Framing Social Issues for Business
Authors: Scully, Maureen; CasePlace.org
Source: The Aspen Institute Center for Business Education
Year: 2004
Abstract:
Public policy analysts have long understood that how an issue is “framed” – the metaphors, logic, and meanings it conjures – affects the response to it. For example, “anti-war” activists reframed their efforts as “peace” activism to gain wider support.
Increasingly, policy issues and business issues are intersecting. Various stakeholders frame issues in business terms to “sell” them to businesses and generate attention. They advance the “business case” for various forms of corporate social responsibility. For example, the term “sustainability” may generate a greater sense of urgency and need for focused technical solutions than the more politically loaded term “environmentalism.”
Within businesses, change agents frame issues – such as environment, diversity, community relations, governance and accountability – in ways that link them to the core of business operations. Indeed, the entire field of business and society employs frames – such as Aspen BSP's “social impact management” – that clarify the inextricable two-way link between business imperatives and wider societal concerns. Effective frames trigger actions. Thus, many of the materials on CasePlace.org could be assessed using the concept of “framing social issues for business.”
This collection on framing offers three references as background reading on framing. These pieces each include detailed cases and examples. The case, “Changing a Culture of Face Time,” can be used to illustrate how work / life balance is reframed as a retention issue – and as such, garners top management attention and targeted solutions. The case, “Gail Mayville,” can be used to show how an employee can frame an issue as within the domain of an organization's mission and thereby increase the legitimacy of and attention to the issue.
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