Tài liệu Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management 10 ppt

Their cause-and-effect model is set out more formally in Figure 2.8, which shows how reputation building, personalized communications, the quality of communications and the EQ or emotion

We will discuss this link between identification in Chapters 3 and 4, when we look more closely at engagement

Their cause-and-effect model is set out more formally in Figure 2.8, which shows how reputation building, personalized communications, the quality of communications and the

EQ (or emotional appeal) are linked through increased levels

of organizational identification with behaviours that are supportive of corporate reputation The model also highlights the questions used to assess the levels of organizational identification

Plural reputations are lead indicators of brands

Though Fombrun and his colleagues have certainly advanced our understanding of corporate reputation, there are two criti-cisms we can make The first is that it is not quite clear enough

in setting out the relationship between reputation and branding, which are sometimes treated synonymously Grahame Dowling’s (2001) work is particularly helpful in this regard by making clear links between reputations and what he calls ‘super-brands’ In

The degree of fit or alignment among the beliefs and feelings held about an organization by people and groups and what they personally or collectively value, e.g ‘chicness’, professionalism and social responsibility are values which are held to be important by potential employees, so the organization maintains a reputation for these characteristics

Reputation

Brand

The levels of trust and confidence that

an individual or group has in the organization’s ability to deliver continuously high levels of what they value about the organization’s image and the support they give to its products and services, e.g the organization develops an external brand as a provider of chic, professional and socially responsible products and services and an employer brand as a chic, professional and socially responsible, and customers/employees continue to buy the products and recommend them to others

Figure 2.8

The relationship between reputations and brands (based on Dowling, 2001)

line with our earlier discussion on the importance of corporate brands, he sees the valued outcomes of reputations as follows:

■ building trustamong customers, employees and other stakeholders that the organization will act in their best interests or that of the community

■ building confidence among customers, employees and other stakeholder that the organization will con-tinue to value their contributions and their trust

■ lending supportto the organization by continuing to use its products and services and to recommend others

to use them

It is from high levels of such confidence, trust and support for organizational reputations (for valued characteristics such

as superior performance, fairness, honesty, social responsibility and professionalism) that super-brands result

The second criticism is of the unitary approach of Fombrun and his colleagues, which culminates in the global measure of reputation Again, Dowling’s work is helpful in this regard in pointing out the plural nature of reputations His argument, like some of the writers on organizational culture and identity, is that

we cannot sensibly talk about a corporate reputation in a unitary sense because reputations will be judged differently according to who is doing the judging, when and why they are judging, and the criteria they use to judge Reputations, he argues, arise from the degree of fit or alignment between two key elements:

■ the beliefs and feelings of different groups of stake-holders about an organization (which he defines as image but we see as part of reputations)

■ their individual or collective values (personal values) (see Figure 2.1)

Since, as he contends, brands flow from the levels of trust, confidence and support that stakeholders have in the ability of the organization to deliver what they value about the

organiza-tion’s image/reputation, by definition perceptions of brands

will also be different, e.g among different customer segments, different groups of employees, potential employees, etc Dowling is not alone in emphasizing the plural nature of reputations For example, Hatch and Schultz (2001) point to

the interaction between the objective and subjective evalu-ations of four distinct groups as the source of reputational pluralism These groups are:

■ Functional groups – for example, through informal interactions at sales meetings, employee storytelling

or accounts from satisfied or dissatisfied service pro-viders These incidents strongly influence an organi-zation’s reputation but are largely uncontrollable

■ Different customer segments – for example, young, old, educated, urban, suburban, class, etc

■ The business press and special interest groups –such

as the rankings of the best places to work and industry press ratings of organizations, as outlined above

■ Normative and potential stakeholders – such as pos-sible recruits, shareholders and other funders, trade associations, government regulatory agencies, profes-sional organizations and the community at large

So it follows that no organization in reality has a single rep-utation since different stakeholders are likely to value different images of an organization Indeed, what you see is likely to depend on where you stand; if you place high value on profes-sionalism, you are likely to look for that element in an organi-zation’s projected image, say from a business school that is research-led with well-known teachers On the other hand, if you place a high value on friendliness or leading-edge enter-prise, you would probably look for a different kind of school

As a result, the ‘designers’ of corporate reputations need to

be clear about who they are aiming to influence and the best methods of influencing different groups of stakeholder

However, at a practical level, the debate between the singular and global view of reputations and brands may be a false one, since Fombrun has always acknowledged the problems of an aggregated notion of corporate reputation He points, instead,

to its practical value in helping organizations identify their relative standing, understand the factors that have contributed

to it and highlight the kinds of actions that might be needed to improve it In effect, he has gone for simplicity and practicality

in moving the conversation along on reputations rather than overcomplicating the story before readers begin to understand

it At the time of writing Fombrun and Van Riel are working on

a development of the RQ to address the problems of using aggregate measures with different stakeholders and to address one of the key problems of understanding, what they acknow-ledge to be a key driver of reputations – human resource man-agement and employee communications (Fombrun, 2005)

Conclusions

In this chapter we have examined, in more depth, the notions of branding and reputations, showing how these are distinctive but related ideas Whilst branding is the better-known concept, espe-cially among practitioners in the for-profit sector, our argument

is that we have to work with both notions In our model, we have described reputations, which are best thought of as plural, as lead indicators of corporate brands Brands flow from good or poor reputations held by different groups of people about the organi-zation’s image These evaluations are quite specific to the particu-lar values of different groups, so are more usually associated with

a wider range of stakeholder and agendas, including good govern-ance, CSR, diversity and human resource management Reputa-tion is also a more intuitive idea, takes longer to build and is a more acceptable term to organizations in the not-for-profit sec-tor Moreover, there is an increasing volume of material on repu-tation management, which is very well researched and is shown to have strong links to performance At the heart of the reputation management approach is the link between external image and internal identity, to which we now turn in Chapter 3

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Organizational identity,

action and image:

the linchpin

3

Introduction

We now turn to an examination of the core relationship between what Ed Schein (1985) described as the external adaptation/ internal integration problem This relationship is at the heart of our model linking HR, reputations and corporate branding; it also presents organizations seeking to create new identities and images with enormous challenges Consider an advertisement

placed by GE, one of the world’s largest companies, in The Economist during September 2005 In this advertisement, they

portrayed an image of the company as an ecologically friendly and innovative organization, summed up in the strapline, ‘eco-magination at work’, and pointed out how they could produce quieter and more efficient aircraft engines, energy-efficient wind turbines, advanced water desalination, advanced plastics for cars, which reduce the needs for paint, and energy-efficient light bulbs (see Chapter 9 for a further discussion of this case)

Recapping on our basic storyline in Chapter 1, there are four key processes at work that have to be addressed in meeting such challenges, which the GE example illustrates well (see Figure 3.1) First, organizational image is what senior people in the company want different groups of stakeholders to believe and feel about it in terms of its most enduring and distinctive fea-tures, e.g a traditional engineering conglomerate wishes to pro-ject a socially responsible and technically professional image Second, whether GE can secure a reputation for ecomagination will depend on what different people and groups expect from, perceive and value about its image, e.g do they expect to see this image, do they value these characteristics of professional-ism and eco-friendliness, and do they see GE acting out their image? Third, this image and reputation, in turn, will depend

on GE’s organizational identity (‘Who are we?’) and its collect-ive actions, including its governance and senior leadership behaviours, e.g leaders collectively identify with the agenda, understand their relevance to the business context and act with high regard for professionalism and eco-friendliness in their decisions and dealings with stakeholders Fourth, the quality of individual employment relationships and employee behaviour

in GE will shape the projected image, the organizational iden-tity and organizational actions In turn, these factors feed back into the quality of individual employment relationships through

a process of identification

In this chapter, we will explore these ideas in more depth, focusing on the organizational identity, actions and image rela-tionship, though we cannot discuss these in isolation from how they shape individual employment relationships, an issue covered

in depth in Chapter 4

The core relationship

As we have become all too aware in writing this book, there is a great deal of confusion among practitioners and academics over terms such as identity, image, reputation and culture So, it

is extremely important for readers that we attempt to clear up the confusion and make our position clear on these issues for sound practical reasons If you cannot define your concepts and

show how they are related, you are unlikely to be able to meas-ure them, explain how one may cause the other (account for them) or justify them (why they matter) As a result, you will never be able to manage them in the proper sense of that term

Organizational action

Image

The quality of individual employment relationships

Organizational identity

Engagement

Identification

Reputation(s)

Figure 3.1

Linking reputation, image, actions and identity

Dave Whetten and Alison Mackey (2002) illustrate this prob-lem well when discussing the field of reputation management (see Figure 3.2) They point out that most models of reputation management that build on the notion of identity fail to make a

distinction between identity as a cause and identification as an effect As we shall see, identity has come to be seen as a property of

the organization as a whole, and not just the sum of its parts (e.g individual attributes, opinions and personalities) Thus organi-zations have to create and manage these identities (cause) to influence their reputation(s) (effect) However, the manage-ment of reputations is also justified because it helps create greater identification among individuals (the justification), e.g customers with the brand, employees who internalize the values

of the product or service and investors with the mission of the organization The most important practical point here is that measuring and managing organizational identity is not the same

as measuring and managing individual identification and the quality of individual employment relationships; though these may be closely related ideas, again as we shall see later in this