Abstract
AbstractSystem‐wide change is often challenging to achieve due to complex and fragmented institutions, dispersed and diffused power structures, confidence‐sapping histories of failure and the influence of multiple and overlapping fields. This study examines how a large complex system‐wide problem such as the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace Process was paradoxically opened up and made more receptive to change by widening of the way the problem was framed. We demonstrate how and why the framing enables the mobilization of cooperation and the delivery of contextually appropriate collective action critical to the achievement of outcomes in system‐wide change processes. More specifically, we examine how and why such complex and precarious processes emerge over extended timescales through four mechanisms: frame contesting, reframing, frame reproduction and frame defending. Each of these mechanisms is agentic, dynamic, purposive and politically charged. The time‐series analysis of these interlinked mechanisms is a crucial and innovative feature of the study. We encourage management and organizational scholars to elevate their gaze to the system‐wide changes so emblematic of contemporary society and offer an outline agenda for research.
Highlights
The paper addresses why and how success can be achievable in delivering system-wide changes
We studied framing mechanisms as they unfold over time in the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace Process (NICPP)
Repositories of historical and archived documents: https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/ – CAIN is the main academic archive relating to the Northern Ireland conflict and peace process; it is maintained by the University of Ulster
Summary
The paper addresses why and how success can be achievable in delivering system-wide changes. We see attempts at system-wide change focused on racial/ethnic mobilization to address discrimination and inequality (Mora, 2014a, 2014b), revolutions (McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, 2001) and civil rights movements (Hargrave and Van De Ven, 2006); disruptive technologies requiring coalitions of actors who individually lack resources, power or legitimacy groups to produce change by themselves (Hargrave and Van De Ven, 2006); collective action to enable publicsector reform (Ferlie et al, 1996); and initiatives designed to address intractable health care issues (Pettigrew, Ferlie and McKee, 1992) These issues have often been referred to as grand challenges (Ferraro, Etzon and Gehna, 2015), wicked problems (Head and Alford, 2015; Rittel and Webber, 1973) or ‘messes’ These lines of inquiry and interest highlight the role of ideas and framing mechanisms in delivering change outcomes and the importance of time, history, context, configuration, power and process in shaping the development and resolution of big societal issues of the day
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