Identity framing in response to collective activism among U.S. wood- biomass pellet producers.

While scholars have shown that collective activists can negatively affect performance of individual firms, little is known about how firms respond to field-level private politics--activist attacks that threaten the legitimacy of collective identities shared by all firms in the field. We suggest that firms may promulgate an alternative collective identity while shifting away from the tarnished identity to address the issue of legitimacy threats. Using the U.S. wood-biomass sector as an empirical setting, we describe how wood pellet producers attempted to frame a collective identity of sustainable, renewable energy producers and shift away from a negative identity portrayed by forestry conservation activists of exploitative forest product manufacturers. We empirically examine the consequences and contingencies of this tactic on pellet firms being legally recognized as renewable energy producers and its subsequent impact on the growth of the biomass sector. We also discuss the implications of these findings for research on social movements, organization theory, and nonmarket strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]