Currently I am working on my thesis for my master in philosophy of management and organization. The topic under philosophical scrutiny is Internal Branding
While working on it I was amazed at how myopic the point of view from many authors are. Internal Branding is looked at solely from the perspective of brand management and few look across their own professional boundaries to fields such as organizational behavior, organizational culture and change management. This results in sometimes astoundingly naïve approaches towards the relation between the employees and the brand. Burmann & Zeplin actually state that the boss is the brand over the employee. Colin Mitchell (Selling the Brand inside) sees employees as (just) another audience and advises an internal advertising campaign to turn employees into brand champions. I think those authors are too narrow minded; they look at the world through their branding glasses and fail to see the complexity of managing and changing employees’ behavior. Unfortunately, branding professionals – who also tend to look at the world through their branding glasses – may think that these authors preach the gospel.
Another author who is very popular is Ind. He wrote the book on Living the Brand. Interesting but also limiting in some aspects. Ind doesn’t like verbal gymnastics and stays away from definitions and distinctions. “Culture” is the same as “brand” and other terms used interchangingly are mission and vision and values and – once again – brand. Ind ’s aversion of verbal gymnastics makes it confusing to understand what exactly he is talking about and why it is the brand he is talking about. Ind also assumes a lot and he admits to that. I have a big problem with Ind’s assumption that work should be the person’s outlet for passion and intellect. What about those people who have other passions and only work to support that passion? And what about people who for some reason do not work. Have they lost the chance for passion or intellect in their life? I don’t think so.
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