Selling Issues with Solutions: Igniting Social Intrapreneurship in for‐Profit Organizations

• Date: 01 July 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12200
• Published date: 01 July 2016

Selling Issues with Solutions: Igniting Social

Intrapreneurship in for-Profit Organizations

Elisa Alt and Justin B. Craig

Anglia Ruskin University; Northwestern University

ABSTRACT We offer an explanation of the issue selling process when issues deviate from the

dominant logic of organizations. Our main objective is to articulate the multiple ways in

which socially oriented innovations can be legitimated in for-profit organizations through the

work of bottom-up change agents, also known as social intrapreneurs. To unpack this

multiplicity, we draw on both institutional theory and the framing perspective in social

movements. Specifically, we propose how sellers may advance social issues with solutions by

drawing on the logic composite of both organizations and selling targets. By providing an

account of the social issue selling process in for-profit organizations, we consider how the

nature of an issue shapes selling efforts when it diverges from the dominant logic, and we

shed light on how the content choices of sellers relate to the meaning systems of organizations

and targets.

Keywords: framing tasks, institutional logics, issue selling, legitimacy judgments, social

intrapreneurship, vocabularies

INTRODUCTION

Research in issue selling, which is defined as ‘individuals’ behaviours that are directed

toward affecting others’ attention to and understanding of issues’ within firms (Dutton

and Ashford, 1993, p. 398), shows that selling involves complex decisions for change

agents (Dutton et al., 2001). First, sellers have to decide the content of selling: whether it is

better to sell an issue with a solution or in more abstract terms; whether to tie the issue

to other concerns; how to package or frame the issue. Second, sellers must determine

how to perform selling: whom they will target and involve; the level of formality of the sell-

ing initiative; the best timing. Each of these decisions may influence the likelihood of

selling success, highlighting the importance of the knowledge individuals accumulate

during the preparation stages of issue selling (Dutton et al., 2001). Yet selling tactics,

Address for reprints: Elisa Alt, Lord Ashcroft International Business School, East Road, Cambridge, CB1

1PT, UK (elisa.alt@anglia.ac.uk).

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C2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies

Journal of Management Studies 53:5 July 2016

doi: 10.1111/joms.12200

and consequently the knowledge sellers gather, may shift subject to the type of issue

being sold (Piderit and Ashford, 2003).

Researchers of social issues in management (Andersson and Bateman, 2000; Bansal,

2003; Howard-Grenville, 2007; Sonenshein, 2006, 2012, 2014) have fruitfully explored

this line of inquiry, linking knowledge of organizational values and targets to both selling

tactics and selling success. However, the contributions of this previous research are lim-

ited in two ways. First, previous studies have conflated the way in which sellers craft dis-

course about issues with the way sellers craft solutions (e.g., Bansal, 2003). Yet, many

social issue selling initiatives fail because of the lack of a viable solution (Bansal, 2003;

Howard-Grenville, 2007), showing the importance of theorizing on how solutions may

be crafted to effectively promote selling success. Second, although prior studies have

shown that sellers can justify social issues on both instrumental and normative grounds

(Andersson and Bateman, 2000; Bansal, 2003; Sonenshein, 2006), previous work is

inconclusive regarding when doing so can enhance the likelihood of selling success. Tar-

gets and organizations respond to issues independently (Bansal, 2003) and, as such,

understanding how to reconcile knowledge on both meaning systems is essential to

improve explanations of successful issue selling in for-profit organizations.

In this paper, we make the case that general explanations of issue selling success –

and of social issue selling, specifically – can be enhanced through a renewed focus on

sellers’ content choices and how these relate to the organizational context and selling

targets. Marrying the selling process with institutional logics (Friedland and Alford,

1991) and the framing perspective in social movements (Benford and Snow, 2000; Snow

et al., 1986), we offer an explanation of issue selling that articulates the multiple ways in

which socially oriented innovations can be legitimated in for-profit organizations

through the work of bottom-up change agents.

Change agents working at the intersections of sustainability, ethics, and entrepreneur-

ship within organizations are increasingly challenging the dominance of the commercial

logic in for-profit organizations. These individuals, also known as ‘social intrapreneurs’

(Davis and White, 2015; Grayson et al., 2014; Net Impact, 2009; SustainAbility, 2008),

work to advance solutions to social issues that may range from ‘not-for-loss’ to market

penetration in bottom-of-the-pyramid markets, showing in practice the multiple ways in

which sellers can work with context and target signals to advance social innovations.

We argue that an institutional logic perspective enriches explanations of social issue

selling by revealing how social and commercial meanings can have different levels of

compatibility (Besharov and Smith, 2014), even in contexts dominated by commercial

objectives, as in for-profit organizations. Likewise, we suggest that the framing perspec-

tive in social movements illuminates issue selling as a process of intra-organizational

mobilization (Scully and Segal, 2002), recasting selling as a conversation with targets

(Cornelissen and Werner, 2014), and expanding the work of sellers to consider the craft

of solutions. Building on both perspectives, we offer nuance to the understanding of con-

text and target signals in social issue selling, and suggest how successful selling can

emerge from narratives that tap into broader discourses and targets’ interests (Lefsrud

and Jennings, 2014; Martens et al., 2007).

We begin by reviewing how issues and solutions have been defined and sold in the

literature, to show that more attention to solutions is necessary to improve our

795Selling Issues with Solutions

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C2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies