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The Expressive Organization: Linking Identity, Reputation, and the Corporate Brand
Edited by Majken Schultz, Mary jo Hatch, and Mogens Holten Larsen Oxford University Press
2000
292 pp.
ISBN 0-19-829778-5
Keywords Corporate image, Brands, Marketing
Review DOI 10.1108/03090560310477735
This excellent book focuses primarily on the issue of how identity and reputation are linked to the corporate brand, exploring the multidimensional nature of this question from an interdisciplinary perspective. The three editors have assembled a wide range of different authors who each contribute one chapter on topics such as rethinking identity, reputation as strategy, and organizations as brands. Some of the well known names in the field who share their thoughts on how companies might aspire to become an "expressive organization" include Wally Olins, Paul Argenti, Charles Fombrun, Cees van Riel, and Kevin Lane Keller.
Schultz, Hatch and Larsen, the book's editors, take as their starting point the view that "once dominant only in the minds of consumers, brands are increasingly taking over the minds of all stakeholders". This standpoint implies the need to take a holistic and integrative approach to the management of identity, reputation and corporate branding issues. In their own chapter on the theme of rethinking identity, "Scaling the Tower of Babel: relational differences between identity, image, and culture in organizations", Hatch and Schultz acknowledge the danger of conceptual confusion arising from adopting such a broad perspective, while at the same time maintaining that the variety and richness that comes from such diversity provide valuable input to their theorizing.
One of Hatch and Schultz's most important observations concerns the concept of identity, which cannot, they claim, be understood simply as a projection of an organizational self but rather must be conceived of in terms of the perceptions others have of us and that we have of others. Although that may sound like a statement of the obvious, it is probably worth articulating in order to emphasise to company executives that a new "identity" cannot be conjured up by a designer, since identity is not just a visual projection but rather a complex interaction of the self and the other.
An interesting departure from the widespread understanding of identity from a purely visual viewpoint is provided by Jay Barney and Alice Stewart in their chapter...