Can moral markets scale without compromising their values?

What happens when an initiative rooted in social movements begins to grow? Does it hold on to its founding principles, or does success force it to compromise? For many community-driven efforts, expansion typically brings new stakeholders, regulatory pressures, and market dynamics that can dilute the original vision. 

Guifi.net, a community-driven telecommunications network in Spain, is one such example. It began as a grassroots, non-profit initiative to connect rural Catalonia to the internet. Over time, it evolved into one of the world’s largest community-led telecom networks. Unlike many moral markets that have lost their identity over the years, Guifi.net has grown into a major player while remaining dedicated to an open, neutral, and community-led internet.  

A study by Esade researchers Daniel Arenas, Joan Rodon, and Mireia Yter explores how Guifi.net grew while keeping its principles, offering insights for initiatives and organizations facing similar challenges. Their work is published in the Journal of Management Studies. 

The nature of moral markets

Social movements have played an active role in shaping and creating new markets that merge economic activity with moral values sensitive to social and environmental issues. Examples include markets supporting ethical fashion, ethical banking, recycling, organic food, and fair trade. 

Moral markets combine economic activity with social and environmental values

These “moral markets” emerge as an alternative to mainstream markets. But their success and expansion usually comes at the risk of losing their original values due to cooptation by profit-driven market forces. How did Guifi.net avoid the gradual dilution of their moral ideals? 

While researching the organization, the Esade researchers interviewed 47 key stakeholders—including activists, business owners, and policymakers—who were involved in the network’s growth. To see how the company developed over the years, the researchers looked at blog posts, annual reports, and historical documents. 

Approaches for scaling without selling out

As the network grew, it had to figure out how to engage new stakeholders—such as businesses and local governments—while ensuring they respected and adhered to its core values. The key to its success is a ‘frame overlapping’ strategy that enabled Guifi.net to connect its ethical mission with broader economic and social benefits. This alternative path allows moral values to be maintained and even reinforced as the market grows. 

By framing its work as an opportunity for digital inclusion, local economic development, and fairer access to infrastructure, it attracted a variety of backers without compromising on its principles.  

The conflict between ethics and growth is one of the great dilemmas facing organizations today

Following this frame overlapping strategy, the initiative didn’t position itself as a conventional grassroots activist network but as a network that can bring about digital access, support local economic growth, and promote fair competition in telecommunications. This made it appealing to a broader audience without compromising its original mission. 

The model of frame overlapping involves three mechanisms. 

• Frame amplification: The activists underscored the moral urgency of their mission and linked it to broader social rights by emphasizing the core values of their project, such as freedom, neutrality, openness, and collaboration.
• Frame bridging: Connecting their ideas and moral values with economic arguments to engage a wider audience, including businesses and policymakers. For instance, job creation, fair competition, and local economic development.
• Frame extension: Adapting broader cultural templates, such as the commons framework or the social and solidarity economy. This way, they further legitimized and reinforced their initiative as a model of sustainable, community-driven infrastructure. 

The process remains open-ended and can continue over time, allowing for new frames to be integrated. 

Guifi.net kept control over the main decisions and did not allow the organization to develop according to the demands of new stakeholders. It did this by implementing a community-driven governance model that ensured decision-making remained in the hands of its founding stakeholders rather than external players.  

A new model for ethical business growth?

The conflict between ethics and growth is one of the biggest issues facing organizations today. The research on Guifi.net suggests that scaling efficaciously while maintaining moral principles is possible—but it requires strategic thinking. 

The three mechanisms behind frame overlapping allows for new interpretations of the market to intersect with and reinforce earlier ones, without replacing or diverging from them. It makes it possible to maintain the original values of the market while making it attractive to new participants and external audiences. 

Contrary to earlier understandings of ‘frame lamination’—where new frames replace old ones with fundamentally different interpretations or without significant interaction between them—frame overlapping ensures that multiple frames coexist and reinforce one another, fostering both evolution and preservation. 

Instead of viewing growth and integrity as competing components, not only activist initiatives but also ethical businesses can employ frame overlapping to incorporate their mission into overall economic and social objectives. Arenas, Rodón and Yter’s research challenges the idea that morals and markets must always be in conflict. Guifi.net’s case shows that it is possible to scale successfully without compromising our core values.