Description
Institutional entrepreneurs are actors who create new or transform established institutions in ways that diverge from the status quo (DiMaggio, 1988.
Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in
organizational ?elds
?
Theodore L. Waldron
a,
?, Greg Fisher
b
, Chad Navis
c
a
Department of Management, Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University, United States
b
Department of Management and Entrepreneurship, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, United States
c
Initiative for Studies in Transformational Entrepreneurship, Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin, United States
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Available online xxxx
Field Editor: Garry Bruton
This study examines how institutional entrepreneurs with marginalized social positions use
institutional change to become more in?uential members of organizational ?elds. We analyze
how the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) used rhetoric to garner more in?uence as it altered a
key sourcing practice in the retail home-improvement ?eld. Our ?ndings indicate that RAN
relied on three rhetorical practices, comprising an encompassing process, to cultivate positive
associations between the new sourcing practices and its social position in the ?eld. Overall, by
specifying a marginalized entrepreneur's methods for leveraging one type of change to enact
another, we enhance theory at the intersection of institutional entrepreneurship, institutional
work, and rhetoric.
© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Institutional entrepreneurs
Activists
Institutional work
Rhetoric
Social mobility
1. Executive summary
Institutional entrepreneurs are actors who create new or transform established institutions in ways that diverge from the status
quo (DiMaggio, 1988; Fligstein, 1997; Maguire et al., 2004; Rao et al., 2000). Research on institutional entrepreneurs has explained
how the social position of actors in organizational ?elds affect their methods for fostering institutional change. However, it reports
much less on how marginalized institutional entrepreneurs' use institutional change to improve their social positions. This omission
is surprising, because institutional entrepreneurs fundamentally pursue change to realize their own interests. The purpose of this pro-
ject is to explain how, as marginalized institutional entrepreneurs alter established arrangements in their organizational ?elds, they
achieve upward social mobility.
Todoso, we establishsocial mobility as a novel formof institutional work andemploy a qualitative, inductive approachto examine
the Rainforest Action Network's (RAN) rhetoric for attaining an elite social position in the retail home-improvement ?eld. Using
various forms of persuasion, RAN prompted home-improvement retailers to institute more environmentally friendly practices for
sourcing wood-based products, and, more broadly, to place greater emphasis on the environmental impact of their operations. The
evolution of new sourcing practices and changes to the ?eld's meaning system also provided a platform for RAN to transform itself
from an inconsequential actor in the ?eld to an in?uential one that guided major retailers' decisions. Our analysis examines how
RANused rhetoric to alter perceptions of its social position in the ?eld. Overall, we found that RANenacted a deliberate process, com-
prised of three rhetorical practices—namely, contextualization, elicitation, and incentivization—to cultivate positive associations be-
tween itself, ?eld issues, elite retailers, and institutional change.
Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
? The authors would like to thank our editor, Roy Suddaby, our anonymous reviewers, and Mike Pfarrer for the insights they shared in the development of this
manuscript. We also would like to thank Jocelyn Leitzinger for her helpful support of the data effort for this project.
? Corresponding author at: Department of Management, Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University, One Bear Place #98006, Waco, Texas 76798-8006.
JBV-05714; No of Pages 19
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
0883-9026/© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Business Venturing
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
The central theoretical contribution of this study is to enrich our understanding of the role of persuasive communication in
facilitating a distinct type of institutional change. Rather than view rhetoric as a means for motivating, legitimating, and diffusing
new arrangements, we focus on the implications of rhetoric for the actors catalyzing such change. The main takeaway of our study
is that, while they use rhetoric to convince ?eld members to accept new arrangements, institutional entrepreneurs also leverage
such language to generate acceptance and in?uence for themselves. Fundamentally, then, we recognize that institutional entrepre-
neurs' change projects may emanate fromthe latent desire to attain heightened status in their organizational ?elds, and that rhetoric
crucially facilitates these concurrent processes.
2. Introduction
Institutional entrepreneurs are actors who create new or transform established institutions in ways that diverge from the status
quo (DiMaggio, 1988; Fligstein, 1997; Maguire et al., 2004; Rao et al., 2000). Prior research has explained howinstitutional entrepre-
neurs' social positions in organizational ?elds affect their methods for fostering institutional change, yet it reports much less on how
the entrepreneurs' change efforts affect their social positions. This omission is surprising, because institutional entrepreneurs funda-
mentally pursue change to realize their owninterests (Battilana et al., 2009; DiMaggio, 1983; Maguire et al., 2004). Elite entrepreneurs
may use change projects to preserve their in?uential social positions (GreenwoodandSuddaby, 2006; Greenwood et al., 2002), where-
as marginalized entrepreneurs may use change projects to improve their inconsequential social positions.
The fact that the latter type of entrepreneur concurrently engages in both self and ?eld transformation makes them particularly
interesting. Marginalized entrepreneurs often overcome their lack of in?uence by relying on more elite actors to implement new
structures (Lawrence, 1999; Maguire et al., 2004). This dependency creates an incentive for marginalized entrepreneurs to covet
more elite standing, which would reduce their reliance on proverbial “middle men” and increase their ability to pursue their interests.
This study seeks to advance understanding of this phenomenon by explaining how marginalized entrepreneurs use institutional
change to improve their social standing.
Institutional work and rhetoric help to structure our examination of this phenomenon. Institutional work describes “purposive ac-
tion aimed at creating, maintaining, and disrupting institutions” (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006: 216). This perspective shifts attention
from the general processes of institutional change to the particular practices through which institutional entrepreneurs enact these
processes. Rhetoric, which describes the strategic use of persuasive language that simultaneously re?ects and manipulates target au-
diences' meaning systems (Berkenkotter and Huckin, 1995; Miller, 1994; Orlikowski and Yates, 1994), represents a quintessential in-
strument for performing institutional work. Institutional entrepreneurs use rhetoric to transformother ?eld members' perceptions of
reality, motivating these audiences to accept and enact profound change (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005). Such actors argue that
existing arrangements are problematic and that new arrangements resolve those problems (Greenwood et al., 2002; Heracleous
and Barrett, 2001; Lawrence and Phillips, 2004; Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005; Vaara and Tienari, 2011).
We suggest that rhetoric may also facilitate a related—yet distinct—type of institutional work, (social) mobility work, which
describes institutional entrepreneurs' efforts to improve their current social standing in organizational ?elds. An organizational
?eld describes “a community of organizations that partakes in a common meaning system and whose participants interact more fre-
quently and fatefully with one another than with actors outside those settings” (Scott, 1995: 56). The composition and boundaries of
these spaces continually evolve as organizations, throughtheir interactions, attempt to construct, maintain, and tear downestablished
arrangements (Greenwood et al., 2002; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006; Zietsma and Lawrence, 2010). Such dynamics can stem from
and result in social strati?cations, with ?eld members inhabiting social positions that range from elite (i.e., in?uential or central) to
marginalized (i.e., insigni?cant or peripheral) (Bourdieu, 1991; DiMaggio, 1983; Eisenstadt, 1968; Shils, 1975).
1
The fact that rhetoric
enables institutional entrepreneurs to rede?ne arrangements in ways that prompt change by ?eld elites indicates that such discourse
may also allowmarginalized entrepreneurs to rede?ne ?eld social positions in ways that elicit status-building interactions with those
actors.
We employ a qualitative, inductive approach to examine the Rainforest Action Network's (RAN) rhetoric for attaining an elite
(social) position in the retail home-improvement ?eld. Activists like RAN qualify as marginalized institutional entrepreneurs when
they attempt to “initiate divergent [institutional] changes and participate in the implementation of those changes” (Battilana et al.,
2009) frominconsequential social positions (e.g., Maguire et al., 2004).
2
Despite their non-elite standing, suchactors have successfully
produced novel or heavily modi?ed practices in diverse organizational ?elds—including ?nancial services, grocery retail, and home
construction (Waldron et al., 2013). Activists build their campaigns on broader social logics (Bennett, 2004; den Hond and de
Bakker, 2007), leveraging rhetoric to convince more elite ?eld members that change is necessary to resolve incompatibilities between
?eld arrangements and societal expectations. Activists may also experience upward social mobility as their rhetoric catalyzes more
regular, substantive interactions with ?eld elites. RAN's activities in the retail home improvement ?eld provided an ideal setting for
studying this phenomenon. Using various forms of persuasion, RAN prompted home-improvement retailers to institute more
environmentally friendly practices for sourcing wood-based products, and, more broadly, to place greater emphasis on the environ-
mental impact of their operations.
3
The evolution of newsourcing practices and changes to the ?eld's meaning systemalso provided a
1
On occasion, scholars have used the terms central and peripheral to describe actors' structural positions in ?elds. We use these terms to describe actors' social po-
sition in ?elds.
2
Many social activists are institutional entrepreneurs, because they want to generate fundamental institutional change that differs fromthe status quo. However, not
all institutional entrepreneurs are social activists.
3
In this study, we implicitly recognize that organizations' actions, such as those of RAN and the home-improvement retailers, are attributable to their individual
leaders (Meindl et al., 1985).
2 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
platform for RAN to transform itself from an inconsequential actor in the ?eld to an in?uential one that guided major retailers' deci-
sions. Our analysis examines how RAN used rhetoric to alter perceptions of its social position in the ?eld. Overall, we found that RAN
enacted a unique process, comprised of three rhetorical practices, to cultivate positive associations between itself, ?eld issues, elite
retailers, and institutional change.
The central theoretical contribution of this study is to enrich our understanding of the role of persuasive communication in
facilitating a distinct type of institutional change. Rather than view rhetoric as a means for motivating, legitimating, and diffusing
new arrangements (Green, 2004; Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005), we focus on the implications of rhetoric for the actors catalyzing
such change (Suddaby, 2011). The main takeaway of our study is that, while they use rhetoric to convince ?eld members to accept
new arrangements, institutional entrepreneurs also leverage such language to generate acceptance and in?uence for themselves.
Fundamentally, then, we recognize that institutional entrepreneurs' change projects may emanate from the latent desire to attain
heightened status in their organizational ?elds (cf., Suddaby and Viale, 2011), and that rhetoric crucially facilitates these concurrent
processes.
Our paper proceeds as follows. First, we explain our methodological and analytical approaches. Second, we brie?y summarize the
RAN case. Third, we convey our ?ndings about how RAN, as an exemplar marginalized entrepreneur, used rhetoric to advance its
social standing in the retail-home improvement ?eld. Fourth, we translate our inferences about RAN into a theoretical process
model that proposes how marginalized institutional entrepreneurs perform social mobility work. Finally, we examine the scholarly
implications of our study.
3. Methods
We used a qualitative, inductive methodology to analyze a longitudinal case; namely, RAN's campaign (1997–2002) to modify an
important sourcing practice, and, concurrently, its own social position in the ?eld of retail home-improvement. The case method
involves making inferences about latent theoretical processes, practices, and mechanisms from observable phenomena (Marshall
and Rossman, 1995; Yin, 2003). This method's interpretive nature allowed us to make sense of how, using rhetoric, marginalized
entrepreneurs leverage one type of change to enact another (Langley, 1999). In our research setting, we sought to discern how
RAN's rhetoric convinced home-improvement retailers to go “old-growth free,” and, in the process, to view RAN as an elite member
of the retail home-improvement ?eld. To do so, we carefully evaluated the substantive and symbolic meanings re?ected in the
observable features of RAN's communications (Gephart, 1993).
3.1. Data sources
We sought to collect data that would informevaluations of howRANused rhetoric to become more in?uential in the retail home-
improvement ?eld. RAN's communications with home-improvement retailers, which aimed to convince the retailers to go “old-
growth free,” provided the primary foundation for such inferences. Other ?eld members' communications about the campaign
supplemented those from RAN, enabling us to develop a complete picture of campaign milestones and to assess the robustness of
our evaluations. Pertinent communications, including website matter, press releases, speech transcripts, national and local media
reports, advertisements, pamphlets, letters, emails, and (internal) memos, originated from Factiva, the Internet Archive, and Business
Source Premier. One particularly noteworthy source was the archive of RAN's campaign documents at UC-Berkeley's Bancroft Library.
The archive not only contained many of the same communications as the aforementioned public sources, but it also included private
correspondence within and between focal organizations. Overall, accessing and comparing data from multiple actors and sources
provided a relatively complete, reliable perspective of key events and a foundation for making robust inferences (Eisenhardt, 1989).
3.2. Data analysis
Analysis of the data consisted of four stages. First, we coded each data segment according to its source (e.g., press releases, website
content, campaignmaterials, media reports), and arrangedthe segments chronologically (Miles and Huberman, 1984). Data segments
refer to distinct narratives, suchas the rawcommunications comprising our sample, published at speci?c points intime by identi?able
sources (Strauss and Corbin, 1994). Coding the source of each data segment provided a foundation to evaluate the importance of
campaign events, based on the attention given to each event by the different campaign actors. Chronologically arranging source-
coded data segments facilitated our evaluation of event importance by locating different accounts of the same event together. It
also provided a “roadmap” of the pertinent events in RAN's campaign, which facilitated the development of a campaign history
(Langley, 1999) and the examination of RAN's rhetorical practices (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005). Table 1 presents the account
of major campaign events.
Second, using the chronological account, we uncoveredrelevant blocks of text withineachdata segment and“opencoded” the text
blocks to identify ?rst-order conceptual categories and their properties (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). This analytical stage discerned
speci?c passages within each of RAN's communications that captured RAN's “raw” language for persuading elite retailers to move
away from old-growth products. Our objective at this point was to determine the complete range of these observable arguments,
rather than to infer their latent meaning (cf., Berg, 2004; Greenwood and Suddaby, 2006). Upon isolating the distinct arguments
contained in the text blocks, we assessed the distinguishing attributes of each argument, grouped arguments with similar attributes
into categories, and assigned labels to each category capturing its unique features. This process yielded an account of the different
3 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
observable arguments that RAN used during its campaign and provided the foundation to uncover RAN's rhetorical practices for
performing mobility work.
Third, we moved to “axial coding” (Strauss andCorbin, 1990), whichdescribes the inference of second-order theoretical categories
fromopen codes and then general aggregate dimensions fromthe second-order categories (cf., Corley and Gioia, 2004). Our objective
during this analytical stage shifted toward evaluating howRANused its observable arguments—namely, those for convincing retailers
Table 1
Chronology of events.
Time Event
Jan '97 RAN launches Old Growth Campaign to drive old-growth wood products from the marketplace.
Jan–Aug '97 RAN enters negotiations with Home Depot to address its lumber procurement policies,
but negotiations fail to result in any tangible commitments by the company.
Oct '97 Activists target Home Depot as part of World Rainforest Week. Advertisements are placed in
major magazines and demonstrations are held at 35 Home Depot stores across the country.
Jan–Apr '98 Director Oliver Stone, baseball star Al Leiter, and rock band REM write letters to Home Depot,
urging the company to phase out sales of old-growth wood.
Apr '98 RAN representatives meet with Home Depot representatives, with latter pledging to develop a
policy by June, 1998 that details how the company will go old-growth free.
Jun '98 June deadline passes without any policy or communication from Home Depot.
Sep '98 RAN prompts investment ?rms and major Home Depot shareholders FRDC, KLD, and Citizens Funds to
write letters to Home Depot urging the company to go old-growth free.
Sep '98 Mailings by RAN, Global Response, and Co-op America result in over 8000 letters sent to Home
Depot within a few weeks.
Oct '98 Time Magazine article exposes Home Depot's egregious purchases of old-growth wood and
highlights the old growth campaign.
Oct '98 International Day of Action: 75 demonstrations at Home Depot stores across U.S. & Canada
Oct '98 RAN advertisement in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution details “How two guys in pinstripe
suits cut down more rainforest than anyone in ?annel shirts.”
Oct '98 RAN activists hang ?ve-story banner at Home Depot headquarters. Home Depot executives
promise to have a new old-growth policy in place by the end of the calendar year.
Nov '98 Working Assets, a long distance telephone company, targets Home Depot. Nearly 45,000 letters and
phone calls are sent to Home Depot urging them to go old-growth free. Nearly 5.000 calls are sent
directly to Home Depot President and CEO Arthur Blank's direct extension.
Nov '98 Letter by actor and environmentalist, Ed Asner, urges Home Depot to phase out its old-growth wood sales.
Nov '98 City councils in Madison, WI, and Longmont, CO oppose construction of Home Depot stores until Home
Depot develops a policy that eliminates old-growth wood sales.
Dec '98 RAN full-page advertisement in the New York Times highlights 27 major Fortune 500 companies that
have committed to go old growth free. National press coverage, including in CBS National News and
front-page stories in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Examiner, Vancouver Sun, Portland Oregonian, and
articles in dozens of papers across the country follow. Home Depot is listed prominently in many
articles as a leading company that refuses to change.
Dec '98 RAN launches Holiday Kids campaign. Over 3000 children from across the country send in letters to
Home Depot CEO, asking for a Christmas gift of a healthy forest.
Dec '98 Home Depot shareholders, FRDC and Education Foundation of America, ?le shareholder resolution
against Home Depot, urging the company to eliminate its old-growth wood supply.
Jan–Feb '99 Activists across the U.S. and Canada demonstrate outside of Home Depot store openings, during a
time when Home Depot is opening at least three to ?ve stores each Thursday.
Feb '99 RAN full-page advertisement in New York Times states, “Only a kid can say, ‘Save the Rainforest’ 3000
different ways. Will Home Depot listen to even one?”
Mar '99 Home Depot reveals new policy, which dismisses the full scope of RAN's desired changes and instead
commits to purchase small amounts of certi?ed wood.
Mar '99 RAN and a coalition of other activists protest at over 150 stores across the U.S. and Canada.
Mar–Apr '99 RAN sends letter to all major home-improvement retailers in the U.S., offering them an opportunity to
get the jump on Home Depot in taking responsible action for the world's forests.
May '99 Hereditary leaders of the Nuxalk tribe from British Columbia travel with RAN to Home Depot's annual
shareholders' meeting in Atlanta, since wood sold at Home Depot was traced back to Nuxalk land.
Nuxalk leaders are barred from attending the shareholders' meeting, despite having legal rights to be there.
The event generates coverage in major media outlets including NPR and the Wall Street Journal.
May–Jun '99 REM, Indigo Girls, and Dave Matthews Band send letters to Home Depot executives and speak out on issues of
forest destruction and indigenous rights.
Aug '99 Civic leaders in Racine, WI deny a request by Home Depot to build a new store in the community.
Aug '99 Home Depot announces its commitment to stop selling old-growth wood.
Sep '99 RAN moves beyond Home Depot and continues its campaign to rid the home-improvement retail industry of
old-growth wood products by sending letters to ?ve other home-improvement retailers.
Oct '99 RAN advertisement in the New York Times commends Home Depot for its policy change and warns ?ve other
home-improvement retailers (later dubbed the “Foolish Five”) to change their practices too.
Oct '99 RAN initiates protests around the country that urge the “Foolish Five” to make or exceed the same
commitment to go old-growth free as Home Depot did.
Nov '99 Wickes Lumber and HomeBase announce plans to phase out their sales of old-growth wood products.
Jan '00 Menard's announces a plan to phase out its sales of old-growth wood products.
Dec '00 Six other large home-improvement retailers make commitments to stop selling old-growth wood products.
4 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
to implement new sourcing practices—to improve its social standing. To accomplish this, we iteratively cycled between the data
analysis and theory development in two stages (cf., Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2003). The ?rst stage involved identifying the methods
of persuasion re?ected in the ?rst-order codes, grouping conceptually similar codes into second-order theoretical categories, and
then developing labels for and descriptions of each category. The second step was a nuanced iteration of the ?rst one, and involved
consolidating conceptually similar second-order categories into aggregate theoretical dimensions. These aggregate dimensions
constituted theoretical representations of RAN's rhetorical practices for performing mobility work and informed the exploration of
its patterns for enacting these practices. Table 2 provides examples of our analytical progression from text blocks to each theoretical
dimension. Fig. 1 provides an illustration of the ?ndings obtained during each stage of the data analysis.
Fourth, we integrated output from previous rounds of data analysis, along with supplementary evidence, into a chronology that
re?ects the process through which marginalized entrepreneurs like RAN improve their social standing. We adopted the schematic
approach employed in prior research (e.g., Binghamand Davis, 2012; Langley, 2007; Van de Ven, 1992). With the original chronolog-
ical account as a framework, we coded RAN's communications, captured in the text blocks, for the theoretical constructs that emerged
Table 2
Progression from text blocks to aggregate theoretical dimensions.
Selected coding examples
Original text block Only about four percent of the United State's original ancient forests are still standing.
Worldwide, logging and other causes of deforestation have brought all but twenty
percent to the brink of extinction (RAN PR, 10/22/1997)
First-order code Providing statistics and facts about the issue
Second-order code Rationalization
Aggregate dimension Contextualization
Original text block The Earth's once lush green blanket is already threadbare and tattered with only 22% of
the old-growth forests left standing. When future generations look back, they will see the
period we now live in as a critical moment in time: the world's last great forests have come
under ?nal attack (RAN Web archive, 1/21/1998)
First-order code Creating vivid imagery of the issue's effects (and the required urgency to stop them)
Second-order code Dramatization
Aggregate dimension Contextualization
Original text block In this day and age it is no longer appropriate to make consumer goods out of the world's last
ancient trees, some as old as 2000 years (RAN PR, 8/17/1997)
First-order code Classifying the issue as a violation of social norms
Second-order code Moralization
Aggregate dimension Contextualization
Original text block In a time when only 22 percent of the world's original old growth forests remain, continuing the
sales of old growth wood is simply barbaric… Home Depot sells cedar, ?r and spruce lumber and
wood products cut from the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest of British Columbia; lumber,
decking and trim from the Paci?c Northwest's ancient redwoods; mahogany doors from the
tropical rainforests of the Amazon; and lauan and ramin plywood, paneling, tool handles and
dowels from southeast Asia at their 700-plus stores in North America (RAN PR, 10/28/1998)
First-order code Condemning targets, namely their sourcing practices, as causes of the issue
Second-order code Stigmatization
Aggregate dimension Elicitation
Original text block Home Depot is lagging behind. Many large, visionary companies and leaders in the home
improvement industry have already started to eliminate old growth wood products. Europe's
largest home improvement center, B&Q, has nearly completed removing old-growth wood from
its shelves. In December 1998, 27 U.S. corporations—including IBM, Dell, Kinko's, Nike, 3 M,
Levi-Strauss and others—announced their commitment to stop using old growth wood (RAN PR, 2/24/1999)
First-order code Proposing targets could espouse social norms, values, and beliefs, and thus become moral leaders,
by changing their sourcing practices
Second-order code Incentivization
Aggregate dimension Elicitation
Original text block The end of old growth logging worldwide is one step closer now that Wickes Lumber has agreed to
stop selling products made from these endangered areas (RAN PR, 11/4/1999)
First-order code Portraying targets as (industry) heroes for changing sourcing practices
Second-order code Sancti?cation
Aggregate dimension Formalization
Original text block After a two-year international grassroots campaign led by Rainforest Action Network, Home Depot,
in a bold policy turnaround, announced recently that it would eliminate old-growth wood
products by the year 2002 (RAN PR, 10/8/1999)
First-order code Claiming changes to targets' sourcing practices as a success for RAN and as a function of RAN's efforts
Second-order code Cooptation
Aggregate dimension Formalization
5 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
during axial coding (i.e., the aggregate theoretical dimensions portrayed in Fig. 1). We then examined other ?eld members' commu-
nications, contained in the broader sample of data segments, for evidence of shifts in their attentiveness, tenor, and responsiveness to
RAN. The resulting data helped us to identify changes in the interactions between RANand the targeted retailers, as well as changes in
the collective perceptions of RAN's social position. Finally, we used arrows to depict the process relationships between the theoretical
constructs in the chronological account, and then created a map of the basic construct interactions over time (cf., Binghamand Davis,
2012). As Fig. 2 demonstrates, our schematic analysis yielded a diagram of patterns in RAN's rhetorical practices for initiating and
leveraging interactions with elite retailers to alter perceptions of its social position. This process model provided a platformto explain
the process and composite practices through which RAN, and, more generally, marginalized entrepreneurs perform mobility work.
Next, we offer an historic overview of our case to contextualize our ?ndings, theoretical inferences about marginalized
entrepreneurs, and discussion of scholarly implications.
Fig. 1. Data structure.
6 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
4. Change in the home-improvement retail industry
In January 1997, RANlaunched the Old Growth Campaign. The campaign's objective was to stop the extraction of old-growth wood
—such as Lauan, Mahogany, Ramin, Cedar, Redwood and Douglas Fir—from mature, indigenous forests by removing the demand for
products utilizing old-growth wood (described henceforth as old-growth products). A critical facet of the broader campaign was
RAN's effort to alter the ?eld of retail home-improvement, which consisted of ?rms that sold an array of old-growth products—
including lumber, cabinets, and doors—as part of their core product mix. RAN ultimately wanted all home-improvement retailers
to increasingly attend to the environmental impact of their operations, which in this case meant developing and abiding by policies
for replacing old-growth products with environmentally certi?ed varieties. Since it maintained few—if any—impactful relationships
with elite retailers, RAN occupied a marginal position in the retail home-improvement ?eld during this early phase of the campaign.
Interestingly, and despite its lower standing, RAN initially focused its efforts on a ?eld leader, The Home Depot (hereafter, ‘Home
Depot’).
4.1. RAN's initial target: Home Depot
RANdelivered persuasive discourse in diverse ways to convince Home Depot to eliminate old-growth products fromits inventory.
It ?rst entered negotiations with the company in mid-1997. However, the talks yielded no commitments to change from the
company's management, so RAN made its arguments more visible in October of that year through a variety of approaches. These
included demonstrations at Home Depot stores; written petitions from (non-) celebrity supporters; sponsorship of shareholder
resolutions; development of advertisements; and the introduction of stories to the news media. When Home Depot still did not
respond, RAN took its case to the political arena in the last half of 1998 by working with city councils to oppose the construction of
new Home Depot stores across the U.S.
While escalating their efforts against Home Depot, RAN's representatives continued to meet and negotiate with the Home Depot's
executives. Home Depot's executives, for their part, took steps to signal its concern for RAN's requests. Suzanne Apple, Home Depot's
Fig. 2. Rhetorical process for improving social positions through institutional change.
7 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
Director of Community Affairs and Environmental Programs, exempli?ed this point in a letter to RAN's leaders that called for RAN to
focus more on collaborating with the company than on conducting protests at the company's retail stores:
We share RAN's concern for the environment, however, this protest today represents a misplaced criticism of a company that
has led the industry in environmental practices. We are constantly striving to raise the bar on environmental issues and
recognize that this particular issue is not just a Home Depot issue, but an industry and world-wide issue…Instead of
demonstrations, RAN might consider joining us and others in the effort to develop alternative products, educate consumers,
and pioneer green building practices that can be used in all types of construction (private letter, 2/12/1998).
A solution seemed imminent in September 1998 when Home Depot's executives pledged to develop a policy for eliminating old-
growthproducts fromtheir shelves. However, the pledge turned out to be empty: Home Depot neither formally releaseda newpolicy,
nor took any substantive steps to enact one. As Randy Hayes—RAN's president—communicated, “They gave us lip service of all sorts”
(Carlton, 2000). Fueled by Home Depot's passive resistance, RANannouncedinFebruary 1999that it would “continue [its efforts] until
Home Depot commits to end all sales of old growth wood [products]” (RANpress release, 2/28/1999). RAN increased the intensity of
its arguments for Home Depot to change during 1999. In March, RANarranged and carried out a massive protest against Home Depot:
Activists converged on more than 150 Home Depot stores in 35 states and provinces in the U.S. and Canada. In addition to the
usual grassroots activismtoolkit of civil disobedience, banners, in?atables, picket signs, and bullhorns, activists commandeered
Home Depot's intercom system. All over the continent, activists directed Home Depot's customers directly to the old growth
wood for sale on its aisles (RAN website archive).
RAN followed the mass protest in May of that year by arranging for the hereditary leader of the Nuxalk Tribe, an indigenous tribe
from British Columbia, to speak at Home Depot's annual shareholders' meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. Old-growth products on sale at
Home Depot stores had been traced back to Nuxalk land. Accordingly, tribal leaders—with support from RAN—planned to highlight
the negative impact that logging old-growth wood had on their people and environment, and to con?rm RAN's call for Home
Depot to stop selling derivative products. However, despite being shareholders of the company, the tribe's leaders were barred
from the meeting on the day of the event. The decision generated signi?cant media coverage (e.g., NPR and The Wall Street Journal),
and served as a publicity boon to RAN's campaign.
The con?uence of RAN's protests, petitions, and political actions continued until August 1999, when Arthur Blank—Home Depot's
CEO—announced that his ?rm would change its policy on the sale of old-growth products. Blank stated that:
Home Depot embraces its responsibility as a global leader to help protect endangered forests. By the end of 2002, we will
eliminate from our stores wood from endangered areas—including certain lauan, redwood and cedar products—and give
preference to ‘certi?ed’ wood (Home Depot press release, 8/26/1999).
This announcement marked the beginning of an increasingly substantive relationship between RAN and Home Depot, with
the two jointly crafting and implementing a plan for rapidly replacing old-growth products with suitable substitutes. It also provided
a crucial beachhead for RAN to call for similar behavior by other major retailers.
4.2. RAN's “lost” target: Lowe's
RANalso entered negotiations with Lowe's at the onset of the campaign. Lowe's and Home Depot maintained comparable levels of
dominance in the ?eld, and, not surprisingly, each one served as the other's main competitor. Unlike Home Depot's executives,
though, Lowe's executives proactively addressed the old-growth issue and even began to craft a plan for going “old-growth free.”
This stance was evident in a formal letter from Dale Pond—Lowe's executive vice-president of merchandising—to Michael Brune—
RAN's campaign director—that touted Lowe's ongoing effort “to set global [environmental] standards for the entire retail home
improvement industry” (Private letter, 10/13/1999).
Interestingly, RAN never claimed Lowe's efforts to change as a victory or used this outcome to secure similar concessions from
other retailers during the main body of the campaign, as it had done with Home Depot and subsequent targets. One possible reason
is that Lowe's desire to become the ?eld's environmental championlimited RAN's ability to use Lowe's as evidence of its ownauthority
on environmental issues in the ?eld. When Pond's letter informed RAN's leaders of Lowe's environmental objectives and did not
assign credit to RAN, RAN personnel marked the correspondence with the clear directives, “Do not distribute!,” “For Private Review
Only,” and “Not to be leaked to press.” The decision to obscure this information and the absence of discourse mentioning Lowe's,
which would have made RAN's arguments for ?eld change more compelling, point to the importance RAN assigned to its own social
ascent in the ?eld. Appendix A contains Pond's private letter to Brune.
4.3. RAN's subsequent targets: the Foolish Five and other home-improvement retailers
Ultimately, though, RAN sought to bring environmental logic to the fore of the ?eld's meaning system by transforming a practice
accepted and used by most home-improvement retailers. Just before Home Depot's policy change, RAN sent a letter to other retailers
enticing them “to get the jump on Home Depot while taking responsible action for the world's forests” (RAN website archive). None
responded, so once Home Depot agreed to change, RAN sent another letter to those ?rms in September 1999. This letter highlighted
8 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
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(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
Home Depot's recent commitment to stop selling old-growth products and suggested that other home-improvement retailers follow
suit to avoid action by RAN.
Indeed, RANsingled out a set of prominent home-improvement retailers when the broader ?eld remained largely unresponsive. In
early October 1999, RAN placed an advertisement in the New York Times that publicly commended Home Depot for its policy change
and warned ?ve of the company's top competitors—84 Lumber, Homebase, Menards, Payless Cashways, and Wickes—of escalated
pressure if they did not follow suit. RAN made good on its promise later that October when it publicized these ?rms as the Foolish
Five and initiated massive demonstrations at their stores. At the same time, RAN negotiated with the executives of the Foolish Five
to switch from old-growth products as Home Depot had done. These efforts elicited a chain of concessions from this group of ?rms
from the end of 1999 to 2000. Even ?rms that RAN had not engaged, such as IKEA and Lanoga, began to adopt comparable changes.
By the end of 2002, most major home-improvement retailers had initiated or already transitioned from old-growth to environmen-
tally certi?ed products, leading RAN to end its campaign.
These concessions also marked the beginning of more signi?cant relationships between RAN and the members of the Foolish Five.
As with Home Depot, RANworked with many of these ?rms to identify acceptable product substitutes and construct formal plans for
implementing these policies. It then oversaw the enactment of the policies and threatened action against laggard or non-compliant
?rms.
5. Findings
The preceding history provides context to present our ?ndings about RAN, and, in turn, to advance theory on the role of rhetoric in
marginalized entrepreneurs' mobility work. Three rhetorical practices—contextualization, elicitation, and formalization—emerged from
our analysis. We ?rst introduce the observable arguments underpinning each rhetorical practice, and describe how RAN used these
arguments to introduce new sourcing practices in the retail home-improvement ?eld. We then elaborate how these arguments
also constituted the essence of RAN's rhetoric for construing itself as a more elite member of the ?eld. The essence of our ?ndings
is that, to construe and realize their aspirant social position, RAN rhetorically linked itself to the ?eld issues, elites, and arrangements
that de?ned its change project.
5.1. Contextualization
RAN began its campaign by establishing old-growth deforestation as a general issue facing the retail home improvement ?eld.
RAN's initial arguments during this stage of its campaign conveyed objectively framed information and statistics that de?ned the
nature and impact old-growth deforestation, and hinted at the need to curb this phenomenon. The crux of such arguments was to
alert members of the retail home improvement ?eld, in general terms, that the destruction of old-growth forests was having an
observable, quanti?able effect on the natural environment. RAN made such an argument in one press release, linking the demise of
old-growth forests with harmful climate change:
Old-growth forests are important storehouses of carbon, which moderate the Earth's climate. Logging these forests contributes
signi?cantly to global climate change. Only 22 percent of the world's old-growthforests remain intact; inthe United States, less
than 4 percent of the old growth forests are still standing (10/14/1997).
Upon establishing old-growth deforestation as a substantive issue, RAN introduced more socially oriented arguments that made
the issue more captivating, troubling, and identi?able to home-improvement retailers. One of these arguments built on the emerging
normative trends of environmentalism and sustainability to challenge the legitimacy of manufacturing products from old-growth
wood. The core idea was to convey that the commercial activities facilitating this issue contradicted society's expectations and
therefore represented the “wrong” thing to do. A RAN press release, for instance, explained that its “campaign galvanizes the public's
existing feeling that cutting oldgrowthforests toturntheminto 2 ×4's and pulpis simply unethical andthat a mature, modernsociety
has outgrown such practices” (10/14/1998).
The other arguments invoked intense imagery, metaphors, and verbiage to make old-growth deforestation a more empathetic
issue. The core function of such arguments was to elicit visceral disdain for old-growth deforestation, often by associating this issue
with other despised acts. RAN sought to create a social environment where members of the retail home-improvement ?eld cringed
when they thought about contributing damage to old-growth forests. For instance, a press release from Christopher Hatch—RAN's
executive director—suggested, “selling old-growth wood products is like killing elephants for ivory, or making ashtrays out of gorilla
paws” (8/17/1997).
The observable arguments for de?ning old-growth deforestation as an issue also constituted the essence of RAN's rhetoric for
symbolically construing its aspirant social position. RAN, at this early phase of its campaign, had yet to develop a body of mean-
ingful interactions with major home-improvement retailers. The basic function of such rhetoric, described henceforth as contex-
tualization or contextualizing rhetoric, was to create a suitable environment for RAN to feasibly rede?ne itself as a ?eld elite. By
problematizing old-growth deforestation using the logics of environmentalismand sustainability, which were relatively foreign
to the retail home-improvement ?eld, RAN established a new sub-community in the ?eld based on these logics and crafted a
backdrop to rede?ne its social position. This sub-community was akin to a parallel or alternate reality in the ?eld, where
home-improvement retailing was secondary to old-growth preservation. Henceforth, we describe the new sub-community as
the old-growth community.
9 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
RAN leveraged three forms of contextualizing rhetoric—rationalization, moralization, and dramatization—to convey its au-
thority in the emerging old-growth community. The observable arguments designating the logical, ethical, and emotional di-
mensions of old-growth deforestation re?ected different facets of RAN's authority on the issue. Rationalizing rhetoric, which
manifested in arguments about the factual parameters of old-growth deforestation, depicted RAN as the retail home improve-
ment ?eld's intellectual expert on old-growth deforestation. Moralizing and dramatizing rhetoric, which manifested in argu-
ments infusing ethical and emotional concerns into the old-growth issue, held up RAN as the ?eld's champion of morality and
humanity, respectively.
The signals conveyed through rationalization, moralization, and dramatization provided a foundation for RAN to ascend into
a more elite social position in the retail home-improvement ?eld. Although RAN still was a marginalized member of the ?eld
according to the commercial logics of home-improvement retailing, its contextualizing rhetoric repositioned RAN as an elite
member of a new ?eld sub-community based on the social logics of old-growth preservation. This niche space afforded RAN
with a “home-?eld advantage,” enabling it to subject major home-improvement retailers to the community's alternative logics,
adjust the retailers' social positions on these terms, and even broker meaningful exchanges with these ?rms.
5.2. Elicitation
As old-growth deforestation became a more familiar issue in the retail home-improvement ?eld, RAN increasingly unfurled two
types of arguments that linked the issue to major retailers. One type of argument adopted a negative stance, attributing old-growth
deforestation to powerful home-improvement retailers that sourced old-growth products. Initially, these negative arguments focused
on villainizing Home Depot for maintaining such practices. RANsuggested that, by purchasing old-growth products, Home Depot was
destroying ancient ecosystems, harming the broader environment, wronging indigenous forest inhabitants, and ignoring society's
growing call for sustainability. The function of this message was to harm the company's reputation and consequently to pressure it
to cease undesirable behavior. Mark Westland—RAN's director of communications—communicated one such argument in an
interview with NPR:
Home Depot makes much of its reputation as a company involved in the community that it works in. But as long as they're
selling old-growth wood, they're doing something that is really unconscionable… (NPR's Marketplace Report, 5/25/1999).
RAN modi?ed the content of these negative arguments, and the retailers such arguments targeted, once Home Depot agreed to
eliminate and refrain from stocking old-growth products. This transition involved using Home Depot's agreement to change, rather
than the old-growth issue independently, to motivate similar behavior by the Foolish Five. In general terms, RAN delegitimized old-
growth products by painting agreements from adopters as signs of fundamental shifts in what constituted acceptable behavior for
all ?eld members. An important facet of these communications was that RAN hinted at the illegitimacy tarnishing retailers that did
not follow the example set by earlier adopters. In a RAN press release, for instance, Michael Brune leveraged Menards' new sourcing
practices as a platform to propose that “it's no longer a question of whether home improvement stores will stop selling old growth
wood, but when they will stop (1/28/2000).”
In more speci?c terms, RAN unfavorably contrasted newly targeted retailers with recent adopters. These messages indicated that,
if newtarget retailers did not agree to implement RAN's proposed changes, they would remain as laggards in the ?eld and continue to
face the same stigma that motivated earlier adopters to change. In a report titled “HomeBase: For Old Growth Forest Destruction, ‘Go
to the Base’,” for instance, RAN contrasted HomeBase's ignorance with Home Depot's submission and hinted at the possible stigma
that awaited HomeBase if it failed to act:
Last spring, RAN contacted HomeBase to determine why the company had not previously addressed this [old-growth]
issue, and to identify steps that HomeBase could take to help alleviate old growth forest destruction. Despite the urgency
of the crisis in the Earth's forests, HomeBase did not respond to our letters or phone calls. In contrast, Home Depot
resolved a years-long con?ict in August when it announced plans to completely eliminate old growth wood from its
stores (10/15/1999).
RANalso provided more explicit ultimatums, articulating that, if the retailers did not act in desired ways, RAN would increase the
intensity and visibility of pressure on them. A National Home Center News interviewwith Michael Brune highlighted the forthcoming
consequences if HomeBase and Menards continued to resist RAN's overtures:
These companies refuse to address the [old-growth] issue, so our actions against them will be quite diverse. Both dealers can
count on demonstrations outside their stores every week for the next several weeks. RAN next month also intends to launch a
newspaper ad campaign that will be directed at the two chains' customers (10/27/1999).
The other major type of argument for linking the old-growth issue to major retailers adopted a positive stance and portrayed the
issue as anopportunity for the retailers to prosper. RAN's positive arguments oftenunfolded intandemwith its negative messages and
thus manifested in a similar sequence. Initially, the positive arguments focused more on conveying the gains associated with going
“old-growth free” for Home Depot. RAN emphasized emerging social norms, at times exemplifying these norms with the actions of
?rms in other industries, to provide Home Depot with constructive reasons for establishing new supplier relationships. Such
arguments indicated that, if Home Depot changed, it would comply with society's call for sustainability, become an environmental
10 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
leader in the ?eld, achieve celebrated standing in society, and even realize performance boosts. Effectively, RAN encouraged Home
Depot to “do the right thing” and to keep pace with ?rms already working to protect old-growth forests. For example, RANexplained
in a public action alert that:
As a powerful force in its industry, Home Depot can slow the pace of rainforest destruction by committing to stop selling
products fromold growth forests. Other industry leaders such as IBM, Hallmark, Kinko's, Hewlett-Packard, and others have al-
ready made this commitment, clearly it is time for Home Depot to do the same. Immediately (01/08/1999).
RAN modi?ed the content of its positive arguments as Home Depot agreed to eliminate and refrain from stocking old-growth
products. Like RAN's negative arguments, the crux of this transition involved using Home Depot's agreement to change, rather than
just the old-growth issue or the members of foreign ?elds, to motivate similar behavior by less prominent retailers. Unlike RAN's
negative arguments, though, incentivizing comparisons helduphome-improvement retailers that had already changed their sourcing
practices as the “gold standard” for lagging retailers to attain through change of their own. For instance, RANplaced a NewYork Times
advertisement—located in Appendix B—that held up Home Depot's decision to eliminate old-growth products as motivation for the
Foolish Five to do the same:
Without smart business policies like The Home Depot's, our last old-growthforests will be gone forever. Please visit our website
and encourage other companies to meet or beat The Home Depot's example [singling out Homebase, Menards, Payless
Cashways, Wickes, and 84 Lumber in a separate graphic] (9/22/1999).
A powerful byproduct of RAN's arguments during this phase of the campaign was that it incited other ?eld members, including
consumers, city councils, celebrities, and other activist organizations, to sympathize with RAN's cause and to convey their own
versions of RAN's messages. This support ampli?ed pressure on the home-improvement retailers to stave off damage or to pursue
gains described in RAN's positive and negative arguments. Ed Asner—a well-known American actor—wrote one such letter to
Home Depot's executives on November 6, 1998 (RAN web archive):
I have heard frommy friends at Rainforest Action Network that you are presently considering a phase-out of the purchase and
use of old growth wood. I hope this is accurate, as it would be an invaluable step in saving the very last of our planet's ancient
forests. I urge you to be decisive and to announce your intention to phase out old growth timber products and to phase in
certi?ed wood. But make your decision a strong one; continuing the trade in old growth will not be acceptable to the
American public in the next century (11/6/1998).
The observable arguments for pressuring the major home-improvement retailers to go “old-growth free” also constituted
the essence of RAN's rhetoric for construing and beginning to verify its aspirant social position relative to these ?rms. The
basic function of such rhetoric—described henceforth as elicitation or elicitive rhetoric—was to pull home-improvement re-
tailers into the old-growth community established during contextualization. By linking target retailers to old-growth defores-
tation, RAN subjected the retailers to the community's logics and de?ned the retailers as referents for situating its own social
position in that setting. Stated more basically, RAN's elicitive rhetoric ranked home-improvement retailers according the values,
norms, beliefs, and rules of an alternate reality in the ?eld. This move “leveled the playing ?eld” between RAN and the target
retailers, enabling the former to compare itself to and inspire status-building interactions with the latter.
Using two forms of elicitive rhetoric, stigmatization and incentivization, RAN constructed the social order in the old-growth
sub-community. RAN's positive and negative arguments for pressuring the home-improvement retailers to change their prac-
tices provided the essence of each form of elicitation. Stigmatizing rhetoric, which manifested in arguments about the negative
effects of target retailers' practices, portrayed the retailers as counterproductive laggards or outliers in the old-growth commu-
nity. By contrast, incentivizing rhetoric, which manifested in arguments about the bene?ts associated with change, suggested
that target retailers would achieve better standing in the community if they embraced the “old-growth free” mentality. Both
types of rhetoric reinforced RAN's position as the authority in the old-growth community, implying that RAN was the only
?eld member capable of helping target retailers resolve the problem or realize the opportunity. This subtle message, embedded
in the explicit threats of loss or promises of gain, motivated target retailers to dialogue with RAN as they grappled with whether
and how to eliminate old-growth products. Each exchange, whether it involved resistance or cooperation, re?ected RAN's in?u-
ence over target retailers and provided evidence of the social order, including RAN's elite position, in the old-growth
community.
The subject of RAN's stigmatizationand incentivizationtransformed as it positioned home-improvement retailers withinthe social
order of the old-growth community. RAN initially signaled that Home Depot maintained a lower social position than its own in the
old-growth community by highlighting inconsistencies between the company's actions and the community's logics. Once Home
Depot agreed to move away from old-growth products, RAN began to signal that the members of the Foolish Five maintained even
more marginalized positions in the community by contrasting their resistance with Home Depot's cooperation. This pattern repeated
as individual retailers agreedto change, withRANcomparing resistant members of the Foolish Five to retailers that had eliminated old-
growth products, until all major players cooperated with RAN. Each retailer that conceded provided RAN with evidence for more
explicitly substantiating its elite standing in the old-growth community and ultimately extending that standing to the broader ?eld
of retail home-improvement.
11 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
Finally, RAN's elicitive rhetoric also brokered support for its social position in the old-growth community from outside of the
old-growth community. Such rhetoric implied that, since consumers, investors, suppliers, media outlets, and lesser retailers
subscribed to the same (commercial) logics as the targets, these ?eld members were party to the old-growth issue and could
thus experience the same gains or losses as the targets. This message extended awareness of the old-growth community's logics,
participants, and social hierarchy in the ?eld, enticing ?eld members to consider their associations with the community. Sym-
pathetic ?eld members opted into the old-growth community and corroborated RAN's elevated standing in it. Some of these
supporters, like Ed Asner, explicitly used rhetoric that depicted RAN in a positive light while admonishing target retailers for
sourcing old-growth products. Others used rhetoric that did not explicitly mention RAN, but paraphrased RAN's “talking points.”
The following excerpt, for instance, from an expose in Time Magazine, synthesized content (italicized) from RAN's contextual-
izing and elicitive rhetoric:
Most American consumers knowbetter than to buy ivory, or ashtrays made fromgorilla paws, or tuna caught in nets that are not
“dolphin free.” But when they stop by Kinko's for stationery or Home Depot for plywood, will they ask themselves, “Is this old-
growth free?” (Hornblower, 1998).
As more ?eld members identi?ed with the old-growth community, RAN received mounting recognition of and support for its
standing as the elite player in this setting.
5.3. Formalization
As the major home-improvement retailers began to cooperate, RAN increasingly introduced two types of arguments that
proclaimed such change as the dawn of a “new age” in the ?eld. One type of argument lauded cooperative retailers as “heroes”
or exemplars of ideal practices for agreeing to move away from old-growth products. The theme of such arguments was that, for
rectifying the issue or acting upon the opportunities highlighted via negative and positive arguments, the home-improvement
retailers transformed fromthe causes of the old-growth issue to the leaders of the movement to eradicate the issue. By positively
reinforcing major players' changes, RAN sought to establish going “old-growth free” as an accepted, taken-for-granted practice
in the ?eld. Home Depot represented the ?rst, and perhaps the most highly lauded, of the retailers. For example, RAN placed a
New York Times advertisement—located in Appendix B—that heralded Home Depot's decision to eliminate old-growth products
as “bold,” “smart,” and stemming from Home Depot's enlightened view (in?uenced by RAN) of such change as “good business”
policy:
Our sincere thanks to The Home Depot for recognizing that ancient trees are worth more in the forests than in their stores. In a
bold policy turnaround, The Home Depot says it will stop selling wood products from endangered forests by the year 2002…
The Home Depot also recognizes that it's good business to be environmentally responsible, knowing customers want to spend
their money with companies who do the right thing… Without smart business policies like The Home Depot's, our last old-
growth forests will be gone forever (September 2, 1999).
RAN also commended members of the Foolish Five as each retailer in this group agreed to change. The arguments, though,
were less vociferous than for Home Depot and declined in intensity as the concessions came from less prominent retailers. Mi-
chael Brune, for instance, recognized Wickes in a RAN press release, stating that the company “has joined a growing movement
among powerful wood consumers who recognize that selling old growth wood is unacceptable” (11/4/1999). As more retailers
agreed to go “old-growth free,” such arguments increasingly enabled RAN to depict this move as legitimate and attractive for
resistant retailers.
Beginning withRAN's praise of Home Depot, a recursive, symbiotic relationshipemerged betweenRAN's arguments validating and
challenging the practices of target retailers. Arguments lauding retailers that had agreed to change provided a baseline for arguments
contrasting these newly minted “heroes” with retailers that had not yet changed. RAN's glowing reviews of cooperative retailers often
immediately preceded and provided the context for pressuring resistant retailers. This phenomenon is evident in a press release
where Michael Brune distinguished Home Depot and Wickes from the remaining members of the Foolish Five: “Now that Wickes
and Home Depot are setting high standards for wood products, it is high time for HomeBase, Menards and others to follow suit”
(11/4/1999).
The other type of argument attributed home-improvement retailers' decisions to go “old growth free,” as well as support from
other ?eld members, to RAN's efforts. When making such arguments, RAN often described howits pressure turned resistant retailers
into collaborators. The fundamental value of this message was that it subtly warned the remaining retailers of old-growth products
what would occur if they failed to comply with RAN, hastening its engagements with these organizations. As the following press
release indicates, Home Depot represented the ?rst and perhaps most prized subject of these attributional arguments:
Home Depot, whichannounced August 26 plans to go old growth free, had been the focus of a two-year international campaign
urging the retail behemoth to stop selling old growth wood. RAN staged high-pro?le demonstrations at Home Depot head-
quarters, including hanging a giant banner there last October with the words: “Home Depot, Stop Selling Old Growth Wood.”
RAN also worked with major institutional shareholders, fought Home Depot expansion plans at local city council meetings,
coordinated a hard-hitting national ad campaign, and organized demonstrations at several hundred Home Depot across the
U.S. and Canada, as well as in Chile (11/04/1999).
12 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
RAN replicated this approach for each retailer that it lauded. Another statement from Michael Brune illustrates this point for
Wickes Lumber.
Wickes Lumber, the tenth largest home improvement retailer in the United States, announced yesterday that the company
plans to stop selling wood from endangered old growth forests by 2001. Rainforest Action Network (RAN) had included
Wickes Lumber as part of the “Foolish Five,” the largest home improvement stores still selling old growth wood. Wickes' an-
nouncement came just eight days after the company had beentargetedwith demonstrations as part of a nationally coordinated
day of action. The “Foolish Five” is 84 Lumber, Home Base, Menard's, Payless Cashways, and Wickes. Of over 100 protests na-
tionwide—organized by RAN, Student Environmental Action Coalition and Free the Planet—?fteen were at Wickes stores in the
U.S. northeast and midwest (11/04/1999).
The observable arguments for normalizing home-improvement retailers' transitionaway fromold-growthproducts also constitut-
ed the essence of RAN's rhetoric for substantiating its aspirant social position. The basic function of suchrhetoric, describedhenceforth
as formalization or formalizing rhetoric, was to convey the impact of RAN's interactions withtarget retailers. By linking itself to home-
improvement retailers' agreements to adopt new sourcing practices, RAN con?rmed its elite standing in the old-growth community
and even extended this position into the broader ?eld.
Two types of formalizing rhetoric, sancti?cation and cooptation, substantiated RAN's elite standing among home-improvement
retailers in the old-growth community. RAN's arguments for certifying and attributing target retailers' changes to its efforts
constituted the essence of each type of formalization. Sanctifying rhetoric, which manifested in arguments praising the retailers for
their agreements to go “old-growth free,” moved these organizations from outliers to leaders in the old-growth community.
Cooptational rhetoric, whichmanifested inarguments attributing the retailers' change agreements to RAN, indicated that the retailers'
ascent from “social purgatory” resulted from RAN's pressure, blessing, and assistance. When considered in tandem, then, these
rhetorical forms signaled RAN had established substantive relationships with major retailers and exerted valuable in?uence over
each one.
The nature of RAN's formalizing rhetoric transformed with each target retailer that agreed to change. Once Home Depot agreed to
go “old-growth free,” RAN proclaimed Home Depot as a corporate leader in the effort to preserve old-growth forests. However, by
highlighting the extent of pressure that it applied on Home Depot to prompt this change, RAN portrayed itself, not the company, as
the fundamental reason for this outcome. RAN then emphasized the Home Depot's agreement in elicitive rhetoric about the Foolish
Five, portraying those ?rms as laggards relative to Home Depot. Foolish Five retailers that agreed to change received commendations,
associations with Home Depot in the leader group, and positive mentions in later elicitive rhetoric. RAN afforded later adopters with
less praise than earlier adopters, suggesting that the later adopters offered weaker signals than earlier adopters of RAN's in?uence in
the ?eld.
Finally, formalizing rhetoric extended RAN's elite social position in the old-growth community to the broader retail home-
improvement ?eld. RAN, to this point in its campaign, used the advantageous con?nes of the old-growth community to interact
with and position itself favorably relative to home-improvement retailers. However, as more (target) major retailers went “old-
growth free” and other (non-target) ?eld members bought in to this idea, the lines between the old-growth community and the
broader ?eld setting blurred and the logics of the former became more taken-for-granted in the latter. Additionally, by sanctifying
and coopting target retailers' agreements to change, RAN signaled that its authority in the old-growth community translated to the
broader ?eld. Such rhetoric suggested that RAN had motivated the retailers—elites themselves according to the commercial logics
of home-improvement retailing—to adopt operating practices stemming from old-growth (environmental) logics. Recognizing that
RAN could develop meaningful relationships with and exert in?uence over major retailers' commercial activities repositioned RAN
from a marginal to an elite member of the ?eld as a whole, not just the old-growth community.
6. A process model of using change for social mobility
The present section synthesizes our evaluations of RAN to provide a theoretical account of the overarching process through
which marginalized entrepreneurs may leverage change projects to improve their social positions. The three rhetorical practices—
contextualization, elicitation, and formalization—serve independent and interrelated functions in achieving this outcome. Fig. 2,
which diagrams the process links between the rhetorical practices, indicates that mobility work involves recursive relationships
between the composite practices.
At the onset of change projects, marginalized entrepreneurs' observable arguments for introducing ?eld issues double as the
entrepreneurs' contextualizing rhetoric for construing themselves as ?eld elites. In general terms, contextualizing rhetoric yields
new sub-communities, based on logics from other ?elds, and thus produces openings for marginalized entrepreneurs to move
into more elite social positions. In more speci?c terms, the forms of contextualizing rhetoric begin to symbolize marginalized
entrepreneurs as elites in the new sub-communities and to establish the nature of their authority in those settings. Rationalizing
rhetoric uses logical appeals about the objective parameters of ?eld issues to signal marginalized entrepreneurs' intellectual authority.
Moralizing rhetoric uses ethical appeals about the moral underpinnings of ?eld issues to signal the entrepreneurs' normative
authority. Dramatizing rhetoric uses emotional appeals about the affective meaning of ?eld issues to signal marginalized
entrepreneurs' humanitarian authority. By symbolically positioning marginalized entrepreneurs as the elite members of sub-
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Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
communities, contextualizing rhetoric provides a foundation for the entrepreneurs to interact with and de?ne their standing relative
to traditional ?eld elites.
As they construct favorable social contexts, marginalized entrepreneurs shift toward observable arguments that tie elite ?eld
members to ?eld issues. These arguments double as the entrepreneurs' elicitive rhetoric for construing their status relative to
those elite members. Such rhetoric ties elite ?eld members to the sub-communities created during contextualization, subjects
themto a new social order, and facilitates interactions between entrepreneurs and the ?eld elites. The forms of elicitive rhetoric
signal that, in the sub-communities, marginalized entrepreneurs maintain more in?uential social positions than extant ?eld
elites, effectively inverting the traditional social hierarchy according to broader ?elds' logics. Stigmatizing rhetoric uses negative
arguments about the ?eld elites' practices to depict the elites as marginalized members of the sub-communities. Incentivizing
rhetoric uses positive arguments about the bene?ts associated with cooperation to indicate that, although ?eld elites occupy
marginalized positions in the sub-communities, adopting new arrangements will enable them to climb the sub-communities'
social ladder.
The con?uence of stigmatization and incentivization holds important implications for marginalized entrepreneurs' efforts to
construe their relative status. Such messages imply that elite ?eld members can only prevent losses or realize gains with assistance
from the marginalized entrepreneurs. This entices elite ?eld members to interact with the marginalized entrepreneurs, generating
some initial evidence of the entrepreneurs' status. Additionally, such messages entice other ?eld members to identify with the sub-
communities and to expand awareness of and support for the entrepreneurs' construed status in those settings. By favorably
positioning marginalized entrepreneurs against established ?eld elites, elicitive rhetoric provides a foundation for the entrepreneurs
to con?rm their status in sub-communities and extrapolate it to the broader ?eld setting.
Finally, when elite ?eld members agree to implement newarrangements, marginalized entrepreneurs craft observable arguments
that depict such change as a legitimate facet of organizational life in their ?elds. These arguments double as marginalized
entrepreneurs' formalizing rhetoric for validating and extending their construed standing as elite ?eld members. Such rhetoric
takes two forms. Sanctifying rhetoric, which builds on arguments praising cooperative elite ?eld members, rede?nes these actors
as problem solvers—rather than problem causers—in the sub-communities. Cooptational rhetoric, which hinges on arguments
attributing elite ?eld members' changes to the marginalized entrepreneurs' efforts, indicates the former granted the latter's better
standing inthe sub-communities. The con?uence of sancti?cationandcooptation signals that marginalizedentrepreneurs maintained
substantive, in?uential relationships with elite ?eld members. This provides evidence of the elevated social position in the sub-
communities that the marginalized entrepreneurs construed for themselves during contextualization and elicitation.
A crucial implication of formalizing rhetoric is that it also allows marginalized entrepreneurs to establish more favorable social
positions in the broader ?eld. Because they occupy insigni?cant positions according to dominant ?eld logics, marginalized
entrepreneurs create sub-communities to cultivate relationships with elite ?eld members. However, as elite ?eld members begin
to cooperate with marginalized entrepreneurs and sub-community logics assimilate into dominant ?eld logics, the cognitive
distinction between sub-communities and the main ?elds diminishes. Accordingly, when marginalized entrepreneurs claim
responsibility for such change, the entrepreneurs signal that their authority over the elite members extends beyond the sub-
communities. Such rhetoric recognizes that, by prompting elite ?eld members to act and think more like them, marginalized
entrepreneurs garnered more in?uence in their ?elds.
7. Discussion
This study sought to explain marginalized entrepreneurs' rhetorical practices for becoming more elite members of their
organizational ?elds. Our primary contribution is to expand the nature and implications of self-interest at the heart of institutional
entrepreneurship. Research on institutional entrepreneurs has focused on how such actors' social positions in organizational ?elds
shape their efforts to introduce and legitimize new arrangements in those settings. Institutional entrepreneurs, particularly those
with elite social positions, use these institutional change projects to maintain their standing (cf., Greenwood and Suddaby, 2006;
Greenwood et al., 2002; Sherer and Lee, 2002). However, scholars report little about how institutional entrepreneurs, particularly
those with marginalized social positions, use change projects to better their standing. Our study addresses this limitation by
identifying howmarginalized entrepreneurs' efforts to institute newarrangements enable these actors to achieve more elite standing.
An important insight fromour inferences is that the self-interest driving marginalized entrepreneurs to generate institutional change
may, in some instances, stem from the entrepreneurs' desire to accrue greater status in their organizational ?elds. This means that
institutional entrepreneurs may not only pursue institutional change for its intrinsic value, but they may also use institutional change
projects as a vehicle for achieving other objectives. Accordingly, although prior research has attended to the impact of institutional
entrepreneurs' projects on other ?eld members, we report that such efforts can also have a profound impact on the entrepreneurs
themselves.
Our exploration of marginalized entrepreneurs' social mobility expands the scope of research on institutional work, which
provided the perspective to analyze and interpret RAN's campaign. Such research has focused on the micro-practices underpinning
the macro-processes of institutional change, and examined how individuals—whether independently or as organizational leaders—
create, maintain, and destroy institutions (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006; Suddaby, 2010). We extend this conceptualization of
institutional work by recognizing that marginalized entrepreneurs' work to implement new arrangements concurrently supports
their work to attain higher status. Recognizing marginalized entrepreneurs' social mobility as institutional work extends the shift
in research on such actors from the general processes of institutional change to the speci?c practices of individual actors. In doing
so, we also amend research on institutional work to account for the inextricable link between practice and process. By identifying
14 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
the sequence and interplay of marginalized entrepreneurs' practices for performing mobility work, we begin to connect the macro-
processes that scholars of institutional work have sought to demystify and the micro practices that they have emphasized. Finally,
we highlight the importance of rhetoric to institutional work by proposing that marginalized entrepreneurs' rhetorical practices
shift elite ?eld members' perceptions of the entrepreneurs' social positions. Identifying institutional entrepreneurs' methods for
altering other ?eld members' perceptions demysti?es the “conceptual black box” between institutional entrepreneurs' change
projects and other ?eld members' perceptions and actions.
Our study also advances research on how institutional entrepreneurs use rhetoric. At its core, rhetoric offers an instrument for
shifting how an audience perceives reality (Bitzer, 1992). Although scholars have recognized that elite entrepreneurs may use
institutional change to maintain their social positions (Greenwood and Suddaby, 2006), research on the role of rhetoric typically fo-
cuses on the change itself (Green, 2004; Green et al., 2009; Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005). We enrichthis proposal by reporting that
rhetoric also serves a symbolic function, enabling institutional entrepreneurs—particularly those inhabiting marginalized social posi-
tions—to depict themselves as the primary facilitators of institutional change. Effectively, marginalized entrepreneurs embed an un-
spoken ?gurative message within a more literal one, suggesting what a marginalized entrepreneur does not say can prove as
meaningful as what it does say. This inference indicates that marginalized entrepreneurs use rhetoric not only to manipulate elite
?eld members' perceptions of ?eld meaning systems (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005), but also to manipulate elite members'
perceptions of the marginalized entrepreneurs' social positions. Additionally, research suggests that elite institutional entrepreneurs
often look to make new, divergent arrangements less controversial and more digestible through rhetoric that de?nes change as
consistent with existing arrangements (Greenwood et al., 2002; Maguire et al., 2004). Our inferences paint a different picture:
when engaging in mobility work, marginalized entrepreneurs use rhetoric that embraces the divergence of new arrangements
from the status quo. Doing so may enable the entrepreneurs to construe themselves as the main arbiter of change and to position
themselves to take credit for any resulting change. Finally, prior research on institutional entrepreneurship has delineated rhetoric
as a means for generating institutional change, portraying rhetorical practices as discrete, sequential phenomena (Green, 2004).
We qualify this idea by identifying that, when used for marginalized entrepreneurs' social mobility, rhetorical practices can interact
and unfold concurrently.
The three rhetorical practices that enable marginalized entrepreneurs' social mobility—namely, contextualization, elicita-
tion, and incentivization—belie a number of interesting theoretical insights. Each of these rhetorical practices uses different as-
pects of marginalized entrepreneurs' arguments for institutional change to signal the entrepreneurs' in?uence over elite ?eld
members. Contextualizing rhetoric signals marginalized entrepreneurs' authority on the parameters of emerging issues, from
intellectual, humanitarian, and moral perspectives, through arguments that introduce the issues to their ?elds. The core value
of contextualizing rhetoric is that it establishes new sub-communities, which constitutes socio-cognitive spaces—with distinct
norms, values, beliefs, and arrangements—where marginalized entrepreneurs can rede?ne themselves as elite actors. This
revelation suggests that studies on the birth of new ?elds (e.g., David et al., 2012; Maguire et al., 2004) may, in some instances,
actually examine the evolution of sub-communities in otherwise established ?elds (cf., Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005). Addi-
tionally, our inferences about contextualization offer an interesting contrast to how elite entrepreneurs protect their status.
Evidence suggests these actors de?ne ?eld issues and resolutions as inevitable phenomena, with the eventual objective of mo-
tivating other ?eld members to adopt arrangements that will preserve the entrepreneurs' status (Greenwood and Suddaby,
2006). Effectively, elite entrepreneurs recognize themselves as the messengers—rather than the catalysts—of proposed change,
which allows them to sustain their elevated social position over the longer term without threatening their current social posi-
tion. By contrast, we propose that marginalized entrepreneurs use contextualization to create and tie themselves to ?eld issues,
setting themselves up as arbiters of change. Finally, we recognize that contextualizing rhetoric may convey reasoning based on
the logics of foreign ?elds, rather than on the logics of the ?elds where marginalized entrepreneurs look to climb the social lad-
der. This tendency reinforces the proposal that actors engaging in institutional work can belong to multiple ?elds and transfer
logics from one to others (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006).
Elicitive rhetoric signals that marginalized entrepreneurs occupy more favorable social positions than traditional ?eld
elites in the new sub-communities through arguments that de?ne those elites as the causes of the emerging issues. Margin-
alized entrepreneurs convey their relative authority by stigmatizing elite ?eld members for maintaining practices that con-
tribute to ?eld issues and by incentivizing those members to adopt new practices. The underlying mechanism at play here
is akin to the one underpinning the good cop-bad cop routine for securing confessions, or the Sicilian Ma?a's methods for
extracting rents. In both contexts, an actor creates a problem for a target (stigmatization) and positions itself as the solution
to the problem(incentivization). Effectively, marginalized entrepreneurs like RANuse elicitive rhetoric to convey a clear mes-
sage: “if you do what we want, all of your woes will go away, and if you do not, the problem will get worse.” Such rhetoric also
relies on a more obvious mechanism—akin to public pillorying—where authorities openly humiliate “problem causers” for
their offenses. An interesting facet of elicitive rhetoric is that, like contextualizing rhetoric, marginalized entrepreneurs
may draw their power from the meaning systems of other ?elds or contexts, at least when pursuing their initial, and
highest-status targets. For instance, in our research setting, RAN played on the Protestant ethic of American culture by
using the ideological delineation between saint and sinner, good and evil to make Home Depot's practices appear more con-
tentious (cf., Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005). This phenomenon is quite different from elite entrepreneurs' looking to protect
their status through institutional change. Such actors use rhetoric to align change with their audiences' core identities (cf.,
Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005), whereas marginalized entrepreneurs simultaneously challenge and connect with aspects
of their targets' identities. This “good-evil” contrast points to an interesting difference in marginalized and elite entrepre-
neurs' rhetoric. While elite entrepreneurs may motivate status-maintaining change through general overtures about issues
15 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
with the status quo (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005), marginalized entrepreneurs may motivate status-building change by
“knocking down and building up” speci?c ?eld elites.
Finally, formalizing rhetoric substantiates marginalized entrepreneurs construed standing in subcommunities and translates this
standing to broader ?eld settings through arguments that normalize burgeoning change. Marginalized entrepreneurs leverage ?eld
elites' change agreements as evidence that the entrepreneurs have established substantive, in?uential relationships with the elites,
con?rming the entrepreneurs' construed social positions in sub-communities and signaling that this position extends into their
broader ?elds. A closer look at formalizing rhetoric suggests that it offers some interesting insights about marginalized entrepreneurs'
social mobility. Suchrhetoric exhibits a symbiotic, recursive relationship withelicitive rhetoric: when?eld elites change, marginalized
entrepreneurs elevate the elites' social positions in sub-communities and take credit for the elites' actions. This portrayal reverses the
depiction of ?eld elites as marginal members of sub-communities through elicitation and provides an alternative platform for
targeting other, lower-status elites. For instance, once Home Depot conceded, RAN's platform for stigmatizing other retailers shifted
from a pure focus on cultural logics (e.g., the Protestant ethic) to the positive manifestation of those logics in Home Depot's “saintly”
decision to go “old-growth free.” Using these newly minted “saints” to publicly embarrass resistant ?eld members re?ects a transition
toward symbolic interactionism(Blumer, 1986; Herman and Reynolds, 1994; Snow, 2001). Such visible, unfavorable comparisons to
one's peers provide a potent motivator to mimic howthose peers think and act (Leigh andGabel, 1992). This effect may be particularly
salient for ?eld members with lower status, which tend to pay closer attention to the actions of higher-status ?eld members than to
more abstract environmental factors (Phillips and Zuckerman, 2001). The use of symbolic interactionism also points to a key
distinction between marginalized entrepreneurs and elite entrepreneurs, since the latter does not appear to play speci?c actors
against others when sustaining its social positions. Interestingly, the use of symbolic interactionism in this setting indicates that
this concept extends beyond its micro-roots (i.e., individuals) into more macro-contexts (i.e., organizations). Overall, formalization
serves a unique function in marginalized entrepreneurs' mobility work, ?nalizing the entrepreneurs' efforts to convert their
aspirations into reality. The culmination of such efforts, when successful, is that elite ?eld members buy into the marginalized
entrepreneurs' claims and come to perceive the entrepreneurs as elite, rather than as marginal, actors.
Some noteworthy opportunities exist to build on our work. The ?rst opportunity deals with the effectiveness of marginalized
entrepreneurs' mobility work. Our study focused on RAN's social climbinthe ?eld of retail home-improvement, yet we still knowlittle
about differences in the outcomes of such efforts. Indeed, change projects enable some—but not all— marginalized actors to attain
higher status (cf., Leblebici et al., 1991). Holistic attention to the entrepreneur, the environment, or even the elite ?eld members
might provide a valuable starting point for future research on this topic. For instance, when marginalized entrepreneurs and ?eld
elites espouse different ideologies, the former may be less likely to achieve more favorable standing than entrepreneurs that share
common ideologies with their potential targets. Other perspectives may involve studying the factors that enable marginalized
entrepreneurs to improve their social positions without securing institutional change or that prevent such improvements even with
the advent of institutional change.
The second opportunity deals with the sustainability of the social positions attained through mobility work. Our study focused on
howRANcultivated better standing in its ?eld, yet we still knowlittle about its subsequent tenure in this social position. Scholars can
begin to examine whether, for howlong, and through what means marginalized entrepreneurs sustain the elite standing produced by
their mobility work. Various factors characterizing the divide, or lack thereof, between marginalized entrepreneurs andtheir potential
targets may provide a useful starting point for such research. For instance, when a social activist organization (e.g., RAN) gains higher
status among commercial ?rms (e.g., major home-improvement retailers), these status gains may erode more quickly than for
institutional entrepreneurs that exhibit more similar objectives to their targets. Attending to whether the institutional change
advocated by marginalized entrepreneurs “sticks” may also help to explain the longevity of the entrepreneurs' newly attained status.
The third opportunity deals with the nature of marginalized entrepreneurs' mobility work. Our study focused on the rhetorical
practices and processes that enabled RAN—a social activist organization—to become an elite member of the retail home-
improvement ?eld. However, other types of marginalized entrepreneurs, such as new ventures or small ?rms (Garud et al., 2002),
also may seek to attain better status through institutional change projects (cf., Leblebici et al., 1991). Scholars therefore could identify
and explain differences in marginalized entrepreneurs' rhetorical practices and processes. As with the effectiveness of mobility work,
fundamental similarities or differences between marginalized entrepreneurs and elite ?eld members may help to explain the advent
of comparable or divergent behaviors. For instance, a small startup looking to attain a better social position in a software ?eld may not
need to engage in the same types and levels of contextualization and elicitation as an environmental activist organization attempting
to improve its standing in the same setting.
The ?nal opportunity deals with the broader implications of institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility work. Our study focused
on RAN's social ascent in the retail home-improvement ?eld, however we knowlittle about the impact of such change on RAN's social
position in other ?elds (e.g., the environmental movement ?eld). Scholars can thus examine these spillover effects. Status in the ?elds
where an entrepreneur claims membership, as well as structural differences between these ?elds, may designate whether the
entrepreneur will experience status decline, growth, or stasis in one ?eld as they climb the social hierarchy in another. For instance,
if a socially motivated activist attains more elite standing in a ?eld comprised of ?nancially motivated members, the activists might
experience social decay in a ?eld comprised of similar, socially motivated members. Alternatively, the same activist might become
more elite in the eyes of more socially motivated actors for imposing shared ideologies on fundamentally dissimilar actors.
In conclusion, our study enhances research on the activities of institutional entrepreneurs. We do so by explaining how, using
institutional change, entrepreneurs with marginalized social positions can become more elite members of their organizational ?elds.
We hope that our conceptualization will guide future inquiry into the dynamic link between institutional entrepreneurs' change
projects and their social positions.
16 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
Appendix A. Private letter from Lowe's to RAN
17 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
Appendix B. RAN New York Times advertisement from September 2, 1999
18 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
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doc_856118841.pdf
Institutional entrepreneurs are actors who create new or transform established institutions in ways that diverge from the status quo (DiMaggio, 1988.
Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in
organizational ?elds
?
Theodore L. Waldron
a,
?, Greg Fisher
b
, Chad Navis
c
a
Department of Management, Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University, United States
b
Department of Management and Entrepreneurship, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, United States
c
Initiative for Studies in Transformational Entrepreneurship, Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin, United States
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Available online xxxx
Field Editor: Garry Bruton
This study examines how institutional entrepreneurs with marginalized social positions use
institutional change to become more in?uential members of organizational ?elds. We analyze
how the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) used rhetoric to garner more in?uence as it altered a
key sourcing practice in the retail home-improvement ?eld. Our ?ndings indicate that RAN
relied on three rhetorical practices, comprising an encompassing process, to cultivate positive
associations between the new sourcing practices and its social position in the ?eld. Overall, by
specifying a marginalized entrepreneur's methods for leveraging one type of change to enact
another, we enhance theory at the intersection of institutional entrepreneurship, institutional
work, and rhetoric.
© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Institutional entrepreneurs
Activists
Institutional work
Rhetoric
Social mobility
1. Executive summary
Institutional entrepreneurs are actors who create new or transform established institutions in ways that diverge from the status
quo (DiMaggio, 1988; Fligstein, 1997; Maguire et al., 2004; Rao et al., 2000). Research on institutional entrepreneurs has explained
how the social position of actors in organizational ?elds affect their methods for fostering institutional change. However, it reports
much less on how marginalized institutional entrepreneurs' use institutional change to improve their social positions. This omission
is surprising, because institutional entrepreneurs fundamentally pursue change to realize their own interests. The purpose of this pro-
ject is to explain how, as marginalized institutional entrepreneurs alter established arrangements in their organizational ?elds, they
achieve upward social mobility.
Todoso, we establishsocial mobility as a novel formof institutional work andemploy a qualitative, inductive approachto examine
the Rainforest Action Network's (RAN) rhetoric for attaining an elite social position in the retail home-improvement ?eld. Using
various forms of persuasion, RAN prompted home-improvement retailers to institute more environmentally friendly practices for
sourcing wood-based products, and, more broadly, to place greater emphasis on the environmental impact of their operations. The
evolution of new sourcing practices and changes to the ?eld's meaning system also provided a platform for RAN to transform itself
from an inconsequential actor in the ?eld to an in?uential one that guided major retailers' decisions. Our analysis examines how
RANused rhetoric to alter perceptions of its social position in the ?eld. Overall, we found that RANenacted a deliberate process, com-
prised of three rhetorical practices—namely, contextualization, elicitation, and incentivization—to cultivate positive associations be-
tween itself, ?eld issues, elite retailers, and institutional change.
Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
? The authors would like to thank our editor, Roy Suddaby, our anonymous reviewers, and Mike Pfarrer for the insights they shared in the development of this
manuscript. We also would like to thank Jocelyn Leitzinger for her helpful support of the data effort for this project.
? Corresponding author at: Department of Management, Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University, One Bear Place #98006, Waco, Texas 76798-8006.
JBV-05714; No of Pages 19
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
0883-9026/© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Business Venturing
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
The central theoretical contribution of this study is to enrich our understanding of the role of persuasive communication in
facilitating a distinct type of institutional change. Rather than view rhetoric as a means for motivating, legitimating, and diffusing
new arrangements, we focus on the implications of rhetoric for the actors catalyzing such change. The main takeaway of our study
is that, while they use rhetoric to convince ?eld members to accept new arrangements, institutional entrepreneurs also leverage
such language to generate acceptance and in?uence for themselves. Fundamentally, then, we recognize that institutional entrepre-
neurs' change projects may emanate fromthe latent desire to attain heightened status in their organizational ?elds, and that rhetoric
crucially facilitates these concurrent processes.
2. Introduction
Institutional entrepreneurs are actors who create new or transform established institutions in ways that diverge from the status
quo (DiMaggio, 1988; Fligstein, 1997; Maguire et al., 2004; Rao et al., 2000). Prior research has explained howinstitutional entrepre-
neurs' social positions in organizational ?elds affect their methods for fostering institutional change, yet it reports much less on how
the entrepreneurs' change efforts affect their social positions. This omission is surprising, because institutional entrepreneurs funda-
mentally pursue change to realize their owninterests (Battilana et al., 2009; DiMaggio, 1983; Maguire et al., 2004). Elite entrepreneurs
may use change projects to preserve their in?uential social positions (GreenwoodandSuddaby, 2006; Greenwood et al., 2002), where-
as marginalized entrepreneurs may use change projects to improve their inconsequential social positions.
The fact that the latter type of entrepreneur concurrently engages in both self and ?eld transformation makes them particularly
interesting. Marginalized entrepreneurs often overcome their lack of in?uence by relying on more elite actors to implement new
structures (Lawrence, 1999; Maguire et al., 2004). This dependency creates an incentive for marginalized entrepreneurs to covet
more elite standing, which would reduce their reliance on proverbial “middle men” and increase their ability to pursue their interests.
This study seeks to advance understanding of this phenomenon by explaining how marginalized entrepreneurs use institutional
change to improve their social standing.
Institutional work and rhetoric help to structure our examination of this phenomenon. Institutional work describes “purposive ac-
tion aimed at creating, maintaining, and disrupting institutions” (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006: 216). This perspective shifts attention
from the general processes of institutional change to the particular practices through which institutional entrepreneurs enact these
processes. Rhetoric, which describes the strategic use of persuasive language that simultaneously re?ects and manipulates target au-
diences' meaning systems (Berkenkotter and Huckin, 1995; Miller, 1994; Orlikowski and Yates, 1994), represents a quintessential in-
strument for performing institutional work. Institutional entrepreneurs use rhetoric to transformother ?eld members' perceptions of
reality, motivating these audiences to accept and enact profound change (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005). Such actors argue that
existing arrangements are problematic and that new arrangements resolve those problems (Greenwood et al., 2002; Heracleous
and Barrett, 2001; Lawrence and Phillips, 2004; Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005; Vaara and Tienari, 2011).
We suggest that rhetoric may also facilitate a related—yet distinct—type of institutional work, (social) mobility work, which
describes institutional entrepreneurs' efforts to improve their current social standing in organizational ?elds. An organizational
?eld describes “a community of organizations that partakes in a common meaning system and whose participants interact more fre-
quently and fatefully with one another than with actors outside those settings” (Scott, 1995: 56). The composition and boundaries of
these spaces continually evolve as organizations, throughtheir interactions, attempt to construct, maintain, and tear downestablished
arrangements (Greenwood et al., 2002; Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006; Zietsma and Lawrence, 2010). Such dynamics can stem from
and result in social strati?cations, with ?eld members inhabiting social positions that range from elite (i.e., in?uential or central) to
marginalized (i.e., insigni?cant or peripheral) (Bourdieu, 1991; DiMaggio, 1983; Eisenstadt, 1968; Shils, 1975).
1
The fact that rhetoric
enables institutional entrepreneurs to rede?ne arrangements in ways that prompt change by ?eld elites indicates that such discourse
may also allowmarginalized entrepreneurs to rede?ne ?eld social positions in ways that elicit status-building interactions with those
actors.
We employ a qualitative, inductive approach to examine the Rainforest Action Network's (RAN) rhetoric for attaining an elite
(social) position in the retail home-improvement ?eld. Activists like RAN qualify as marginalized institutional entrepreneurs when
they attempt to “initiate divergent [institutional] changes and participate in the implementation of those changes” (Battilana et al.,
2009) frominconsequential social positions (e.g., Maguire et al., 2004).
2
Despite their non-elite standing, suchactors have successfully
produced novel or heavily modi?ed practices in diverse organizational ?elds—including ?nancial services, grocery retail, and home
construction (Waldron et al., 2013). Activists build their campaigns on broader social logics (Bennett, 2004; den Hond and de
Bakker, 2007), leveraging rhetoric to convince more elite ?eld members that change is necessary to resolve incompatibilities between
?eld arrangements and societal expectations. Activists may also experience upward social mobility as their rhetoric catalyzes more
regular, substantive interactions with ?eld elites. RAN's activities in the retail home improvement ?eld provided an ideal setting for
studying this phenomenon. Using various forms of persuasion, RAN prompted home-improvement retailers to institute more
environmentally friendly practices for sourcing wood-based products, and, more broadly, to place greater emphasis on the environ-
mental impact of their operations.
3
The evolution of newsourcing practices and changes to the ?eld's meaning systemalso provided a
1
On occasion, scholars have used the terms central and peripheral to describe actors' structural positions in ?elds. We use these terms to describe actors' social po-
sition in ?elds.
2
Many social activists are institutional entrepreneurs, because they want to generate fundamental institutional change that differs fromthe status quo. However, not
all institutional entrepreneurs are social activists.
3
In this study, we implicitly recognize that organizations' actions, such as those of RAN and the home-improvement retailers, are attributable to their individual
leaders (Meindl et al., 1985).
2 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
platform for RAN to transform itself from an inconsequential actor in the ?eld to an in?uential one that guided major retailers' deci-
sions. Our analysis examines how RAN used rhetoric to alter perceptions of its social position in the ?eld. Overall, we found that RAN
enacted a unique process, comprised of three rhetorical practices, to cultivate positive associations between itself, ?eld issues, elite
retailers, and institutional change.
The central theoretical contribution of this study is to enrich our understanding of the role of persuasive communication in
facilitating a distinct type of institutional change. Rather than view rhetoric as a means for motivating, legitimating, and diffusing
new arrangements (Green, 2004; Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005), we focus on the implications of rhetoric for the actors catalyzing
such change (Suddaby, 2011). The main takeaway of our study is that, while they use rhetoric to convince ?eld members to accept
new arrangements, institutional entrepreneurs also leverage such language to generate acceptance and in?uence for themselves.
Fundamentally, then, we recognize that institutional entrepreneurs' change projects may emanate from the latent desire to attain
heightened status in their organizational ?elds (cf., Suddaby and Viale, 2011), and that rhetoric crucially facilitates these concurrent
processes.
Our paper proceeds as follows. First, we explain our methodological and analytical approaches. Second, we brie?y summarize the
RAN case. Third, we convey our ?ndings about how RAN, as an exemplar marginalized entrepreneur, used rhetoric to advance its
social standing in the retail-home improvement ?eld. Fourth, we translate our inferences about RAN into a theoretical process
model that proposes how marginalized institutional entrepreneurs perform social mobility work. Finally, we examine the scholarly
implications of our study.
3. Methods
We used a qualitative, inductive methodology to analyze a longitudinal case; namely, RAN's campaign (1997–2002) to modify an
important sourcing practice, and, concurrently, its own social position in the ?eld of retail home-improvement. The case method
involves making inferences about latent theoretical processes, practices, and mechanisms from observable phenomena (Marshall
and Rossman, 1995; Yin, 2003). This method's interpretive nature allowed us to make sense of how, using rhetoric, marginalized
entrepreneurs leverage one type of change to enact another (Langley, 1999). In our research setting, we sought to discern how
RAN's rhetoric convinced home-improvement retailers to go “old-growth free,” and, in the process, to view RAN as an elite member
of the retail home-improvement ?eld. To do so, we carefully evaluated the substantive and symbolic meanings re?ected in the
observable features of RAN's communications (Gephart, 1993).
3.1. Data sources
We sought to collect data that would informevaluations of howRANused rhetoric to become more in?uential in the retail home-
improvement ?eld. RAN's communications with home-improvement retailers, which aimed to convince the retailers to go “old-
growth free,” provided the primary foundation for such inferences. Other ?eld members' communications about the campaign
supplemented those from RAN, enabling us to develop a complete picture of campaign milestones and to assess the robustness of
our evaluations. Pertinent communications, including website matter, press releases, speech transcripts, national and local media
reports, advertisements, pamphlets, letters, emails, and (internal) memos, originated from Factiva, the Internet Archive, and Business
Source Premier. One particularly noteworthy source was the archive of RAN's campaign documents at UC-Berkeley's Bancroft Library.
The archive not only contained many of the same communications as the aforementioned public sources, but it also included private
correspondence within and between focal organizations. Overall, accessing and comparing data from multiple actors and sources
provided a relatively complete, reliable perspective of key events and a foundation for making robust inferences (Eisenhardt, 1989).
3.2. Data analysis
Analysis of the data consisted of four stages. First, we coded each data segment according to its source (e.g., press releases, website
content, campaignmaterials, media reports), and arrangedthe segments chronologically (Miles and Huberman, 1984). Data segments
refer to distinct narratives, suchas the rawcommunications comprising our sample, published at speci?c points intime by identi?able
sources (Strauss and Corbin, 1994). Coding the source of each data segment provided a foundation to evaluate the importance of
campaign events, based on the attention given to each event by the different campaign actors. Chronologically arranging source-
coded data segments facilitated our evaluation of event importance by locating different accounts of the same event together. It
also provided a “roadmap” of the pertinent events in RAN's campaign, which facilitated the development of a campaign history
(Langley, 1999) and the examination of RAN's rhetorical practices (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005). Table 1 presents the account
of major campaign events.
Second, using the chronological account, we uncoveredrelevant blocks of text withineachdata segment and“opencoded” the text
blocks to identify ?rst-order conceptual categories and their properties (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). This analytical stage discerned
speci?c passages within each of RAN's communications that captured RAN's “raw” language for persuading elite retailers to move
away from old-growth products. Our objective at this point was to determine the complete range of these observable arguments,
rather than to infer their latent meaning (cf., Berg, 2004; Greenwood and Suddaby, 2006). Upon isolating the distinct arguments
contained in the text blocks, we assessed the distinguishing attributes of each argument, grouped arguments with similar attributes
into categories, and assigned labels to each category capturing its unique features. This process yielded an account of the different
3 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
observable arguments that RAN used during its campaign and provided the foundation to uncover RAN's rhetorical practices for
performing mobility work.
Third, we moved to “axial coding” (Strauss andCorbin, 1990), whichdescribes the inference of second-order theoretical categories
fromopen codes and then general aggregate dimensions fromthe second-order categories (cf., Corley and Gioia, 2004). Our objective
during this analytical stage shifted toward evaluating howRANused its observable arguments—namely, those for convincing retailers
Table 1
Chronology of events.
Time Event
Jan '97 RAN launches Old Growth Campaign to drive old-growth wood products from the marketplace.
Jan–Aug '97 RAN enters negotiations with Home Depot to address its lumber procurement policies,
but negotiations fail to result in any tangible commitments by the company.
Oct '97 Activists target Home Depot as part of World Rainforest Week. Advertisements are placed in
major magazines and demonstrations are held at 35 Home Depot stores across the country.
Jan–Apr '98 Director Oliver Stone, baseball star Al Leiter, and rock band REM write letters to Home Depot,
urging the company to phase out sales of old-growth wood.
Apr '98 RAN representatives meet with Home Depot representatives, with latter pledging to develop a
policy by June, 1998 that details how the company will go old-growth free.
Jun '98 June deadline passes without any policy or communication from Home Depot.
Sep '98 RAN prompts investment ?rms and major Home Depot shareholders FRDC, KLD, and Citizens Funds to
write letters to Home Depot urging the company to go old-growth free.
Sep '98 Mailings by RAN, Global Response, and Co-op America result in over 8000 letters sent to Home
Depot within a few weeks.
Oct '98 Time Magazine article exposes Home Depot's egregious purchases of old-growth wood and
highlights the old growth campaign.
Oct '98 International Day of Action: 75 demonstrations at Home Depot stores across U.S. & Canada
Oct '98 RAN advertisement in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution details “How two guys in pinstripe
suits cut down more rainforest than anyone in ?annel shirts.”
Oct '98 RAN activists hang ?ve-story banner at Home Depot headquarters. Home Depot executives
promise to have a new old-growth policy in place by the end of the calendar year.
Nov '98 Working Assets, a long distance telephone company, targets Home Depot. Nearly 45,000 letters and
phone calls are sent to Home Depot urging them to go old-growth free. Nearly 5.000 calls are sent
directly to Home Depot President and CEO Arthur Blank's direct extension.
Nov '98 Letter by actor and environmentalist, Ed Asner, urges Home Depot to phase out its old-growth wood sales.
Nov '98 City councils in Madison, WI, and Longmont, CO oppose construction of Home Depot stores until Home
Depot develops a policy that eliminates old-growth wood sales.
Dec '98 RAN full-page advertisement in the New York Times highlights 27 major Fortune 500 companies that
have committed to go old growth free. National press coverage, including in CBS National News and
front-page stories in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Examiner, Vancouver Sun, Portland Oregonian, and
articles in dozens of papers across the country follow. Home Depot is listed prominently in many
articles as a leading company that refuses to change.
Dec '98 RAN launches Holiday Kids campaign. Over 3000 children from across the country send in letters to
Home Depot CEO, asking for a Christmas gift of a healthy forest.
Dec '98 Home Depot shareholders, FRDC and Education Foundation of America, ?le shareholder resolution
against Home Depot, urging the company to eliminate its old-growth wood supply.
Jan–Feb '99 Activists across the U.S. and Canada demonstrate outside of Home Depot store openings, during a
time when Home Depot is opening at least three to ?ve stores each Thursday.
Feb '99 RAN full-page advertisement in New York Times states, “Only a kid can say, ‘Save the Rainforest’ 3000
different ways. Will Home Depot listen to even one?”
Mar '99 Home Depot reveals new policy, which dismisses the full scope of RAN's desired changes and instead
commits to purchase small amounts of certi?ed wood.
Mar '99 RAN and a coalition of other activists protest at over 150 stores across the U.S. and Canada.
Mar–Apr '99 RAN sends letter to all major home-improvement retailers in the U.S., offering them an opportunity to
get the jump on Home Depot in taking responsible action for the world's forests.
May '99 Hereditary leaders of the Nuxalk tribe from British Columbia travel with RAN to Home Depot's annual
shareholders' meeting in Atlanta, since wood sold at Home Depot was traced back to Nuxalk land.
Nuxalk leaders are barred from attending the shareholders' meeting, despite having legal rights to be there.
The event generates coverage in major media outlets including NPR and the Wall Street Journal.
May–Jun '99 REM, Indigo Girls, and Dave Matthews Band send letters to Home Depot executives and speak out on issues of
forest destruction and indigenous rights.
Aug '99 Civic leaders in Racine, WI deny a request by Home Depot to build a new store in the community.
Aug '99 Home Depot announces its commitment to stop selling old-growth wood.
Sep '99 RAN moves beyond Home Depot and continues its campaign to rid the home-improvement retail industry of
old-growth wood products by sending letters to ?ve other home-improvement retailers.
Oct '99 RAN advertisement in the New York Times commends Home Depot for its policy change and warns ?ve other
home-improvement retailers (later dubbed the “Foolish Five”) to change their practices too.
Oct '99 RAN initiates protests around the country that urge the “Foolish Five” to make or exceed the same
commitment to go old-growth free as Home Depot did.
Nov '99 Wickes Lumber and HomeBase announce plans to phase out their sales of old-growth wood products.
Jan '00 Menard's announces a plan to phase out its sales of old-growth wood products.
Dec '00 Six other large home-improvement retailers make commitments to stop selling old-growth wood products.
4 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
to implement new sourcing practices—to improve its social standing. To accomplish this, we iteratively cycled between the data
analysis and theory development in two stages (cf., Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2003). The ?rst stage involved identifying the methods
of persuasion re?ected in the ?rst-order codes, grouping conceptually similar codes into second-order theoretical categories, and
then developing labels for and descriptions of each category. The second step was a nuanced iteration of the ?rst one, and involved
consolidating conceptually similar second-order categories into aggregate theoretical dimensions. These aggregate dimensions
constituted theoretical representations of RAN's rhetorical practices for performing mobility work and informed the exploration of
its patterns for enacting these practices. Table 2 provides examples of our analytical progression from text blocks to each theoretical
dimension. Fig. 1 provides an illustration of the ?ndings obtained during each stage of the data analysis.
Fourth, we integrated output from previous rounds of data analysis, along with supplementary evidence, into a chronology that
re?ects the process through which marginalized entrepreneurs like RAN improve their social standing. We adopted the schematic
approach employed in prior research (e.g., Binghamand Davis, 2012; Langley, 2007; Van de Ven, 1992). With the original chronolog-
ical account as a framework, we coded RAN's communications, captured in the text blocks, for the theoretical constructs that emerged
Table 2
Progression from text blocks to aggregate theoretical dimensions.
Selected coding examples
Original text block Only about four percent of the United State's original ancient forests are still standing.
Worldwide, logging and other causes of deforestation have brought all but twenty
percent to the brink of extinction (RAN PR, 10/22/1997)
First-order code Providing statistics and facts about the issue
Second-order code Rationalization
Aggregate dimension Contextualization
Original text block The Earth's once lush green blanket is already threadbare and tattered with only 22% of
the old-growth forests left standing. When future generations look back, they will see the
period we now live in as a critical moment in time: the world's last great forests have come
under ?nal attack (RAN Web archive, 1/21/1998)
First-order code Creating vivid imagery of the issue's effects (and the required urgency to stop them)
Second-order code Dramatization
Aggregate dimension Contextualization
Original text block In this day and age it is no longer appropriate to make consumer goods out of the world's last
ancient trees, some as old as 2000 years (RAN PR, 8/17/1997)
First-order code Classifying the issue as a violation of social norms
Second-order code Moralization
Aggregate dimension Contextualization
Original text block In a time when only 22 percent of the world's original old growth forests remain, continuing the
sales of old growth wood is simply barbaric… Home Depot sells cedar, ?r and spruce lumber and
wood products cut from the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest of British Columbia; lumber,
decking and trim from the Paci?c Northwest's ancient redwoods; mahogany doors from the
tropical rainforests of the Amazon; and lauan and ramin plywood, paneling, tool handles and
dowels from southeast Asia at their 700-plus stores in North America (RAN PR, 10/28/1998)
First-order code Condemning targets, namely their sourcing practices, as causes of the issue
Second-order code Stigmatization
Aggregate dimension Elicitation
Original text block Home Depot is lagging behind. Many large, visionary companies and leaders in the home
improvement industry have already started to eliminate old growth wood products. Europe's
largest home improvement center, B&Q, has nearly completed removing old-growth wood from
its shelves. In December 1998, 27 U.S. corporations—including IBM, Dell, Kinko's, Nike, 3 M,
Levi-Strauss and others—announced their commitment to stop using old growth wood (RAN PR, 2/24/1999)
First-order code Proposing targets could espouse social norms, values, and beliefs, and thus become moral leaders,
by changing their sourcing practices
Second-order code Incentivization
Aggregate dimension Elicitation
Original text block The end of old growth logging worldwide is one step closer now that Wickes Lumber has agreed to
stop selling products made from these endangered areas (RAN PR, 11/4/1999)
First-order code Portraying targets as (industry) heroes for changing sourcing practices
Second-order code Sancti?cation
Aggregate dimension Formalization
Original text block After a two-year international grassroots campaign led by Rainforest Action Network, Home Depot,
in a bold policy turnaround, announced recently that it would eliminate old-growth wood
products by the year 2002 (RAN PR, 10/8/1999)
First-order code Claiming changes to targets' sourcing practices as a success for RAN and as a function of RAN's efforts
Second-order code Cooptation
Aggregate dimension Formalization
5 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
during axial coding (i.e., the aggregate theoretical dimensions portrayed in Fig. 1). We then examined other ?eld members' commu-
nications, contained in the broader sample of data segments, for evidence of shifts in their attentiveness, tenor, and responsiveness to
RAN. The resulting data helped us to identify changes in the interactions between RANand the targeted retailers, as well as changes in
the collective perceptions of RAN's social position. Finally, we used arrows to depict the process relationships between the theoretical
constructs in the chronological account, and then created a map of the basic construct interactions over time (cf., Binghamand Davis,
2012). As Fig. 2 demonstrates, our schematic analysis yielded a diagram of patterns in RAN's rhetorical practices for initiating and
leveraging interactions with elite retailers to alter perceptions of its social position. This process model provided a platformto explain
the process and composite practices through which RAN, and, more generally, marginalized entrepreneurs perform mobility work.
Next, we offer an historic overview of our case to contextualize our ?ndings, theoretical inferences about marginalized
entrepreneurs, and discussion of scholarly implications.
Fig. 1. Data structure.
6 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
4. Change in the home-improvement retail industry
In January 1997, RANlaunched the Old Growth Campaign. The campaign's objective was to stop the extraction of old-growth wood
—such as Lauan, Mahogany, Ramin, Cedar, Redwood and Douglas Fir—from mature, indigenous forests by removing the demand for
products utilizing old-growth wood (described henceforth as old-growth products). A critical facet of the broader campaign was
RAN's effort to alter the ?eld of retail home-improvement, which consisted of ?rms that sold an array of old-growth products—
including lumber, cabinets, and doors—as part of their core product mix. RAN ultimately wanted all home-improvement retailers
to increasingly attend to the environmental impact of their operations, which in this case meant developing and abiding by policies
for replacing old-growth products with environmentally certi?ed varieties. Since it maintained few—if any—impactful relationships
with elite retailers, RAN occupied a marginal position in the retail home-improvement ?eld during this early phase of the campaign.
Interestingly, and despite its lower standing, RAN initially focused its efforts on a ?eld leader, The Home Depot (hereafter, ‘Home
Depot’).
4.1. RAN's initial target: Home Depot
RANdelivered persuasive discourse in diverse ways to convince Home Depot to eliminate old-growth products fromits inventory.
It ?rst entered negotiations with the company in mid-1997. However, the talks yielded no commitments to change from the
company's management, so RAN made its arguments more visible in October of that year through a variety of approaches. These
included demonstrations at Home Depot stores; written petitions from (non-) celebrity supporters; sponsorship of shareholder
resolutions; development of advertisements; and the introduction of stories to the news media. When Home Depot still did not
respond, RAN took its case to the political arena in the last half of 1998 by working with city councils to oppose the construction of
new Home Depot stores across the U.S.
While escalating their efforts against Home Depot, RAN's representatives continued to meet and negotiate with the Home Depot's
executives. Home Depot's executives, for their part, took steps to signal its concern for RAN's requests. Suzanne Apple, Home Depot's
Fig. 2. Rhetorical process for improving social positions through institutional change.
7 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
Director of Community Affairs and Environmental Programs, exempli?ed this point in a letter to RAN's leaders that called for RAN to
focus more on collaborating with the company than on conducting protests at the company's retail stores:
We share RAN's concern for the environment, however, this protest today represents a misplaced criticism of a company that
has led the industry in environmental practices. We are constantly striving to raise the bar on environmental issues and
recognize that this particular issue is not just a Home Depot issue, but an industry and world-wide issue…Instead of
demonstrations, RAN might consider joining us and others in the effort to develop alternative products, educate consumers,
and pioneer green building practices that can be used in all types of construction (private letter, 2/12/1998).
A solution seemed imminent in September 1998 when Home Depot's executives pledged to develop a policy for eliminating old-
growthproducts fromtheir shelves. However, the pledge turned out to be empty: Home Depot neither formally releaseda newpolicy,
nor took any substantive steps to enact one. As Randy Hayes—RAN's president—communicated, “They gave us lip service of all sorts”
(Carlton, 2000). Fueled by Home Depot's passive resistance, RANannouncedinFebruary 1999that it would “continue [its efforts] until
Home Depot commits to end all sales of old growth wood [products]” (RANpress release, 2/28/1999). RAN increased the intensity of
its arguments for Home Depot to change during 1999. In March, RANarranged and carried out a massive protest against Home Depot:
Activists converged on more than 150 Home Depot stores in 35 states and provinces in the U.S. and Canada. In addition to the
usual grassroots activismtoolkit of civil disobedience, banners, in?atables, picket signs, and bullhorns, activists commandeered
Home Depot's intercom system. All over the continent, activists directed Home Depot's customers directly to the old growth
wood for sale on its aisles (RAN website archive).
RAN followed the mass protest in May of that year by arranging for the hereditary leader of the Nuxalk Tribe, an indigenous tribe
from British Columbia, to speak at Home Depot's annual shareholders' meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. Old-growth products on sale at
Home Depot stores had been traced back to Nuxalk land. Accordingly, tribal leaders—with support from RAN—planned to highlight
the negative impact that logging old-growth wood had on their people and environment, and to con?rm RAN's call for Home
Depot to stop selling derivative products. However, despite being shareholders of the company, the tribe's leaders were barred
from the meeting on the day of the event. The decision generated signi?cant media coverage (e.g., NPR and The Wall Street Journal),
and served as a publicity boon to RAN's campaign.
The con?uence of RAN's protests, petitions, and political actions continued until August 1999, when Arthur Blank—Home Depot's
CEO—announced that his ?rm would change its policy on the sale of old-growth products. Blank stated that:
Home Depot embraces its responsibility as a global leader to help protect endangered forests. By the end of 2002, we will
eliminate from our stores wood from endangered areas—including certain lauan, redwood and cedar products—and give
preference to ‘certi?ed’ wood (Home Depot press release, 8/26/1999).
This announcement marked the beginning of an increasingly substantive relationship between RAN and Home Depot, with
the two jointly crafting and implementing a plan for rapidly replacing old-growth products with suitable substitutes. It also provided
a crucial beachhead for RAN to call for similar behavior by other major retailers.
4.2. RAN's “lost” target: Lowe's
RANalso entered negotiations with Lowe's at the onset of the campaign. Lowe's and Home Depot maintained comparable levels of
dominance in the ?eld, and, not surprisingly, each one served as the other's main competitor. Unlike Home Depot's executives,
though, Lowe's executives proactively addressed the old-growth issue and even began to craft a plan for going “old-growth free.”
This stance was evident in a formal letter from Dale Pond—Lowe's executive vice-president of merchandising—to Michael Brune—
RAN's campaign director—that touted Lowe's ongoing effort “to set global [environmental] standards for the entire retail home
improvement industry” (Private letter, 10/13/1999).
Interestingly, RAN never claimed Lowe's efforts to change as a victory or used this outcome to secure similar concessions from
other retailers during the main body of the campaign, as it had done with Home Depot and subsequent targets. One possible reason
is that Lowe's desire to become the ?eld's environmental championlimited RAN's ability to use Lowe's as evidence of its ownauthority
on environmental issues in the ?eld. When Pond's letter informed RAN's leaders of Lowe's environmental objectives and did not
assign credit to RAN, RAN personnel marked the correspondence with the clear directives, “Do not distribute!,” “For Private Review
Only,” and “Not to be leaked to press.” The decision to obscure this information and the absence of discourse mentioning Lowe's,
which would have made RAN's arguments for ?eld change more compelling, point to the importance RAN assigned to its own social
ascent in the ?eld. Appendix A contains Pond's private letter to Brune.
4.3. RAN's subsequent targets: the Foolish Five and other home-improvement retailers
Ultimately, though, RAN sought to bring environmental logic to the fore of the ?eld's meaning system by transforming a practice
accepted and used by most home-improvement retailers. Just before Home Depot's policy change, RAN sent a letter to other retailers
enticing them “to get the jump on Home Depot while taking responsible action for the world's forests” (RAN website archive). None
responded, so once Home Depot agreed to change, RAN sent another letter to those ?rms in September 1999. This letter highlighted
8 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
Home Depot's recent commitment to stop selling old-growth products and suggested that other home-improvement retailers follow
suit to avoid action by RAN.
Indeed, RANsingled out a set of prominent home-improvement retailers when the broader ?eld remained largely unresponsive. In
early October 1999, RAN placed an advertisement in the New York Times that publicly commended Home Depot for its policy change
and warned ?ve of the company's top competitors—84 Lumber, Homebase, Menards, Payless Cashways, and Wickes—of escalated
pressure if they did not follow suit. RAN made good on its promise later that October when it publicized these ?rms as the Foolish
Five and initiated massive demonstrations at their stores. At the same time, RAN negotiated with the executives of the Foolish Five
to switch from old-growth products as Home Depot had done. These efforts elicited a chain of concessions from this group of ?rms
from the end of 1999 to 2000. Even ?rms that RAN had not engaged, such as IKEA and Lanoga, began to adopt comparable changes.
By the end of 2002, most major home-improvement retailers had initiated or already transitioned from old-growth to environmen-
tally certi?ed products, leading RAN to end its campaign.
These concessions also marked the beginning of more signi?cant relationships between RAN and the members of the Foolish Five.
As with Home Depot, RANworked with many of these ?rms to identify acceptable product substitutes and construct formal plans for
implementing these policies. It then oversaw the enactment of the policies and threatened action against laggard or non-compliant
?rms.
5. Findings
The preceding history provides context to present our ?ndings about RAN, and, in turn, to advance theory on the role of rhetoric in
marginalized entrepreneurs' mobility work. Three rhetorical practices—contextualization, elicitation, and formalization—emerged from
our analysis. We ?rst introduce the observable arguments underpinning each rhetorical practice, and describe how RAN used these
arguments to introduce new sourcing practices in the retail home-improvement ?eld. We then elaborate how these arguments
also constituted the essence of RAN's rhetoric for construing itself as a more elite member of the ?eld. The essence of our ?ndings
is that, to construe and realize their aspirant social position, RAN rhetorically linked itself to the ?eld issues, elites, and arrangements
that de?ned its change project.
5.1. Contextualization
RAN began its campaign by establishing old-growth deforestation as a general issue facing the retail home improvement ?eld.
RAN's initial arguments during this stage of its campaign conveyed objectively framed information and statistics that de?ned the
nature and impact old-growth deforestation, and hinted at the need to curb this phenomenon. The crux of such arguments was to
alert members of the retail home improvement ?eld, in general terms, that the destruction of old-growth forests was having an
observable, quanti?able effect on the natural environment. RAN made such an argument in one press release, linking the demise of
old-growth forests with harmful climate change:
Old-growth forests are important storehouses of carbon, which moderate the Earth's climate. Logging these forests contributes
signi?cantly to global climate change. Only 22 percent of the world's old-growthforests remain intact; inthe United States, less
than 4 percent of the old growth forests are still standing (10/14/1997).
Upon establishing old-growth deforestation as a substantive issue, RAN introduced more socially oriented arguments that made
the issue more captivating, troubling, and identi?able to home-improvement retailers. One of these arguments built on the emerging
normative trends of environmentalism and sustainability to challenge the legitimacy of manufacturing products from old-growth
wood. The core idea was to convey that the commercial activities facilitating this issue contradicted society's expectations and
therefore represented the “wrong” thing to do. A RAN press release, for instance, explained that its “campaign galvanizes the public's
existing feeling that cutting oldgrowthforests toturntheminto 2 ×4's and pulpis simply unethical andthat a mature, modernsociety
has outgrown such practices” (10/14/1998).
The other arguments invoked intense imagery, metaphors, and verbiage to make old-growth deforestation a more empathetic
issue. The core function of such arguments was to elicit visceral disdain for old-growth deforestation, often by associating this issue
with other despised acts. RAN sought to create a social environment where members of the retail home-improvement ?eld cringed
when they thought about contributing damage to old-growth forests. For instance, a press release from Christopher Hatch—RAN's
executive director—suggested, “selling old-growth wood products is like killing elephants for ivory, or making ashtrays out of gorilla
paws” (8/17/1997).
The observable arguments for de?ning old-growth deforestation as an issue also constituted the essence of RAN's rhetoric for
symbolically construing its aspirant social position. RAN, at this early phase of its campaign, had yet to develop a body of mean-
ingful interactions with major home-improvement retailers. The basic function of such rhetoric, described henceforth as contex-
tualization or contextualizing rhetoric, was to create a suitable environment for RAN to feasibly rede?ne itself as a ?eld elite. By
problematizing old-growth deforestation using the logics of environmentalismand sustainability, which were relatively foreign
to the retail home-improvement ?eld, RAN established a new sub-community in the ?eld based on these logics and crafted a
backdrop to rede?ne its social position. This sub-community was akin to a parallel or alternate reality in the ?eld, where
home-improvement retailing was secondary to old-growth preservation. Henceforth, we describe the new sub-community as
the old-growth community.
9 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
RAN leveraged three forms of contextualizing rhetoric—rationalization, moralization, and dramatization—to convey its au-
thority in the emerging old-growth community. The observable arguments designating the logical, ethical, and emotional di-
mensions of old-growth deforestation re?ected different facets of RAN's authority on the issue. Rationalizing rhetoric, which
manifested in arguments about the factual parameters of old-growth deforestation, depicted RAN as the retail home improve-
ment ?eld's intellectual expert on old-growth deforestation. Moralizing and dramatizing rhetoric, which manifested in argu-
ments infusing ethical and emotional concerns into the old-growth issue, held up RAN as the ?eld's champion of morality and
humanity, respectively.
The signals conveyed through rationalization, moralization, and dramatization provided a foundation for RAN to ascend into
a more elite social position in the retail home-improvement ?eld. Although RAN still was a marginalized member of the ?eld
according to the commercial logics of home-improvement retailing, its contextualizing rhetoric repositioned RAN as an elite
member of a new ?eld sub-community based on the social logics of old-growth preservation. This niche space afforded RAN
with a “home-?eld advantage,” enabling it to subject major home-improvement retailers to the community's alternative logics,
adjust the retailers' social positions on these terms, and even broker meaningful exchanges with these ?rms.
5.2. Elicitation
As old-growth deforestation became a more familiar issue in the retail home-improvement ?eld, RAN increasingly unfurled two
types of arguments that linked the issue to major retailers. One type of argument adopted a negative stance, attributing old-growth
deforestation to powerful home-improvement retailers that sourced old-growth products. Initially, these negative arguments focused
on villainizing Home Depot for maintaining such practices. RANsuggested that, by purchasing old-growth products, Home Depot was
destroying ancient ecosystems, harming the broader environment, wronging indigenous forest inhabitants, and ignoring society's
growing call for sustainability. The function of this message was to harm the company's reputation and consequently to pressure it
to cease undesirable behavior. Mark Westland—RAN's director of communications—communicated one such argument in an
interview with NPR:
Home Depot makes much of its reputation as a company involved in the community that it works in. But as long as they're
selling old-growth wood, they're doing something that is really unconscionable… (NPR's Marketplace Report, 5/25/1999).
RAN modi?ed the content of these negative arguments, and the retailers such arguments targeted, once Home Depot agreed to
eliminate and refrain from stocking old-growth products. This transition involved using Home Depot's agreement to change, rather
than the old-growth issue independently, to motivate similar behavior by the Foolish Five. In general terms, RAN delegitimized old-
growth products by painting agreements from adopters as signs of fundamental shifts in what constituted acceptable behavior for
all ?eld members. An important facet of these communications was that RAN hinted at the illegitimacy tarnishing retailers that did
not follow the example set by earlier adopters. In a RAN press release, for instance, Michael Brune leveraged Menards' new sourcing
practices as a platform to propose that “it's no longer a question of whether home improvement stores will stop selling old growth
wood, but when they will stop (1/28/2000).”
In more speci?c terms, RAN unfavorably contrasted newly targeted retailers with recent adopters. These messages indicated that,
if newtarget retailers did not agree to implement RAN's proposed changes, they would remain as laggards in the ?eld and continue to
face the same stigma that motivated earlier adopters to change. In a report titled “HomeBase: For Old Growth Forest Destruction, ‘Go
to the Base’,” for instance, RAN contrasted HomeBase's ignorance with Home Depot's submission and hinted at the possible stigma
that awaited HomeBase if it failed to act:
Last spring, RAN contacted HomeBase to determine why the company had not previously addressed this [old-growth]
issue, and to identify steps that HomeBase could take to help alleviate old growth forest destruction. Despite the urgency
of the crisis in the Earth's forests, HomeBase did not respond to our letters or phone calls. In contrast, Home Depot
resolved a years-long con?ict in August when it announced plans to completely eliminate old growth wood from its
stores (10/15/1999).
RANalso provided more explicit ultimatums, articulating that, if the retailers did not act in desired ways, RAN would increase the
intensity and visibility of pressure on them. A National Home Center News interviewwith Michael Brune highlighted the forthcoming
consequences if HomeBase and Menards continued to resist RAN's overtures:
These companies refuse to address the [old-growth] issue, so our actions against them will be quite diverse. Both dealers can
count on demonstrations outside their stores every week for the next several weeks. RAN next month also intends to launch a
newspaper ad campaign that will be directed at the two chains' customers (10/27/1999).
The other major type of argument for linking the old-growth issue to major retailers adopted a positive stance and portrayed the
issue as anopportunity for the retailers to prosper. RAN's positive arguments oftenunfolded intandemwith its negative messages and
thus manifested in a similar sequence. Initially, the positive arguments focused more on conveying the gains associated with going
“old-growth free” for Home Depot. RAN emphasized emerging social norms, at times exemplifying these norms with the actions of
?rms in other industries, to provide Home Depot with constructive reasons for establishing new supplier relationships. Such
arguments indicated that, if Home Depot changed, it would comply with society's call for sustainability, become an environmental
10 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
leader in the ?eld, achieve celebrated standing in society, and even realize performance boosts. Effectively, RAN encouraged Home
Depot to “do the right thing” and to keep pace with ?rms already working to protect old-growth forests. For example, RANexplained
in a public action alert that:
As a powerful force in its industry, Home Depot can slow the pace of rainforest destruction by committing to stop selling
products fromold growth forests. Other industry leaders such as IBM, Hallmark, Kinko's, Hewlett-Packard, and others have al-
ready made this commitment, clearly it is time for Home Depot to do the same. Immediately (01/08/1999).
RAN modi?ed the content of its positive arguments as Home Depot agreed to eliminate and refrain from stocking old-growth
products. Like RAN's negative arguments, the crux of this transition involved using Home Depot's agreement to change, rather than
just the old-growth issue or the members of foreign ?elds, to motivate similar behavior by less prominent retailers. Unlike RAN's
negative arguments, though, incentivizing comparisons helduphome-improvement retailers that had already changed their sourcing
practices as the “gold standard” for lagging retailers to attain through change of their own. For instance, RANplaced a NewYork Times
advertisement—located in Appendix B—that held up Home Depot's decision to eliminate old-growth products as motivation for the
Foolish Five to do the same:
Without smart business policies like The Home Depot's, our last old-growthforests will be gone forever. Please visit our website
and encourage other companies to meet or beat The Home Depot's example [singling out Homebase, Menards, Payless
Cashways, Wickes, and 84 Lumber in a separate graphic] (9/22/1999).
A powerful byproduct of RAN's arguments during this phase of the campaign was that it incited other ?eld members, including
consumers, city councils, celebrities, and other activist organizations, to sympathize with RAN's cause and to convey their own
versions of RAN's messages. This support ampli?ed pressure on the home-improvement retailers to stave off damage or to pursue
gains described in RAN's positive and negative arguments. Ed Asner—a well-known American actor—wrote one such letter to
Home Depot's executives on November 6, 1998 (RAN web archive):
I have heard frommy friends at Rainforest Action Network that you are presently considering a phase-out of the purchase and
use of old growth wood. I hope this is accurate, as it would be an invaluable step in saving the very last of our planet's ancient
forests. I urge you to be decisive and to announce your intention to phase out old growth timber products and to phase in
certi?ed wood. But make your decision a strong one; continuing the trade in old growth will not be acceptable to the
American public in the next century (11/6/1998).
The observable arguments for pressuring the major home-improvement retailers to go “old-growth free” also constituted
the essence of RAN's rhetoric for construing and beginning to verify its aspirant social position relative to these ?rms. The
basic function of such rhetoric—described henceforth as elicitation or elicitive rhetoric—was to pull home-improvement re-
tailers into the old-growth community established during contextualization. By linking target retailers to old-growth defores-
tation, RAN subjected the retailers to the community's logics and de?ned the retailers as referents for situating its own social
position in that setting. Stated more basically, RAN's elicitive rhetoric ranked home-improvement retailers according the values,
norms, beliefs, and rules of an alternate reality in the ?eld. This move “leveled the playing ?eld” between RAN and the target
retailers, enabling the former to compare itself to and inspire status-building interactions with the latter.
Using two forms of elicitive rhetoric, stigmatization and incentivization, RAN constructed the social order in the old-growth
sub-community. RAN's positive and negative arguments for pressuring the home-improvement retailers to change their prac-
tices provided the essence of each form of elicitation. Stigmatizing rhetoric, which manifested in arguments about the negative
effects of target retailers' practices, portrayed the retailers as counterproductive laggards or outliers in the old-growth commu-
nity. By contrast, incentivizing rhetoric, which manifested in arguments about the bene?ts associated with change, suggested
that target retailers would achieve better standing in the community if they embraced the “old-growth free” mentality. Both
types of rhetoric reinforced RAN's position as the authority in the old-growth community, implying that RAN was the only
?eld member capable of helping target retailers resolve the problem or realize the opportunity. This subtle message, embedded
in the explicit threats of loss or promises of gain, motivated target retailers to dialogue with RAN as they grappled with whether
and how to eliminate old-growth products. Each exchange, whether it involved resistance or cooperation, re?ected RAN's in?u-
ence over target retailers and provided evidence of the social order, including RAN's elite position, in the old-growth
community.
The subject of RAN's stigmatizationand incentivizationtransformed as it positioned home-improvement retailers withinthe social
order of the old-growth community. RAN initially signaled that Home Depot maintained a lower social position than its own in the
old-growth community by highlighting inconsistencies between the company's actions and the community's logics. Once Home
Depot agreed to move away from old-growth products, RAN began to signal that the members of the Foolish Five maintained even
more marginalized positions in the community by contrasting their resistance with Home Depot's cooperation. This pattern repeated
as individual retailers agreedto change, withRANcomparing resistant members of the Foolish Five to retailers that had eliminated old-
growth products, until all major players cooperated with RAN. Each retailer that conceded provided RAN with evidence for more
explicitly substantiating its elite standing in the old-growth community and ultimately extending that standing to the broader ?eld
of retail home-improvement.
11 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
Finally, RAN's elicitive rhetoric also brokered support for its social position in the old-growth community from outside of the
old-growth community. Such rhetoric implied that, since consumers, investors, suppliers, media outlets, and lesser retailers
subscribed to the same (commercial) logics as the targets, these ?eld members were party to the old-growth issue and could
thus experience the same gains or losses as the targets. This message extended awareness of the old-growth community's logics,
participants, and social hierarchy in the ?eld, enticing ?eld members to consider their associations with the community. Sym-
pathetic ?eld members opted into the old-growth community and corroborated RAN's elevated standing in it. Some of these
supporters, like Ed Asner, explicitly used rhetoric that depicted RAN in a positive light while admonishing target retailers for
sourcing old-growth products. Others used rhetoric that did not explicitly mention RAN, but paraphrased RAN's “talking points.”
The following excerpt, for instance, from an expose in Time Magazine, synthesized content (italicized) from RAN's contextual-
izing and elicitive rhetoric:
Most American consumers knowbetter than to buy ivory, or ashtrays made fromgorilla paws, or tuna caught in nets that are not
“dolphin free.” But when they stop by Kinko's for stationery or Home Depot for plywood, will they ask themselves, “Is this old-
growth free?” (Hornblower, 1998).
As more ?eld members identi?ed with the old-growth community, RAN received mounting recognition of and support for its
standing as the elite player in this setting.
5.3. Formalization
As the major home-improvement retailers began to cooperate, RAN increasingly introduced two types of arguments that
proclaimed such change as the dawn of a “new age” in the ?eld. One type of argument lauded cooperative retailers as “heroes”
or exemplars of ideal practices for agreeing to move away from old-growth products. The theme of such arguments was that, for
rectifying the issue or acting upon the opportunities highlighted via negative and positive arguments, the home-improvement
retailers transformed fromthe causes of the old-growth issue to the leaders of the movement to eradicate the issue. By positively
reinforcing major players' changes, RAN sought to establish going “old-growth free” as an accepted, taken-for-granted practice
in the ?eld. Home Depot represented the ?rst, and perhaps the most highly lauded, of the retailers. For example, RAN placed a
New York Times advertisement—located in Appendix B—that heralded Home Depot's decision to eliminate old-growth products
as “bold,” “smart,” and stemming from Home Depot's enlightened view (in?uenced by RAN) of such change as “good business”
policy:
Our sincere thanks to The Home Depot for recognizing that ancient trees are worth more in the forests than in their stores. In a
bold policy turnaround, The Home Depot says it will stop selling wood products from endangered forests by the year 2002…
The Home Depot also recognizes that it's good business to be environmentally responsible, knowing customers want to spend
their money with companies who do the right thing… Without smart business policies like The Home Depot's, our last old-
growth forests will be gone forever (September 2, 1999).
RAN also commended members of the Foolish Five as each retailer in this group agreed to change. The arguments, though,
were less vociferous than for Home Depot and declined in intensity as the concessions came from less prominent retailers. Mi-
chael Brune, for instance, recognized Wickes in a RAN press release, stating that the company “has joined a growing movement
among powerful wood consumers who recognize that selling old growth wood is unacceptable” (11/4/1999). As more retailers
agreed to go “old-growth free,” such arguments increasingly enabled RAN to depict this move as legitimate and attractive for
resistant retailers.
Beginning withRAN's praise of Home Depot, a recursive, symbiotic relationshipemerged betweenRAN's arguments validating and
challenging the practices of target retailers. Arguments lauding retailers that had agreed to change provided a baseline for arguments
contrasting these newly minted “heroes” with retailers that had not yet changed. RAN's glowing reviews of cooperative retailers often
immediately preceded and provided the context for pressuring resistant retailers. This phenomenon is evident in a press release
where Michael Brune distinguished Home Depot and Wickes from the remaining members of the Foolish Five: “Now that Wickes
and Home Depot are setting high standards for wood products, it is high time for HomeBase, Menards and others to follow suit”
(11/4/1999).
The other type of argument attributed home-improvement retailers' decisions to go “old growth free,” as well as support from
other ?eld members, to RAN's efforts. When making such arguments, RAN often described howits pressure turned resistant retailers
into collaborators. The fundamental value of this message was that it subtly warned the remaining retailers of old-growth products
what would occur if they failed to comply with RAN, hastening its engagements with these organizations. As the following press
release indicates, Home Depot represented the ?rst and perhaps most prized subject of these attributional arguments:
Home Depot, whichannounced August 26 plans to go old growth free, had been the focus of a two-year international campaign
urging the retail behemoth to stop selling old growth wood. RAN staged high-pro?le demonstrations at Home Depot head-
quarters, including hanging a giant banner there last October with the words: “Home Depot, Stop Selling Old Growth Wood.”
RAN also worked with major institutional shareholders, fought Home Depot expansion plans at local city council meetings,
coordinated a hard-hitting national ad campaign, and organized demonstrations at several hundred Home Depot across the
U.S. and Canada, as well as in Chile (11/04/1999).
12 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
RAN replicated this approach for each retailer that it lauded. Another statement from Michael Brune illustrates this point for
Wickes Lumber.
Wickes Lumber, the tenth largest home improvement retailer in the United States, announced yesterday that the company
plans to stop selling wood from endangered old growth forests by 2001. Rainforest Action Network (RAN) had included
Wickes Lumber as part of the “Foolish Five,” the largest home improvement stores still selling old growth wood. Wickes' an-
nouncement came just eight days after the company had beentargetedwith demonstrations as part of a nationally coordinated
day of action. The “Foolish Five” is 84 Lumber, Home Base, Menard's, Payless Cashways, and Wickes. Of over 100 protests na-
tionwide—organized by RAN, Student Environmental Action Coalition and Free the Planet—?fteen were at Wickes stores in the
U.S. northeast and midwest (11/04/1999).
The observable arguments for normalizing home-improvement retailers' transitionaway fromold-growthproducts also constitut-
ed the essence of RAN's rhetoric for substantiating its aspirant social position. The basic function of suchrhetoric, describedhenceforth
as formalization or formalizing rhetoric, was to convey the impact of RAN's interactions withtarget retailers. By linking itself to home-
improvement retailers' agreements to adopt new sourcing practices, RAN con?rmed its elite standing in the old-growth community
and even extended this position into the broader ?eld.
Two types of formalizing rhetoric, sancti?cation and cooptation, substantiated RAN's elite standing among home-improvement
retailers in the old-growth community. RAN's arguments for certifying and attributing target retailers' changes to its efforts
constituted the essence of each type of formalization. Sanctifying rhetoric, which manifested in arguments praising the retailers for
their agreements to go “old-growth free,” moved these organizations from outliers to leaders in the old-growth community.
Cooptational rhetoric, whichmanifested inarguments attributing the retailers' change agreements to RAN, indicated that the retailers'
ascent from “social purgatory” resulted from RAN's pressure, blessing, and assistance. When considered in tandem, then, these
rhetorical forms signaled RAN had established substantive relationships with major retailers and exerted valuable in?uence over
each one.
The nature of RAN's formalizing rhetoric transformed with each target retailer that agreed to change. Once Home Depot agreed to
go “old-growth free,” RAN proclaimed Home Depot as a corporate leader in the effort to preserve old-growth forests. However, by
highlighting the extent of pressure that it applied on Home Depot to prompt this change, RAN portrayed itself, not the company, as
the fundamental reason for this outcome. RAN then emphasized the Home Depot's agreement in elicitive rhetoric about the Foolish
Five, portraying those ?rms as laggards relative to Home Depot. Foolish Five retailers that agreed to change received commendations,
associations with Home Depot in the leader group, and positive mentions in later elicitive rhetoric. RAN afforded later adopters with
less praise than earlier adopters, suggesting that the later adopters offered weaker signals than earlier adopters of RAN's in?uence in
the ?eld.
Finally, formalizing rhetoric extended RAN's elite social position in the old-growth community to the broader retail home-
improvement ?eld. RAN, to this point in its campaign, used the advantageous con?nes of the old-growth community to interact
with and position itself favorably relative to home-improvement retailers. However, as more (target) major retailers went “old-
growth free” and other (non-target) ?eld members bought in to this idea, the lines between the old-growth community and the
broader ?eld setting blurred and the logics of the former became more taken-for-granted in the latter. Additionally, by sanctifying
and coopting target retailers' agreements to change, RAN signaled that its authority in the old-growth community translated to the
broader ?eld. Such rhetoric suggested that RAN had motivated the retailers—elites themselves according to the commercial logics
of home-improvement retailing—to adopt operating practices stemming from old-growth (environmental) logics. Recognizing that
RAN could develop meaningful relationships with and exert in?uence over major retailers' commercial activities repositioned RAN
from a marginal to an elite member of the ?eld as a whole, not just the old-growth community.
6. A process model of using change for social mobility
The present section synthesizes our evaluations of RAN to provide a theoretical account of the overarching process through
which marginalized entrepreneurs may leverage change projects to improve their social positions. The three rhetorical practices—
contextualization, elicitation, and formalization—serve independent and interrelated functions in achieving this outcome. Fig. 2,
which diagrams the process links between the rhetorical practices, indicates that mobility work involves recursive relationships
between the composite practices.
At the onset of change projects, marginalized entrepreneurs' observable arguments for introducing ?eld issues double as the
entrepreneurs' contextualizing rhetoric for construing themselves as ?eld elites. In general terms, contextualizing rhetoric yields
new sub-communities, based on logics from other ?elds, and thus produces openings for marginalized entrepreneurs to move
into more elite social positions. In more speci?c terms, the forms of contextualizing rhetoric begin to symbolize marginalized
entrepreneurs as elites in the new sub-communities and to establish the nature of their authority in those settings. Rationalizing
rhetoric uses logical appeals about the objective parameters of ?eld issues to signal marginalized entrepreneurs' intellectual authority.
Moralizing rhetoric uses ethical appeals about the moral underpinnings of ?eld issues to signal the entrepreneurs' normative
authority. Dramatizing rhetoric uses emotional appeals about the affective meaning of ?eld issues to signal marginalized
entrepreneurs' humanitarian authority. By symbolically positioning marginalized entrepreneurs as the elite members of sub-
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Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
communities, contextualizing rhetoric provides a foundation for the entrepreneurs to interact with and de?ne their standing relative
to traditional ?eld elites.
As they construct favorable social contexts, marginalized entrepreneurs shift toward observable arguments that tie elite ?eld
members to ?eld issues. These arguments double as the entrepreneurs' elicitive rhetoric for construing their status relative to
those elite members. Such rhetoric ties elite ?eld members to the sub-communities created during contextualization, subjects
themto a new social order, and facilitates interactions between entrepreneurs and the ?eld elites. The forms of elicitive rhetoric
signal that, in the sub-communities, marginalized entrepreneurs maintain more in?uential social positions than extant ?eld
elites, effectively inverting the traditional social hierarchy according to broader ?elds' logics. Stigmatizing rhetoric uses negative
arguments about the ?eld elites' practices to depict the elites as marginalized members of the sub-communities. Incentivizing
rhetoric uses positive arguments about the bene?ts associated with cooperation to indicate that, although ?eld elites occupy
marginalized positions in the sub-communities, adopting new arrangements will enable them to climb the sub-communities'
social ladder.
The con?uence of stigmatization and incentivization holds important implications for marginalized entrepreneurs' efforts to
construe their relative status. Such messages imply that elite ?eld members can only prevent losses or realize gains with assistance
from the marginalized entrepreneurs. This entices elite ?eld members to interact with the marginalized entrepreneurs, generating
some initial evidence of the entrepreneurs' status. Additionally, such messages entice other ?eld members to identify with the sub-
communities and to expand awareness of and support for the entrepreneurs' construed status in those settings. By favorably
positioning marginalized entrepreneurs against established ?eld elites, elicitive rhetoric provides a foundation for the entrepreneurs
to con?rm their status in sub-communities and extrapolate it to the broader ?eld setting.
Finally, when elite ?eld members agree to implement newarrangements, marginalized entrepreneurs craft observable arguments
that depict such change as a legitimate facet of organizational life in their ?elds. These arguments double as marginalized
entrepreneurs' formalizing rhetoric for validating and extending their construed standing as elite ?eld members. Such rhetoric
takes two forms. Sanctifying rhetoric, which builds on arguments praising cooperative elite ?eld members, rede?nes these actors
as problem solvers—rather than problem causers—in the sub-communities. Cooptational rhetoric, which hinges on arguments
attributing elite ?eld members' changes to the marginalized entrepreneurs' efforts, indicates the former granted the latter's better
standing inthe sub-communities. The con?uence of sancti?cationandcooptation signals that marginalizedentrepreneurs maintained
substantive, in?uential relationships with elite ?eld members. This provides evidence of the elevated social position in the sub-
communities that the marginalized entrepreneurs construed for themselves during contextualization and elicitation.
A crucial implication of formalizing rhetoric is that it also allows marginalized entrepreneurs to establish more favorable social
positions in the broader ?eld. Because they occupy insigni?cant positions according to dominant ?eld logics, marginalized
entrepreneurs create sub-communities to cultivate relationships with elite ?eld members. However, as elite ?eld members begin
to cooperate with marginalized entrepreneurs and sub-community logics assimilate into dominant ?eld logics, the cognitive
distinction between sub-communities and the main ?elds diminishes. Accordingly, when marginalized entrepreneurs claim
responsibility for such change, the entrepreneurs signal that their authority over the elite members extends beyond the sub-
communities. Such rhetoric recognizes that, by prompting elite ?eld members to act and think more like them, marginalized
entrepreneurs garnered more in?uence in their ?elds.
7. Discussion
This study sought to explain marginalized entrepreneurs' rhetorical practices for becoming more elite members of their
organizational ?elds. Our primary contribution is to expand the nature and implications of self-interest at the heart of institutional
entrepreneurship. Research on institutional entrepreneurs has focused on how such actors' social positions in organizational ?elds
shape their efforts to introduce and legitimize new arrangements in those settings. Institutional entrepreneurs, particularly those
with elite social positions, use these institutional change projects to maintain their standing (cf., Greenwood and Suddaby, 2006;
Greenwood et al., 2002; Sherer and Lee, 2002). However, scholars report little about how institutional entrepreneurs, particularly
those with marginalized social positions, use change projects to better their standing. Our study addresses this limitation by
identifying howmarginalized entrepreneurs' efforts to institute newarrangements enable these actors to achieve more elite standing.
An important insight fromour inferences is that the self-interest driving marginalized entrepreneurs to generate institutional change
may, in some instances, stem from the entrepreneurs' desire to accrue greater status in their organizational ?elds. This means that
institutional entrepreneurs may not only pursue institutional change for its intrinsic value, but they may also use institutional change
projects as a vehicle for achieving other objectives. Accordingly, although prior research has attended to the impact of institutional
entrepreneurs' projects on other ?eld members, we report that such efforts can also have a profound impact on the entrepreneurs
themselves.
Our exploration of marginalized entrepreneurs' social mobility expands the scope of research on institutional work, which
provided the perspective to analyze and interpret RAN's campaign. Such research has focused on the micro-practices underpinning
the macro-processes of institutional change, and examined how individuals—whether independently or as organizational leaders—
create, maintain, and destroy institutions (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006; Suddaby, 2010). We extend this conceptualization of
institutional work by recognizing that marginalized entrepreneurs' work to implement new arrangements concurrently supports
their work to attain higher status. Recognizing marginalized entrepreneurs' social mobility as institutional work extends the shift
in research on such actors from the general processes of institutional change to the speci?c practices of individual actors. In doing
so, we also amend research on institutional work to account for the inextricable link between practice and process. By identifying
14 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
the sequence and interplay of marginalized entrepreneurs' practices for performing mobility work, we begin to connect the macro-
processes that scholars of institutional work have sought to demystify and the micro practices that they have emphasized. Finally,
we highlight the importance of rhetoric to institutional work by proposing that marginalized entrepreneurs' rhetorical practices
shift elite ?eld members' perceptions of the entrepreneurs' social positions. Identifying institutional entrepreneurs' methods for
altering other ?eld members' perceptions demysti?es the “conceptual black box” between institutional entrepreneurs' change
projects and other ?eld members' perceptions and actions.
Our study also advances research on how institutional entrepreneurs use rhetoric. At its core, rhetoric offers an instrument for
shifting how an audience perceives reality (Bitzer, 1992). Although scholars have recognized that elite entrepreneurs may use
institutional change to maintain their social positions (Greenwood and Suddaby, 2006), research on the role of rhetoric typically fo-
cuses on the change itself (Green, 2004; Green et al., 2009; Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005). We enrichthis proposal by reporting that
rhetoric also serves a symbolic function, enabling institutional entrepreneurs—particularly those inhabiting marginalized social posi-
tions—to depict themselves as the primary facilitators of institutional change. Effectively, marginalized entrepreneurs embed an un-
spoken ?gurative message within a more literal one, suggesting what a marginalized entrepreneur does not say can prove as
meaningful as what it does say. This inference indicates that marginalized entrepreneurs use rhetoric not only to manipulate elite
?eld members' perceptions of ?eld meaning systems (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005), but also to manipulate elite members'
perceptions of the marginalized entrepreneurs' social positions. Additionally, research suggests that elite institutional entrepreneurs
often look to make new, divergent arrangements less controversial and more digestible through rhetoric that de?nes change as
consistent with existing arrangements (Greenwood et al., 2002; Maguire et al., 2004). Our inferences paint a different picture:
when engaging in mobility work, marginalized entrepreneurs use rhetoric that embraces the divergence of new arrangements
from the status quo. Doing so may enable the entrepreneurs to construe themselves as the main arbiter of change and to position
themselves to take credit for any resulting change. Finally, prior research on institutional entrepreneurship has delineated rhetoric
as a means for generating institutional change, portraying rhetorical practices as discrete, sequential phenomena (Green, 2004).
We qualify this idea by identifying that, when used for marginalized entrepreneurs' social mobility, rhetorical practices can interact
and unfold concurrently.
The three rhetorical practices that enable marginalized entrepreneurs' social mobility—namely, contextualization, elicita-
tion, and incentivization—belie a number of interesting theoretical insights. Each of these rhetorical practices uses different as-
pects of marginalized entrepreneurs' arguments for institutional change to signal the entrepreneurs' in?uence over elite ?eld
members. Contextualizing rhetoric signals marginalized entrepreneurs' authority on the parameters of emerging issues, from
intellectual, humanitarian, and moral perspectives, through arguments that introduce the issues to their ?elds. The core value
of contextualizing rhetoric is that it establishes new sub-communities, which constitutes socio-cognitive spaces—with distinct
norms, values, beliefs, and arrangements—where marginalized entrepreneurs can rede?ne themselves as elite actors. This
revelation suggests that studies on the birth of new ?elds (e.g., David et al., 2012; Maguire et al., 2004) may, in some instances,
actually examine the evolution of sub-communities in otherwise established ?elds (cf., Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005). Addi-
tionally, our inferences about contextualization offer an interesting contrast to how elite entrepreneurs protect their status.
Evidence suggests these actors de?ne ?eld issues and resolutions as inevitable phenomena, with the eventual objective of mo-
tivating other ?eld members to adopt arrangements that will preserve the entrepreneurs' status (Greenwood and Suddaby,
2006). Effectively, elite entrepreneurs recognize themselves as the messengers—rather than the catalysts—of proposed change,
which allows them to sustain their elevated social position over the longer term without threatening their current social posi-
tion. By contrast, we propose that marginalized entrepreneurs use contextualization to create and tie themselves to ?eld issues,
setting themselves up as arbiters of change. Finally, we recognize that contextualizing rhetoric may convey reasoning based on
the logics of foreign ?elds, rather than on the logics of the ?elds where marginalized entrepreneurs look to climb the social lad-
der. This tendency reinforces the proposal that actors engaging in institutional work can belong to multiple ?elds and transfer
logics from one to others (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006).
Elicitive rhetoric signals that marginalized entrepreneurs occupy more favorable social positions than traditional ?eld
elites in the new sub-communities through arguments that de?ne those elites as the causes of the emerging issues. Margin-
alized entrepreneurs convey their relative authority by stigmatizing elite ?eld members for maintaining practices that con-
tribute to ?eld issues and by incentivizing those members to adopt new practices. The underlying mechanism at play here
is akin to the one underpinning the good cop-bad cop routine for securing confessions, or the Sicilian Ma?a's methods for
extracting rents. In both contexts, an actor creates a problem for a target (stigmatization) and positions itself as the solution
to the problem(incentivization). Effectively, marginalized entrepreneurs like RANuse elicitive rhetoric to convey a clear mes-
sage: “if you do what we want, all of your woes will go away, and if you do not, the problem will get worse.” Such rhetoric also
relies on a more obvious mechanism—akin to public pillorying—where authorities openly humiliate “problem causers” for
their offenses. An interesting facet of elicitive rhetoric is that, like contextualizing rhetoric, marginalized entrepreneurs
may draw their power from the meaning systems of other ?elds or contexts, at least when pursuing their initial, and
highest-status targets. For instance, in our research setting, RAN played on the Protestant ethic of American culture by
using the ideological delineation between saint and sinner, good and evil to make Home Depot's practices appear more con-
tentious (cf., Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005). This phenomenon is quite different from elite entrepreneurs' looking to protect
their status through institutional change. Such actors use rhetoric to align change with their audiences' core identities (cf.,
Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005), whereas marginalized entrepreneurs simultaneously challenge and connect with aspects
of their targets' identities. This “good-evil” contrast points to an interesting difference in marginalized and elite entrepre-
neurs' rhetoric. While elite entrepreneurs may motivate status-maintaining change through general overtures about issues
15 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
with the status quo (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005), marginalized entrepreneurs may motivate status-building change by
“knocking down and building up” speci?c ?eld elites.
Finally, formalizing rhetoric substantiates marginalized entrepreneurs construed standing in subcommunities and translates this
standing to broader ?eld settings through arguments that normalize burgeoning change. Marginalized entrepreneurs leverage ?eld
elites' change agreements as evidence that the entrepreneurs have established substantive, in?uential relationships with the elites,
con?rming the entrepreneurs' construed social positions in sub-communities and signaling that this position extends into their
broader ?elds. A closer look at formalizing rhetoric suggests that it offers some interesting insights about marginalized entrepreneurs'
social mobility. Suchrhetoric exhibits a symbiotic, recursive relationship withelicitive rhetoric: when?eld elites change, marginalized
entrepreneurs elevate the elites' social positions in sub-communities and take credit for the elites' actions. This portrayal reverses the
depiction of ?eld elites as marginal members of sub-communities through elicitation and provides an alternative platform for
targeting other, lower-status elites. For instance, once Home Depot conceded, RAN's platform for stigmatizing other retailers shifted
from a pure focus on cultural logics (e.g., the Protestant ethic) to the positive manifestation of those logics in Home Depot's “saintly”
decision to go “old-growth free.” Using these newly minted “saints” to publicly embarrass resistant ?eld members re?ects a transition
toward symbolic interactionism(Blumer, 1986; Herman and Reynolds, 1994; Snow, 2001). Such visible, unfavorable comparisons to
one's peers provide a potent motivator to mimic howthose peers think and act (Leigh andGabel, 1992). This effect may be particularly
salient for ?eld members with lower status, which tend to pay closer attention to the actions of higher-status ?eld members than to
more abstract environmental factors (Phillips and Zuckerman, 2001). The use of symbolic interactionism also points to a key
distinction between marginalized entrepreneurs and elite entrepreneurs, since the latter does not appear to play speci?c actors
against others when sustaining its social positions. Interestingly, the use of symbolic interactionism in this setting indicates that
this concept extends beyond its micro-roots (i.e., individuals) into more macro-contexts (i.e., organizations). Overall, formalization
serves a unique function in marginalized entrepreneurs' mobility work, ?nalizing the entrepreneurs' efforts to convert their
aspirations into reality. The culmination of such efforts, when successful, is that elite ?eld members buy into the marginalized
entrepreneurs' claims and come to perceive the entrepreneurs as elite, rather than as marginal, actors.
Some noteworthy opportunities exist to build on our work. The ?rst opportunity deals with the effectiveness of marginalized
entrepreneurs' mobility work. Our study focused on RAN's social climbinthe ?eld of retail home-improvement, yet we still knowlittle
about differences in the outcomes of such efforts. Indeed, change projects enable some—but not all— marginalized actors to attain
higher status (cf., Leblebici et al., 1991). Holistic attention to the entrepreneur, the environment, or even the elite ?eld members
might provide a valuable starting point for future research on this topic. For instance, when marginalized entrepreneurs and ?eld
elites espouse different ideologies, the former may be less likely to achieve more favorable standing than entrepreneurs that share
common ideologies with their potential targets. Other perspectives may involve studying the factors that enable marginalized
entrepreneurs to improve their social positions without securing institutional change or that prevent such improvements even with
the advent of institutional change.
The second opportunity deals with the sustainability of the social positions attained through mobility work. Our study focused on
howRANcultivated better standing in its ?eld, yet we still knowlittle about its subsequent tenure in this social position. Scholars can
begin to examine whether, for howlong, and through what means marginalized entrepreneurs sustain the elite standing produced by
their mobility work. Various factors characterizing the divide, or lack thereof, between marginalized entrepreneurs andtheir potential
targets may provide a useful starting point for such research. For instance, when a social activist organization (e.g., RAN) gains higher
status among commercial ?rms (e.g., major home-improvement retailers), these status gains may erode more quickly than for
institutional entrepreneurs that exhibit more similar objectives to their targets. Attending to whether the institutional change
advocated by marginalized entrepreneurs “sticks” may also help to explain the longevity of the entrepreneurs' newly attained status.
The third opportunity deals with the nature of marginalized entrepreneurs' mobility work. Our study focused on the rhetorical
practices and processes that enabled RAN—a social activist organization—to become an elite member of the retail home-
improvement ?eld. However, other types of marginalized entrepreneurs, such as new ventures or small ?rms (Garud et al., 2002),
also may seek to attain better status through institutional change projects (cf., Leblebici et al., 1991). Scholars therefore could identify
and explain differences in marginalized entrepreneurs' rhetorical practices and processes. As with the effectiveness of mobility work,
fundamental similarities or differences between marginalized entrepreneurs and elite ?eld members may help to explain the advent
of comparable or divergent behaviors. For instance, a small startup looking to attain a better social position in a software ?eld may not
need to engage in the same types and levels of contextualization and elicitation as an environmental activist organization attempting
to improve its standing in the same setting.
The ?nal opportunity deals with the broader implications of institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility work. Our study focused
on RAN's social ascent in the retail home-improvement ?eld, however we knowlittle about the impact of such change on RAN's social
position in other ?elds (e.g., the environmental movement ?eld). Scholars can thus examine these spillover effects. Status in the ?elds
where an entrepreneur claims membership, as well as structural differences between these ?elds, may designate whether the
entrepreneur will experience status decline, growth, or stasis in one ?eld as they climb the social hierarchy in another. For instance,
if a socially motivated activist attains more elite standing in a ?eld comprised of ?nancially motivated members, the activists might
experience social decay in a ?eld comprised of similar, socially motivated members. Alternatively, the same activist might become
more elite in the eyes of more socially motivated actors for imposing shared ideologies on fundamentally dissimilar actors.
In conclusion, our study enhances research on the activities of institutional entrepreneurs. We do so by explaining how, using
institutional change, entrepreneurs with marginalized social positions can become more elite members of their organizational ?elds.
We hope that our conceptualization will guide future inquiry into the dynamic link between institutional entrepreneurs' change
projects and their social positions.
16 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
Appendix A. Private letter from Lowe's to RAN
17 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2014.06.006
Appendix B. RAN New York Times advertisement from September 2, 1999
18 T.L. Waldron et al. / Journal of Business Venturing xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Waldron, T.L., et al., Institutional entrepreneurs' social mobility in organizational ?elds, J. Bus. Venturing
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