more on organizational identity

On Tuesday I blogged about the department and how faculty worked together to create the department's tagline and tagline image. I emphasized the importance of that process in giving participants a stake in identity creation. What I hadn't thought about, however, was those who were left out of the process--students, staff, and part-time lecturers. Although the process was more inclusive than that of the university's, all unit members did not participate. I should note, though, that we did ask students for their ideas about the department's tagline, emailing all majors for their suggestions. Two students responded. I posted their ideas to the faculty wiki and we used those ideas as a basis for our discussion.

Similarly, for the COMM Club, only those who attended the two meetings in which the discussion of the logo took place were able to comment on the logo. All COMM majors were invited to the meetings (unlike the faculty meetings where students, staff, and part-time lecturers were not invited), so you could make the argument that the club's members attempted to be inclusive. But in person meetings privilege students who have the time to attend and don't have other commitments during the meeting. To provide greater inclusivity, the Club could have put the draft logos online and invited comments.

In spite of these criticisms, though, the club and department did seek greater stakeholder department than the university did when designing its new logo and identity standards. As Cheney et al. point out, "Although 'participation' and 'diversity' have become management buzzwords . . . , few managers today seem willing to tolerate unfettered communication about the organization's identity by employees and external stakeholders" (p. 129). When former SJSU President Robert Caret imposed the SJSU tagline "Silicon Valley's Metropolitan University" and changed the SJSU logo from the Tower to the bricks, faculty were angered, viewing the change as arrogant because so few were involved in the decision. Cheney et al. observe, "Corporate identity management is typically the domain of a relatively small clique of decision makers speaking on behalf of the rest of the organization" (p. 129). This was true of the Caret decision and of the more recent decision to change the SJSU logo and no longer allow units to develop their own logos. The new identity standards make clear the university's priorities: "The primary brand of San José State University is San José State University. All the colleges, departments, etc, make SJSU the great institution that we are, but the university as a whole is the most important aspect of our identity." Public Affairs has created "lockups" or logos for all university units. Units have no need to create their own identities; PA has already done that for them.

~ Professor Cyborg