Keywords and Cultural Change: Frame Analysis of ‘Business Model’ Talk, 1975-2000

Keywords chronicle and capture cultural change by creating common categories of meaning against diverse local usages. We call this the global-local tension. To test competing theories of this tension, we employ frame analysis of more than 500 journal abstracts over a 25-year period, tracking the spread of business model as an economic keyword generated during unsettled economic times. Analyses reveal the simultaneous adoption of "global" and "local" frames without one supplanting or co-opting the other. The global-local tension is conciliated by providing primacy across communities of discourse to a small collection of frames (i.e., the global presence) while maintaining a plurality of local use within communities (i.e., the local alternative).