Reebook Stategic Audit

Introduction

Interest in corporate identity, both as a management issue and as an academic discipline, has grown significantly over the last decade. However, one of the major problems in this area of research is the lack of consensus as to basic conceptualization and definition 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 such as designing a new logo, interior decoration, salesforce training, all the way up to changing the corporate culture (van Rekom, 1997). Corporate identity is perceived by most authors as the organization's presentation to its various stakeholders and the means by which it distinguishes itself from other similar organizations (Markwick and Fill, 1997). The application of this concept is limited insofar as it focuses principally on what the organization wants to become in visual terms, on its desired identity. This perspective ignores the operational reality of the organization, its actual identity. The desired organizational identity usually refers to the management vision and the corporate mission of the organization which lies in the heads of organizational decision makers (Balmer and Soenen, 1999). The actual identity, on the other hand, refers to what the organization is (Balmer, 1995), reflecting the value orientation of the organization (van Rekom, 1997) which frames the mind-sets and behaviors of organizational members.

The actual organizational identity is of particular relevance when considering the need to merge both internal and external aspects of modern organizations. The heightened emphasis on networking, customer service and the emphasis on total corporate communications, has created a situation whereby the management of external relations is now an integral part of the daily activity of nearly all organizational members (Hatch and Schultz, 1997). The increasing visibility of insiders to outsiders means that employees are under pressure to interface with the customer as representatives of the organization in the way they think, feel and behave. This requires that they sign on to the organizational paradigm. Furthermore, it is implied that the internal reality and the desired management vision and corporate mission need to be harmonized in the most efficient and effective way, to create a favorable basis for customer and stakeholder within an increasingly competitive economic environment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine potential discrepancies between the actual and the ideal identity of the organization as perceived by employees, and to determine whether gaps in employees' perceptions have an impact on their attitudes towards the organization, as well as on their willingness to accept and act on the organization's premises. Our evidence highlights the need for an integration of internal with the external reality of an organization. To this end, our findings have major implications for corporate identity management as a means for achieving competitive advantage.

Corporate identity: external fit

The notion of corporate identity addresses the question "Who are we?". The answer to this question has the potential to motivate and shape (and be shaped by) strategic choice and action. What makes the notion of identity so important in the corporate context is that it attaches meaning to an object. In the view of Ashforth and Mael (1996), the quest to answer "Who are we?" is a quest for meaning and justification. Unlike corporate strategy and even culture, the issue of identity goes to the core of what something is, what fundamentally defines that entity.

Despite this, the concept of corporate identity has been used primarily as a marketing tool, an umbrella term referring to considerations of how and in what form organizations might present themselves in ways which optimize external relations and which have implications for business performance. Thus, the term corporate identity has been equated for a long time with graphic design, promoting the idea that implementing a new visual identity can be an effective means of changing organizational strategy, culture and communications (van Rekom, 1997). It has also been used with reference to making the organization's visual identity more fashionable within the contemporary marketplace. As such, corporate identity has been understood merely at the artefactual level (i.e. symbols, statements of philosophy and annual reports), without consideration of the social psychological reality of the organization or its everyday modus operandi (Millward, 1995).

Within this artefactual approach, the development of corporate identity starts from the vision and aims of the top management board and reflects the organization's identity which the management board wish to acquire, that is, the desired identity of the organization (Balmer and Soenen, 1999). This desired identity is communicated mainly through streamlining organizational symbolism and corporate communications on an external basis in order to achieve a favorable market image and to promote competitive advantage. However, such corporate aims may not be genuine expressions of the company's actual identity. Here we argue that organizational identity claims may be much more effective if they have an empirical basis (van Rekom, 1997) within the organization, in the way it is lived and breathed by employees.

Corporate identity: internal reality

Recent research (Balmer, 1995) recognizes that corporate identity is more than just an organizational symbol or mark of recognition. Rather, corporate identity denotes the characteristic way in which an organization goes about its business, how it thinks, feels, behaves and interfaces with the external world via its employees. This approach assumes that corporate identity does not sit comfortably within one discipline and that a multidisciplinary stance should therefore be adopted (Balmer, 1995; Hatch and Schultz, 1997; van Riel and Balmer, 1997). It advocates a definition of corporate identity as the visible expression of what an organization is, as interpreted and enacted by employees in the way they go about their work (see also Abratt, 1989; Balmer and Wilkinson, 1991).

This brings us to the concept of organizational identity. It refers to the set of beliefs a member holds about the existing character of the organization (Albert and Whetten, 1985; Dutton and Dukerich, 1991; Thomas and Gioia, 1991). Organizational identity is the set of constructs organizational members use to describe what is central, enduring and distinctive about their organization (Albert and Whetten, 1985) and it acts