Deriving an operational measure of corporate identity

Abstract

IntroductionThere is an extensive amount of practitioners' literature on corporate identity, whereas academic literature is more scarce. One of the major problems in the area of corporate identity is the lack of consensus among writers as to the basic concept of "corporate identity" (Balmer and Wilkinson, 1991). "Corporate identity" seems to be a general-purpose concept that serves as an alibi for a variety of activities like designing a new logo, interior decoration, salesforce training, all the way up to changing the corporate culture. Most authors do not define corporate identity explicitly. The only element which they appear to have in common is that "corporate identity" means "something that symbolizes the organization as a whole". Whereas it is possible to represent a whole organization by just assigning a symbol to it, symbolizing the organization becomes more difficult if information has to be communicated on what the organization is about and if a certain degree of correspondence between the symbol and the organization itself is required. Then the focus of interest changes from the symbol itself to the content of the symbol, i.e. "to what the organization is". This changed focus is equivalent to how Webster's Dictionary (1990) describes "identity": "who a person is or what a thing is".The initial purpose of this paper is to provide an outline of the prescriptive criteria for the concept of corporate identity so as to make the concept useful for corporate communication. These requirements should help ensure communication with an informative content, more than just signalling the presence of an organization. For instance, the Mercedes star itself, as a marker for Daimler Benz, stands for the Daimler Benz organization. On the other hand, it can be perceived to embody certain values when representing the organization. The second purpose of this paper is to show how such values can be found empirically in an organization, prior to management decisions to communicate something to the outside world, and prior to management decisions to improve a corporate identity deemed unsatisfactory. Role of corporate identity in corporate communicationWhenever an organization wants to communicate something about itself as a whole, it has to deal with its corporate identity. van Riel (1995) defines "corporate communication" as:

Adding Psychological Value to Heritage Tourism Experiences

“…After the initial attribute, or distinction of a specific aspect is provided, a series of sequential indepth probing questions follows into why the distinction is important. In order to identify the full set of linkages, this style of questioning of 'why' in terms of importance is continued until the subject can no longer answer (Reynolds and Gutman, 1984;van Rekom, 1994van Rekom, , 1997. This classic technique is based on the visitor being able to link from concrete attributes to abstract attributes, to functional consequences, to psycho-social consequences, to instrumental values, and finally to terminal values (Bagozzi and Dholakia, 1999).…”

“…Both styles of the HVM technique have been applied to determining means-end chains or motives for attending a fine arts museum (Crotts and van Rekom, 1998;Jansen-Verbeke and van Rekom, 1996), selecting a ski destination (Klenosky et al, 1993), use of a state park interpretive services (Klenosky, Frauman, Norman, and Gengler, 1998), corporate values (van Rekom, 1994, 1997, how goals are set and influenced to lose weight, and how people felt about a United States President whilst he was in office (Bagozzi and Dabholkar, 2000;Bagozzi and Dholakia, 1999). The HVM methodology employed in the current study was the method purported by colleagues (1999, 2000).…”

Integrating identity, strategy and communications for trust, loyalty and commitment

“…Also, communication can shape the connection between a company's personality and identity (p. 204). Van Rekom (1997) highlights how the purpose of corporate communications is to improve a certain desired corporate image for target audiences (p. 411). According to , gaining a competitive advantage from messages needs the integration of communications between internal and external stakeholders (p. 156).…”

“…consciously employed forms of external and internal communication are harmonized successfully and professionally to generate a favourable basis for associations with the stakeholders upon whom the organization is dependent (Melewar, 2003;Van Rekom, 1997).…”

At the confluence of organisation development (OD) and organisation identity theory (OIT): Enter identity interventions

“…The literature however indicates otherwise and some convergence is for example observed between the views propagated in some quarters in the corporate identity field (cf. Balmer, 1995;Glover, 1993;Olins, 1996;Van Rekom, 1997;Van Riel & Balmer, 1997) and proponents of the classical approach to organisation identity. In keeping with the view of for example Kiriakidou and Millward (2000) and Van Tonder (1999), corporate identity is viewed here as the "external" manifestation of organisation identity (which is core) and, for obvious reasons, should be congruent.…”