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Administrative Science Quarterly
57 (3)535–536
The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/0001839212462541
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Matthew J. Brannan, Elizabeth Parsons, and Vincenza Priola,
eds.: BrandedLives: The Production and Consumption of Meaning at
Work.Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2011. 224 pp. $110.00 / £65.00,
hardback.
This edited volume contains eleven chapters, including the
editors’ introductory
and concluding chapters, on employer branding. This is an
important effort
because of the widespread use of branding strategies among
today’s organiza-tions. The organizations studied are large and
small, private and nonprofit, and
span multiple industries; the occupations analyzed include
front-line service
workers, warehouse workers, professional employees, and
managers. The edi-
tors and authors are therefore to be commended for their work in
opening up
this new space both theoretically and qualitatively.
The book opens with the claim that ‘‘this volume explores the
experience of
employer branding, a very concrete and specific employment
practice, that has
become increasingly popular in recent times’’ (p. 1). After
reading this volume, I
think this opening claim is only partially correct. Many of the
chapters focus on
case studies, and the depth and diversity of these cases
certainly delivers a richexploration of the experience of employer
branding while also demonstrating
the popularity of employer branding in practice. More
problematic is the claim
that employer branding is ‘‘a very concrete and specific
employment practice.’’
In my view, an important contribution of this volume is a
demonstration of the
opposite—that is, employer branding is a diverse and somewhat
amorphous
practice. Some of the chapters highlight organizational
communication prac-
tices, others human resource management policies, and at least
one highlights
the importance of physical space. This multidimensional approach
to branding
is a stimulating aspect of this volume. At the same time,
however, the authors
tend to take differing approaches to conceptualizing branding,
and this leaves
the reader, or at least this reader, with a muddied sense of
what employerbranding is and how it differs from employee branding
(another term used in
multiple places) and from efforts to create organizational
culture more
generally.
Based on the volume’s subtitle, I was also expecting a deeper
treatment of
the types of meanings that employees experience in their work,
but this was
not a consistent theme in the volume. Rather, the volume is more
successful
in portraying the multiple ways in which organizations attempt
to achieve
employer and employee branding and the ways in which
organizations are see-
mingly never able to be completely successful in these pursuits
due to
employee agency and resistance.The chapters are theoretically
informed and generally employ a critical frame
of reference that makes the overall tone of the volume skeptical
about the
motives, aims, and outcomes of organizations’ branding efforts.
This critical
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approach is important. As just one example, chapter 10 cautions
that strategies
to create a uniform brand with a unitary set of values and
beliefs can contradict
the respect for individual differences that should be a part of
efforts to promote
diversity. Readers who are looking for this type of critical
theoretical and meth-
odological approach will likely find many important insights in
this volume.Other perspectives, however, are not as well
represented.
This volume successfully demonstrates that there are many
situations in
which ‘‘the values, vision and culture of organizations become
the core of their
unique selling proposition,’’ and in such situations, ‘‘the role
played by employ-
ees shifts dramatically from providers/sellers of labour to
carriers or intermedi-
aries of such corporate values and visions’’ (p. 193). More
importantly, this
volume richly develops the resulting implications for the lived
experiences of
workers and provides the foundation for future research on this
phenomenon.
John W. BuddCenter for Human Resources and Labor Studies
Carlson School of Management
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455
[email protected]
536 Administrative Science Quarterly 57 (2012)
