Abstract
Branding and brand work is certainly not a new topic in the field of marketing or consumption studies, yet it has been a surprisingly neglected area of study in organization and management studies. More recently there has been a growth in research that explores employee branding, however, to date this has been heavily slanted towards more functionalist approaches. However, as this book demonstrates, brands have become an integral part of many internally driven organizational and managerial practices, and as the title suggests, our work and non-work lives. This collection of chapters shows the broad scope in which brands have come to dominate and shape a wide variety of organizational contexts, and the ways in which brands are able to successfully mesh what has been typically considered external organizational processes with internal processes, and as such provides new and interesting ways to view the employer-employee relationship. Adopting a more critical lens, the focus in particular in this edited book is upon employee branding, where ‘brands come to structure modes of self-governance’ (p. 6) and employees become active reproducers of the brand. While studies on organizational aesthetics illustrate how employees come to embody and ‘be the brand’ (e.g. Warhurst and Nickson, 2007; Witz et al., 2003) the research presented in this book suggest that employees seek and construct meanings from brands in a range of organizational contexts, such as face-to-face service work, large scale global retailers, high-tech products and services, and the construction industry, among others.
The book is structured by beginning (and ending) with a conceptual and theoretical consideration of employee branding and places this in a broader contextual framework. However most of the book chapters are based on empirical case studies that explore how brands are experienced by employees as part of contemporary work practices. These range from a more micro level analysis, for instance focusing upon how a select few employees perceive the brand, to a more meso level, for example looking at how unions might use brands to organize.
Firstly, the Introductory chapter gives a good overview of the overall thesis of the edited book, and makes a strong case that brands should be understood as mediating the employment relationship by shaping and producing the meanings organizational members both produce and consume in their work.
The second chapter, by Hugh Willmott, considers the ‘bigger picture’ of branding processes, in relation to the financialization of brands and considers how brand equity is co-produced by consumers. The chapter offers an interesting analysis of how organizations appropriate and convert brand value, and the enormous funds generated from brand value in market capitalization. While brands are considered an important element in the creation of corporate value, the extent to which organizations build and exploit this is significant and some of the numbers provided in the chapter are quite startling. Brands are indeed highly valuable commodities for organizations, and organizations are able to exploit and capitalize on this set of symbols and images in conjunction with user-consumers. The discussion of how consumers become voluntary co-producers of brand equity is particularly interesting. In short, this chapter succinctly shows that brands mean big business for organizations and warrant further critical exploration.
The other conceptual chapter in the collection, by Martin Edwards and Elisabeth Kelan, focuses more upon the organizational level, and discusses processes of employer branding in relation to diversity management. In particular, the authors question whether branding, which they see as a process of value homogenization, and diversity management, which aims to acknowledge and value differences among employees, are antithetical. The chapter considers whether branding and diversity management are diagrammatically opposed or if they can in fact be reconciled and serve a common objective. I found the discussion of the differences in more marketing-orientated internal branding practices/ideologies versus HR-led internal branding, and the distinctions and possible tensions between these, quite useful. Adopting a somewhat functional orientation towards the end, the authors argue that ‘Inclusive employer brands’ have the potential to be ‘much more effective in ensuring employee engagement and participation’ (p. 181). The authors note, however, that there have been surprisingly few studies or commentaries on the incompatibility between diversity and a (homogenizing) brand. It would be interesting to see this topic explored further.
Other than these two conceptual chapters, the remainder of contributions are based on empirical case studies. The first empirical study, titled ‘Be who you want to be: branding, identity and the desire for authenticity’, by Christopher Land and Scott Taylor, considers how workers selves, which might be typically considered ‘outside’ of the organization, come to be incorporated into establishing ‘brand authenticity’. The case organization, Ethico, is a retailer of ‘alternative lifestyle’ fashion goods, which the authors argue provides a contradictory set of values within a capitalist market. We see that while the company promotes a brand based on ‘New Age’ values, and promotes this to employees, its practices are firmly rooted in capitalist ideology. While the subject of ‘authenticity’ and the utilization of the personal in work activities is certainly not a new area of research, the consideration of this from the perspective of branding does provide a new insight into concerns about the management of authenticity and points to a new way of conceptualizing the labour process vis-à-vis the organizational brand. The study raises some very interesting implications. On the one hand the study suggests there is a type of ‘commodified’ authenticity occurring in organizations such as Ethico, where ‘freedom’ is only really achieved by total mental and/or physical escape from the organization and its brand. Alternatively, the authors cautiously suggest that a reimagining of ethical and authentic organization is possible.
The following chapter, by Sandra Smith and Margo Buchanan-Oliver, titled ‘The branded self as paradox: polysemic readings of employee-brand identification’, continues to explore the theme of the self, organization and the brand. The authors focus here on employee understandings and representations of the brand in an organization (a large financial services provider). As the term ‘polysemic’ in the title suggests, the authors are interested in the multiple, diverse and contradictory range of meanings employees derive from a brand. What struck me most when reading this chapter was the rather complicated methodology adopted, with an array of epistemological stances and approaches adopted. Indeed, a great deal of text is spent on justifying and explaining these various (and at times at odds with each other) approaches. The authors state their aim is to explore the employee-brand interaction by focusing upon the ‘employee-brand experience’. They go on to say they are particularly interested in how employees engage with, accommodate or resist ‘the brand’, and see this as reflective of ‘identity formation’ processes and link this to reflection of a ‘post-structural world’ involving dichotomies. This seems to reflect a number of arguments that have been made for some time in the field of management and organization studies, where labour relations, organizing as a process and organizations in general have been shown to be imbued with paradox, dichotomies and ambiguities. After a rather exhaustive overview of the epistemological approaches adopted (social constructionism mixed with a Lacanian view of the self/subject), the authors present a novel way of exploring worker’s interpretations of a brand, by asking employees to draw how they perceive the relationship between themselves, the brand and the organization. Focus groups and interviews are also used as data.
The notion of using employees’ illustrative representations of the brand is an interesting idea, and as the authors note, brands themselves are laden with symbolism and representations. The drawings provided by employees show some thought-provoking employee understandings and interpretations of the employee-brand-organization relationship, yet seemed to be reflective of rather functional or managerial notions of brands. Indeed, I imagine management of the case organization would be rather pleased by how employees position themselves towards the ‘brand culture’. I wasn’t so convinced by the claim that the apparent ‘separation’ in the first case was a sign of resistance. All three cases show employees who are willing to engage with the brand but find different ways of positioning themselves towards this engagement. All adopt some form of distancing from the brand yet did not do so from the organization. This suggests the brand has not developed such a strong level meaning for these employees, but rather they derive meaning more from the organization. I found myself wondering how these forms of positioning towards the brand were any different from what a great deal of literature has explored in considering organizational culture, organizational image and organizational identities. Further, I wondered why ‘brands are necessarily contextualized in a post-structural world’ (p. 71). The argument that brands provide ‘fragmented contexts’ does not offer anything new or novel from understandings of organizational control or resistance. In fact, considering that brands provide multiple logics and frameworks makes the coherency in employee understandings and positions towards the brand as surprising, and shows that for this organization at least, they have been very successful at harnessing any possible ambiguity around the brand. It seems that the brand in this context is not necessarily so far fragmented, however the employees presented here choose nuanced ways of positioning themselves towards this.
In ‘The trouble with employer branding: resistance and disillusionment at Avatar’, Jean Cushen considers the role of organizational branding in relation to HRM practices, and explores how HRM draws upon an organizational brand. In this case, it is not done successfully in that employees come to ‘live the brand’, but rather actively resist these branding efforts. The author is particularly interested in how the ‘soft rhetoric’ and management of unitary interests are accomplished via internal branding. Based on an ethnographic study in a high-tech global and highly recognizable brand, Avatar actively uses it’s so called ‘brand essence’ as a way of aligning external and internal orientations towards the brand. The author describes how training, socialization, even the physical layout of the site where the study was conducted, was all geared towards ensuring employees were ‘on brand’. However, while the study was conducted there were also various re-organizations taking place, which as the chapter goes on to show created tensions between these strategies and HRM-led internal branding. While this ‘brand essence’ was supposed to deflect attention away from the unpleasantness of these re-organizations, in some instances it had the reverse effect. For the ‘brand recipients’ (i.e. employees) the ‘brand essence’ simply drew attention to the harsh realities of organizational life at Avatar. As the author states, the brand was ‘far from being a unifying framework’ but instead incited resentment and resistance. Branding, for these employees, was a highly contrived activity that may work for consumers but internally was seen as patently clumsy and offensive to their intellect. The study also questions how HR professionals legitimize their actions, and shows a lack of awareness about how their practices are actually received in organizations. As the author contends, what is surprising is why management and/or HR personnel in Avatar persisted with implementing such practices when these were so far removed from the reality of what was occurring in the organization for these employees. The author postulates that the alternative, that is recognition of a more adversarial, pluralistic and ‘harsher truth’ would be too unpleasant and ‘unbecoming’ for a leading firm (and brand). It seems that the brand façade must be maintained both externally and internally, although as this study shows, it can be a hard sell if it is hypocritical.
The topic of brand internalization continues to be explored in Stephanie Russell’s ‘Internalizing the brand? Identity regulation and resistance at Aqua-Tilt.’ Also based upon an ethnographic inquiry, Russell considers how ‘cultural techniques’ (specifically recruitment, training and development, and décor and artifacts) are used to ‘harness the brand’, and more specifically how a discourse of customer sovereignty is harnessed as part of the managerial drive to align employees’ behavior with the brand. Russell suggests that the brand leads to an internalization of the organization that encroaches upon their personal lives and therefore ‘regulates identity’, which suggests that branding is yet another form of identity regulation that organizations seek to harness. In discussing how employer branding can become a form of regulatory and normative control, this seemed very much the same as cultural control. Indeed, Russell draws upon literature (e.g. Willmott, 1993) that explores the ‘dark side of culture and identity regulation.’ It seemed that in this case, organizations carefully supplement cultural control mechanisms with ‘brand messages’. In reading this chapter, I found myself asking a number of questions, in terms of the relationship between organizational (or corporate) culture and internal branding. Does culture come before the brand, or is it the other way around? What is more likely to induce compliance, or alternatively, resistance? Can company branding now be seen as an additional ‘add on’ to cultural control? Is the brand a more powerful disciplining device than culture? If so, how? These types of questions and themes arise in the final chapter by the editors, and Russell’s study brings these to the foreground. What is also interesting in this study is that, as with the previous chapter, employees were expected to act in ‘brand appropriate’ ways yet were under increasing pressure to act in ways that, to them, was incongruent with these brand messages. This is where we see instances of employee resistance emerging in both studies.
In the following chapter, Scott Hurrell and Dora Scholarios look at brands as a type of recruitment practice, used to attract and select potential employees. Adopting a more functional approach, the chapter explores how recruitment and selection processes can ‘facilitate a person-brand fit’ and therefore ‘reduce skills deficits’ among employees in the hospitality industry. Using employee and management interviews and employee focus groups, the study finds that an employee-brand fit can help reduce skills deficits, and therefore would be of interest to HR practitioners or managers. One aspect to note is that there is not such a strong connection made to how the brand specifically was drawn upon in recruiting and retaining staff for much of the chapter. It seems that reputation, image and ‘cultural currency’ of the organization are the same thing as a brand. If this is the case, it would be good to see this considered more fully.
It seems that the hotels studied recruit much like many service-oriented organizations, and, like most service or face-to-face customer jobs, emphasis is placed on ‘soft skills’ and appearance and recruiting people who ‘fit’ with the organization (and its projected image), while less customer-interactive roles focused more finding people with more ‘hard skills’. None of this was particularly new or surprising and has been explored in other studies (e.g. Hancock and Tyler, 2007, who the authors mention). Both functional and more critical studies of recruitment practices, and how these are connected to brands, demonstrate employee identification with a brand is more likely to illicit the required ‘soft skills’ (behaviours) sought from employees. Overall, it would have been good to see a little more questioning or consideration of the possibility that the organization does not live up to its ‘brand promise’ (as is explored in the next chapter) when recruiting employees, and what forms of resistance, if any, emerges from this. It might be that employees choose to work for an organization because they identify with a brand (as studies have shown) yet find they cannot enact these ‘brand skills’ for various reasons. As the authors themselves suggest, it would be good to see in future studies the more direct link between HR practices, brand identification and ‘employee outcomes’.
Moving from a broader analysis of brands and recruitment, the following chapter focuses directly upon employees and considers how they interact with a brand as part of their work. Titled ‘The brand I call home? Employee-brand appropriation at IKEA’, Veronika Tarnovskaya explores how employees of this well-known retail giant interpret and derive meaning from the brand and mobilize these in their identity work. The author argues that brand meanings are not only imposed upon employees, but are also re-appropriated in a way that they too become ‘active constructors of brand meaning’. What is particularly interesting in this study is how the brand offers these employees a ‘brand promise’, which becomes part of the psychological contract between the employee and organization. In one case an employee happily engages with the brand in their work and finds meaning in the brand values conveyed. However, in another case we see what might happen if an employee feels this ‘brand promise’ has not been realized. The most significant contribution of this study is an illustration of how employees take an active role in co-constructing brand meanings, and therefore shows that internal branding is not simply imposed by managers, but is a dual process, which at times is symbiotic but in some instances diverges. The author makes the case that employee and employer branding are not two separate processes, as is commonly depicted in some of the literature.
In the final empirical chapter, Melanie Sims also considers how employees might appropriate brands, but focuses on a broader group level, and explores how workplace unions draw upon brand meanings in the context of front-line service work. The author notes that the ability for employees to ‘live the brand’ has been seen as important in studies exploring front-line service work, and states that in service work, and in particular where there is no product, employees are expected to be able to deliver in their interactions certain brand messages. In essence, employees are the brand. However this study is interested in ‘what happens to service brand values when a trade union starts to organize the workforce’ (p. 150). Based on four longitudinal ethnographic case studies, the author aims to demonstrate that worker’s unionizing can tell us something about how they understand their (branded) work, and most interestingly, how resistance to managerial control can sometimes be developed using some of the brand values. The study shows how unions present and articulate brand service values as a form of control and therefore presents a platform for inciting resistance. In fact, in this research unions go further by using brand values to work against management. In some ways the findings are similar to Cushen’s in chapter 5 (and to an extent Tarnovskaya’s study) in that employees have certain expectations about the brand (a ‘brand promise’ in Tarnovskaya’s case) and expect opportunities to enact and appropriate meanings from the brand. In Sim’s study the brand values or messages from HR and management did not correspond to actual organizational practices, or vice versa. Unions were able to identify and exploit some of the contradictions and tensions in the espoused brand values to mobilize collective action.
Overall, the book will be of value for anyone interested in brands but particularly those more interested in the effects of internally focused branding practices. One key observation upon reading this collection is how interchangeable terms such as organizational (or corporate) values, organizational (or corporate) cultures, organizational (or corporate) identity and the like are with the term brand/s/branding. It seems that just as brands and branding have become familiar internal organizing processes and a familiar part of HR and managerial rhetoric, similarly many of the authors in this book use the term(s) brand/brands/branding interchangeably with terms such as values, culture, identity and image and do not necessarily reflect much on this.
While reading this collection of empirical chapters, I kept wondering if part of this conflation of terms is because internal brands or branding isn’t particularly different from organizational culture and/or image and perhaps this is why is has not been so easily incorporated into HR and managerial practices. As Sims comments in her chapter, ‘Service brands are closely linked to, but not identical to, concepts such as organizational brand values, corporate identity and corporate image’ (p. 148). Perhaps the brand is where internal culture and external image meet. The question is whether this ultimately creates a different set of labour relations in organizations, or is this really the same as what we might find (indeed, have found) in studies exploring culture, values, image or identities? If the term brand was replaced by the terms organizational culture and/or image among those studied, would their responses have been any different to what has been presented in this book? These are some of the questions that the editors try to address in the final chapter, and the editors do a very good job of bringing together some of the rather complex questions and debates that are likely to emerge from this collection. The editors make a case that employee branding differs from cultural control ‘in that it emphasizes identification of the brand outside the workplace as part of the employees lifestyle and identity’ (p. 188). This, I believe, is what makes research on branding potentially very interesting, and at the very least the studies in this collection highlight this. As the editors further note, employee branding represents a symbolic, and material, shift on the part of capital to bring the internal organizational space to the outside life-space of employees and potential employees. This, as the editors comment, has real implications for work identities and other ‘outside work’ identities. Employees, as user-consumers and user-employees, participate in building (and also eroding) brand equity.
The range of organizational contexts that are explored in the case studies illustrate how brands has become a common organizing practice in not only face-to-face or product-associated work, but shows that even in contexts where one would assume a ‘strong brand’ would not be seen as so important (e.g. a manufacturer of construction goods), brands are highly symbolic. Furthermore, the studies presented here suggest there are a number of similarities in how these organizations incorporate and use brands as part of managerial practice. Given this widespread use of internally-focused branding, this collection also further opens the debate about whether we should be concerned about the pervasiveness of this practice. From a practitioner perspective, the research presented in this book suggests that brands and internal branding is far from a simple process, and as some of the studies show, employee branding is an inherently complex and at times ambiguous process. Just as studies on various managerial and ‘cultural programs’ have indicated, employees are able to identify, exploit and challenge these processes.
In many ways the chapters in the book, in particular the empirical case studies, indicate that while brands and processes of internal branding appear to elicit many of the same outcomes, responses and challenges we see in other forms of normative organizing processes, the studies here do allude to something different. Whether this is in relation to different modes of identification, a way of inciting resistance, or the employee appropriation of a brand in complex ways, the chapters in this book suggest a need for more commentary and research on some of the themes and questions raised in this book. This book helps set the scene for a relatively new area of inquiry in organization studies, and certainly makes for an engaging, interesting and diverse read.