Conclusions In this chapter we have discussed the added complexity experi- enced by MNEs in creating strong corporate reputations and brands and the importance of HR in that process. MNEs follow different strategies with respect to their global ambitions; these we discussed at length and illustrated with some of our case study research. They include ethnocentric, polycentric, regiocentric and geocentric strategies, all of which present a different answer to the perennial problem of balancing the corporatist integration agenda and the more responsive, local differentiation agenda. Although current thinking suggests that the geocentric response is the most appropriate, there are plenty of examples of success- ful organizations following the other agendas. Moreover, most organizations seem to move through four stages en route towards geocentricity; though, as we suggested, this is more of an ideal than something achieved in reality. One of the other main themes of the chapter has been the added complexity of national cultural and institutional differ- ences in transferring practices across borders. While the cultural difference school has been the most discussed in the literature, it is increasingly recognized that institutions and institutional dis- tances often provide the best explanation of why practices remain ‘sticky’ and do not transfer well. We have made the point that any organization wishing to fully understand the potential for trans- ferring practices should have a thorough understanding of these institutional differences and of business systems. The Mars case 254 Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management The role, philosophy and activities of HRM within the Mars Corporation aim to develop, define, communicate, maintain and enforce the parent company culture across all units. This status may be the reason why the Personnel Director in Poland was the only expatriate HRM manager in the Mars Corporation encountered during the research. Mars placed great emphasis on entrusting the HR function of a foreign unit to an expatriate manager. By so doing the company seeks to ensure its parent culture is diffused. The Mars Corporation seeks to operate a geocentric strategy by overlaying national differences with a strong corporate identity, but to what extent has it got the balance right? illustrated this point vividly, with the difficulties it had in estab- lishing a presence in Poland. In Chapter 10 we will also look at the case of Scottish & Newcastle Breweries, which raises similar ques- tions concerning the tensions between global and local brand building, and HR policies. References Adler, N. J. and Ghadar, F. (1990) Strategic human resource manage- ment: a global perspective, in Human Resource Management in International Comparison (ed. R. Pieper). 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Nanhchang: Jiangxi Science and Technology Press. 256 Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management CHAPTER Corporate communications and the employment relationship 8 The importance of corporate communications to HR, reputation management and branding Although we have been a little sceptical of the more over- blown claims of communications specialists regarding their contribution to reputation management and branding, few managers, especially in HR and marketing, would disagree with the view that communications are at the heart of creating positive organizational images and identities. Indeed, the business press has recorded a catalogue of communications and public relations failures to do so, including during the Exxon Valdez oils spill disaster, problems with Farley’s and Gerber’s baby milk and baby foods, Perrier’s benzene contam- ination of its bottled water (Haig, 2001), and British Airways’ repeated crises at Heathrow following the series of summer strikes (see, for example, People Management, 2005). These failures of communications (but also of content) not only have cost companies many customers but have also damaged employees’ trust and identification with their brands, and hin- dered the ability of these firms to compete in the market for talented people. One result of this growing awareness of communications in business is a recent turn in strategic management to seeing ‘strategy-as-narrative’ (Barry and Elmes, 1997), which claims the essence of organizational strategy, in sharp contrast to earlier planning perspectives, is in authoring a credible, compelling and novel story. Drawing on our earlier metaphor of self-authored and other-authored biographies, usually this narrative is part- biographical, co-authored with customers, clients, employees and other stakeholders. If it is not co-authored, research shows that official corporate stories tend to be counterbalanced and negated by insiders’ and outsiders’ unofficial biographies with potentially damaging consequences in the long term (one of the dangers we referred to in the discussion of Google in Chapter 1) (Boje, 2006). So, in this chapter we will focus on the role of corporate- level communications in shaping the experience of employees, organizational identities and images. To do so, we will examine some of the newer ideas in corporate communications and then focus on internally focused communications strategies, including employer of choice programmes and employer branding. A few years ago, one of us developed a model of strategic HR change in multinational organizations that drew heavily on strategic narratives (Martin and Beaumont, 2001). This model, with just a little modification, helps provide an integrating framework for academic and consultancy writing in this field, as we hope you will see later in this chapter. First, however, to help you understand some of the issues involved, let’s examine a recent case we researched with a col- league of ours, Annette Frem, Culture Change Manager of Orange. 258 Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management Chapter 8 Corporate communications and the employment relationship 259 Box 8.1 Opening case: Orange in Denmark Introduction Orange in Denmark developed from a company called Mobilix A/S. It was established in March 1998 as a subsidiary of France Telecom, which had acquired local licences in a number of countries for mobile phone companies. Initially, these companies were largely left alone and oper- ated as independent brands, without any real attempt to create a sense of corporateness. Nevertheless, Mobilix became a success in Denmark, achieving the third largest operator-status in terms of market share and brand awareness. Just as BT in the UK had created the O 2 brand to distinguish its mobile communication arm from the main line of business, France Telecom recognized that they needed to establish a strong brand image for their own venture into this product market. Consequently, they acquired the UK-based Orange, which had a strong brand image in mobile communications. France Telecom immediately embarked on a re-branding exercise to help subsidiaries leverage the Orange brand. This included re-branding Mobilix A/S as Orange A/S in May 2001. ‘Orange on the Inside’ ‘Orange on the Inside’ was launched as a culture change process to help Mobilix employees and managers identify with the external Orange brand image. French-born, lifetime France Telecom employee Monique Muller-Zetterstroem had been CEO of Mobilix from its inception. She was seen as the ‘mother’ of the company, and personally led the change process. The changes were intended to align with the Orange vision, to make a difference to people’s lives by creating simple and innova- tive services that help people to communicate and interact better, expressed by the brand values of being straightforward, honest, friendly, dynamic and refreshing. One of the biggest challenges was building con- fidence in the new management team. This required their profiles to be raised among existing Mobilix employees and to help build employ- ees’ confidence and trust in them. Note here the use of process rather than programme to describe Orange on the inside, which was intended to avoid the cynicism asso- ciated with previous Mobilix employee initiatives and to demonstrate to employees that management understood that changing a company’s culture wasn’t a quick fix, but a process in which they were willing to invest time and money. 260 Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management A project team was established, covering internal communications, HR and branding to put together a plan to drive the process internally. The project leader was given a reporting role to the monthly Chief Operating Officers meeting of Orange to track progress. The ‘Orange on the Inside’ process comprised the following elements: ■ Launch events of the ‘Orange on the Inside’ process ■ An ongoing employee survey process to establish where the com- pany was starting from and to assess its progress against goals. This comprised: ❒ A culture questionnaire ❒ Focus groups, and ❒ One-to-one management and key influencers’ interviews ■ Management seminars to keep management actively involved ■ Division meetings to share survey findings and action points ■ Brand workshops ■ Culture workshops The process in operation 1 Launch events: The CEO, Monique Muller-Zetterstroem, invited all employees to the launch of the ‘Orange on the Inside’ process, giving them a chance to meet her in person and to be able to ask her directly all of the questions they may have had concerning the process. She toured the country to meet all employees in person, telling them about the background for the change and the steps involved in the process. She also asked all the employees to fill in a culture survey to assess where the company was in respect of Orange’s values frame- work, and gave personal guarantees to employees to take action on the basis of the findings. In total, she met about 1000 employees dur- ing a nine-day period, covering 17 events in Denmark. 2 The survey process: The questionnaire used at the launch events drew on the Orange ‘Culture Blueprint’ which was provided from the Orange Group. The questionnaire was based on the brand values to make the experience of completing it part of an exploration of the Orange brand. The survey process was also intended to signify to employees that the management wished to hear their views. In add- ition to the questionnaire, ten focus groups covering a sample of 10% of employees and managers, were held over a concentrated period of five days to add qualitative data to the questionnaire data. Every attempt was made to ensure that these focus groups included Chapter 8 Corporate communications and the employment relationship 261 sceptics as well as those employees more likely to have bought into the Orange message. All senior managers and staff identified as key influencers had one-to-one interviews to ensure all views and levels of the business were taken into account. These interviews were intended to create an element of ‘management buy-in’ and to begin coaching them in their new roles and responsibilities associated with the new ways of doing Orange business. 3 Management seminars: These data collection exercises were used as the basis for day-long management seminars, which were designed to analyse the problems and initiate improvement projects. Each semi- nar was designed as an interactive session and played on the Orange values of being refreshing and dynamic. For example, instead of straight reporting back of the survey results, the management team was divided into small groups competing over whether they could guess the results of the survey. The evening session was an interactive workshop session which will be covered later on in this case study. 4 Division meetings: Senior managers were made responsible for feeding back the information to their own employees. Again this approach forced them to be personally involved in the process and served as a trust-building exercise, during which managers provided personal stories about action points which they had committed to progressing as a result of the management seminars. 5 Brand workshops: Throughout the process the centrality of the brand to Orange’s success was communicated to all staff, though for many the concept of a brand was quite new to them. Consequently, it was important that employees were given the opportunity to explore and familiarize themselves with the brand values and culture of Orange. So, all employees were asked to participate in two work- shops, a half-day brand workshop and full-day culture workshop. Few excuses for non-participation were permitted. 6 Culture workshops: The aim of the culture workshops was to rebuild the psychological contracts between the employees and Orange and challenge employees to make a conscious or unconscious choice about whether or not they wanted to be part of the new company. Like the brand workshops, they were interactive learning sessions to explore six themes: ❒ Their common heritage with Orange (‘Where were we coming from’?). ❒ The strategy of Orange (‘The future’s bright, the future’s Orange’), and the key business drivers. 262 Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management ❒ The relationship between the brand and customers (‘Orange on the outside’). ❒ The relationship between how employees behaved and the brand promise (‘Orange on the inside’). ❒ Critical opportunities in day-to-day life that employees would meet in making decisions on how to implement brand values (‘Noticing and acting’). ❒ Role modelling the new brand values and what employees could do differently to support the brand (‘How we behave’). 7 Brand ambassadors (change agents): The workshops were facilitated by skilled and enthusiastic local employees, not trained Orange facili- tators. The reason for doing so was because the company believed that employees would be more willing to listen to ‘one of their own’ rather than an Orange employee who may not be a source of credible infor- mation about the company. It was also believed that employees would be more willing to voice concerns if it was not to Orange facilitators. Outcomes The survey process revealed some serious issues that the management had to deal with, including the need for more information about strategy, establishing ways of communicating and rewarding bright ideas to sup- port the values, the motivation of managers, expectations and communi- cation of desired behaviours, the need for employee ‘get-togethers’ and the need to focus on employee well-being. Unfortunately, as is often the case in such examples, Orange in Denmark changed dramatically and the Danish company went through a number of re-organizations and redundancies. However, the ‘Orange on the Inside’ process was seen to be successful and integrated into a new corporate workstream, called the ‘Renaissance’ project. This process has been widely used in other parts of Orange globally. Corporate communications, HR and branding: towards a definition This case provides a contemporary account of how one company is using communications to integrate overseas acquisitions and subsidiaries into a high profile and, increasingly, global corporate Chapter 8 Corporate communications and the employment relationship 263 brand. The early evidence points to success in Denmark, though, as Orange managers admit, this is no guarantee it will work else- where and in another timeframe. However, most of the elements of modern corporate communications good practice are there to see; indeed the case has been used in a number of presentations as an exemplar for others to follow. So, what can we learn about corporate communications from a ‘local’ case that can be transferred ‘globally’? There are at least two ways of answering this question: the first is by comparing trad- itional views of communications with newer ones to examine the role of changing context; the second is to see it as part of a strategic narrative of change through, and in, communications. This latter perspective is the one we shall concentrate on in this chapter, but first, how have communications changed in the past couple of decades? Old vs new views on corporate communications The field of corporate communications has become prominent since the early 1990s in most organizations, but even now is rec- ognized to be quite different from when corporate communica- tions departments first began to appear. Table 8.1 shows how things have changed to reflect the changing contexts of the pre- sent decade, which, according to Don Schultz and Philip Kitchen (2004), will make corporate communications much more import- ant than previously was the case. Most of these changes we have met before, but are worth re-stating and re-locating in a commu- nications perspective. Seen in this light, the Orange case, especially the ‘Orange on the Inside’ process, is very much a 21st century approach, espe- cially with its emphasis on dialogue and interactivity, involve- ment of all functions and people, and focus on branding and communications as key drivers. However, the process has not been in operation long enough to make a good assessment, since, as both of us can testify to from experience, it takes a num- ber of years to change a culture. Journalists often conclude their stories with an ‘only time will tell’ qualifier; it will be well after this book has been published that Annette Frem will be able to know . time and money. 260 Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management A project team was established, covering internal communications, HR and branding. Nanhchang: Jiangxi Science and Technology Press. 256 Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management CHAPTER Corporate communications and the employment relationship 8 The