Exploring rationales for branding a university: Should we be seeking to measure branding in UK universities?

Although branding is now widespread among UK universities, the application of branding principles in the higher education sector is comparatively recent and may be controversial for internal audiences who question its suitability and efficiency. This paper seeks to investigate how and whether the effectiveness of branding activity in the higher education sector should be evaluated and measured, through exploratory interviews with those who often drive it; UK University marketing professionals. Conclusions suggest that university branding is inherently complex and therefore application of commercial approaches may be over simplistic. Whilst marketing professionals discuss challenges they do not necessarily have a consistent view of the objectives of branding activity although all were able to clearly articulate branding objectives for their university, including both qualitative and, to some extent, quantitative metrics. Some measures of the real value of branding activity are therefore suggested but a key debate is perhaps whether the objectives and role of branding in higher education needs to be clarified, and a more consistent view of appropriate metrics reached? Various challenges in implementing branding approaches are also highlighted

Performative Work: Bridging Performativity and Institutional Theory in the Responsible Investment Field

Callon’s performativity thesis has illuminated how economic theories and calculative devices shape markets, but has been challenged for its neglect of the organizational, institutional and political context. Our seven-year qualitative study of a large financial data company found that the company’s initial attempt to change the responsible investment field through a performative approach failed because of the constraints posed by field practices and organizational norms on the design of the calculative device. However, the company was subsequently able to put in place another form of performativity by attending to the normative and regulative associations of the device. We theorize this route to performativity by proposing the concept of performative work, which designates the necessary institutional work to enable translation and the subsequent adoption of the device. We conclude by considering the implications of performative work for the performativity and the institutional work literatures

Interpreting ethics: public relations and strong hermeneutics

This article suggests that public relations’ inadequate engagement with the complexities of ethical theory has contributed to public loss of trust in its activities. Instead of blaming this on publics, communicators could take more responsibility for their professional ethics. The author suggests that a hermeneutic approach to ethics opens up a new area for debate in the field. Public relations ethics have traditionally drawn on the major approaches of deontology (Kant) and consequentialism (Bentham and Mill), with marginal reference to the more recent revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics (MacIntyre, 1984), an approach that shifts attention from ethical action to ethical agent. Thus discussion of ethics in public relations literature (Fitzpatrick and Bronstein, 2006; S. A. Bowen, 2007; McElreath, 1996) concentrates on rational approaches to ethical decision making, based (respectively) in marketplace theory, Kantian approaches or systems theory. In these and other writings, there is an emphasis, as is common in approaches to professional ethics, on external rule-based ethics rather than attempts to focus on inner processes to assess ethical implications of practice. This article argues that as concepts of professionalism shift and buckle under global economic and social pressures, it might be timely to look less to systems and more to human experience for ethical guidance. A hermeneutic approach, drawing on the philosophy of interpretation developed in recent decades by thinkers such as Gadamer, Habermas and Riceour, offers an alternative, inner, path to an ethics drawn from the search for shared meaning. The article starts with a brief overview of the current state of public relations ethics, suggesting a reliance on somewhat superficial codes for guidance and the absence of reflexivity in ethical debates; it then introduces concepts from hermeneutics and its main schools or approaches, with a particular focus on hermeneutic ethics. Finally, the article links the two topics to show how ‘strong’ hermeneutic ethics might contribute to greater reflexivity in public relations ethics. It aims to shift the ethical debate away from notional reliance on codes and external guidance towards a deeper ethic. The approach taken is broadly critical (Hall, 1980; Heath, 1992) and is itself interpretative, making the article doubly-hermeneutic (Giddens, 1984) in both form and content