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Introduction
The purpose of this article is to determine how and to what extent corporate reputational elements are reflected in organisational storytelling. This study used storytelling to determine whether employees revealed tangible and intangible elements of corporate reputation through the stories they told. Employees constitute the interface between a brands internal environment and external environment and have an impact on stakeholder perceptions of the organisation. Their behaviour can reinforce the reputation of the organisation or it can damage its reputation. Employee brand building behaviours may include courtesy, responsiveness, reliability, helpfulness, and empathy, amongst others and may result in higher levels of customer retention and loyalty ([34] Miles and Mangold, 2004).
The leadership and management of the organisation will have to make sure that the brand values are discussed with the employees through communication and internal marketing. To gain employees' commitment to a brand's identity it is important to establish staff communication programmes ([22] Harris and de Chernatony, 2001). While advertising and public relations can counter negative images, nothing is more powerful than stakeholders' direct, personal encounters with the organisation ([24] Hatch and Schultz, 2001).
According to [14] Davies (2008) marketing to employees has two main foci, first to align employees' views of the corporate brand and their behaviour to what is being marketed to customers and second; treating employees as "customers" who need to be communicated to, so that they have favourable views of their organisation. Organisational storytelling can play an important role in organisational communication and can lead to more effective behaviour towards the organisation's stakeholder groups.
Organisational storytelling reveals cultural themes and values ([13] Christie, 1996). [26] James and Minnis (2004) state that storytelling is receiving attention as a powerful management tool to facilitate knowledge sharing, guide problem solving and decision making and generate commitment to change. "Corporate stories might be a powerful tool for organisations to communicate about changes and to limit the amount of misinterpretations, informal communication and or communication failures" ([38] Powell et al. , 2009).
[6] Bendixen and Abratt (2007) describe corporate reputation as a mixture of branding, communications, image, culture and identity. [39] Schwaiger (2004) states that corporate reputation is not only about financial indicators but human conduct as well. Our research uses [39] Schwaiger's (2004) definition and...