Lars Strannegård

Silence of the brands

Since the late 1980s, brands have gained centre stage in marketing and in the managerial discourse. From having been a mere marker that identifies the producer or the origin of a product, the brand is today increasingly becoming the product that is consumed. For the corporation, the brand is conceptualised as the essence of the firm, its most crucial “asset”. In the literature, branding is described as a process of expressing core values through the use of persuasive stories. By questioning the conception of brands as corporately managed stories, the article aims to re‐conceptualise branding as a process of aesthetic expression, where the conventional distinctions between senders and receivers become blurred. The paper looks into how brands have become depicted in the branding literature, and thereafter discusses the narrative and pictorial modes of communication. On the basis of this, the article finally discusses how images are used and reused in the joint construction of brands, thus challenging the idea of brands as stories crafted and controlled by the corporation.

Organizations Coping with Their Natural Environment

Abstract Through their activities, organizations have an impact upon the natural environment. When organizational members and stakeholders perceive this impact as problematic, organizations are motivated to develop routines to deal with it. In this article, we argue that the emergence and diffusion of these routines provide a rich empirical testing ground for institutional theory. We identifY three specific areas of institutional theory that could be advanced using this testing ground: (1) the relation between efficiency and institutionalization processes, (2) the link between micro and macro processes of institutionalization, and (3) the distinction between diffusion and translation.

Leadership Voices: The Ideology of ‘The New Economy’

This article explores leadership voices in the so-called new economy. For approximately half a decade, influential business leaders, authors of popular management texts, politicians, journalists and scholars preached the dawning of a new economic order and a corresponding new leadership practice. The article examines influential leadership voices and the ideology claims being expressed in Sweden during a particular time period. By bracketing the epochal claims in time and space, the dominating leadership ideology is examined. The results show a clear influence of market rationalism, but with a twist of community, emotions and reciprocal individualization.

Union-Jacking the research agenda. A study of the frontstage and backstage of Business Strategy and the Environment 1992–1998

The purpose of this discussion article is to show some descriptive characteristics of research carried out in environmental management. Thus, it is an invitation for reflection on environment-relat ...

The Cocoon—A Traveling Space

As a graduation project at a design school in Stockholm, a piece of furniture to be used for retreats in the public space was exhibited. It was named ‘The Cocoon’ and was a reclining chair covered with a bubble-like construction made out of cloth and steel. The exhibition was a starting point for a number of journeys. In the years to come, the Cocoon reached museums, exhibition halls, newspapers and magazines throughout the world. In this article, we track the travels and illustrate the transformations of the Cocoon. We seek to understand spacing activities behind the travels and view the travels from a spatial perspective focusing on the relation between transportation and transformation, of emptiness, form and content.

Loveable networks – a story of affection, attraction and treachery

In an increasingly connected age, information technology can be argued to have become more politicized. The attempts to establish network technologies to promote the development of an information society are tokens of an increasingly vested interest that politics has in information technologies. Recognition of the entanglement of politics and technology is crucial in understanding contemporary organizational change. Instead of taking organizational stability for granted, we assume organizational change to be the norm. In this paper, we point to the many organizing efforts needed to prevent technologies from drifting away into non‐existence. We present two cases of IT ventures – one seemingly failed and one seemingly successful. Together, they illustrate the point that technological networks, as stable as they may seem, can only survive as long as they permanently fascinate actors from other techno‐economic networks and thereby attract their unconditional love, affection and commitment.

Developing researching managers and relevant research – the ‘executive research programme’

The current paper argues for bridging the ‘relevance gap’ in management research and education by creating educational programmes that bring together experienced managers and management researchers. In the ‘Executive Research Programme’ discussed in this paper, managers were paired up with researchers to conduct a collaborative research project that resulted in a paper presented at an academic conference. The collaborative process was supported by 20 course days on topics such as the philosophy of science, methodology and overviews over the core disciplines of management science. This paper presents the programme and discusses experiences of the involved researchers and managers. The results suggest that programmes of this kind may provide a liminal space for managers and researchers where new and relevant knowledge is developed.

Students’ Self-Branding in a Swedish Business School

Abstract The premise of this article is that brands help people create their identities. When institutions of higher education engage in explicit branding activities, an appearance-focused brand culture, in which a coherent system of symbols, actions, and meaning, may emerge. This article explores how students in a Swedish business school use the school’s brand for self-branding. The branding processes have implications for student postures toward their university education and the development of their self-conceptualizations. The article presents a theoretical framework for branding and for student self-branding at the studied school, demonstrates how the school is the focal point for this self-branding, identifies the branding vocabulary used at the school, and analyzes how students develop self-conceptualizations in a meaning system infused by branding. The article concludes by posing questions on the significance of self-branding in higher education.

The Triumph of Feelings: On the Power of Imagery in Business

In recent years, images, brands, opinions, and attitudes have attracted an increasing amount of attention, both from representatives of organizations and from individuals. And as a result of this shift, researchers in business administration have begun to take an interest in matters concerning trust, images, and reputation. Searches for terms, such as “branding,” “employer branding,” “trust,” “performance,” and “reputation,” produce a hugely larger number of hits in academic databases today, than even just a few years ago.