Frame Restructuration: The Making of an Alternative Business Incubator amid Detroit’s Crisis

Abstract

Adaptive responses to crisis rely on effective cognitive frames: understanding what is going on amid unfolding crisis and what should be done to address it. Research has shown that failing to drop a routine cognitive frame exacerbates crises, while nimbly adopting a novel frame enhances resilience. This suggests that actors in crisis have an urgent dual mission: to simultaneously destroy and construct frames. Existing research offers little guidance on how actors can accomplish this in the midst of their struggles to survive threatening and disruptive circumstances. I address this shortcoming by drawing from a 22-month ethnography of a Detroit business incubator, analyzing how it gradually developed a novel diagnostic and prognostic frame of the city’s unfolding crisis. I propose and show that actors amid crisis construct a novel frame—while dismantling an old one—through a process of frame restructuration: the novel frame emerges from and co-evolves with unconventional actions that pragmatically address the exigencies of the crisis. Mutual constitution between pragmatic actions and the emergent frame can be critically propelled by the use of metaphor, which helps actors instantly reframe the context.

On the moral side of enterprise

“…For instance, InsCorp's CEO was initially widely applauded by members for publicly 'taking a stance' by committing to the compensate customers, even though these efforts had already been explicitly ordered by regulatory authorities. Consistent with prior research that has shown that framing is imperative for enabling recovery following adverse events (Kim, 2021;Williams et al, 2017), these types of dissociative actions are crucial in re-establishing the moral character of organizations in the wake of an integrity failure.…”

“…Extant research has investigated the processes through which organizations return to 'business as usual' after experiencing disruptive failures, including organizational reintegration (Gillespie et al, 2014;Pfarrer et al, 2008), resilience (Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003;Williams et al, 2017), and adaptation (Cyert and March, 1963;Kim, 2021). Although these studies have been mainly based on environmental or technological disasters, research suggests that integrity failures (e.g.…”

Understanding distributed sensemaking in crisis management: The case of the Utrecht terrorist attack

“…Current research into distributed sensemaking points to a number of factors that play into the ability to update a frame among different actors (Christianson, 2019; Kim, 2021). Weick (2005) points to the crucial role of interdependence and cognition.…”

Repositioning Organizational Failure Through Active Acceptance

“…Adopting this continuum uses Cyert and March’s (1963) recognition that organizations often seek to meet aspiration levels on a broad range of goals in order to avoid conflict or political struggles between constituents. It also acknowledges that people act on the subjective meanings they give to their environment (Kim, 2021). In doing so, it acknowledges that reacting to failure can be framed differently dependent on different responses, exemplified in Figure 1.…”

“…Fourth, in paying attention to selective project goals that are achieved, the value of the solution is over-emphasized (e.g. Kim, 2021). Finally, in overvaluing failure, organizations recognize and explain this outcome as a reasoned choice (e.g.…”