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78 Mapping the Field

employees are asked to describe what they do on a daily basis, and how they look
upon their work. Such descriptions of critical work incidents can then be further
analysed to decipher the underlying values.The method can, when aggregated, give
important insights into the general values that people working within an organiza-
tion seem to share. 37

5. Audit or survey. A more structured research method involves an audit or survey
that asks members of the organization to select from lists of attributes those charac-
teristics that define the organization best. The selected characteristics can then be
further screened by asking respondents in the same survey to evaluate the impor-
tance and value of each of the selected characteristics for describing the organiza-
tion. Surveys are easy to administer, but may not be able to capture the richness and
detail of organizational identity that more open methods can.

Once the value and attributes that make up an organizational identity are drawn
out and made explicit, senior managers and communications practitioners need to
consider whether the identified values are inspiring and stand out, whether they offer
potential for differentiation in the marketplace, and whether they are likely to be
appreciated by stakeholders of the organization. In other words, it needs to be decided
whether the elicited core values are to play a role in the corporate identity mix and are
to be made public through products and services, communications and employee
behaviour.Some of the values expressed through the corporate identity mix will in fact
derive from the organizational identity; other values may be included because of the
sector in which the organization is operating or because of the expectations of its
stakeholder groups. Surveying the opinions of stakeholders regarding the organization
is therefore essential to capture their views of the organization and its relative standing
in the sector in which it is operating,and to offset a strict view of the company’s orga-
nizational identity alone. Organizations cannot myopically focus internally on their
identities alone and trust that on the back of their identity’s strength they will achieve
glowing reputations. Equally, organizations should not be led solely by stakeholder
opinions (and opportunistically manufacture and fashion a corporate identity for it),as
such opinions may be changing and sometimes short-lived.An internal orientation on
organizational identity, which may be a source of inspiration and differentiation, needs
to be balanced with an external stakeholder orientation, so that a company avoids
38
myopically focusing on either one. Polaroid, for example, is a case in point.The com-
pany had from its beginning created a strong and distinctive identity around its business
model and core competence of instant photography. In line with this identity, the focus
was originally on self-developing film technology, garnering healthy profits on the film
while earning relatively little on the cameras.This worked well until the advent of dig-
ital photography, which offered instant photographs but made film unnecessary. Digital
photography altered investors’ and consumers’ expectations, and as Polaroid was rather
slow in following suit (and redefining itself as an imaging company and moving into
digital photography), it had to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October
2001. Surveying and being attuned to the reputation that an organization has with its
stakeholders provides an important strategic indication as to whether the company’s
identity is at all valued and whether it has been successfully communicated.The concept
of corporate reputation is therefore the subject that the chapter turns to next.