time of the study. In 1998,
County Councillor for Internal Affairs in Alpha first introduced an IT-enabled distributed
work program to allow employees to work remotely via the use of LOTUS notes and similar
proprietary groupware technologies. Although distributed work was initially sponsored as the
“new revolution of workplace” targeting an estimated number of employees of 250 in a two
years from the launch of the study, at the time of our study there were only 38 distributed
workers and no further extension of this innovative work practice was expected.
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The second field study was conducted on a medium translation services company
employing more than 160 workers, Omega, which introduced IT-enabled distributed work
practices for their employees and managers. In less than a year, the practice of distributed
work became established in Omega as a normal alternative to the collocated work. Through
distributed work, the company was able to cut by half its office spaces‟ costs and to obtain
significant improvements of labor productivity.
2.3 Data Collection
In both research sites, data were collected through a variety of methods: unstructured
and semi-structured interviews, archival materials and documents, observation. The field
study in Alpha was conducted between September 2002 and June 2003, while the field study
in Omega was conducted between the summer 2003 and the spring of 2004. To validate my
findings, I went back to the two organizations in the fall 2005, conducting additional
interviews and asking key informants to read my reports. I spent initial time at the two
research sites reviewing the documentation generated on distributed work (such as, plans,
meeting minutes, newspapers‟ articles), conducting general-purpose unstructured interviews
with key informants and observing the organizational context. I then conducted semi-
structured interviews with the key players initially identified and with other actors involved
in the change identified interviewing key players. Thirty semi-structured interviews were
conducted at the one site (Alpha) and twenty four at the other site (Omega), each lasting from
an hour to over three hours. Interviews were taped and transcribed verbatim. When the
interviews could not be directly taped, I wrote extensive field notes reconstructing the
interview‟s content right after the meeting. Participants spanned all the organizational levels
relevant for the changes analyzed, from president, to middle and senior managers, to line and
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staff employees. Table 1 reports the formal position of the interviewees and the number of
interviews conducted in the two sites:
Position Alpha Omega Total
President 1 1 1 2
Senior Managers 8 3 11
Middle Managers 5 10 15
Employees 16 10 26
Total 30 24 54
Table 1 – Number of Interviews and Formal Position of Respondents
2.4 Data Analysis
Following the principles of grounded theory from cases (Glaser and Strauss, 1967;
Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 1984), data analysis was inductive and open-ended, but informed by
my initial interest in how individuals in organizations experience the organizational dynamics
connected with the introduction of new information technologies in existing work practices.
As recommended by the constant comparative method illustrated by Glaser and
Strauss (1967), data analysis started when the field work began: I regularly wrote field notes
and memoranda from my analysis of collected data while collecting those data. In a first stage
of analysis, I used these data to reconstruct a timeline of the events of the change programs
introduced in the two organizations. This exercise gave me some initial insights on the
different roles of specific actors in the change process. In a second phase, I identified a list of
themes and codes from these actors‟ interviews and from the minutes of their meetings. This
initial list mostly concerned actors‟ activities and their views on the major events in the
1 County Councilor for Internal Affairs in the case Alpha; President in the case Omega.
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change initiative. Data have been initially coded following the open coding technique
(Strauss and Corbin, 1990), letting themes and codes emerging from data, and adding new
codes as they emerge from multiple readings of data. I organized the recurring themes and
codes into a preliminary list of concepts and categories (Strauss and Corbin 1990).
Subsequently, I followed Strauss and Corbin (1990)‟s axial coding technique, making
connections between different categories and concepts and linking the emerging recurring
themes and codes to a common and stable set of concepts and categories.
At this stage, I had identified the environmental and organizational context, the set of
key players and their activities (see Figure 1 below) as relevant categories of my model.
However, I was not satisfied with the concepts and categories describing the activities carried
out by the key players –much broader concepts than the ones listed in Figure 1. Specifically, I
started realizing that a substantial amount of data was actually describing how different actors
saw and interpreted each other‟s actions and significant aspects of the change initiative.
Intuitively, in my understanding, these data referred to something different than key players‟
activities per se, in a sense preceding key players‟ single actions and encompassing them at a
more general level. To check on my intuition, I went back to the original timeline of the
events of the change process and I started “attaching” to each phase of the change program
the different interpretations given by the interviewed actors. While doing that, I began seeing
some patterns in the ways different actors talked and interpreted the events and in the ways
they justified their actions. These patterns strengthen my initial intuition. At this stage, to
make sense of what I perceived as an incongruity between the data and the model, I started
looking into the concept of cognitive frames and the relevant socio-cognitive literature.
Drawing on this literature, I started re-coding all the concepts and categories which
referred to the key players‟ activities by conducting a frame analysis (Goffman, 1974;
Kaplan, 2008; Orlikowski and Gash, 1994). I identified cognitive frames from individual or
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group statements made in interviews and meeting minutes, looking for similarities across
statements. To my surprise, I found more similarities than I expected within actors that had
similar formal positions and roles in the change process (see Figure 1 below). I identified
cognitive frames‟ content by classifying people‟s interpretations and viewpoints expressed in
their statements, while I identified frames‟ structures by comparing the ways in which people
crafted their statements and by contrasting the relative number of issues included in each
frame and the extent to which actors‟ statements were displaying certainty (Fiol, 1994).
Crucial in this stage was the constant iterative process of comparison recommended
by the grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). I iterated between raw data,
emerging categories of frame content and structure and the related literature in order to settle
on overarching categories and their interconnections. I also constantly compared the two
organizations, analyzing the data collected for the two cases in turn and in parallel (e.g.
Orlikowski, 1993). The initial categories of frame content and structures were contrasted and
qualified through this process of comparison. This iteration between data and conceptual
categories ended only when data analysis reached what Glaser and Strauss (1967) called
“theoretical saturation”, that is, the situation in which enough categories and associated
concepts have been defined to explain what had been observed in both the cases and when no
additional data were found to add to the scheme of categories identified.
To corroborate the interpretations made, emerging concepts were checked for
representativeness by examining them across participants (Miles and Huberman, 1984; Yin,
1984). To ensure validity, concepts were also validated with triangulation, actively searching
for, and trying to give meaning to, differences found across data sources (multiple informants
at different levels of the organization), across the two organizations, and across data
collection methods (e.g. interviews and archival materials). For example, minutes of the
executive committee were confronted with ex-post reconstructions given in the interviews.
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Finally, two key players per each organization (a component of the development team and a
target manager) were asked to provide feed-back and comments on an executive report
summarizing the findings of the study per each organization.
3. Research Results
The process of IT-enabled organizational change surrounding the introduction of
distributed work in the two organizations is illustrated in Figure 1. The figure shows the
categories and concepts emerged as salient from data analysis and how they interact with
each other. The model is proposed as a formulation of the key concepts and categories
involved in a process of IT-enabled organizational change. No claim is made that this model
describes exhaustively every IT-enabled organizational change process. Thus, this process
model should, and hopefully will, be enriched and modified by other studies. Below I
describe the categories and the arrows depicted in Figure 1, “walking” through the figure
following the order suggested by the numbers reported in the figure.
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FIGURE 1 – Process of IT-enabled Organizational Change around Distributed Work
(Key Concepts and Interactions Generated via Alpha and Omega‟s Case Studies)
Four players had a key role in the process of developing and implementing an IT-
enabled distributed work program in the two organizations: initiator of the change;
development team; target managers; target employees. Each of these key players engaged in
a set of activities critical for the introduction of IT-enabled change in the two organizations.
These activities are reported in the boxes corresponding to each key player (boxes 1, 2, 3, 4 in
Figure 1). For example, in both Alpha and Omega the introduction of distributed work has
been initiated by a single crucial sponsor of the change, which first recognized some
problems or opportunities in the organizational and environmental context, envisioning
information technologies as the solution; and defining general objectives for a organizational
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change program designed around those technologies (Box no. 1).
Importantly, the actions of these key players had been influenced by the different
cognitive templates that each of these actors used to interpret three key elements of the
change initiative (CS= change strategy; CI= change implementation; NC= nature of
change), which are detailed below as three separate domains of cognitive frames‟ content. As
said, building explicitly on the tradition of socio-cognitive research (Berger and Luckmann,
1966; Gioia, 1986; Weick, 1979), I labeled these templates as “cognitive frames”.
Consistently with this research, in the model cognitive frames “serve as vehicles for people‟s
understanding and action” (Gioia 1986, p. 50), by being located in between, and constructed
through, the interactions among actors (Goffman, 1974). From this perspective, each player‟s
cognitive frame (depicted in the four ovals in Figure 1) has two primary functions in the
model. First, serving as input into the actor‟s decision-making process and behavior,
cognitive frames shape “how actors see the world and their own interests…actors make
choices and act from within that understanding (Kaplan 2008, p. 732; emphasis added). This
first function of frames is symbolized by the set of arrows identified by the a subscript in
Figure 1 (respectively, 1a, 2a, 3a, 4a for each key player). At the same time, cognitive frames
are also vehicles to influence, mobilize, and communicate with other actors as the change
initiative unfolds. This function of frames has been studied extensively, mostly at the field
level, in the social movement literature (for review see Benford et al., 2000), but it has also
been recently addressed in intra-organizational analyses of cognitive frames (Kaplan, 2008).
This function is symbolized with the set of arrows identified by the b subscript in Figure 1
(respectively, 1b, 2b, 3b for each key player)2.
2 In Figure 1 there is no arrow 4b signaling the use of TE’s cognitive frame to mobilize the action of other actors
by conveying TE’s frame about the change initiative. This is because I didn’t detect mobilization attempts by
target employees in any of the two organizations. However, this may be due to data limitations, as most
probably target employees used their frames to influence other actors in the change initiative, for example
managers or colleagues. These influence attempts apparently did not have any significant impact on the actual
outcomes of the change, and have not left empirical traces in the history of the two changes.
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It is important to note here that the particular sequence of the change process found in the
data is part of the findings emerging from the field studies. As depicted in Figure 1, the
process of IT-enabled change in the two organizations evolved though an apparently linear,
almost hierarchically shaped, sequence, going from the initiator of the change to the targets of
the change (i.e. managers and employees). This does not mean that the change envisioned at
the beginning was faithfully translated into outcomes via linear reactions from the actors
targeted for change. Quite the opposite, in both cases the trajectories of change have been
marked by unexpected turning points, while the meaning itself of the change initiative was
transformed via the interaction of actors‟ different cognitive frames (see section below).
However, the linear sequence depicted in Figure 1 has two important implications on how to
interpret the findings of this study. First, it indicates that individuals or groups occupying a
similar formal position and role (in the organization and, more specifically, in the change
initiative) have been found to have similar cognitive frames about the change initiative.
Second, it indicates that each key player cognitive frame has been influenced much more
significantly from the frames of their immediate counterparts in the change process rather
than from other actors‟ frames (e.g. target employees were more influenced by the frames of
target managers rather than by those of the development team). Both these findings were not
expected at the beginning of the study and they are quite remarkable as they emerge from a
comparative analysis of two very different organizations. The implication of these findings
for the socio-cognitive literature will be elaborated in the discussion session.
In terms of the content of the key players‟ cognitive frames, I empirically identified three
specific content domains of cognitive frames as salient in the process of change:
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1. Change Strategy (CS), which refers to people‟s understanding of why the organization
is pursuing IT-enable organizational change. It includes their understanding of the
motivation or vision of other organization actors sponsoring the change;
2. Change Implementation (CI), which refers to people's understanding of how the
proposed change is likely to be implemented in the context of the organization, the
likely or actual conditions and consequences associated with change implementation;
3. Nature of Change (NC), which refers to people's understanding of the change
program, including the core element/focus of the program. Differently from CS, this
category includes people‟s understanding of their own motivation to join the change.
Data concerning these frame domains for each of the key players involved in the two
organizations are reported in Figure 2 and 3 below. Although identified empirically, these
three categories are consistent with other frame domains identified by socio-cognitive studies
of IT adoption and organizational change (Davidson, 2006; Orlikowski and Gash, 1994).
Finally, I found that the key players‟ cognitive frames and activities have been influenced
by the organizational and environmental context in which the change was embedded and
unfolding over time (arrow 5). Table 2 below describes the environmental and organizational
context of IT-enabled change in the two organizations. For example, the cognitive frames of
the initiators of the change in the two organizations have been influenced by the
environmental context to which these actors were exposed. At the same time, in drawing on
their contexts to articulate their cognitive frames, actors also reinforce those contexts (arrow
6), often unintentionally. In this respect, the model shares the premise of structuration theory
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(Giddens, 1984) that human action and structural context interact and reciprocally influence
each other over time, as other studies of IT-enabled change (e.g. Orlikowski, 1993).
In the next two sections, I provide the empirical evidence collected on these concepts for
each of the two cases3. Specifically, the first section is devoted to a description of the key
players‟ activities and the content of their cognitive frames, while the second section
describes the process through which these frames evolved. Where not differently indicated,
the quotes reported in the sections 3.1 and 3.2 below refer to interviews with the study
participants. I used a standard convention to refer to interviewees in each quote, indicating
first the formal position of the interviewee in the organization, second a letter indicating the
organization (A for Alpha and O for Omega) and an anonymous number for each respondent
(e.g. A1), finally the key player group in which I classified the respondent (e.g. DT for
development group).
3 Despite analytically distinct, the two categories of “reacting to change” and “experiencing change” have been discussed under the same
section for convenience and for the sake of brevity.
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Table 2: Context of IT-enabled Change in Alpha and Omega
Categories Concepts Data (Alpha) Data (Omega)
Organizational
Context
Strategy
Being the leading
County government in
the nation, providing
more timely and higher
quality public services
to citizens, by
leveraging on new
information
technologies for
regional development
Dominate the market
for translation and
localization services at
the global level, by
leveraging on new
information
technologies for
market growth and
organizational
efficiency
Organization
Structure and
Culture
Functional structure
Highly formalized and
centralized
Low level of internal
mobility across
functions
Bureaucratic and
lifetime employment
culture
“ Job security” as
shared belief
Project organization
Low level of
formalization and
centralization
High level of internal
mobility across
projects
Market and
meritocratic culture
“Pay for performance”
as shared belief
IT
PC workstations widely
diffused and used
Limited use of
groupware IT for
collaboration
PC workstations
widely diffused, but
used mostly for
individual work
No use of groupware
IT for collaboration
Environmental
Context
Labour
Regulation
No temporary contracts
allowed (public
regulation)
Temporary free-lance
contracts allowed
(private regulation)
Competition
Fall of public
monopolies in utilities
creates competition
from private actors
Increasing global
competition on price
and time-to-market
IT New groupware and
internet technologies
available
New groupware and
internet technologies
available
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FIGURE 2 – Key Players‟ Frames (Alpha)
FIGURE 3 - Key Players‟ Frames (Omega)
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3.1. The Process of IT-enabled Organizational Change in Alpha
3.1.1 Envisioning Change (Initiator of Change)
The idea of introducing distributed work in Alpha was launched in March 1998 by the
County Councilor for Internal Affairs (the initiator of change, IC). Stimulated by a series of
environmental changes and by recent changes in the organization structure and strategy of
Alpha, the County Councilor perceived IT-enabled distributed work as a fundamental piece
of a major transition of the County‟s public administration:
“Times were ripe for a major innovation in our administration, it‟s sort of a long story…it
dates back at least a few years before with the increasing computerization of our
administrative offices and with the new labor regulation, which introduced a standardized
evaluation system for all public employees…all these initiatives were directed to make us the
most efficient and citizen-centered County‟s administration in our country…in this context, I
thought that we were well ready to be the first administration in the Nation to introduce
distributed work on a wide basis…” (county councilor, A1, IC).
Described by his consultants at the time as “resolute” and “very confident” to become the
promoter of this major with Alpha, the County Councilor had very ambitious and optimistic
objectives for his “jewel project”, estimating that the distributed work program would
involve 250 people, within two years of the change introduction. What was defined at the
time as the "Distributed Work Strategic Project" had three types of objectives: 1) Improving
employees‟ satisfaction and work/life balance, by offering commuting workers the
opportunity to work closer to their homes and families; 2) Improving organizational
efficiency, by reducing the county‟s administration costs for office spaces and by increasing
employees‟ productivity via IT use; 3) Reducing pollution and traffic in the region, by
reducing work-related commuting. In other words, as described in the official document
launching the project, distributed work was expected to be the “ultimate revolution of the
public workplace”.
23
Notably, the initiative was envisioned as having broad community, economic and
organizational objectives, but the type and function of information technologies expected to
support distributed work –and to increase employees‟ productivity- were not mentioned or
specified in this phase of the program.
3.1.2 Planning Change (Development Team)
After the approval of the project by the County Council, the Councilor constituted a
committee including 8 people (6 Alpha‟s senior managers and 2 external consultants expert
in distributed work initiatives). Acting as a development team of the initiative, this committee
held a fundamental role in defining the scope of the IT-enabled change by formalizing a
planning document to set the "Guidelines for the Adoption of Distributed Work in Alpha".
Several decisions were formalized in this document, which constituted the platform
for the implementation of distributed work in the subsequent stages of the change process.
First, the team decided to start experimenting distributed work only in the form of home-base
remote working on employees to be selected on the basis of three requirements: 1) daily
commuting employees; 2) administrative jobs; 3) subject to approval by the manager
supervising the employee, which had to evaluate whether the job of the “candidate”
distributed worker is "suitable to be carried out at distance". Following these guidelines, a
questionnaire was distributed to employees to determine their willingness to work from home
and their level of daily commuting. 90 "candidate distributed workers" were identified
through this survey. However, only 10% of the supervising managers approved the
experimentation of distributed work for their subordinate employees, yielding a final number
of 12 distributed workers, against the initial target of 250 employees. Importantly, most of
these employees belonged to different organizational units, jeopardizing the change initiative
and its expected benefits in terms of reduction of office spaces‟ cost.
24
Close examination of the committee‟s meeting minutes and interview data reveals an
interesting scenario behind the decision-making process of the team. Indeed, members of the
committee knew which selective organizational interventions were necessary to achieve the
objectives of the change program:
“It became increasingly clear to us that the distributed work initiative had to reach a
sufficient scale to meet the set objectives …the distribution of workers was also extensively
discussed…if we had to obtain the expected real estate costs‟ reduction, we had to have a
group of at least 2/3 distributed workers in each organizational unit, or, alternatively a desk-
sharing program across units…but all these changes were just too radical for our
organization and I personally believe that no one, starting from the Councilor, was ready for
that at the time…” (manager, A6, DT).
Paradoxically, despite they were aware of changes necessary to accomplish the
project‟s objectives, member of the Alpha‟s development team never actually proposed those
interventions. This was for two primary reasons.
First, they believed that the Councilor was actually more interested in a quick
realization of the project in order to earn the political and electoral gains of the innovation as
soon as possible, rather than being seriously committed to a long-term radical change of
Alpha‟s organization:
“one of the main reasons why this initiative was launched was that distributed work was
„cool‟ for the external reputation of the County organization…what the councilor was really
interested in was to make headlines in the newspapers…they want people to believe we are
always first…saying that we were adopting distributed work was an opportunity to
demonstrate to the public that our administration was innovative and ahead of other
administrations…”(manager, A7, DT).
“we examined several alternatives before formalizing the guidelines…however, at some point
we started procrastinating all those solutions which required more time and effort in the
implementation…we knew we were on a fast track and that the councilor wanted us to get
things done as quickly as possible, so those guidelines were the more reasonable solution in
that situation” (manager, A5, DT).
25
This evidence supports the finding that the shared cognitive frame of the development
team‟s members was influenced by the way they interpreted the cognitive frame and actions
of the initiator of change (arrow 2c in Figure 1). More than an acontextual problem-solving
process on how to accomplish a set of objectives, what we observe here is a cognitive process
in situ, by which different interacting parties adapt solutions and actions to the context that
they “see”, via their situated understanding of each other‟s interests.
Second, members of Alpha‟s development team had a much more pessimistic view
on change implementation than the councilor, anticipating that a radical change would have
provoked "obstructionist" reactions by managers, which would be afraid of losing part of
their control and power on distributed workers due to physical distance:
“I was surprised to discover that almost all the directors and senior managers in the team
expected a lot of resistance from the managers supervising the employees…I guess, this is
due to the fact that Alpha‟s culture is predominantly based on physical presence and direct
control….so, we (i.e. the members of the development team) thought to anticipate managers‟
reactions, by focusing on those employees which had “objectively justifiable” reasons to
work at distance” (manager, A8, DT).
“We thought a preliminary identification of the employees who actually needed to work at
distance, for personal and family reasons, would have been helpful for the managers
supervising those employees… this should have provided a sort of “objective” basis from
which we could have better negotiated with the managers on the terms and conditions of the
initiative….that seemed a good idea at the time…..however, in retrospect I believe that it
wasn‟t….probably it was the only feasible solution, though…. Nobody in the team really
believed in a really radically change, so any other alternative sounded like proposing to
“shoot for the moon” (consultant A2, DT).
3.1.3 Reacting to Change (Target Managers) and Practicing Change (Target Employees)
Despite the attempts of Alpha‟s DT to avoid managers‟ resistance, manager‟s first
reaction to distributed work‟s introduction was indeed opposition because they perceived the
initiative as a top-down imposition by the committee:
“I remember that one day I received a written communication by them, asking for my
approval on distributed work…..they wanted me to allow one of my people to work outside
the office because she had commuting problems…I had heard about distributed work, but I
was expecting them to first ask us which of our employees was best suited to work at a
26
distance…I mean, if you want my approval, you don‟t send me a letter asking me YES or
NO…they didn‟t even know who are the employees they were talking about! We, who are
everyday here, know who the employees are and who is more responsible and accountable
among them….” (manager, A12, TM, emphasis in original).
“I didn‟t know much about this…then one day I was contacted about one of my
collaborators, they proposed her as a candidate “teleworker” and wanted my
authorization….I thought that this could have been unfair with respect the other employees of
my unit…they would have asked me why she could work from home while they had to stay in
the office…so I said NO” (manager, A13, TM).
Alpha‟s target managers emphasized an oppositional logic, contrasting what “they”
(the members of the development team) suggested with what “we” (the target managers,
collectively intended) expected from the change initiative. In addition, target managers
predominantly understood the change initiative as a program benefiting employees, without
seeing in it real benefits for the productivity of the offices:
“…it is easy for them to propose radical changes without thinking carefully about the big
impact that those changes can have on our job, because at the end of the day we are the only
ones held accountable for the final results of our organizational units….so, they wanted us to
allow our collaborators with special needs to work outside the office, but how can we be sure
that they will get their jobs done properly then? Who will make sure that their jobs get
integrated with the work of the other employees working in the office? That distributed work
initiative could have had huge additional costs for our units, without really bringing any
benefits….”(manager, A13, TM).
“on one side, the central administration was asking our organizational units to increase the
efficiency and speed-up completion time; on the other side, there was that Councilor‟s group
asking us to relinquish control over employees that had particular commuting needs….now,
it‟s not that I don‟t want to help my collaborators if they have a problem, I care about them,
don‟t get me wrong….but I personally know the people working in my units and if they have a
personal problem they can talk with me and ask for permission to stay home…however,
allowing this on a regular permanent basis was too much….you know, coordinating people
from a distance implies more costs and time….they clearly didn‟t think carefully about this
aspect, because they didn‟t know the huge amount of work that we get done here in the
organizational units…”(manager, A11, TM).
Given their cognitive frames on the nature, implementation and strategy of the
initiative, the target managers did actually oppose resistance to the change by requesting the
27
enactment of several rules on the experimentation. For example, distributed workers were
requested to: 1) come back in the office for two days a week; 2) fill in and send, under the
control of their direct supervisors, a weekly activity-report to managers containing the
estimated amount of work to be done and the jobs actually completed in that week; 3) upon
request by managers, provide “additional evidence” of the advantages of distributed work for
executing their tasks at a distance and their commuting activity during the experimentation.
The actual practice of distributed work was a “mixed-blessing” for the target
employees participating to the initiative. On one side, most of them reported a clear
improvement in their work/life balance, as testified by a questionnaire handed by the
development team after a year from the start the change initiative. 92% of the 12 distributed
workers (11 out 12) were overall “strongly satisfied” with the initiative because of a
reduction of commuting time and the possibility to work from home. At the same time, 10 out
of 12 distributed workers complained about the relative isolation and the “feeling of
exclusion” that they felt when coming back to the offices. In addition, 11 out 12 distributed
workers reported a “lack of trust by their supervising managers” and “additional control on
their work” as the main problems that they were experiencing in practicing distributed work:
“distributed work has certainly improved my working life, but my (distributed work)
colleagues and I noticed that our supervising managers became much more focused on
controlling our tasks than non-distributed workers‟ ones…this, to be honest, is quite unfair,
but I also understand why….in general, managers here have never trusted the fact that their
collaborators could work at distance, because they feel more confident if they see them
working in the office next door, it‟s the way it works here, that‟s it…” (employee, A22, TE)
“since I have been teleworking from home, I have noticing that my colleagues in the office
started considering me as a “privileged”, perhaps because I have been the only one allowed
to work at distance in my unit, because I leave very far….this is one of the things that I don‟t
like to work at distance, both managers and other people in the office talk about us as we had
been lucky and as we work less, while I think that we actually work even more and with
tighter deadlines than our colleagues in office…” (employee, A23, TE)
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3.1.4 Outcomes of Change
Alpha‟s distributed work strategic project did not yield the expected benefits, mostly
due to the fact that the change did not reach a sufficient scale with Alpha‟s organization. The
expected social benefits of the program (such as pollution or traffic reduction) were
obviously not achieved due to the limited scale. The cost of office spaces increased rather
than decreasing, due to the installation, maintenance and support of IT at the distributed
workers' houses. Those higher expenses were not compensated by a reduction of office
spaces because distributed workers were spread among different units and buildings. This
jeopardized distribution made almost impossible the implementation of desk-sharing
practices, which were necessary for economizing on office spaces.
Despite distributed employee‟s productivity was overall higher than those of
distributed workers, the benefits of this increase were not exploited by aligning and
integrating the jobs completed by distributed workers with those of their colleagues in the
offices. The organization of work in the organizational units did not change: both employees
and their supervisors disregarded the weekly activity report, employees' tasks and activities
continued to be defined during the “return-to-the-office”. Finally, only the basic features of
the LOTUS groupware technologies installed on home workstations were used on a regular
basis. In terms of job satisfaction, employees were experiencing significant improvements in
their life quality. However, as discussed, they also reported that their work-related
relationships with managers and colleagues were worsening because of the fact that they
were seen as "privileged employees".
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3.2 The Process of IT-enabled Organizational Change in Omega
3.2.1 Envisioning Change (Initiator of Change)
In the mid-90s, Omegas‟ president envisioned the newly available information technologies
at the time as a tremendous strategic opportunity for Omega‟s growth:
“I thought that the opportunities offered by the internet and network technologies were
endless for us, at the time I was among the first in our business to perceive that we were at
the beginning of a new revolution …the biggest challenge was to extend our market and keep
the pace with competition through the use of technology, creating a global network of
translators and clients around the world…the imagery I had in mind, and again this was very
innovative for the time, was to transform our traditional company in a “distributed
community” which free-lance translators from all over the world could join, working with us
on a common technological platform…” (president, O1, IC).
This statement clearly shows that IT-enabled change was envisioned, first and foremost, as a
strategic opportunity for Omega to create a new organizational form able to exploit new
market opportunities and new economies in the translation service industry. The introduction
of IT-enabled distributed work practices in Omega‟s traditionally collocated structure of the
time was understood through the lens of this larger strategy:
“we were taking up a huge challenge and we were aware of it…a big risk was to lose the
talented translators that we had in-house and that had worked with us for years…I knew the
buzz in the company was that things were going to change radically and that people were
scared about their jobs and potential de-localization…but at the same time I knew that
change was necessary for our survival, so also our translators, which were used to work “old
style”, inside our offices each with its PC, had to get used to work together with others
outside of these walls, everywhere they were located and with more flexible times, if they
wanted to compete and keep the pace with the globalization of our business….” (president,
O1, IC).
3.2.2 Planning Change (Development Team)
At that stage, a group of three senior managers with high tenure in the company were
involved by Omega‟s president to lead the introduction of IT-enabled distributed work
practices in Omega‟s traditional work organization, acting de facto as development team for
30
the change initiative. As a member of the group recalled, the team was deeply aware of the
organizational risks implied by this change:
“One of the major concern we had at the time was how to “sell” this big change to our teams
without having them scared about their jobs and future career opportunities in Omega…most
of our workforce traditionally consisted of motivated and talented immigrants…and most of
them at the time were concerned that the real intention of the company was to downsize
through IT and bring the jobs where it was cheaper….to be honest, we were not totally sure
about the real intentions of the president behind his strategy neither…was distributed work
really an opportunity for growth or also a smart excuse to cut costs and move the main
headquarter of the company somewhere else? We know that the president is very smart but
also very political...and he is always looking forward to next big move…” (manager O3, DT)
Being aware of these problems, members of the Omega‟s development team started a lively
debate on how to introduce the idea of a distributed work, eventually coming to the crucial
decision of “not emphasizing the idea of a big shift to a new globally dispersed work
community” (Manager O3, DT) that the president had in mind. The decision of the DT‟s
managers was purposeful and informed by the concerns that they had about the likely
reactions of project managers and employees targeted in the change:
“we thought that the idea of an approaching “revolution” could have been scary for the
translators…plus, to us the more interesting aspect of the president‟s vision was the idea of
introducing these new technologies for information storage and retrieval, which had the
potential of truly changing the way we used to work…” (manager O4, DT).
“as project managers ourselves, we knew that our translators and managers are motivated to
maximize their productivity because here it works like the more you are efficient, the more
you get paid, for translators, it all depends on the amount of words and text that they will be
able to translate in a given amount of time…so, a tool reducing the amount of time per
translation could have meant more work done in less time for translators and managers, and
so more money for everyone…that turned out to be the most powerful message we could think
of “ (manager O2, DT).
However, at the time, DT‟s managers did not know and were not confident with the new
tools, so they started talking with Omega‟s software engineers. The development team
embarked in a series of informal “IT training sessions” with a member of the IT group, which
31
informally became another member of Omega‟s DT. He “walked” the three managers
through the functionalities and use of the new proprietary technology:
”I recall our first reaction was overwhelmingly positive, the benefits of using the software for
collaboration and text retrieval became immediately clear to all of us….at first it didn‟t
appear easy to use, but the general sense was that the new system could save all of us lots of
time and effort, allowing members of a project and clients to work and communicate on the
same page wherever they were” (manager O3, DT).
Galvanized by the potential of the new software, the three senior managers thought to extend
the training sessions to all Omega‟s managers and translators. They launched a “voluntary
training program” with the aim of illustrating the main features of the new IT-system and its
benefits for handling translation projects, while at the same time introducing the idea of a
distributed work program as an additional “benefit” of the new software allowing managers
and translators to coordinate their work at distance. Differently than in Alpha, senior
managers, decided to not formalize rules for the initiative, defining 4 general principles: 1)
each Omega employee was allowed to voluntarily join the initiative of distributed work
independently from their formal position (managers, translators, etc.); 2) distributed workers
were not subjected to specific and distinctive contractual arrangements (their tasks and roles
remained the same, although the way they were expected to perform their tasks was much
more IT-intensive, given the use of the new system); 3) the periodic evaluation of distributed
workers on a project was decentralized to the manager of that project; 4) the experimentation
of distributed work could have been terminated in case of repeated negative performance
evaluations by different managers across different projects.
3.2.3 Reacting to Change (Target Managers) and Practicing Change (Target Employees)
With time, the reaction of project managers and translators to the voluntary training program
was overwhelmingly positive. While an initial group of 10 people, between managers and
32
translators, were attending the first sessions of the training program, the development team
started receiving more and more requests to extend the training sessions, eventually
organizing two other training programs, each involving 25 people in the organizations. As
expected by the development team, the attention of both managers and translators focused on
the beneficial effects of the technologies for handling projects. The distributed work program
was understood in the context of the new technologies.
“I believe these tools really changed our jobs, as they allowed us to handle more projects
than before and to coordinate translators starting from a common shared platform….it used
to be that coordination here happened in long meetings which were often a total waste of
time or that we (ie, the project managers) had to integrate the pieces of work done by
different translators, which had different formats, styles, etc……the problem with that, I
think, was that much information typically was getting lost and then it was our job to go back
and retrieve information to get translators back on track….with the new tools, this became
much easier not only for us, but for the translators as well….and yes, with the help of these
tools it became much easier also managing people at a distance, because all the members of
a team could see how we were proceeding…” (manager O9, TM).
“the new tools certainly facilitated our jobs and the possibility of working a distance, by
keeping us on what each other is doing….it is also a great benefit for me, as I live far from
the office and I can now stay home with my kids if I need…I think all project managers here
are fine with this approach....they can now monitor what we are doing much more effectively
with these tools….no matter where we are, we all use these tools now, so it‟s sort of
indifferent whether we work home, in the office, or in a coffee bar….” (translator O6, TE).
3.2.4 Outcomes of Change
In less than a year since the end of the training session, the practice of distributed work
became established in Omega as a normal alternative to the collocated work. The firm
obtained important economies through reduction of office spaces: before the experimentation,
Omega‟s employees were spread in 10 offices, 5 of which were closed in 2000 after the
diffusion of distributed work. Perhaps more importantly, significant improvements in terms
of projects‟ completion time and productivity had been reported after the initiative. For
example, between 1997 and 1999, the costs of communicating and transferring documents
with clients and translators dropped from 10% to 2,5% of revenues.
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3.3 Framing Processes and IT-enabled Organizational Change in the two Cases
It is interesting to note that the cognitive frames of the organizational members evolved in
very different ways in the two organizations. In this section, I describe and compare these
different framing dynamics detected and elaborate on the mechanisms connecting these
dynamics and the resulting change outcomes.
3.3.1 Framing Processes in Alpha
The evolution of key players‟ cognitive frames in Alpha is depicted in Figure 4:
FIGURE 4 – Framing Dynamics in Alpha: Frame Narrowing and Frame Ossification
As illustrated, Alpha‟s change initiative was initially framed broadly by the county
councilor, including economic, organizational and social objectives, which were tapping into
34
the interests of different constituencies (respectively, the county organization, the employees,
the community). The term “broad” refers to the number of different issues represented in the
frame (Fiol 1994). The number of issues contained in a frame has also a political meaning, as
different issues correspond to different constituencies‟ interests. The term is used here in
relative terms, compared to the cognitive frames used by the other organization members to
interpret the same change initiative.
Because of their pessimistic view on change implementation, members of the
development team modified the frame proposed by the initiator of change via two re-framing
processes. They simultaneously narrow and re-focus the initial frame, by, respectively,
eliminating and changing the salience of some of the issues contained in the IC‟s frame. For
example, they de facto eliminated some of the initial objectives of the initiative (i.e. reduction
of office spaces‟ costs). They also re-focused the IC‟s frame, changing the salience among its
primary elements (i.e. employees‟ telecommuting needs and employees‟ satisfaction became
more salient objectives while the expected increase in offices‟ productivity was de-
emphasized), thereby procrastinating the involvement in the change initiative of the
constituencies that could have benefited from the achievement of those objectives (i.e.
supervising managers). The resulting frame was significantly narrower than the initial one.
Quite paradoxically, despite the intent of the development team was precisely to avoid
managers‟ resistance, managers actually opposed such a narrow frame because they felt
excluded from the program, re-interpreting distributed work as an initiative benefiting
uniquely employees and possibly jeopardizing the coordination of their organizational units
by reducing their control on employees‟ workflow. Target managers complicated DT‟s
frame, by including, for example, new rules and procedures to be respected for employees to
join the initiative. Thus, TM‟s frame focused only on the interests of a sub-category of
employees (i.e. those respecting certain task and commuting requirements), thereby further
35
narrowing the frame on the change initiative. Eventually, this narrow and complicated frame
prevented the IT-enabled change to widely diffuse in the organization, marginalizing
distributed workers –stigmatized as “privileged employees”- in the eyes of their supervisors
and peers. As a result, target employees started perceiving the change as a “benefit program”
for employees with special needs. This led to an additional narrowing of the frame. Through
this process, productivity- and technology-related issues were definitely eliminated from the
meanings attributed to the word “distributed work” within Alpha. Interestingly, despite the
actual positive effects of change on distributed work‟ productivity and the organizational
effort to re-frame the initiative around these positive productivity effects, the negative
perception of distributed work as an “employees‟ benefit program” persisted in the
organization. In other words, the frame of distributed work became ossified in the
organization, displaying rigidity to re-framing attempts, resisting reversing changes.
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3.3.2 Framing Processes in Omega
The evolution of key players‟ cognitive frames in Omega is depicted in Figure 5:
FIGURE 5 – Framing Dynamics in Omega: Frame Broadening and Frame Embedding
In Omega, the president‟s frame predominantly focused on the need and opportunity
to create a new distributed organization form via IT tools. In this frame, the “new”
organizational form was contrasted to the “old” collocated organization to be transformed.
This frame was relatively narrow, focusing on the interests of one constituency (i.e. the
benefits of the new organization for Omega‟s owner and shareholders), de-emphasizing the
existing Omega‟s organization at the time (i.e. collocated project managers and translators) as
relevant audiences and constituencies of the change initiative.
37
Omega‟s development team broadened this initial frame, including new elements such
as the advantages of the new IT tools for Omega‟s managers and employees. In doing so, the
development team embedded the potentially conflicting elements of the initial frame in the
context of a broader message targeting also translators and project managers as key
constituencies of the change. Broadening the initially narrow frame to the interests of
multiple constituencies and re-calibrating the salience of possible conflicting elements,
Omega‟s development team effectively mobilized project managers and employees by acting
on their motivation to join the change and by creating a common perception of inclusion and
participation in the rest of the organization.
Despite positively reacting to the DT‟s initiative of the training program, the target
managers initially re-narrowed the frame, by focusing mostly on the benefits of the new
information technologies for the management of projects (e.g. the benefits for themselves).
The capability of the new technology of supporting geographically dispersed distributed work
became a secondary issue for target managers. Only once the use of the new IT tools became
a routine integrated into new work practices, target employees eventually re-broaden the
frame on the initiative by using the new IT tools also as a platform to work at distance. From
this perspective, the broad frame devised by the development team turned out to be very
flexible, malleably adapting to the interests of different actors, which creatively re-framed the
initial message of the development team serving as a platform allowing different schemes of
interpretation to emerge around the change initiative.
4. Discussion and Conclusions
While Alpha and Omega both intended to implement a major IT-enabled
organizational change with the introduction of IT systems for distributed work, the two
organizations differ significantly in how effectively they were able to achieve their change
38
objectives. Contrasting Alpha and Omega on a common set of concepts though a grounded
theory comparative analysis method, this paper shows that these differences can be attributed
to variations in: 1) the context of the IT-enabled change (environmental and organizational);
2) the interpretative process by which the key players involved in the change understood the
strategy, implementation and nature of the change via their cognitive frames, which shaped
their actions and reactions about the change. Importantly, the model emphasizes how these
two factors (context and framing processes) interact to produce change outcomes.
In this respect, the paper makes three distinctive contributions to the socio-cognitive
literature on cognitive frames and organizational change.
First, the findings point to the importance of a dynamic view of framing, showing that
effective cognitive frames may differ during the different phases of an organizational change.
Specifically, the cognitive frames adopted in the initial phases of a change initiative (i.e.
envisioning and planning) are particular important for change outcomes, as they shape
subsequent actions and reactions of the actors targeted in a change initiative. This finding is
consistent with previous studies emphasizing the importance of "windows of opportunity"
occurring soon after IT-related changes were introduced and in which most successful
adaptations were likely to occur (Tyre and Orlikowski, 1994). The paper adds to this finding,
illustrating how windows of opportunity for change can be strategically enlarged (as in
Omega) or unexpectedly closed (as in Alpha) through the framing processes enacted by
actors involved in the change. The important implication here is to focus attention on the
timing of a process of change, looking at the “cognitive turning points” –events though which
some key actors are able to re-shape the perspective from which an initiative had been
initially envisioned- as critical junctions of a change process. The re-framing process enacted
by Alpha‟s development team is particularly instructive in this respect, shifting the trajectory
originally planned by the change initiator.
39
The second contribution is related to the central question of what type of cognitive
frames can be more conducive to effective change, pointing to the importance of specific
frame structures and frame contents which can facilitate change.
In terms of frame structures, findings reveal that adopting narrow frames (including
one or few constituencies as targets of the change) in the early stages of a change program
can generate resistance to change. When a change initiative involves different organizational
units and hierarchical levels in an organization, as it is often the case, a narrow frame crafted
from the perspective of one constituency can be perceived as un-balanced and asymmetric by
different organizational actors. As a result, the constituencies not included in the frame can
feel excluded from the change process or simply struggle to understand the rationale for
change from their perspective. In contrast, broad frames can allow a diverse set of
constituencies to recognize their interests in the frame. These results are consistent with Fiol
(1994)‟s findings that broad frames can encompass a diversity of perspectives and are
therefore conducive to organizational learning. This finding calls for more systematic
analysis of frame structures, moving away from purely content issues and looking in
particular at the political origins and consequences of the frame breadth. A practical
implication here is to give careful consideration to the number and type of relevant
stakeholders when planning a change initiative, crafting the communication around the
initiative accordingly, and possibly enlarging the number of constituencies to be involved in
the initial stages of a change process.
In terms of frame content, effective frames have been shown to be consistent with
core characteristics of the formal structure of an organization (such as the type of
compensation schemes or the degree of centralization and formalization characterizing an
organizational structure), while at the same time exhibiting some degrees of inconsistency
and novelty in order to signal the need and opportunity for change. For example, in Alpha the
40
frame developed by the development team was disruptive of routines well established in the
history of the organization, such as a culture of control based on physical presence.
Predominantly framing distributed work as “changing the physical location of single
employees” was not consistent with the culture of the organization. In contrast, in Omega the
distributed work initiative was embedded in the context of the opportunities offered by the
new technologies for improving the existing working practices of the organization. This
frame was familiar and consistent with the existing organizational structure, while at the same
time signaling the necessity of a change in existing routines. Generally, the content of
effective frames for change detected in the study balances elements of “new” and “old”, fit
and misfit, consistency and inconsistency, with respect to the status quo. This finding recalls
the notion of robust design developed by Hargadon and Douglas (2001) to explain how
Edison carefully embedded the features of his disruptive inventions in existing
institutionalized understandings.
The third contribution concerns how frames are connected to features of the
organizational structure in which the framing activity is taking place. The study shows that
there is a relationship of reciprocal influence between formal organizational structure and
cognitive frames. On one side, as discussed in section 3.1, actors‟ position in the formal
organization has been found to influence their cognitive frames, as individuals or groups
occupying a similar formal role had shown similar cognitive frames about the change. On the
other side, the findings indicate that the effect of cognitive frames on actors‟ actions and
reactions may vary depending on the formal structure in which actors are embedded. For
example, the negative effect of a narrow frame on Alpha‟s managers‟ reactions could have
been reinforced by the fact that Alpha‟s organizational structure was highly formalized. In a
formalized organized setting, positions, roles and status categories are more crisply defined
than in a less formalized setting. As a consequence, a narrow framing for change is more
41
likely to be interpreted in a rigid way in formalized work environment. In a world made of
well-defined categories, narrow frames are thereby more likely to generate a perception of
exclusion and misunderstanding. These findings contribute to the exploration of contingent
effects on framing activity which have been recently called for in the socio-cognitive
literature (Kaplan 2008, p. 746), highlighting formal organizational structure and positions as
important sources of individual and cognitive frames. In addition, this finding opens up new
directions for research on how formal organizational structure, by constraining social
interactions, can influence the process through which cognitive frames evolve and become
aligned in a change initiative. The practical implication of this for change managers is to
think ahead and pay attention at how groups and individuals that have different formal
positions are likely to differently perceive a change initiative.
Taken together, these findings go beyond the traditional analysis of cognitive frames
in IT-enabled organizational change, typically analyzing the level of congruence among the
frames adopted by different stakeholders (e.g. Orlikowski and Gash, 1994). Despite analyses
of frame congruence have been pioneering in contributing to this area of study, research on
cognitive frames and technological change is now ready to go deeper in the mechanisms
connecting framing and organizational outcomes (Davidson, 2006; Kaplan, 2008). This paper
contributes to this research agenda by enriching the repertoires of frame content and
structures possibly conductive to effective change; and by pointing to formal organizational
structure as a source of cognitive frames and as a factor interacting with framing processes to
influence the change process.
This study also has some important limitations and boundary conditions. First,
findings may be biased by some data and methodological limitations. For example, the fact
that interview data have been collected after the change was implemented might have biased
the interviewee‟s responses because they had already observed change outcomes. Similarly,
42
relying on actors‟ ex-post reconstructions provided in the interviews could have led to an
underestimation of the interactions among the identified groups of key players while the
change was unfolding and, possibly, to overestimating the similarity among cognitive frames
within the groups. Although it is certainly true that I did not observe the real-time process of
frame alignment as this was unfolding at the time of the change, this bias should be mitigated
by the fact that I also used archival material and documents to reconstruct the events –
including many actors‟ interactions such as meetings- of the change process. Second, the
process model developed does not include several concepts which have been proven to
influence IT-enabled organizational change in previous studies, such as the material and
functional aspects of the technology (Leonardi and Barley, 2008), the features of tasks and
routines (Walsh et. al., 1988) and social networks (Barley, 1986). Some of these factors (i.e.
functionalities of technology; tasks) were initially included in our preliminary list of
categories, but they eventually resulted not salient for explaining variations in the process and
outcomes of change in the two organizations examined. A challenge for future research on
IT-enabled organizational change will be to enrich a socio-cognitive perspective, focused on
cognitive frames as emerging from people‟s interaction, with a situated understanding of the
material, technological, and organizational contexts in which the change unfolds.
43
Acknowledgements
I thank Stefano Brusoni, Hans Frankort, Gianvito Lanzolla and Vangelis Souitaris for their
comments on early versions of this paper. Remaining errors are my sole responsibility.
44
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