{"title":"City branding to solve social problems? – The Eigendynamik of management concepts","authors":"Jens Rennstam, Jon Bertilsson, Katie R Sullivan","doi":"10.1177/01708406241273819","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Branding is a management concept that has migrated from corporate to public organizations, with suggestions that it can address social problems, often referred to as ‘inclusive branding’. This ethnographic study analyzes efforts to use branding to tackle inequality and segregation in a Swedish city. Our findings reveal that the initial focus on social problems was glossed over in favor of following corporate branding ideals, but also that city communicators expressed critique, confusion, and doubt regarding the relevance of branding to their work. Surprisingly, this did not slow down but rather energized the branding process. Through an interactionist analysis, we suggest that rather than addressing social problems, branding in cities may give rise to an Eigendynamik, signifying a self-energizing inner dynamic fueled by the tension between a branding frame and the civic frame of the city. This theorization lays the groundwork for contributions to the understanding of inclusive branding: it can start with good intentions to address civic issues but may get swept up in corporate branding concepts and activities that are ill-equipped to deal with social issues. More generally, complementing established notions of translation and colonization, our study provides a novel understanding of how management concepts migrate from corporate to public organizations through what we call frame-induced Eigendynamik. Overall, we contribute by shedding light on the role of self-energizing processes as reasons why organizational members engage with management concepts even when they struggle to see their relevance to their work.","PeriodicalId":48423,"journal":{"name":"Organization Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.9000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Organization Studies","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406241273819","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"MANAGEMENT","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Branding is a management concept that has migrated from corporate to public organizations, with suggestions that it can address social problems, often referred to as ‘inclusive branding’. This ethnographic study analyzes efforts to use branding to tackle inequality and segregation in a Swedish city. Our findings reveal that the initial focus on social problems was glossed over in favor of following corporate branding ideals, but also that city communicators expressed critique, confusion, and doubt regarding the relevance of branding to their work. Surprisingly, this did not slow down but rather energized the branding process. Through an interactionist analysis, we suggest that rather than addressing social problems, branding in cities may give rise to an Eigendynamik, signifying a self-energizing inner dynamic fueled by the tension between a branding frame and the civic frame of the city. This theorization lays the groundwork for contributions to the understanding of inclusive branding: it can start with good intentions to address civic issues but may get swept up in corporate branding concepts and activities that are ill-equipped to deal with social issues. More generally, complementing established notions of translation and colonization, our study provides a novel understanding of how management concepts migrate from corporate to public organizations through what we call frame-induced Eigendynamik. Overall, we contribute by shedding light on the role of self-energizing processes as reasons why organizational members engage with management concepts even when they struggle to see their relevance to their work.
期刊介绍:
Organisation Studies (OS) aims to promote the understanding of organizations, organizing and the organized, and the social relevance of that understanding. It encourages the interplay between theorizing and empirical research, in the belief that they should be mutually informative. It is a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal which is open to contributions of high quality, from any perspective relevant to the field and from any country. Organization Studies is, in particular, a supranational journal which gives special attention to national and cultural similarities and differences worldwide. This is reflected by its international editorial board and publisher and its collaboration with EGOS, the European Group for Organizational Studies. OS publishes papers that fully or partly draw on empirical data to make their contribution to organization theory and practice. Thus, OS welcomes work that in any form draws on empirical work to make strong theoretical and empirical contributions. If your paper is not drawing on empirical data in any form, we advise you to submit your work to Organization Theory – another journal under the auspices of the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) – instead.