Kaarten: C&O Week 7 | Quizlet

Branding

Communicative process that involves the efforts of corporations to shape human identity and influence the cultural and social landscape

Brand

The total constellation of meanings, feelings, perceptions and beliefs attributed to any market offering displaying a particular sign - Product only provides service/function

Steps in creating brands

1. Branding - representing values of the product, what it stands for
2. Marketing - ads, product placement, influencers; creates awareness
3. Communication - creating a story for the brand e.g red bull giving you energy and charisma
4. Symbolic aspects e.g floating signifier effect - any meaning can be attached to a product e.g diamonds

Microcelebrity (attention economy)

How people can develop personal brands through e.g social media - influencers

Aim of branding

Create new markets but also to establish customer loyalty and customer needs (they keep needing them again)

Niche marketing

Marketing not for mass but for specific identities (you should buy this because its different from anyone else

Brands as institutions

Consumers become direct participants - engagement blurs the boundary between production and consumption - world is influenced by brands

Unique selling proposition

Formula for selling based on
1. Secret/magic ingredient
2. Improve your life (make it more glamorous, beautiful or tasty)
3. More time to remain more desirable for family

Floating signifier effect

How any arbitrary meaning or quality can be attached to any brand e.g diamonds, supreme

Brand extension

Leveraging the meanings and emotions associated with a company to encompass a variety of different products, that frequently bear little relationship to one another

Attention economy

Effort to attract followers online and become a micro-celebrity

Three periods of branding after WW2

1. Fordist period of mass marketing (buy this cos everyone has it)
2. Niche Marketing (buy this cos its different)
3. Consumer engagement/Brand as an institution

Communicative capitalism

Connection between creation of economic value and the construction of meanings though communication processes

Mecosystem

A select set of brands that create customised experiences around an individual - how we live in a complex system that brands create for us - we live and our surrounded by the brands (e.g Truman show)

Murketing

Clears the distinction between advertising and the main program of the medium (e.g native advertising)

Branding from the outside in

Getting employees to be themselves and add that to the brand - The process of drawing on the cultural and social knowledge and forms of expertise that employees already possess (in contexts external to the organization) as a way to maintain and enhance the brand. In this sense, brands create organizations rather than organizations creating brands.

Employee branding

Management give courses and help for employees to help form an employee brand to help them get closer to the company

Ethics of branding

Brands have a large reach, so will have a large effect on any social issue they promote - corporations thus play a large role in defining our sense of identity and mediate many aspects of human experience

Organisational branding practices are unethical when

1. They contradict their actual business practices e.g BP
2. They exploit vulnerable members of society
3. Present consumption as empowering feature of who we are as people

Primary result

Identification may reduce organisations' moral learning capacity by encouraging higher-ups to engage in ethical sensegiving of their org's wrongdoings in defensive ways

Purpose of article

Understand the communicative resources that form organisational members' sensegiving

Ethical sensegiving

Communicative attempts to influence how moral meaning is assigned to events or actions - range of defensive mechanisms used by organisational members to protect collective identities against accusations

Organisational identification (OI)

The degree to which a member defines themselves by the same attributes that they believe define the organisation - extent to which they identify their values with organisation values (high OI means increased belongingness to Org e.g "We")'

Positive effects of OI for org outcomes

1. Goal achievement
2. Task involvement
3. Job satisfaction

Social identity theory (SIT) characteristics

The notion that two poles motivate social action:
1. Idiosyncratic characteristics
2. Social classification - actions are determined by group memberships not interpersonal factors

Social identity

The part of an individuals self concept that derives from their membership of a social group, along with the emotional significance of that membership

Problem with increased OI

1. In-group bias caused by pressure to think of ones Org as positive
2. Increased chance to frame unethical situations in least harmful ways to ones sense of self
3. Higher-ups defend organisational wrongdoing instead of accepting responsibility

Organisational Disidentification

A self perception based on:
1. Separation of ones identify and perception of identity with organisation
2. Negative relationship of oneself with the organisation

Triggers for Organisational disidentification

1. Members perceive differences in their own and organisations values
2. Members feel their own reputation is threatened by Org's reputation

Unobtrusive control

The process by which members of an organisation are guided by organsiations in making organisationally relevant decisions - members are controlled by their identification with Org

Concertive control

Control that is developed by members occuring by reaching a consensus of how to behave according to a set of core values

Defence mechanisms

Automatic strategies used by individuals and Orgs to maintain and protect concepts of self - can be maladaptive and immature to adaptive and mature e.g denial (if org is labelled unethical, higher up also defined as unethical)

Sensemaking

Interpreting and understanding efforts to reduce equivocal inputs - making sense of their environments

Sensegiving

Engaging in influence to move members into action, not only making sense of their environments - triggered by important/uncertain situations

Results of Article on OI

H1: As OI increases, frequency of defence mechanisms increase
H2: Members assigned to ambiguous scenario used more linguistic defence mechanisms than those in certain scenario H3: Longer an employee has worked for Org, more linguistic defences they use

Objectives of study

1. Determine effect of OI on frequency of linguistic defences 2. Determine effect of ambiguous Org wrongdoing on frequency of linguistic defences 3. Determine effect of tenure on OI and frequency of linguistic defences

Limitations of study

1. Doesn't investigate how dialogue about Org wrongdoing unfolds
2. Types of defence mechanisms were not analysed
3. Only small sample - potential dangers with variance

Conclusion of Article

Higher-up, tenured members in ambiguous situations will not acknowledge Org wrongdoing as unethical (since it attacks their values too); they will engage in defensive snesegiving, shaping their own and others' assignments of moral meaning, to protect their Org and their own identity