From “issue-selling” to “issue-buying”: what generates strategists’ attention to risks
Résumé
The concept of “issue-selling” captures how internal and external actors influence top or middle managers’ attention toward specific issues. According to the literature, issue-selling succeeds when top or middle managers perceive the salience of the issue. In this paper, we argue that their attention also depends on how they perceive the issue-selling practices addressed to them. While issue-selling studies have mainly focused on why and how issue-selling is performed, this article focuses on how issue-selling is perceived. We studied how top and middle managers perceived issue-selling actions performed by their risk manager through 38 interviews in 11 companies. We show that issue-selling can lead to issue-buying through three kinds of triggers. Results also challenge the common assumption that issue-selling moves generate attention, by showing how issue-selling’s side effects lead to inattention to risks.