IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/respol/v49y2020i1s004873331930201x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why matter matters: How technology characteristics shape the strategic framing of technologies

Author

Listed:
  • Hoppmann, Joern
  • Anadon, Laura Diaz
  • Narayanamurti, Venkatesh

Abstract

Previous work stresses that actors use strategic technology framing—i.e. purposeful language and rhetoric—to shape technology expectations, persuade stakeholders, and influence the evolution of technologies along their life-cycle. Currently, however, the literature predominantly describes strategic technology framing as a sociopolitical process, and provides only limited insights into how the framing itself is shaped by the material characteristics of the technologies being framed. To address this shortcoming, we conducted a comparative, longitudinal case study of two leading research organizations in the United States and Germany pursuing competing solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies to examine how technology characteristics shape the strategic framing of technologies. We show that to frame PV technologies in their own favor, executives made use of four framing dimensions (potential, prospect, performance, and progress) and three framing tactics (conclusion, conditioning, and concession). Moreover, we show that which framing dimensions and tactics actors selected depended on the maturity and evolution of the technology they pursued, respectively. By highlighting how technology characteristics shape strategic technology framing, we contribute to the literatures on social movements, institutional entrepreneurship, and impression management. Additionally, by providing a coherent framework of strategic technology framing, our study complements existing findings in the literature on the sociology of expectations and contributes to a better understanding of how technology hypes emerge.

Suggested Citation

  • Hoppmann, Joern & Anadon, Laura Diaz & Narayanamurti, Venkatesh, 2020. "Why matter matters: How technology characteristics shape the strategic framing of technologies," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(1).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:respol:v:49:y:2020:i:1:s004873331930201x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2019.103882
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004873331930201X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.respol.2019.103882?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dennis A. Gioia & Kumar Chittipeddi, 1991. "Sensemaking and sensegiving in strategic change initiation," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(6), pages 433-448, September.
    2. Raghu Garud & Michael A. Rappa, 1994. "A Socio-Cognitive Model of Technology Evolution: The Case of Cochlear Implants," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 5(3), pages 344-362, August.
    3. Mary J. Benner & Mary Tripsas, 2012. "The influence of prior industry affiliation on framing in nascent industries: the evolution of digital cameras," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 277-302, March.
    4. Katherine C. Kellogg, 2011. "Hot Lights and Cold Steel: Cultural and Political Toolkits for Practice Change in Surgery," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(2), pages 482-502, April.
    5. Bakker, Sjoerd, 2010. "The car industry and the blow-out of the hydrogen hype," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(11), pages 6540-6544, November.
    6. Konrad, Kornelia & Markard, Jochen & Ruef, Annette & Truffer, Bernhard, 2012. "Strategic responses to fuel cell hype and disappointment," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 79(6), pages 1084-1098.
    7. Kaplan, Sarah & Tripsas, Mary, 2008. "Thinking about technology: Applying a cognitive lens to technical change," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 790-805, June.
    8. Sarah Kaplan, 2008. "Framing Contests: Strategy Making Under Uncertainty," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 19(5), pages 729-752, October.
    9. Kimberly D. Elsbach & Robert I. Sutton & Kristine E. Principe, 1998. "Averting Expected Challenges Through Anticipatory Impression Management: A Study of Hospital Billing," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 9(1), pages 68-86, February.
    10. Hoppmann, Joern & Peters, Michael & Schneider, Malte & Hoffmann, Volker H., 2013. "The two faces of market support—How deployment policies affect technological exploration and exploitation in the solar photovoltaic industry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 989-1003.
    11. Raghu Garud & Henri A. Schildt & Theresa K. Lant, 2014. "Entrepreneurial Storytelling, Future Expectations, and the Paradox of Legitimacy," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(5), pages 1479-1492, October.
    12. Alkemade, Floortje & Suurs, Roald A.A., 2012. "Patterns of expectations for emerging sustainable technologies," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 79(3), pages 448-456.
    13. W. E. Douglas Creed & Maureen A. Scully & John R. Austin, 2002. "Clothes Make the Person? The Tailoring of Legitimating Accounts and the Social Construction of Identity," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 13(5), pages 475-496, October.
    14. Michael Lounsbury & Mary Ann Glynn, 2001. "Cultural entrepreneurship: stories, legitimacy, and the acquisition of resources," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(6‐7), pages 545-564, June.
    15. Bakker, Sjoerd & van Lente, Harro & Meeus, Marius T.H., 2012. "Credible expectations — The US Department of Energy's Hydrogen Program as enactor and selector of hydrogen technologies," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 79(6), pages 1059-1071.
    16. Clark G. Gilbert, 2006. "Change in the Presence of Residual Fit: Can Competing Frames Coexist?," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(1), pages 150-167, February.
    17. Dosi, Giovanni, 1993. "Technological paradigms and technological trajectories : A suggested interpretation of the determinants and directions of technical change," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 102-103, April.
    18. Michael Gibbert & Winfried Ruigrok & Barbara Wicki, 2008. "What passes as a rigorous case study?," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(13), pages 1465-1474, December.
    19. Bagnall, Darren M. & Boreland, Matt, 2008. "Photovoltaic technologies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(12), pages 4390-4396, December.
    20. Paul‐Brian McInerney, 2008. "Showdown at Kykuit: Field‐Configuring Events as Loci for Conventionalizing Accounts," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(6), pages 1089-1116, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kriechbaum, Michael & Posch, Alfred & Hauswiesner, Angelika, 2021. "Hype cycles during socio-technical transitions: The dynamics of collective expectations about renewable energy in Germany," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(9).
    2. Palmié, Maximilian & Rüegger, Stephanie & Parida, Vinit, 2023. "Microfoundations in the strategic management of technology and innovation: Definitions, systematic literature review, integrative framework, and research agenda," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    3. Hoppmann, Joern, 2021. "Hand in hand to Nowhereland? How the resource dependence of research institutes influences their co-evolution with industry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(2).
    4. Hung, Shih-Chang & Chang, Shu-Chen, 2023. "Framing the virus: The political, economic, biomedical and social understandings of the COVID-19 in Taiwan," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    5. Williams, Laurence & Bergman, Noam, 2023. "Koomey's law forevermore? A document analysis of the production and circulation of the promise of ‘green 5G’," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    6. Klimenko, V.V. & Ratner, S.V. & Tereshin, A.G., 2021. "Constraints imposed by key-material resources on renewable energy development," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    7. Patrick Spieth & Tobias Röth & Thomas Clauss & Christoph Klos, 2021. "Technological Frames in the Digital Age: Theory, Measurement Instrument, and Future Research Areas," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(7), pages 1962-1993, November.
    8. Rohe, Sebastian & Chlebna, Camilla, 2021. "A spatial perspective on the legitimacy of a technological innovation system: Regional differences in onshore wind energy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    9. Matti Minkkinen & Markus Philipp Zimmer & Matti Mäntymäki, 2023. "Co-Shaping an Ecosystem for Responsible AI: Five Types of Expectation Work in Response to a Technological Frame," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 103-121, February.
    10. Bojovic, Neva, 2022. "Strategic framing of enabling technologies: Insights from firms digitizing smell and taste," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(3).
    11. Befort, N., 2021. "The promises of drop-in vs. functional innovations: The case of bioplastics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sarah Kaplan & Wanda J. Orlikowski, 2013. "Temporal Work in Strategy Making," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(4), pages 965-995, August.
    2. Rory McDonald & Cheng Gao, 2019. "Pivoting Isn’t Enough? Managing Strategic Reorientation in New Ventures," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(6), pages 1289-1318, November.
    3. Hoppmann, Joern, 2021. "Hand in hand to Nowhereland? How the resource dependence of research institutes influences their co-evolution with industry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(2).
    4. Garud, Raghu & Gehman, Joel & Giuliani, Antonio Paco, 2014. "Contextualizing entrepreneurial innovation: A narrative perspective," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(7), pages 1177-1188.
    5. Victor P. Seidel & Siobhán O’Mahony, 2014. "Managing the Repertoire: Stories, Metaphors, Prototypes, and Concept Coherence in Product Innovation," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(3), pages 691-712, June.
    6. Garud, Raghu & Gehman, Joel, 2012. "Metatheoretical perspectives on sustainability journeys: Evolutionary, relational and durational," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(6), pages 980-995.
    7. Kriechbaum, Michael & Posch, Alfred & Hauswiesner, Angelika, 2021. "Hype cycles during socio-technical transitions: The dynamics of collective expectations about renewable energy in Germany," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(9).
    8. Hoppmann, Joern & Wu, Geng & Johnson, Jillian, 2021. "The impact of demand-pull and technology-push policies on firms’ knowledge search," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    9. Raghu Garud & Henri A. Schildt & Theresa K. Lant, 2014. "Entrepreneurial Storytelling, Future Expectations, and the Paradox of Legitimacy," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(5), pages 1479-1492, October.
    10. Callen Anthony & Andrew J. Nelson & Mary Tripsas, 2016. "“Who Are You?…I Really Wanna Know”: Product Meaning and Competitive Positioning in the Nascent Synthesizer Industry," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 1(3), pages 163-183, September.
    11. Kriechbaum, Michael & López Prol, Javier & Posch, Alfred, 2018. "Looking back at the future: Dynamics of collective expectations about photovoltaic technology in Germany & Spain," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 76-87.
    12. Michael G. Jacobides & John Paul MacDuffie & C. Jennifer Tae, 2016. "Agency, structure, and the dominance of OEMs: Change and stability in the automotive sector," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(9), pages 1942-1967, September.
    13. Gino Cattani & Daniel Sands & Joe Porac & Jason Greenberg, 2018. "Competitive Sensemaking in Value Creation and Capture," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 3(4), pages 632-657, December.
    14. Budde, Björn & Konrad, Kornelia, 2019. "Tentative governing of fuel cell innovation in a dynamic network of expectations," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(5), pages 1098-1112.
    15. Diego Zunino & Fernando F. Suarez & Stine Grodal, 2019. "Familiarity, Creativity, and the Adoption of Category Labels in Technology Industries," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(1), pages 169-190, February.
    16. Hung, Shih-Chang & Chang, Shu-Chen, 2023. "Framing the virus: The political, economic, biomedical and social understandings of the COVID-19 in Taiwan," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    17. Vecchiato, Riccardo, 2020. "Analogical reasoning, cognition, and the response to technological change: Lessons from mobile communication," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(5).
    18. Srikant, Chethan D., 2019. "Impression management strategies to gain regulatory approval," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 136-153.
    19. Riccardo Vecchiato & Giampiero Favato & Francesco di Maddaloni & Hang Do, 2020. "Foresight, cognition, and long‐term performance: Insights from the automotive industry and opportunities for future research," Futures & Foresight Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 2(1), March.
    20. Grimm, Veronika & Kretschmer, Sandra & Mehl, Simon, 2020. "Green innovations: The organizational setup of pilot projects and its influence on consumer perceptions," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:respol:v:49:y:2020:i:1:s004873331930201x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/respol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.