Societal problems and industry reorientation: Elaborating the Dialectic Issue LifeCycle (DILC) model and a case study of car safety in the USA (1900–1995)

Frank W. Geels and Caetano Penna

Research Policy, 2015, vol. 44, issue 1, 67-82

Abstract: Addressing societal problems requires the reorientation of firms-in-industries, including changes in technology, belief systems, and mission. The paper aims to make two contributions to the Dialectic Issue LifeCycle (DILC) model, which captures the dynamics of socio-political mobilization around societal problems and industry responses. First, the five phases in the DILC-model are elaborated with insights from social movement theory, political science, public attention, issue management, corporate political strategy, and innovation management. Second, a ‘cyclical’ lifecycle pattern is explored, in which a social problem does not linearly progress through successive phases, but can also move ‘backwards’ if public attention or political will decrease. We explore these contributions with a longitudinal study of the car-safety problem and responses from American automakers (1900–1995). We use a combined quantitative–qualitative method that employs coupled time-series analyses as support for an in-depth case study. The case study showed that the industry long denied the influence of car design on fatalities, and reluctantly changed its position in the mid-1960s (under pressure from public opinion and policymakers). In the late-1980s, when markets emerged because safety became part of consumer preferences, the industry implemented comprehensive changes in technology, beliefs and mission.

Keywords: Societal problems; Industry reorientation; Car industry; Auto-safety problem (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733314001620
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:44:y:2015:i:1:p:67-82

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2014.09.006

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().