The Dynamics of (De)Stigmatization: Boundary construction in the nascent category of organic farming

This study finds that it is possible for organizations in emerging categories to resist stigmatization through discursive reconstruction of the central and distinctive characteristics of the category in question. We examined the emerging market of organic farming in Finland and discovered how resistance to stigmatization was both an internal and an external power struggle in the organic farming community. Over time, the label of organic farming was manipulated and the practice of farming was associated with more conventional and familiar contexts, while the stigma was diverted at the same time to biodynamic farming. We develop a process model for removal of stigma from a nascent category through stigma diversion. We find that stigma diversion forces the core community to (re)define themselves in relation to the excluded community and the mainstream. We also discuss how notoriety can be an individuating phenomenon that helps categorical members conduct identity work and contributes to stigma removal.

Data-Driven Materials Science: Status, Challenges, and Perspectives

Data-driven science is heralded as a new paradigm in materials science. In this field, data is the new resource, and knowledge is extracted from materials datasets that are too big or complex for traditional human reasoning-typically with the intent to discover new or improved materials or materials phenomena. Multiple factors, including the open science movement, national funding, and progress in information technology, have fueled its development. Such related tools as materials databases, machine learning, and high-throughput methods are now established as parts of the materials research toolset. However, there are a variety of challenges that impede progress in data-driven materials science: data veracity, integration of experimental and computational data, data longevity, standardization, and the gap between industrial interests and academic efforts. In this perspective article, the historical development and current state of data-driven materials science, building from the early evolution of open science to the rapid expansion of materials data infrastructures are discussed. Key successes and challenges so far are also reviewed, providing a perspective on the future development of the field.

Contestation about Collaboration: Discursive Boundary Work among Professions

We examine how professions responded to a potential change in jurisdictional boundaries by analyzing the written submissions of five professional associations in reaction to a government proposal to strengthen interprofessional collaboration, relating these responses to the professions’ field positions. We identify four foci for framing used by the professions to discursively develop their boundary claims: (1) framing the issue of interprofessional collaboration (issue framing), (2) framing of justifications for favored solutions (justifying), (3) framing the profession’s own identity (self-casting), and (4) framing other professions’ identities (altercasting). We find that professions employed these foci differently depending on two dimensions of their field positions – status and centrality. Our study contributes to the literature by identifying distinctive ways through which the foci for framing may be mobilized in situations of boundary contestation, and by theorizing how field position in terms of status and centrality influences actors’ framing strategies.

Framing the Change: Switching and Blending Frames and their Role in Instigating Institutional Change

Taken-for-granted cognitive schemas form a core aspect of institutions. Whilst much is known about their effects, past research has not yet detailed and formalized how individual actors are able to initiate changes to such institutionalized schemas, reframe their circumstances and how, in turn, such a provisional reframing may itself evolve into a taken-for-granted schema. In this article, we argue that changes to existing institutions come about when actors engage in discursive processes of frame shifting or frame blending by which they articulate alternative or combined schematizations and succeed in building up common ground around the novel cognitive template. We elaborate a set of propositional arguments for when and how actors are more likely to initiate and realize institutional change by either discursively marking the contrast with prior cognitive schemas or by scaling these up into a broader understanding.

How our Frames Direct Us: A Poker Experiment

We adapt Erving Goffman’s (1974) frame analysis to discover how frames shape individuals’ decisions in a poker-based experiment. The frames that surfaced in our subjects’ verbalizations suggest the ways in which they form very different impressions of “what is going on” in an identical situation. Our findings revealed that people’s frames drive the information they attend to in a situation, the interpretation they put on that information, and the way they synthesize the information to make a decision. The thematic frames that emerged differed dramatically across groups of individuals; they also were cohesive, multifaceted, and relatively few in number. As a result they were predictive: one could foretell a person’s behavior across multiple situations given the consistency in the frame adopted. In most cases, frames also revealed a significant mismatch with the requirements of the situation. Management scholars and practitioners would be wise to be more alert to frames which can do as much to derail effective decision-making as to facilitate it.

Science or Science Fiction? Professionals’ Discursive Construction of Climate Change

This paper examines the framings and identity work associated with professionals’ discursive construction of climate change science, their legitimation of themselves as experts on ‘the truth’, and their attitudes towards regulatory measures. Drawing from survey responses of 1077 professional engineers and geoscientists, we reconstruct their framings of the issue and knowledge claims to position themselves within their organizational and their professional institutions. In understanding the struggle over what constitutes and legitimizes expertise, we make apparent the heterogeneity of claims, legitimation strategies, and use of emotionality and metaphor. By linking notions of the science or science fiction of climate change to the assessment of the adequacy of global and local policies and of potential organizational responses, we contribute to the understanding of ‘defensive institutional work’ by professionals within petroleum companies, related industries, government regulators, and their professional association.