The Evolution of Issue Interpretation within Organizational Fields: Actor Positions, Framing Trajectories, and Field Settlement

In this study, we seek to understand how actors' interpretations of contentious issues evolve over time within organizational fields and how these interpretations may lead to field settlement. Empirically, we examine how groups of actors in the field of civil aviation interpreted the environmental issues of noise and emissions during the period 1996-2010. Actors employed various cultural frames to interpret these issues as they rose and fell in prominence within the field. We develop a framework to track actors' framing trajectories over time; in particular, the extent to which these frames reveal actors' stance toward buffering versus integrating issues into their core operations. We reveal four prototypical framing trajectories and find that actors' framing trajectories were influenced by the extent to which these actors were directly linked to issues in societal discourse and had direct contact with concerned audiences. Based on our analysis, we build theory of how actor framing of issues evolves over time and leads to field settlement of contentious issues.