This dissertation examined union leaders' interpretations of changes that are occurring in the entertainment industry. The author drew on an industry case study and qualitative methods 1) to conduct an issue analysis; that is, to identify issues, determine their characteristics, and evaluate them as threats, opportunities, or mixed (Gilbert, 2006), and 2) to examine conflict framing through naming and blaming, abstracting, whole-story framing, and reframing (Putnam, in press).

The author conducted 27 interviews with leaders from two types of unions, below-the-line and above-the-line, to understand the types of change-related issues that were of concern. The interview data was analyzed in two stages. In the first phase, the author conducted an issue analysis that focused on classifying issues and deciphering their characteristics (Dutton, Walton, & Abrahamson, 1989). The findings revealed four main issues that concerned union leaders (positioning the union, shifting patterns of risk, negotiating and enforcing contracts, and claiming jurisdiction) and five characteristics (locus, boundary, manageability, predictability, and scope), which were then used to determine how interviewees cast the issues as threats, opportunities, or mixed evaluations. In general, most issues were cast solely as threats; none of them were seen as opportunities alone; and one issue surfaced as a mixed evaluation.

Across the unions, three characteristics of issues grouped together to constitute threats: external locus, indistinct boundaries, and low manageability. At the same time, indistinct boundaries contributed to assessments of issues as both an opportunity and a threat. ATL leaders viewed shifting patterns of risk as both a threat and an opportunity, as they saw careers in the industry shrinking due to the decline of middle-class jobs (threat), but also perceived them as an opportunity with the Internet leading to a possible expansion of jobs and control over distribution of work.

In the second phase of analysis, the researcher conducted a language analysis of the issues linked to shifting patterns of risk and negotiating and enforcing contracts. These issues were chosen for further analysis based on their frequency, mix of threat and opportunity, and conflictual nature. Drawing on conflict framing (Putnam, in press), this analysis concentrated on how union leaders named issues and attributed blame for them; abstracted issues at different levels of meaning; cast issues in terms of whole stories with plots, characters, and morals; and reframed several of them.

Overall, leaders of ATL and BTL unions differed in their naming of issues; that is, blame rested mostly on identifiable groups (employers, other unions) for ATL leaders, while BTL leaders also blamed unfair legal, economic, and technological systems. Both BTL and ATL drew exclusively on symbolic meanings to characterize issues, but they differed on whether the problems were situated at the system or local level. Four out of the seven sub-issues were local for BTL leaders; while all but one of the seven focused on the system level for ATL leaders. On the issue of negotiating and enforcing contracts, union leaders presented whole-story frames, but they did not repeat this pattern for the issue of shifting patterns of risk. Leaders seldom reframed issues and when they did, they altered the level of abstraction from the local to the system level. Overall, this study suggested that naming as a type of framing and whole-story frames operated in different ways for the two types of unions. Naming singled out critical agenda items and was open to reframing, while whole-stories were resistant to reframing.