christensen and ashegaard - corporate identity and corporate image revisited

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EuropeanJournal ofMarketing

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European Journal of Marketing,

Vol. 35 No. 3/4, 2001, pp. 292-315.

# MCB University Press, 0309-0566

Revised August 1999

Corporate identity andcorporate image revisited

A semiotic perspectiveLars Thger Christensen

Department of Intercultural Communication and Management,The Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, and

Sren AskegaardDepartment of Marketing, Odense University, Odense, Denmark

Keywords Corporate identity, Corporate image, Corporate communications,Marketing research

Abstract Asserts that the marketing discipline has been quite instrumental in securing andmaintaining both practical and theoretical attention to the issues of identity and image incontemporary organisations. Discusses and critiques much of the discourse of corporate identityand image management. This is accomplished through a semiotic exercise in which prevailing

perspectives and assumptions with respect to corporate identity and image are explained,analysed and subjected to a coherent interpretive framework. Rather than trying to legislateterminology or suggest conceptual parsimony, we use the semiotic framework as one way toillustrate the benefits of theoretical consistency and to stimulate self-reflection among scholarswho use the notions of identity and image.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, the notions of image and identity arereceiving growing scholarly and managerial attention. While contemporary

social critics have pointed out that we live in a society saturated with images(e.g. Baudrillard, 1981; Ewen, 1988), scholars within marketing andorganisation are arguing that the quest for visibility and credibility in acluttered and sometimes hostile environment has made the questions ofidentity and image salient issues for organisations in most sectors of society(e.g. Christensen and Cheney, 1994; Cheney and Christensen, 1999). As aconsequence, the pressure on contemporary organisations to focus attention onthe symbolic dimensions of their activities has been, and still is, on the rise.

In a seminal article, written more than 20 years ago, Kennedy (1977, p. 130)quoted a Philips company report for saying:

In this age of technology and competition, the buying public is being increasingly faced with

a wide choice of similar designs and features within each price range for all kinds of products.It is clear that when there are no obvious differences in price, quality, design and features, thepurchase decision may increasingly be influenced by a positive reputation of the brand and ofthe manufacturer.

Today, with still more competing brands, intensified communication and theadvent of new information technology, this observation and its implied

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The authors thank George Cheney, The University of Montana, James Fitchett, University ofExeter, and anonymous reviewers at European Journal of Marketing for useful comments onearlier versions of this paper.
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challenge is more topical than ever not the least for the marketing discipline.And indeed, the discipline has in many respects been able to meet thechallenge. Knowing that a strong identity has a number of potential benefits foran organisation e.g. adding value to increasingly similar products, generating

consumer confidence and loyalty, stimulating investments, attracting high-quality personnel, and breeding employee motivation (e.g. Balmer, 1995;Fombrun and Shanley, 1990; Olins, 1989; van Riel, 1995; van Riel and Balmer,1997) marketing scholars and practitioners have consistently sought to keepthe issue of identity on the agenda of senior managers and to integrate concernsabout external environments in the planning and execution of corporateidentity programs. Moreover, with the growing media attention and increasingcritique of private business corporations by various interest groups, marketinghas along with related disciplines begun to consider the value of a positivecorporate image or estimation in the public (e.g. Dowling, 1993; Kennedy, 1977;van Riel, 1995; see also Dutton and Dukerich, 1991; Fombrun, 1996; Gray, 1986).The marketing discipline has, in other words, been quite instrumental insecuring and maintaining both practical and theoretical attention to the issuesof identity and image in contemporary organisations.

But what is an image? Or an identity? And how are those terms interrelated?And, in what sense can we conceive of products and organisations as havingimages and identities? These questions often tax us as scholars or practitionersof marketing and corporate communications, both when we conceptualise newtrends in the communication environment and when we seek to convey ourideas and experiences to our students or to our customers. Interestingly, thegrowing attention to identity and image has not resulted in more precision in

the usage of these notions. In spite of a number of important attempts to clarifythe definitions of identity and image (e.g. Abratt, 1989; Dowling, 1988; the 1997special issue ofEuropean Journal of Marketing[1]), there is still a general lack ofconsistency when these terms are adopted to theoretical models or applied inpractice. How, for example, do we conceptualise the differences betweenvarious images of an organisation without maintaining rigid and problematicdistinctions between its internal and external audiences? And how do weconceive of organisational identity without assuming that somerepresentations of the organisation are more intrinsically true than others?These and similar questions call for greater theoretical consistency, both whenwe model the interplay between organisational identity and image and when

we apply our definitions of these notions to real-life situations.As we move into the realm of organisational identity and organisational

image, we move into a world of carefully designed and attuned signifiers inother words, a world intentionally constructed to elicit quite specific responsesand reactions. Identities and images, however, are volatile social constructionsthat, although seemingly ` objective'', base their existence and significancelargely on the interpretive capabilities and preferences of their audiences. Thus,in order to understand the complex interplay between identities and images, weneed to balance the prescriptive and predominantly sender-oriented


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approaches of most managerial writings with a more consistently interpretiveperspective.

The aim of this paper is to discuss and critique much of the discourse ofcorporate identity and image management. This is accomplished through asemiotic exercise in which prevailing perspectives and assumptions withrespect to corporate identity and image are explained, analysed and subjectedto a coherent interpretive framework. Rather than trying to legislateterminology or suggest conceptual parsimony, we use the semiotic frameworkas one way to illustrate the benefits of theoretical consistency and to stimulateself-reflection among scholars who use the notions of identity and image. Morespecifically, the paper addresses:

. the problematic tendency in most writings to distinguish sharplybetween internal and external audiences;

. the assumption that organisations can be falsely represented and have a``true'' or immutable self; and

. the notion that the task of the identity manager is to uncover the true` character'' or ` personality'' of the organisation behind its variousappearances.

By applying a semiotic perspective to the notions of corporate identity andcorporate image, the paper suggests that these notions can be described associal-historical simulations of organisational realities simulations whosequality cannot be simply judged on the basis of their ` fit'' with reality but mustbe understood on the basis of their rhetorical power vis-a -vis its variousaudiences.

Common-sense and non-sense perspectives on corporate image andidentityIt is often pointed out that the concepts of corporate identity and corporateimage are ambiguous and need clarification. And that this problem is related tothe fact that much literature dealing with these notions is written at asuperficial theoretical level by consultants within the field of design orcommunication management. Indeed, our notions of corporate image andidentity are often based on common sense understandings of communicationand reality. While the interest in identities and images has become a general

concern among managers in many business firms, these terms have entered oureveryday vocabulary with which we as citizens, consumers, members oforganisations, and as even scholars seek to describe and understand ourexperiences with a growing number of commercial signs of differing qualityand persuasiveness. Although such understandings are unavoidable andessential in social life, we believe that scholars of marketing and corporatecommunications should be sensitive to the potential non-sense of sucheveryday vocabularies. Unfortunately, however, common-sense and non-sensenotions of identity and image are often reproduced in the scholarly literature.


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As already mentioned, the most salient and problematic common-senseperspectives on corporate image and identity concern:

. the sharp distinction between internal and external audiences; and

.

the simplistic, binary notion of ``false'' or ``true'' representations.

Whereas the former tends to ignore the complex nature of organisationalaudiences, the latter implies that organisations have a true essence or characterthat can be expressed more or less accurately in their market-relatedcommunication. These perspectives and their problematic assumptions will bediscussed at length below. Moreover, in order to link our discussion of thesesender perspectives with the theories of the assumed receiver typically theconsumer we will comment on the problematic ways in which the notion ofimage is used within the general field of consumer behaviour theory.

The internal-external distinctionAlthough the literature abounds with different definitions of corporate identityand corporate image, a first, brief look at these definitions suggests someoverall commonalties. On the one hand, we find some convergence around theidea that corporate identity is a set of symbolic representations includinggraphic designs and, sometimes, organisational behaviour (e.g. Abratt, 1989;Balmer, 1995; Olins, 1989; van Riel and Balmer, 1997). Corporate identity, thus,becomes an assembly of cues, as Abratt (1989, p. 68) puts it:

F F F by which an audience can recognise the company and distinguish it from others andwhich can be used to represent or symbolise the company.

On the other hand, we find corporate image typically conceptualised as thetotal impression an organisation makes on its various audiences (Bernstein,1992; Dichter, 1985; Gray, 1986; Kennedy, 1977). Corporate image, in otherwords, describes the reception of an organisation in its surroundings.

While some authors, as we shall discuss later, associate corporate identitywith something deeper than symbolic representations (e.g. Dukerich andCarter, 1998; Downey, 1986/1987), the notion of corporate identity is generallyseen as belonging to the sender side of the communication process. Conversely,and allowing for Dowling's (1988) important point that a company servesmultiple publics and thus has multiple images, corporate image is mostcommonly related to the receiver side of the communication process. This

distinction between identity and image is expressed most explicitly byMargulies (1977, p. 66):

Identity means the sum of all the ways a company chooses to identify itself to all its publics the community, customers, employees, the press, present and potential stockholders, securityanalysts, and investment bankers. Image, on the other hand, is the perception of the companyby these publics.

For Margulies, organisational identity is the sum of symbols and artefactsdesigned and managed in order to communicate the ideal self-perception of theorganisation to its external publics. Identity, thus, becomes as an integral


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(Dowling, 1993), or by conceptualising several interfaces between identity andimage (Balmer, 1988). Although some of these models are focused primarily onthe planned elements of corporate identity (e.g. Abratt, 1989; Dowling, 1993),they all suggest in different ways a move beyond traditional conceptualisations

of the organisational audience.Today, the dividing lines between senders and receivers are becoming

blurred and, consequently, a clear distinction between the inside and theoutside of the organisation is increasingly problematic to uphold. This is so notonly because organisational members interact with ``outsiders'', are members ofexternal groups and encounter organisational symbols in their lives outsidetheir workplace (Hatch and Schultz, 1997). Organisations are characterised by``partial inclusion'' (Weick, 1979) and their members have always, no matterhow much they identify with their workplace, been members of other audiencesas well. Such multiple memberships imply that the organisation's ownmembers potentially belong to groups that form impressions of theorganisation, a fact that has been explicitly recognised in the consolidation ofcorporate communications functions in a number of industries (Cheney andChristensen, 1999).

This point, however, needs to be elaborated and related to fact that mostpeople today only have the time and capacity to relate to a small fraction of thesymbols and messages produced by contemporary organisations. In a clutteredcommunication environment, saturated with symbols asserting distinctnessand identity, many organisations have come to realise that perhaps the mostinvolved receivers of their communication are their own members. AsChristensen (1997) has illustrated, much market-related communication of

today can be characterised as auto-communication, that is, communicationthrough which the organisation confirms and reinforces its own symbols,values and assumptions, in short: its own culture (see also Broms andGahmberg, 1983; Lotman, 1991). Without ruling out the possibility that marketcommunication also affects other audiences, the auto-communicationperspective points out that organisational symbols and messages often serve asimportant vehicles of identification, motivation and loyalty (cf. Gilly andWolfinbarger, 1998). In a society characterised by an absence of traditionalforms of community (e.g. Nisbet, 1970; see also Mongin, 1982), organisations, asBurke (1973) points out, are important sources of identification and theirsymbols have become important signifiers of belongingness (see also Cheney,

1981, 1983, 1991; Cheney and Christensen, 1999; Olins, 1989). To locate theperceptions and impressions that we call organisational images primarily inthe minds of external audiences is, in other words, to miss the point that themost central receivers of organisational symbols may in fact be the members ofthe sending organisation.

Conversely and of equal importance, many organisations have come torealise that organisational practices which traditionally have been thought ofas strictly internal for example, the structure of work processes, the use ofresources, the disposal of waste and the practice of leadership are now


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becoming central themes in the public discourse and thus part of thecommunication that the organisation, sometimes unwillingly, carries on withits surroundings. When consumers start boycotting organisations that functionaccording to principles considered unethical in the general public and whenemployees begin choosing their workplace on the basis of its reputation insociety, traditional distinctions between internal and external with respect toidentity and image break down (Cheney and Christensen, 1999).

The challenge, then, is to conceive of organisational identity as symbolicrepresentations of organisations that appeal to many different audiences acrossformal boundaries and of organisational image as a composite interpretation(or set of interpretations) of these representationsan interpretation composedof perceptions and impressions among both members and non-members of theorganisation (cf. Gray, 1986). Before we elaborate on the semiotic and practicalimplications of these conceptualisations, we will discuss the implications of

another common-sense perspective on corporate image and identity.

The notion of the false representationIn addition to the problematic distinctions between senders and receivers orinternal and external, most writers on corporate identity and corporate imageseem preoccupied with the idea that identities and images can be, and often are,wholly false representations of an organisation (e.g. Alvesson, 1990; Berg andGagliardi, 1985; Olins, 1979, 1989). In an often-cited article, Alvesson (1990), forexample, uses this idea to argue that images belong to the sphere of superficialhuman experiences, that images are developed in the absence of interactionwith and ` good'' knowledge of an object, and that frequent and ` deep''

interaction with an object would make images untenable or obsolete. Althoughhe cites Langer's (1957) rather complex definition of image as:

F F F the subjective record of sense-experience [which] is not a direct copy of actual experience,but has been ``projected'', in the process of copying, into a new dimension, the more or lessstable form we call a picture'' (Langer, 1957, p. 144).

his discussion of organisational images radically reduces this complexity bysuggesting that such pictures are false, simplistic representations of the true ormore deep reality behind. In a similar manner, Berg and Gagliardi (1985) arguethat since symbolic representations of organisations are only partial reflectionsof the organisation and often rarely match the organisational reality behind,

they are false representations that constitute, in the words of Daniel Boorstin,` pseudo-realities'' in contemporary society. Even among writers whoacknowledge the fact that the symbolic representations of organisations andthe images they produce are powerful realities in themselves (e.g. Bernstein,1992), we find the notion of an organisational reality that is misrepresented incorporate communication (see also Ashforth and Mael, 1996).

Such an understanding seems to correspond well with our day-to-dayexperiences with organizations of various sorts: organizations often seem toassert qualities of themselves or their products that contradict our personal


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encounters with the organizations or products in question. Moreover, the ideathat reality is distorted in advertising and other forms of commercialcommunication is widespread not only among academics (e.g. Pollay, 1986) butalso in the general culture. In short, the world is often not what it claims to be.While such experiences and observations are, no matter how trivial they mayappear, in a certain sense ``real'' and thus very important to acknowledge and tostudy (Weber, 1968/1978; see also Berger and Luckmann, 1967) a point weshall return to later in this paper the researcher and practitioner need to becareful not confuse his or her conceptual constructs with such common-senseunderstandings of what reality is. A golden ring is not love just as a map is nota landscape. This, however, does not make a golden ring or a map ``pseudo-realities'' or false representations as a general category. Just as we are``condemned to meaning'' and cannot, as Merleau-Ponty (1989, p. xix) pointsout, ``do or say anything without its acquiring a name in history'', we cannot

escape representations and are bound to deal with them as, in many situations,our principal reality. In fact, Weber's (1968/1978) interpretive sociologyrecognized this principle long ago by asserting that individuals' image oforganizations were real to the degree that they were adhered to and hadpragmatic effects.

The frequent resort to common sense understandings, however, and thegeneral lack of theoretical consistency in writings on corporate identity andcorporate image, has fostered a great deal of definitional confusion and givenrise to a number of problematic assumptions about what communication is andwhat communication managers can do. First, in order to uphold the idea that anorganisation can be misrepresented symbolically, writers on corporate identity

and corporate image have introduced a number of quasi-positivist notions thatsignify something ``deeper'' or more fundamental to the organisation. Amongsuch notions we find ``personality'', ``innate character'', ``actual identity'', ``basictraits'', ``core'', etc. all with respect to organisation (see e.g. Alvesson, 1990;Baker and Balmer, 1997; Balmer, 1995; Balmer and Soenen, 1999; Berg andGagliardi, 1985; Bernstein, 1992; Day, 1980; Markwich and Fill, 1997; Olins,1989; van Rekom, 1997; van Riel and Balmer, 1997). Indeed, the appeal of suchmetaphors is underwritten by both our persistent desire to ` personalise''organisations and by Western law which grants corporations, quiteparadoxically, the status of individual persons (see the discussion in Cheney,

1991). Moreover, such constructs are probably inevitable in lay discoursebecause they capture our need to make distinctions between what is seen asbetter or worse representations. Their proliferation in scholarly writings,however, is highly problematic because it indicates that writers within the fieldhave difficulties explaining our experiences and interaction with corporatecommunication using a rigorous theoretical language. In addition, theseontologically questionable concepts of organisational identity testify to the factthat identity and image management has become a fast-growing industry inwhich the justification of new image and identity programs relies on the ability


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to claim a better understanding of the organisation as it ``really is'' and to ``sell''some symbolic constructions as being more true representations than others.

Second, to assume that an organisation can be wholly misrepresentedsuggests, strictly speaking, that some representations are more intrinsically

true than others, that some symbols have a more direct or natural relation tothe organisation, and that the challenge to the communication manager is touncover the true essence of the organisation and its naturally concomitantsymbolic expressions. Again, such assumptions rest on our propensity ashuman beings to make binary truth/falsity distinctions and use them todismiss certain entire domains of symbolic activity as ` unreal.'' In theirotherwise interesting attempt to take a Bourdieu-inspired approach tocorporate identity, Moingeon and Ramanantsoa (1997), for example, reproducethis assumption by taking recourse to a deeper layer of non-symbolic` organisational imagery'' when explaining the intrinsic character oforganisational identity. However, while some particular organisationalimagery may be untrue in certain specified ways, it should not be casuallydismissed as unreal (Weber, 1978). As scholars and practitioners of corporateimage and identity we cannot allow ourselves to be embraced by the discourseof such common-sense assumptions. Rather, we need to point out that since weonly make sense of the world through interpretation (Peirce, 1985), thecommunication manager cannot hope to find any natural or intrinsically truerepresentations of the organisation. Even if we imagined for a moment that anorganisation had a true character or personality, how would we ascommunication scholars or managers relate to or talk about this dimension ofthe organisation? Through the use of symbols and representations, of course.

While this point may seem evident in theory, we observe in the morepractical applications of the notions of image and identity great difficultiesamong most writers in applying, and taking the full consequences of, such aninterpretive approach. Initially, of course, such an approach needs to realisealong with Baudrillard (1981, p. 155) citing Lefebvre that ``the referent [here: the`true essence of the organisation'] is not truly reality F F F it is the image we makeof reality'' (see also Neiva, 1999). Although such images of reality, as we shallsee later, are very real for the social actor and thus important to study andunderstand (Berger and Kellner, 1981), it is helpful, theoretically as well aspractically, to think of them as images, that is, as interpretations of reality.Within such a perspective it becomes possible to acknowledge that the

dimension which is referred to as the personality, the character, or the trueessence of an organisation is not as a deeper and more genuine reality than thesymbolic representations referred to as organisational identity but a symbolicconstruction itself a construction whose existence we, as Lefebvre puts it (inBaudrillard, 1981, p. 155), cannot test or control but only allude to through theuse of alternative and competing signs.

Thus, the challenge at this point is to think of our references to the trueorganisational reality as symbolic constructions and to accept that we can onlyquestion such constructions through the use of competing signs. The primary


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advantage of such an approach is that is helps us see our references and theirrepresentations not as sacred and immutable objects, but as historicalconstructions and desired points of reference that can be changed, if not at willthen at least through argument and elaboration. Before addressing andillustrating these points in more detail, we will take a brief look at how thenotion of image is understood within the field of consumer research.

The representation of ``image'' in consumer researchSince the consumer is often seen as the primary receiver/interpreter ofcorporate communications, one might expect the field of consumer research tobe able to provide some reflections about organisational identities and images.However, while phenomena related to the consumer's creation and use of brandimages, product images, and company images are discussed quite often withinconsumer research, this is typically done through the use of other concepts,

reserving discussions about brand personality, brand image and the like formore managerial discourses. For instance, in the consumer behaviourliterature, the image of brands or products is often concealed behind suchcomforting, rational notions as perceived quality (Zeithaml, 1988), productattributions (Folkes, 1988) or brand judgements (Pan and Lehmann, 1993).Common to these approaches is their rather clear distinction between theperceived and the objective qualities of the product or brand in question.

A similar problem is found in the work of Noth (1988), who distinguishesbetween and among three perspectives of a commodity: functional, commercial,and symbolic perspectives representing respectively the use-value, theexchange value, and the sign value. While Noth stresses that this distinction is

not one of product classes but one of perspectives, he still maintains aproblematic separation between ``utilitarian facts'' and ``signs'' where the formeris related to something he calls ` non-semiotic utilitarian features of acommodity''.

However, because a symbol always has a function and a function,conversely, always is a symbolic expression of a certain set of cultural values, itis impossible, semiotically speaking, to tell a functional from a symbolicperspective. Indeed, functionality itself is one of the most important symbolswithin modern Western culture (Askegaard and Firat, 1997; see alsoCastoriadis, 1987). As Castoriadis (1987, p. 117) writes:

Everything that is presented to us in the social-historical world is inextricably linked to thesymbolic. Not that it is limited to this. Real acts, whether individual or collective ones work,consumption, war, love, child-bearing the innumerable material products without which nosociety could live even an instant, are not (not always, not directly) symbols. All of these,however, would be impossible outside of a symbolic network.

A central theme in Castoriadis' writings is his insistence that, although theworld cannot be constructed at will, there is a creative, imaginary dimension inall human reality, including its functional or utilitarian aspects. And thisimagination is not a simple function of the physical world.


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The image concept has primarily received attention within the predominantparadigm of information processing theory. In the last two decades, however, ithas become increasingly clear to scholars of consumer behaviour that thenotion of a highly involved problem-solving consumer, as described by thisparadigm, rarely matches the common state of mind in most consumerdecision-making processes. This change in perspective has been attributed toboth theoretical advance and increasingly complex market conditions (Poiesz,1989). In his overview article, Poiesz argues that the image concept asemployed in traditional consumer behaviour theory tends to overlap with otherconcepts such as means-end chains and attitudes on the higher levels ofpsychological elaboration. Instead, he suggests that the image concept isreserved for the low end of the elaboration-likelihood continuum. According toPoiesz, images serve the following three functions in the psychologicalprocesses of the consumer:

(1) as a complexity-reduction device in the information processing process;

(2) as a choice heuristic in low-involvement decision making; and

(3) as a gatekeeper that prevents further psychological elaboration in theevent of an immediate negative image.

Thus, while there are no explicit distinctions between true and falserepresentations in Poiesz' approach to the image concept, he does share withAlvesson (1990) the notion of image as a more superficial form of knowledge, a``knowledge'' made obsolete and replaced by other types of knowledge throughfurther experience and psychological elaboration. Moreover, behind Poiesz'

discussion of the functions of the image concept lies a tacit assumption ofconsistency in the image formation, since such consistency is a prerequisite forthe reduced complexity and the choice heuristic. It is, however, very unclearwhat such a consistency in our mental images should be based on.

Only in Scott's work (e.g. 1994) do we find an explicit critique of the use ofimage concept within consumer research. Scott seeks to demonstrate howconsumer research:

F F F reflects a bias in Western thinking about pictures that is thousands of years old: theassumption that pictures simply reflect objects in the real world.

While Scott's research specifically addresses images in the context of

advertising, her discussion is of general relevance because she critiques the factthat the image concept has been theoretically reduced to cover either a merevisual and affective (as opposed to a verbal and cognitive) aspect of humanpsychology or, within an information processing approach, as a sensoryanalogue to real existing phenomena (Scott, 1994, pp. 256-7). Conceptualisingimages merely as sensory analogues is highly problematic because it restrictsthe use of images to what from a semiotic perspective would be termed``motivated signs'', that is, signs with a more ``natural'' or causal relation to theobject they represent (see below).


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With the exception of Scott's work, we can conclude that within the field ofconsumer research, image is typically linked to memory or to representations ofvisual phenomena and not to imagination. Even attempts from interpretiveperspectives to construct a so-called ``language of consumer goods'' have atendency to preserve problematic distinctions between reality and itsrepresentations. The challenge to overcome this limitation is to take a point ofdeparture in the recent observation made by Askegaard and Ger (1998) that animage is first and foremost a narrative and to elaborate this point within arigorous interpretive framework. Below, such a framework based on thesemiotics of Charles S. Peirce will be presented and related to our discussion ofidentity and image.

Peircian semiotics applied to corporate communicationsThe signifying processIn his semiotic writings from the late nineteenth century, Peirce described thesignifying process, or semiosis, as a dynamic relation between three elements: asign, an object and an interpretant. Peirce (1985, p. 5) describes the relation thisway:

A sign, or representamen, is something, which stands to somebody for something in somerespect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person anequivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call theinterpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for thatobject, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the

groundof the representamen.

The sign can, in principle, be anything a gesture, a logo, an advertisement, a

slogan, a product, a package, a narrative, a written text, a set of behaviours, oreven an entire persuasive campaign. The object, which the sign stands for, issometimes also called the referent an equivalent to the notion of the world asit ``is'' in itself in the present context, for example, the so-called personality ofa product or the ``real'' character of an organisation. Finally, the interpretant canbe thought of as a mental image of the interpreter created or stimulated by thesign an image that links the sign to its object or referent, just as the word` IBM'' creates a mental image that links the three letters I, B and M with a largecorporation that produces computers. The relation between the three elementsin the signifying process is illustrated in Figure 1.

Just as a map can only inform us about certain dimensions of a landscape,

the sign only highlights, as Peirce explains, certain aspects of the referent.

Figure The signifying proce


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Some signs, however, are more ``naturally'' or logically linked to their referentsthan others. Peirce distinguishes between three classes of signs: icons, indicesand symbols. An icon is a sign that has certain qualities in common with theobject it stands for, for example, similarity. A picture of a person, thus, has

iconic qualities because it is a sign that refers to that particular person throughsome degree of resemblance. Onomatopoeia in language is another example.An index is a sign that refers to its object because it is being affected by thatobject in some real way. Footprints on the beach, for example, are affected bythe feet of somebody walking there, just as smoke is often caused by fire. Therelation between an index and its object is, in other words, based on causalityor physical connection. As it appears, both icons and indices are to some degree``motivated'' (Barthes, 1977) by their objects or referents. By contrast, a symbolis a sign with only conventional associations to the object it stands for. Think,for example, of Coca Cola's now old slogan ``The Real Thing.'' The only reasonwhy this well-known sign was taken to represent the object Coca Cola, and wasable to create in our minds images of a particular soft drink, is convention thesame convention Coca Cola now, ironically, has to work against in order toconvince us that their new slogan ``Always'' refers to the same object.

Although most signs have both iconic, indexical and symbolic qualities,language is mainly symbolic, that is, related to its object through conventionsor, as Peirce puts it ``by virtue of a law, usually an association of general ideaswhich operates to cause the symbol to be interpreted as referring to that object(Peirce, 1897-1910/1985, p. 8; see also Johansen, 1985). And clearly, in a dynamicsociety such associations are constantly changing, not least those associationsrelated to corporate symbols and communications. In the following, we will

apply these concepts and principles to the notions of corporate image andidentity and thus demonstrate that common sense understandings of thesenotions are often highly problematic.

The semiotics of corporate identity and corporate image: initial remarksCorporate identity. The total sum of signs that stands for an organisation to itsvarious audiences we call the corporate identity, recognising, of course, theinterplay of interpretations that construct that totality (cf. Cheney andTompkins, 1987). Before proceeding, we haste to emphasise that the semioticperspective presented here is not equivalent to what is sometimes labelled thedesign school approach to identity management (e.g. van Riel and Balmer,

1997). With its focus on visual corporate signifiers, the design school ignoresthe fact that signs can be anything that stands for or represents something else,including not only physical, visual objects like, for example, uniforms andletterheads but also corporate values, stories and rituals. In a semioticperspective, an organisation's identity is what becomes commonly understoodto represent it, regardless of how intangible, incoherent, fragmented, or evenself-contradictory that set of signs sometimes is. Here, of course, we need tomake a clear distinction between this general set of representations whichalso includes unintended signs like, for example, unplanned organisational


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behaviours or negative rumours and the signs carefully manufactured toportray and promote the organisation and its products (cf. Birkigt and Stadler,1986). This latter set of signs we can call the organisation's formal ``profile''.Although this profile often receives more prominent attention internally thanother representations of the organisation, these privileged signs need tocompete with other signs for attention and persuasiveness.

Corporate image. Semiotically speaking, an image is an impression created orstimulated by a sign or a set of signs. An image, in other words, corresponds tothe Peircian notion of the interpretant. Thus, when we talk about a corporateimage, we refer to a notion of a collective or partly shared interpretant a moreor less complex construct generated by signs that has come to represent theorganisation in the minds of its various audiences. Clearly, we need todistinguish between the image in this general sense and the more specific andwell-defined interpretant that decision-makers deliberately hope to develop in the

public or in a specific market segment. This latter, and preferred, interpretant wecan call the organisation's ``official self-image'' (cf. Dowling, 1988, 1993; see alsoSwanson, 1957) an image which sometimes seems to contrast with the generalimpression or estimation of the organisation in the public, in other words, its``reputation'' (Fombrun, 1996; Fombrun and van Riel, 1997). These dimensions ofcorporate image and identity and depicted in Figure 2.

As Figure 2 illustrates, both corporate image and corporate identity arecomplex constructs, composed of elements, which are not only complementarybut also competitive, and sometimes even antagonistic (cf. Morin, 1984). Withrespect to the sign dimension of Figure 2, managers will typically want tohighlight the formal profile elements of the organisation's identity and

downplay other, and less controllable, representations of the organisation.Likewise, and with respect to the interpretant, management will often focusprimarily on the organisation's official self-image and perhaps try to subdueimpressions of the organisation that do not support or coincide with that. As itappears from Birkigt and Stadler's (1986) model of the ``Corporate identity mix'',

Figure Semiotic dimensionscorporate identity a

corporate ima


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the task of the identity manager is to create some kind of homology betweenthe strategically planned identity and the preferred corporate image. However,this tendency to focus on and highlight preferred dimensions of corporateidentity and corporate image implies that organisations often see only theirown constructs when they claim to learn about their surroundings.

Linking identity and imageSince marketing communications, as Dowling (1993, p. 104) points out, ``can beinterpreted as an attempt by the organisation to project its `ideal self-image' toboth internal and external people'', corporate identity and image should be seenas closely interrelated. Moreover, one could argue that since an organisation isable to redefine or reorganise its formal profile, the construct referred to asorganisational image is indirectly produced by the organisation itself (e.g.Bernstein, 1992). This, however, is true also in a broader epistemological sense.

Corporate identity and image are interrelated, not only because impressionsand perceptions among various publics (images) often build on communicationconstructed by organisations themselves (identity), but also because a``corporate image'', in a certain sense, is a construct of the organisation itselfbased on its own reading of ``external'' impressions (cf. Dutton et al., 1994;Dukerich and Carter, 1998).

In order to design a specific corporate profile, decision makers often want toknow how their organisations are perceived by the public or, put differently,how the signs that represent their organisations are received and transformedinto corporate images. Decision-makers, in other words, are interested ininterpretants. Through the use of image analyses, identity managers seek to

probe into the interpretants of key audiences in order to uncover the image thatthe organisation has for the public. This process, however, is also subject to asignifying process or a semiosis, as described by Peirce, and thus morecomplex than assumed in the conventional textbook on identity or imagemanagement. The process is illustrated in Figure 3.

Figure 3.Corporate image as aself-referential process


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As Figure 3 illustrates, the data collected through the image analysis becomesigns in a new signifying process in which management tries to make sense ofwhat the organisation ``is'' in its surroundings. This is not simply a matter ofrecording data or processing information about the environment in general, but

a creative process in which the organisation seeks to understand the receptionof specific organisational symbols among select key audiences. In this process,the organisation, thus, relates as much to itself as to its external world. Sincethe notions and categories used to interpret and evaluate external data are oftenprimarily of internal relevance for example when the surveyed audience isasked to relate to key dimensions of the organisation's profile this process hasa tendency to close in on itself and become self-referential (cf. Cheney, 1992;Christensen and Cheney, 2000; see also Christensen, 1994, 1997). In such cases,the resultant interpretant (management perception of corporate image cf.Dutton et al. (1994)) is a direct reflection of the organisation's point of departure,that is, its formal profile and its concomitant official self-image. Corporateidentity and corporate image, then, become almost inseparable.

The ambiguities of organisational identityAnother modification of Figure 2 concerns the ambiguity related to the termidentity. So far, we have argued that corporate identity can be defined as theways in which an organisation is commonly represented. As such, identitycorresponds to Peirce's notion of the sign. At the same time, however, identityis often thought of as something more ``basic'', a pattern or a structure seen asrelatively stable in time and space (cf. Albert and Whetten, 1985; see alsoErikson, 1968; Mead, 1934). As such, identity corresponds to Peirce's notion of

the referent.Most writings on corporate identity are rather unclear on this distinction.While theorists and practitioners of corporate communications typically talkabout the identity of an organisation and its products as a set of visual andtangible parameters like, for example, names, logotypes, uniforms, colours,architecture, merchandise, trademarks and advertisements, in other words, assigns, they still maintain a notion of a true or fundamental organisationalidentity behind these concrete manifestations (e.g., Olins, 1989; see also Balmer,1995; Balmer and Soenen, 1999; van Riel and Balmer, 1997), that is, a notion ofidentity as referent. This confusion, illustrated in Figure 4, implies room for lots

Figure The semiotic confusi

of corporate identi


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of conceptual inconsistency and manipulation in terms of how an organisationand its ``real'' identity is properly represented.

Most often consultancy-based writings treat identity as a set of manipulablesigns including sometimes the behaviour of the organisation (Olins, 1989). At

the same time, however, the periodic return to the identity as referent is animportant and integral dimension of the same managerial discourse. But alsothe scholarly literature contributes to this discourse. Balmer and Soenen (1999),for example, operate with four different notions of corporate identity actual,communicated, ideal, and desired that lend support to the idea that somedimensions of the organisation are deeper and more intrinsically true thanothers. While the reference to something ``deeper'' than signs is understandableinasmuch as it reflects our propensity to make judgements about truth/falsity,it is important to note also that it serves several rhetorical purposes, includingthe challenge of identity-work by competing consultancy firms and the

justification of one's own new identity programs. To claim that existingidentity programs do not represent an organisation properly is to claim insightinto the organisation as it ` really is'' (see also Baker and Balmer, 1997;Markwick and Fill, 1997; Olins, 1979). When, for example, an identity manager(or any other observer inside or outside the organisation) points out that theofficial corporate symbols (logos, architecture, advertisements, etc.) of acorporation do not match its behaviour or its culture, he or she claims to haveaccess to a world behind and beyond those symbols, a world behindappearances or beyond representations.

Semiotically speaking, however, what is going on here is something entirelydifferent. Since we, as Peirce (1985) points out, only think in signs, our ``access''

to the object or the referent is always mediated by representations (see alsoNeiva, 1999). Even if we agree to reject existing representations as untrue, weare bound to replace them with other representations that are no lessconventional, in a semiotic sense, than those we shun. When, for example, anadvertising campaign for the soft drink Sprite claims that ``Image is Nothing.Thirst is Everything. Obey Your Thirst!'' the advertiser hopes to createcredibility by rejecting fancy life-style images of sex and power and suggestinga return to something more basic: thirst. The referent of ` basic thirst'' is,however, already an image itself an image shaped by generations of softdrink ads. Thus, the Sprite ad is a dual, reflexive message that simultaneouslyaffirms and negates itself. A similar thing is going on when Heineken, in an ad

for its beer, claims that ` The Message is in the Bottle.'' Besides the fact that thisclaim too is self-contradictory (if it was true, the ad would be superfluous), itillustrates a desire to move behind appearances in order to present the world asit ``really is.'' In this nostalgic operation, however, the communicator is notavoiding representations but is simply moving into a different field ofsignifiers.

Thus, if we return to our earlier example, the observer who rejects corporatesymbols with reference to other and more ``true'' dimensions of an organisation(for example, its behaviour or its culture) is not moving behind appearances but


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is introducing, or drawing attention to, additional and different signs, andpointing out that these additional signs are not only inconsistent with existingsymbols and representations of the organisation, but are of a higher status thanthese. As Figure 5 illustrates, these alternative dimensions of the organisation

are not although they are claimed to be dimensions beyond representation,but signs themselves, signs that compete with existing signs for attention andcredibility (cf. Neiva, 1999).

Although references to a more true or basic reality are inevitable and occurat all levels of social life, scholars and practitioners of corporate identity need tobe aware of the fact that the recourse to identity as referent in the discourse ofidentity management serves to justify the claim that competing signs (here, thebehaviour or the culture of the organisation) are of a more deep and genuinenature, in other words, signs devoid of arbitrariness and convention. This,however, is an illusion that ignores the fact that no signs are completely``motivated''. As Baudrillard (1981, p. 156) puts it:

At bottom, the sign is haunted by the nostalgia of transcending its own convention, itsarbitrariness; in a way, it is obsessed with the idea oftotal motivation. Thus it alludes to thereal as its beyond and its abolition. But it can't ``jump outside its own shadow'': for it is thesign itself that produces and reproduces this real, which is only its horizon not itstranscendence. Reality is the phantasm by means of which the sign is indefinitely preservedfrom the symbolic deconstruction that haunts it.

Without denying that we can experience the world (here, an organisation or itsproducts) in some direct ways that cannot be captured properly by existingrepresentations, we are bound to deal with such experiences through the use ofalternative representations or signs (Peirce, 1897-1910/1985; Neiva, 1999). And,as Baudrillard points out, such signs are often shielded from critique anddeconstruction because of their reference to and sometimes quite directinvocation of the referent. This logic is important to understand, not onlybecause of the frequent recourse to the organisation as referent in the discourseof corporate identity management (and sometimes theory, e.g. Alvesson, 1990),but also because notions of what organisations ` really are'' are powerfulrealities in themselves realities that sometimes, as the following example willillustrate, prevent organisations from changing.

Figure Competi

representations and trecourse to the refere


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An illustrative example: a Danish newspaperFor a number of years, a medium-sized Danish newspaper, AarhusStiftstidende, has experienced a serious image problem. While anothernewspaper, Jyllands-Posten, located in the same city, gradually has become thelargest newspaper in Denmark, Aarhus Stiftstidende is facing decreasing salesand a crumbling reputation. The reasons for this development are numerousbut analyses typically highlight the following: the vast majority of AarhusStiftstidende's readers are older people who subscribe to the newspaper in orderto keep a jourof local news; the emphasis on local news makes the newspaperappear old-fashioned and out of touch with new trends and global cultures; as aconsequence, young people prefer different news media, unless they areinterested in local sports.

Clearly, this negative image is damaging to Aarhus Stiftstidende, not onlybecause the group of old and loyal customers is diminishing, but also becausethe image comes back to the organisation and affects the self-perception of itsown employees. As a consequence, Aarhus Stiftstidende has lost several of itsgood journalists to its competitor, Jyllands-Posten, which to many appears moremodern, dynamic and global in its outlook. Whether these images are fair oraccurate is not the primary issue here. What is interesting at this point is thefact that such images are perceptions and impressions that travel acrosstraditional organisational boundaries and are shared among both members andnon-members of the organisation. Since ` internal'' in this context becomes``external'', and vice versa, the distinction between the two breaks down and isno longer meaningful to uphold.

Even more important, perhaps, is the fact that Aarhus Stiftstidende has had

great difficulties moving beyond its negative image. Although the organisationhas been reorganised considerably and the editorial style of the newspaper hasbeen changed so that often its articles are more dynamic, international andsharp than those of Jyllands-Posten, the negative image seems to prevail. Sostrong is the established perception ofAarhus Stiftstidende as a slow, local andold-fashioned publication that new attempts in recent ads to reposition thenewspaper as young and dynamic have been rejected by many as being too farfrom reality. Interestingly, however, this ``reality'' is an image itself, an imageoriginating in the past but an image that still prevents Aarhus Stiftstidendefrom adapting its advertising to the changes in its product and its organisation.

In this context, the whole notion of false representations becomes irrelevant.

To require of organisations, as some managerial writers on corporate identitydo (e.g. Olins, 1989), that there is harmony and accordance between what theorganisation says and what it does is to miss the point that the behaviour of anorganisation, how it thinks and what it does, is also a set of signs a set ofsigns which the audience may not necessarily accept as an accuraterepresentation of the organisation in question. As the case illustrates,organisational images are often powerful realities in themselves, relativelyindependent of interaction with or ``good knowledge'' (Alvesson, 1990) of theorganisation in question. When the image of an organisation is seen as reality,


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the distinction between the referent and the interpretant seems to break down,or put more precisely, the interpretant of one semiosis (the corporate image)becomes the object in a new signifying process.

Figure 6 illustrates that since corporate images are often seen as reality

itself, new corporate identities may not be accepted as proper representations ofan organisation, even if organisational transformations may have renderedthose images obsolete. In other words, and as the newspaper exampledemonstrates dramatically, symbolic representations of organisations are not

judged and evaluated against the world as it ` is'', but against existing, andsometimes deep-seated, images of how the world is or commitments to how itshould be. And often such images determine what signs can be accepted asrepresentations of the organisation ``behind''.

ConclusionAs this semiotic exercise has demonstrated, we should think of the interplaybetween corporate identity and corporate image as an ongoing game ornegotiation between signs and interpretants a negotiation in which the``reality'' is frequently appealed to as the proper yardstick towards which newcommunication measures should be evaluated. In this process, it may bedifficult to judge whether corporate identity determines corporate image or viceversa. Although we do not wish to suggest a radical epistemological relativismthat seeks no role for truth and falsity, we do want to insist that the causaldismissal of certain sets of organisational representations as false or unreal hasno place in professional or academic discourses on identity. One thing is clear:no matter how we conceptualise corporate identity and corporate image and the

relation between the two, we are bound to deal with representations of theorganisational reality representations that are primarily symbolic and thusconventional in their associations to the object that they claim to stand for.

As a consequence, scholars and practitioners of corporate communicationsneed to think of corporate identity and corporate image as social-historicalsimulations of organisational realities simulations whose quality cannot

Figure Corporate images

reali


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simply be judged on the basis of their ` fit'' with reality (although suchjudgements are made all the time) but also on the basis of their rhetoricalpower, that is, their credibility and persuasiveness in a world saturated withsigns.

Note

1. European Journal of Marketing, special issue on Corporate marketing, edited byJ.M.T. Balmer and C.B.M. Van Riel, Vol. 31 Nos 5/6.

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