5.1. Discussion and contribution
My study investigates how incumbents’ senior managers frame technological changes to their audience in order to manage legitimacy. The findings show that senior managers use four types of framing strategies: (1) confidence and incremental framing, (2) confidence and radical framing, (3) careful and incremental framing, (4) careful and radical framing. This observation change the way we think about frame structure and change in frames over time based on the assumptions of the TFR framework (Orlikowski & Gash, 1994), but establishes a more general understanding about framing technological changes in organizations.
Past research assumed that organizations make use of different framing practices to frame strategic changes to their stakeholders (Oliver, 1991). Werner and Cornelissen (2014) find that organizations use frame blending and frame shifting in order to frame institutional change. In contrast, my findings emphasize the frame structure of technological changes rather than institutional change, and I emphasize on how senior managers influence both the individual as well as the collective frames by means of framing practices (Kaplan & Tripsas, 2008). Senior managers of incumbents tend to frame changes based on the extend of internal certainty towards the technology. This means an actor comes across more confident or careful in terms of communication about the technology. Besides, actors tend to frame technological changes with a degree of urgency. The more urgent the message comes across, the framing strategy is considered radical, while the less urgent the message, the framing strategy takes a more incremental form. Framing strategies are not mutually exclusive, which means senior managers may use different framing strategies in their communication at one time.
Another insight of this study is about the processual perspective of technological frames.
Past research assumed that environmental drivers could encourage interpretative shifts of
technological frames within an organization (Davidson, 2006). This thesis elaborates on this assumption and my findings indicate that frames change over time because of internal and external triggers. My findings contribute to the current literature as there remains a gap in the understanding about the conditions and circumstances that have an influence on frame shifting over time when the purpose is to manage legitimacy of technological changes (Davidson, 2006;
Fiss & Zajac, 2006; Spieth, 2021). My study argues that there are internal and external drivers that have influence on the way how incumbents’ senior managers frame technological changes.
Drivers that appear to be significant in changing framing strategies over time are the market’s dynamics, financial results of the company and the sales of company’s shares. If the company has internal confidence in their own technological capabilities, market dynamics on the short term would not influence senior managers’ framing strategies. However, if the market dynamics indicate uncertainty for a longer period of time this would affect the framing strategies. Actors tend to change their framing strategy towards more careful language and also employ a more incremental manner of communication. Once again, this does not imply that in the same period actors do not utilize confidence and radical framing strategies at all. It rather indicates that the proportion of careful and incremental framing increases with respect to previous periods.
Besides the driver market dynamics that indicates frame shifting over time in order to legitimize technological changes, there are also other drivers that play a role in a senior managers’ shift to different frame strategies over time. Company’s financial results provide evidence for stakeholders about the level of performance. Financial results, such as revenue show that customers have confidence in the new technology. So an increase in orders (outcome), results in increasing revenue (driver) and increases the confidence of a company, as the financial results are proven evidence that the technology is accepted and adopted by
customers. The confidence can be noticed by the way senior managers’ frame the technological change and thus which framing strategy is utilized.
Lastly, there is one final driver for changing frames over time, which are the sales of shares. Sales of shares (driver) trigger the stock price (outcome) of a company’s shares.
Especially large customers or important parties have influence on the shares’ stock prices. My study finds that customers that invest in a company encourage the confidence level in framing strategy. However, the resell of the shares does seem not to influence the framing strategies.
This could be the reason because of internal knowledge that the specific customer still has confidence in the company and technology, but just requires the liquid assets elsewhere. Trust of customers is important for a company to feel confident about the technology opportunity. In ASML’s case the customers even invested large amounts of capital to stimulate the development of the new technology. This indicates massive trust from the customers’ side. My findings indicate that although there is uncertainty in the market, the trust of the customers by investing in shares is an important driver for the framing strategy.
5.2. Limitations
It could be argued that a limitation of my study is the focus on a single case study. The chosen case study, ASML, is a characterized case for companies that are incumbent, public traded, and have high technological expertise. Which means research and development is at the core of the company. This condition is important as it may influence the degree of internal certainty towards the technology. However, it could be argued that the monopolistic position of ASML limits the research. Because of the unique position in the industry and knowledge about the EUV technology, especially market dynamics might have less influence on the chosen framing strategies. EUV technology is a complex technology and requires large investments of
research and development. ASML does not fear competition and this could be a reason that market dynamics do not seem to have big influence in the shorter term.
Moreover, this study is built completely on data collected from documents. It could be argued this limits the credibility of the study, because there are no other sources of evidence, such as interviews, observation, and physical artifacts (Yin, 1994). By the use of triangulation potential bias of a single case study can be reduced (Bowen, 2009). Nevertheless, to find evidence for the phenomenon under study, document analysis is an effective research method.
Documents help to gain detailed insight into the phenomenon, since documents are stable and suitable to review multiple times. Detailed information is included and this provides the possibility to answer the research question. Firstly, because by analyzing the quarterly conference earning calls, evidence can be found how senior managers frame technological changes to their audience. Besides, other documents such as news articles, the company’s web page, and annual reports, enable comprehension of the context. This is an important matter as the determined framing strategies change over time, and to find evidence for change triggers, analyzing the context is essential. Glaser and Strauss (1967) argue document analysis is a suitable method especially to build theory. Furthermore, taking the time limitation of this thesis into consideration, the use of secondary data is valuable, since the process is more cost-effective as the data is already available (Johnston, 2017).
5.3. Suggestions for future research
The limitation of a single case study brings opportunities for further research. Future research may investigate and test the emerged framing strategies in different types of organizations, in which technological expertise is less embedded. Moreover, future research
may investigate and test the emerged framing strategies in different types of organizations, in which technology expertise is less embedded.
I aim to add to the literature by providing insight in the way senior managers’ frame technological changes in order to manage legitimacy. However, I especially emphasized on the process of framing strategies. Although I have found evidence for the outcomes of framing strategies. I would recommend future research to investigate the consequences and reactions of the audience on the framing strategies (Spieth et al. 2021).