A Fiasco of Corporate Renaming and Communications: an Empirical Evidence

A fiasco of corporate renaming and communications: An empirical evidence

Somboon Kulvisaechana Thammasat Business School

Faculty of Commerce and Accountancy, Thammasat University 2 Prachan Road, Bangkok 10200 Thailand Tel. [phone] E-mail: [e-mail]

A fiasco of corporate renaming and communications: An empirical evidence
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the dynamic interplay between image and identity being communicated in a major UK distribution company, and focuses on the implications of managerial sensemaking of a radical corporate rebranding. The way in which managers interpret and react to cues in the environment lays out a pattern of sensemaking that involves a dramatic identity renewal. This change in identity reflects a failure in bringing a corporate rebranding and a value shift to a market-driven firm status. Not only does it end up with a recapitulation of its organizational identity trap but also a return to the original corporate name. Keywords: Corporate renaming, corporate rebranding, communications

INTRODUCTION The notions of organizational identity and image have become the focus of increasing organizational attention, because “both can lend insight onto the character and behavior of organizations and their members” (Gioia et al. 2000, 63). At the heart of the idea of organizational identity is the view, defined by Albert and Whetten (1985), that identity is central, enduring and distinctive about an organization’s character. In this paper, we explore the possibility of identity as a dynamic, unstable notion, and how organizational members interpret and revise the constructs of identity regarding the major changes in organizational image. In line with Gioia’s assertion that “instability of identity arises mainly from its ongoing inter-relationships with organizational image, which are clearly characterized by a notable degree of fluidity” (2000, 64), we trace the changes in the reciprocal relationship between identity and

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