Explicating corporate identity

Citation

Balmer, J.M.T., Powell, S.M. and Elving, W.J.L. (2009), "Explicating corporate identity", Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 14 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ccij.2009.16814daa.001

Explicating corporate identity

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Volume 14, Issue 4

About the Guest Editors

John M.T. Balmer Founder, Chairman and Conference Organiser of the International Corporate Identity Group (ICIG). The first symposium took place in 1994 and the ICIG was formally launched in the House of Lords, Palace of Westminster, in 1995. He has single-handedly organised nine of the ICG symposia and has jointly organised the other two. He has been a leading proponent of the strategic importance of corporate identity, corporate branding and corporate marketing to scholars and practitioners alike and has been tireless in his advocacy of these areas over the last two decades. Since 1997, he has served as Guest Editor for some 13 special issues of academic journals on the above areas. Currently, he is Professor of Corporate Marketing at Brunel University, London where he is the Director of the MSc in Corporate Brand Management.

Shaun M. Powell Senior Lecturer and Associate Head of School (Marketing) in the Faculty of Commerce at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Previously, he was based at Heriot Watt University (Edinburgh) and Strathclyde University (Glasgow), following 15 years within industry. He is also the co-founder of the International Centre for Corporate Marketing and Branding Studies (www.corporate-marketing.org) alongside Professor John Balmer. His current research and publication activities are primarily focused upon corporate marketing, corporate branding, public relations and the interface with corporate social responsibility (CSR). He has published in a number of international journals and guest edited five special editions to date including the European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Brand Management and Corporate Communications: An International Journal. Shaun M. Powell is the lead author and can be contacted at: spowell@uow.edu.au

Wim J.L. ElvingLecturer at the University of Amsterdam and an active researcher in the areas of corporate communications and corporate identity, with various papers published in these fields to date. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of Corporate Communications: An International Journal.

Provenance, as the opening papers of this special edition attests, can be a critical dimension in our comprehension and management of corporate identity. Moreover, we note that this celebratory special edition on corporate identity appears on the 10th anniversary of an earlier special edition of this journal on the same theme (Balmer, 1999).

Musing further on the issue of provenance we, as Guest Editors, are mindful that the historical roots of some papers in this special edition are to be found in the 11th ICIG's Symposium which was held in Brighton, England in March, 2008, organised by the ICIG's Chairman and Founder, Professor John M.T. Balmer.

The special edition theme, “Explicating corporate identity” was used as a key benchmark in selecting manuscripts for this special edition. In selecting this theme, we were mindful that a rich variety of perspectives can be adopted in explicating the corporate identity construct and the included papers which have passed the strict double-blind reviewing process, both individually and collectively, speak to the special edition theme in a variety of meaningfully different ways.

We believe that this special edition marks a significant advance in our comprehension of the territory. It does, moreover, build on the strong links between Corporate Communications: An International Journal (CCIJ) and the ICIG over the past: this includes a special edition on corporate and organisational marketing (Powell et al., 2007) and an earlier special edition on corporate identity (Balmer, 1999).

Comparing this special edition with that of 1999, we can see that real progress has been made in our comprehension of the corporate identity construct: there are firmer theoretical bases and the cross-disciplinary and cross-continental nature of the territory is greatly heightened. This being the case, the corporate communications, marketing and strategic perspectives of the field and the enviable provenance of European, British and Commonwealth scholarship of the area is not always recognised elsewhere as it might.

However, there is much to celebrate as we contemplate the real advances that have been made in our comprehension of the corporate identity construct – including its centrality to our comprehension of organisations and the multiple identities of institutions. Moreover, both the Editor-in-Chief of the CCIJ and the Founder of the ICIG are in good cheer as we celebrate ten years of close and mutually beneficial co-operation or, rather, provenance!

The opening paper entitled “Perspectives on organisational change: the struggle between dominating and residual cultures in savings banks” by Lars Silver (Sweden) takes a corporate identity perspective, examining organisational change in the financial services sector and shows that institutional change is underpinned by cultural strife within entities and can often mean that stakeholder perspectives are ignored. This research was undertaken among a number of Swedish savings banks. This study also presents further evidence that the characterisation of corporate identity as being stable and enduring – as advocated in the seminal paper by Albert and Whetten (1985) – is questionable. In this regard, the significance of institutional transformation in financial services, as outlined by Wilkinson and Balmer (1996) in their study of the Co-operative Bank is highlighted. A clear message from the authors' research is that cultural questions are of importance in explicating corporate identity as well in terms of its management: this supports long-standing themes within the corporate identity literature.

Since, the mid-1990s onwards, scholars and practitioners of corporate identity have, understandably, focussed on a distinctive identity type: corporate brand identity. Although closely related to corporate identity and has its roots in corporate identity – the perspective adopted in the second paper entitled “Implications of Habermas's ‘theory of communicative action’ for corporate brand management” by Joachim Kernstock and Tim Oliver Brexendorf (Switzerland) appears to chime as it reveals the significance of adopting a panoptic perspective when scrutinising institutional identity and the need to, perhaps, embrace identity-based views of the corporation. In this paper, the authors show the significance of Habermas's theory of communicative action in terms of corporate brand management and, as such, this breaks new ground in terms of our comprehension of corporate brands and their management. This paper is important for scholars of corporate identity, corporate brand management, corporate communications and corporate marketing since it provides a seemingly groundbreaking approach in terms of corporate identity and corporate brand-orientated communications with stakeholders.

The significance of an organisation's historiography has a less-prominent profile than it once did vis-à-vis the corporate identity canon and the third paper entitled “Corporate identity manifested through historical references” by Anna Blombäck and Olof Brunninge (Sweden) again brings this perspective to the fore. Clearly, an organisation's roots provide a meaningful dimension in explicating corporate identity. In this third paper, the authors explain the importance of history in our comprehension of corporate identities and provide seven insights in this regard. This paper provides a timely reminder of the role of history and of company founders: the latter perspectives do, of course, characterise the early work of Wally Olins and John Balmer on the territory and the authors, in their cogent analysis of the link between corporate identity and institutional history, remind both practitioners and academics of its saliency and, moreover, utility.

Recently, the notion of ethical corporate identity and the interlink with corporate social responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a distinctive stand of inquiry within the field of business ethics: the special edition devoted to the area in the Journal of Business Ethics (Fukukawa et al., 2007) is indicative of the above interest. Interestingly, therefore, the fourth paper entitled “Advertising corporate social responsibility initiatives to communicate corporate image: inhibiting scepticism to enhance persuasion” by Alan Pomering and Lester W. Johnson (Australia) examines corporate identity in the context of its basis in terms of institutional advertising, making especial reference to an organisation's CSR record. To this end, the authors conclude – in terms of four propositions that the inclusion of social topic information in CSR advertisement, the inclusion of messages that establishes an organisation's long-term commitment to CSR, the use of specific social impact information vis-à-vis CSR – will increase message diagnosticity and inhibit scepticism towards the message. In addition, the authors' aver that unplanned corporate personality cues will moderate the size/direction of the effects of diagnostic CSR corporate image/identity advertising in terms of consumer scepticism towards such cues.

With the recent turmoil and ensuing concern with the ethical behaviour in the global financial sector the fifth paper in this special edition, entitled “Explicating ethical corporate identity in the financial sector” by Shaun M. Powell, Wim J.L. Elving, Chris Dodd and Julia Sloan (Australia, Holland and the UK), is particularly timely. The paper returns to the issue of internal change in the financial sector as introduced in the first paper of the edition. In this case it investigates the impact on ethical components of the corporate identity if implementing a “monolithic” corporate branding strategy in a major UK financial institution, while also using a primarily “top down” corporate communication approach across its various divisions and operations. This major empirical study emphasizes the importance of taking the ethical values of employees into account when trying to formulate or change corporate values as part of a strategic corporate identity programme.

The final paper contained in this edition entitled “Corporate social responsibility and transparent pricing in the case of the euro changeover” by Urša Golob, Zlatko Jančič and Borut Marko Lah and was not formally considered for this special edition or theme. This peer reviewed paper has been included by the Editor-in-Chief as the winner of the CCIJ best paper award at the Corporate and Marketing Communications Conference held in Slovenia during 2008. The paper explains different practices companies use when dealing with stakeholder issues, such as transparent changeover pricing via the exploration of a case study of the adoption of the euro in the 13th member state that joined the European Monetary Union.

The Guest Editors wish to thank all those who kindly submitted the papers for this special edition and we also are indebted to the global team of reviewers who undertook their task both conscientiously and expeditiously. There is much here for the readership of CCIJ to draw and reflect on.

John M.T. Balmer, Shaun M. Powell, Wim J.L. ElvingGuest Editors