The Strategic Use of Social Impact Framing with Exchange Partners
Diana Jue‐Rajasingh · Academy of Management Proceedings · 2022
Firms often engage in strategic framing contests to appeal to stakeholders' interests, shaping their beliefs and expectations of the industry and the firms themselves. One type of strategic framing that has only been recently explored is the strategic framing of social impact. In this study, I study the effect of social impact framing on the exchange partners of a socially responsible firm that is asymmetrically dependent on these value chain intermediaries (e.g., retailers) to create value for end customers. I pursue the following questions: 1) To create and appropriate value, can a firm use social impact framing to persuade exchange partners to not only participate in the market but also relinquish value while doing so? 2) How do exchange partners react to the perceived misalignment of social business’ profit-seeking with social impact? 3) How does the emphasis of a social impact frame affect these responses? 4) How does information about suppliers’ costs and profits affect when frame is most effective? I attempt to answer these questions through an online experiment and a lab-in-the-field experiment.