Chapter Five: Communicating Identity

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Chapter Five Communicating Identity

• What we will cover
• The meanings of identity
• Individual identification with organizations
• Identity management by organizations

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Chapter 5 Meanings and Contexts of Identity

• Lets place identity in different historical and
  cultural contexts.
• Lets consider how identity-as-uniqueness came to
  overcome identity-as-sameness in the western
  world.
• Lets look at the ironies and contradictions
  surrounding an emphasis on identity as a
  distinctive self that a person or organization
  owns.

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Chapter 5 Kuhn McPartlands Twenty
Statements Test

• Exercise Answer 20 times the question, I am .
  . . .
• Now, consider how many of your answers are
• --characteristics (e.g., honest, friendly)
• --social roles (e.g., mother, brother)
• --group or organizational memberships
  (e.g., positions)

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Chapter 5 Identity in Contrasts

• Think of identity as
• --continuity versus change
• --authenticity versus superficiality
• --core characteristics versus peripheral or
  secondary ones
• --unified versus differentiated self
• --commitment versus fleeting attachment

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Chapter 5 Identity and Decision Making

• A person identifies with an organization when he
  or she seeks to select alternatives with the
  interests of the organizationas best they can be
  determineduppermost in mind
• --Tompkins Cheney (1985), adapting the
  operational definition by Simon (1976)
• Q What are the advantages of this for the
  organization? For the individual?
• And, the disadvantages?

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Chapter 5 Identity, Space and Time in a
Virtual World

• Q What are the challenges to organizational
  identity in a virtual organization?
• Q How has the Internet simultaneously fostered
  new social bonds, communities, and identities and
  weakened others?
• Q How have space/place, time, and
  organizational boundaries been affected by
  electronic and computer-mediated communication?

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Chapter 5 Some Organizational Identification
Strategies

• Common-ground (e.g., I was poor, too.)
• Antithesis (i.e., unity in opposition)
• Assumed or transcendent we (e.g., We at Acme
  believe)
• Unifying symbols (e.g., logos, banners)
• --from Kenneth Burke (1950), then adapted by
• Cheney (1983), and DiSanza Bullis (1999)
• Q What are the various ways employees or
  members can respond to these organizational
  strategies?

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Chapter 5 Managing Corporate or Organizational
Identities

• This theme is central to advertising, public
  relations, and marketing today.
• The key challenge is creating and expressing a
  distinctive identity while also being part of the
  crowd.
• Organizational identities are often positioned
  vis-à-vis one another
• As new identities become established, they can
  quickly lose their novelty.
• Unified organizational voices, as with
  integrated marketing communications, have certain
  advantages and disadvantages.

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Chapter 5 Timeline ofExternal Corporate
Communications

• 1860s Early Developments in Advertising
• 1880s Early Developments in Public Relations
• 1920s Growth of Advertising Emergence of
  Lifestyle
• 1950s Advent of Marketing Growth of
  Consumerism
• 1960s-1970s Consumer Advocacy and Other Social
  Movements
• 1975? Issues/Values Advertising/Management
• 1980s Rise of Identity Management
• 1990s Dominance of Marketing Discourse
• 2000 Attempted Consolidation of Communications
  Functions

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Chapter 5 Types of Branding

• The Origin of the Metaphor
• Product and Service Branding
• Company/Organizational Branding
• Co-branding
• Branding Extended to Nation, Ethnicity, Values,
  etc.
• The Personal Branding Movement

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Chapter 5 Types of Auto-Communication

• The organization sends messages to the outside
  that it then receives itself.
• This may be conscious or largely unconscious.
• The organization repeats a message so that it
  eventually internalizes it.
• The organization sees the environment in such a
  way that confirms its own expectations.
• The last two are largely unconscious.
• --See several references by Lars Thøger
  Christensen

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Chapter 5 Todays Challenges to Identification
with Organizations

• Rapid Pace of Change in Work and Life
• Geographic and Electronic Mobility
• Breakdown of the Social Contract between
  Organizations and Employees
• Widespread Cynicism about Organizational
  Integrity
• Side-effects of Consumerism Shopping for
  Attachments Like Shopping for Brands