Transforming the Federal Bureau of Investigation: Outcome and Process Framing

This twelve-year qualitative study examines how Director Robert Mueller and his senior team profoundly transformed the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Drawing on 138 interviews within the FBI and Mueller’s testimonies to Congress, we trace how the FBI shifted from being a law enforcement agency, focused on solving crimes after they occurred, to being an intelligence agency, centered on preventing attacks before they occurred. Our data uncover the critical role that cognitive framing played in the transformation: three times senior leaders reframed the FBI in ways that reflected and guided the agency’s internal changes and that accounted for and shaped the reactions of internal and external stakeholders. By comparing these three reframings, we uncover a novel theoretical distinction between two different types of framing. Outcome framing focuses on explaining “what” an organization does and centers on the organization as optimized towards achieving specific results, while process framing focuses on “how” an organization undertakes its work and centers on the organization as optimized towards deploying particular processes. We explore how outcome framing and process framing serve as different but complementary elements of leading strategic organizational change.