Lars Thøger Christensen

Corporate identity and corporate image revisited ‐ A semiotic perspective

Asserts that the marketing discipline has been quite instrumental in securing and maintaining both practical and theoretical attention to the issues of identity and image in contemporary organisations. Discusses and critiques much of the discourse of corporate identity and image management. This is accomplished through a semiotic exercise in which prevailing perspectives and assumptions with respect to corporate identity and image are explained, analysed and subjected to a coherent interpretive framework. Rather than trying to legislate terminology or suggest conceptual parsimony, we use the semiotic framework as one way to illustrate the benefits of theoretical consistency and to stimulate self‐reflection among scholars who use the notions of identity and image.

CSR as aspirational talk

Most writings on corporate social responsibility (CSR) treat lack of consistency between organizational CSR talk and action as a serious problem that needs to be eliminated. In this article, we argue that differences between words and action are not necessarily a bad thing and that such discrepancies have the potential to stimulate CSR improvements. We draw on a research tradition that regards communication as performative to challenge the conventional assumption that CSR communication is essentially superficial, as opposed to CSR action. In addition, we extend notions of organizational hypocrisy to argue that aspirational CSR talk may be an important resource for social change, even when organizations do not fully live up to their aspirations.

Bridging Corporate and Organizational Communication: Review, Development and a Look to the Future

The theory and practice of corporate communication is usually driven by other disciplinary concerns than the field of organizational communication. However, its particular mind-set focusing on wholeness and consistency in corporate messages increasingly influence the domain of contemporary organizational communication as well. We provide a formative and critical review of research on corporate communication as a platform for highlighting crucial intersections with select research traditions in organizational communication to argue for a greater integration between these two areas of research. Following this review, we relax the assumptions underlying traditional corporate communication research and show how these dimensions interact in organizational and communication analysis, thus, demonstrating the potential for a greater cross-fertilization between the two areas of research. This cross-fertilization, as we will illustrate, enriches the theorization of corporate and organizational communication and may better link micro- and macro level analyses.

Corporate communication: the challenge of transparency

When organizations set out to manage their communications in accordance with the corporate ideal, they seem to take for granted that they are transparent, not only to their surroundings but also to themselves. The notion of corporate communications, in other words, builds on the assumption that organizations are able to have a general view of themselves as communicating entities. But is this really the case? And, if not, is it possible to articulate the challenge of corporate transparency in alternative, strategic terms? Since contemporary organizations increasingly relate to their surroundings as if they are transparent, these and related questions are highly relevant in both theoretical and practical terms. Discusses the notion of transparency both as a condition and as a strategy, and deconstructs conventional assumptions associated with the use of the term. Looking at corporate transparency as a staging process that involves strategic disclosure, institutionalisation and mimetic behaviour, asks fundam...

The organisation of integrated communications: toward flexible integration

Purpose – Marketing organisations increasingly talk about the importance of integrating their communications, of aligning symbols, messages, procedures and behaviours across formal organisational boundaries. Often this implies tighter central control over communications and other organisational processes. This paper sets out to discuss potential negative consequences of such tight control in terms of organisational incapability to react to market changes in increasingly fluid environments due to a loss of sufficient corporate complexity and diversity.Design/methodology/approach – In response, a flexible integration approach that draws attention to the handling of difference and variety within the context of an integrated communications project is articulated. The paper proposes a framework that balances centralisation and decentralisation through attention to dimensions of endogenous control, tight and loose couplings, networks, and common process rules.Findings – The paper demonstrated that, in order to ...

Integrated marketing communication and postmodernity: an odd couple?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that, under conditions of postmodernity, the market is too complex to be responded to with an IMC‐framework. While the desire of IMC scholars and practitioners to reinstate order and predictability in an increasingly disordered and fragmented world is understandable, such a mission may be misguided. The paper seeks to discuss the possibility that such attempts instead precipitate the production of complexity of an even more unpredictable nature.Design/methodology/approach – The paper proceeds through a critical juxtaposition of postmodernity and IMC, arguing that the latter – with its ambition to impose order and control – fails to understand important dimensions of contemporary markets.Findings – Rather than imposing a monological and hegemonic identity on markets and organizations – an identity that will unavoidably be challenged by consumers and employees – contemporary marketers and managers need to realize that organizational change and adaptabili...

Marketing as auto‐communication

In contemporary culture, marketing has defined itself as the beneficial institution par excellence, concerned primarily with the needs of society and its members. Through elaborate systems of communication, the marketing institution claims to link organizations with markets and publics and, thus, to foster openness and sensitivity to different voices. Against this image, this paper demonstrates that although marketing‐oriented organizations are heavily engaged in external communication activities, they often communicate primarily with themselves. Marketing may, in other words, be described as a system of auto‐communication, that is, a set of self‐referential communication practices through which the organization recognizes and confirms its own images, values and assumptions; in short; its own culture.

Buffering Organizational Identity in the Marketing Culture

This paper discusses the issue of organizational identity and the role played by marketing in attempts to manage this issue in a complex and turbulent environment. Within prevalent management discourse, marketing is described as a boundary function that ensures a steady conformance of the organization to external expectations and demands. With its strong emphasis on the con sumer and the changing needs of the market, marketing, accordingly, repres ents an attempt to impose and control a flexible identity, that is, an identity without distinctive traits independent of a market-based strategy. In the cultural perspective laid out in this paper, marketing, by contrast, is described as a self-referential system of organizing that enables the organization to establish and maintain a flexible buffer between itself and the environment. Within this buffer, defined by marketing, the organization is able to display a high degree of adaptiveness while upholding and confirming itself. In the marketing- managed organization, identity and flexibility thus become closely inter twined.

New tensions and challenges in integrated communications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how tensions and challenges associated with the implementation of integrated communications in practice have intensified in recent years under the impact of two conflicting trends: new social and organizational “drivers” towards integration; and the appearance of savvy and sophisticated audiences.Design/methodology/approach – Taking the point of departure in now classical discussions of structural “barriers” to integration, today more fundamental difficulties limit the implementation of integrated communications – difficulties rooted in epistemological issues of organization and communication are argued.Findings – Integrated communications present a paradox to contemporary communication management. On the one hand, integration seems to be the most logical and sensible way of managing communications in a complex world of multiple and critical audiences. On the other hand, its prescriptions are essentially at odds with what is known today about organizat...

Corporate brands and identity: developing stronger theory and a call for shifting the debate

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to engage with the issue of construct clarity in corporate communications research giving particular attention to corporate branding and identity whereby a critique of existing alignment models provides a basis for a shift in the debate geared towards an alternative approach.Design/methodology/approach – The commentary offers a discussion of a particular challenge to theory development around the clarity and specification of key constructs such as corporate identity and corporate brands. This leads to an elaboration of existing models of corporate branding and identity management and the subsequent suggestion for a shift towards alternative analytical interpretive models that are not premised on ontological assumptions of a conduit model of communication and objectivist assumptions of alignment and consistency. Shifting the debate in this direction has significant implications for research as well as practice.Findings – There is a need to move away from sender‐domina...