How Corporations Overcome Issue Illegitimacy and Issue Equivocality to Address Social Welfare: The Role of the Social Change Agent

While corporations are increasingly being called on to improve social welfare, researchers have primarily focused their efforts on the role of external pressures and top managers in shaping a corporation’s engagement with social issues. As an alternative, I consider the role of social change agents who work within corporations and direct their firms to address a social issue. I suggest two issue impediments obstructing these efforts—issue illegitimacy and issue equivocality—that are shaped by economic philosophies, institutional fields, firm missions, and social change agent beliefs. These impediments ground four types of issues that social change agents attempt to advance: convertible, blurry, safe, and risky. I propose meaning-making tactics best suited to address the type of social issue individuals seek to advance inside a firm: framing, labeling, maintaining, and importing. I argue that by matching the issue type and meaning-making tactic, social change agents will more likely influence top managers to support a social issue. This article contributes to the literature by explaining how meaning making serves at the heart of impediments to and potential solutions to firms’ efforts to improve social welfare and by spotlighting the role of a firm’s employees in encouraging the organization to improve social welfare.