The Expressive Organization: Linking Identity, Reputation, and the Corporate Brand

This book challenges current beliefs about organizational identity, reputation, and branding. It contains a wealth of new ideas for finding the elusive answers to questions troubling contemporary organizations. How does an organization create a strong reputation? What are the implications of corporate branding on organizational structures and processes? How do organizations discover their identities? These are some of the vexing problems addressed in this book by a diverse international team of contributors. According to the authors, the future lies with 'the expressive organization'. Such organizations not only understand their distinct identity and their brands, but are also able to express these externally and internally. In order to thrive in an era of transparency and customer choice, the authors argue, organizations will have to be expressive.

Table of Contents:
PART I: RETHINKING IDENTITY; PART II: THE SYMBOLIC MARKETPLACE; PART III: REPUTATION AND STRATEGY; PART IV: ORGANIZATIONS AS BRANDS; PART V: THE VALUE OF STORYTELLING; PART VI: COMMUNICATING ORGANIZATIONS

About the Author :
Majken Schultz is a Professor at the Department of Intercultural Communication and Management at Copenhagen Business School. Her research interests are located at the interface between organization theory, strategy, and communication studies and include identity and image, corporate branding, and reputation management. Mary Jo Hatch is Professor of Organization Theory at Cranfield School of Management. She specializes in the application of culture-based organization theories to the study of leadership and management and to organizational identity and corporate branding. She is European editor of the Journal of Management Inquiry. Mogens Holten Larsen is Managing Director of Bergsøe 4 A/S - a Danish communication consultancy specializing in integrated communications. For the last twenty years he has worked with a wide range of major Danish and international companies representing almost all types of communication issues on all types of markets: AstraZeneca, Renault, Danish Railways, Maersk and Superfoss among others.

Review :
challenges current beliefs about organizational identity, reputation, and branding The Expressive Organization is an interesting collection of essays that succeeds by providing a diverse collection of researchers, theorists, and practitioners. One of the early strengths of this text is the ensemble of reputable voices called in from a variety of disciplines and business functions sharing a converging interest - but diverging experiences - in identity, branding, and corporate reputation. The opening chapters written by the editors provide an excellent historical framework. A number of audiences will benefit from the diverse perspectives provided in this text. The well-seasoned scholar will benefit from the conversations and thinking from scholars in other disciplines that one often does not have the time to engage. ... For the student, this text provides a good cross-section of research and thinking allowing the novice to develop a lay of the land in terms of thinking about representation in organizations ... the practitioner is able to benefit from having immediate access to some of the latest and cutting-edge thinking about corporate reputations, organizational identity and branding.