Members’ connections to Orgs

Re-creating Organizational Reputation Using Social Media: Not quite outdated ideas

January 14, 2011

As much as I love academic writing, conducting studies and developing theories, all of this work shares one acute problem – it takes forever to get from first draft to print. My just-published journal article with Adelaide King took about 8 years from idea to print, while the germinal paper on Organizational Identity & Identification [...]

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Insights about Authenticity from the Open Community Book Tour

December 22, 2010

I’m taking part in the virtual book tour and are doing to explore concepts from . Maddie and Lindy, along with their colleague Jamie Notter, have long been some of my favorite bloggers. “Even though” they write about communications strategies, and focus on a very specific type of organization (associations), their ideas are big, broadly [...]

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The Day “The Patrick” Disappeared: A story of lost identity

October 20, 2010

This is a story about a quirky little cafe that disappeared. While I lived in town, and for a few years after we moved, this cafe was a touchstone, a demonstration, of one of the experiences that made our small town so interesting. When the cafe changed just one little thing, it lost what made [...]

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3 Dangerous Assumptions in Corporate Work-Life Policy

October 12, 2010

Isn’t Corporate Work-Life policy great? Here we have a progressive set of programs and strategies that: Acknowledge that every employee is more than a worker, Recognize that she or he is also a ‘whole person’ with a life that extends outside the workplace, and Demonstrate that employees’ full lives should be respected and maybe even [...]

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BP’s Bravest Brandividual: What could be motivating Darryl Willis?

June 22, 2010

If you’ve been paying attention to BP’s “Making it right” newspaper advertising, or if you’ve seen BP’s recent television advertising, you’ve seen BP’s new Brandividual Darryl Willis. Aside from Tony Hayward, BP’s walking PR disaster CEO, Darryl Willis is the only person with a name shown by BPs own advertisements as being in charge of [...]

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Employee Branding at BP: Do snazzy uniforms protect the response teams?

June 16, 2010

Somebody at BP has been reading The Onion. BP has figured out that dressing their employees in groovy outfits can help build esprit, camaraderie and a even a sense of importance. Okay, I’m being snarky here… but I am wondering about the positive (and possibly negative) effects of the outfits these BP control center personnel [...]

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3 Types of Employee Engagement Advocates: Which type are you?

May 17, 2010

Is there ever a time when our reactions don’t reflect our own perspectives on an issue? The whole wisdom behind the dictum: “Seek First to Understand” turns on our awareness of the near-impossibility of uncoupling our initial reactions from our personal standpoint. Our experience with an issue, as well as our general world views, are [...]

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Registering Dis-engagement: How would you respond?

May 13, 2010

Here’s a little story, compelling in its simplicity, about an organizational situation that raises issues of loyalty, commitment, and engagement. When I heard about the initial situation, I had an immediate reaction. My analysis was quickly followed by a few recommendations for the employee involved.  [ Of course, as an ENTJ, I am quick to [...]

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3 Reasons Why Employee Engagement is a Scam

May 10, 2010

We should all maintain a hearty skepticism about employee engagement. While it is true that engaged employees contribute more and more willingly to an organization, the contributions of the employee are rarely if ever matched by compensation from the organization. Last week I had a long talk with a mid-level executive about the rollout of [...]

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Ponies in the Snow

February 10, 2010

Heaven help you if you are a business that I care about, even if your business is no business of mine. I just finished up a 24-hour email exchange with the folks at the Virginia Camp where my daughters and I do our mother-daughter riding weekends, and where they’ll be going to camp this summer. [...]

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