Differences in environmental protection performance among firms in similar institutional and environmental contexts, and changes in their performance over time, suggest the importance of how organizations interpret and cognitively frame environmental issues. A leader’s cognitive frame is particularly important in shaping the organization’s collective frame, which in turn determines the stimuli organization members attend to, and the actions they perform. We develop a typology of frames organization leaders use to view the environment and predict how leaders’ frames change as a result of endogenous and exogenous influences. We illustrate our model with reference to case studies in the forestry industry. Implications and directions for future research are discussed
