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The Soul of the Corporation: How to manage the identity of your company

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There's a famous proverb that states, "The value of identity is that it often accompanies purpose and achievement." Not only is this statement true for individuals it's also true for organizations. The underlying premise of the book The Soul of the Corporation, is that a company's identity plays a significant role in what it can accomplish. According to the writers, this reality is unconsciously driven by the fact that your vested stakeholders (e.g. customers, employees, investors...etc.) care what your company is and how its identity impacts them. Soundview believes this is an interesting concept and recommends the book because it further explains how a firm's identity relates to - and yet differs from - corporate reputation, positioning or culture. Additionally, the authors expertly articulate the real-world identity challenges that can develop in the aftermath of spin-offs, alliances, acquisitions, mergers and brand launches while also offering ideas how to positively reinforce the organizational identity in the face of change.

As someone who has spent their career helping executives deal with organizational identity issues, I am glad to see this book come to fruition. There is too little written about the power of identity to influence the strategy and health of companies.

That said, I don't think that The Soul of The Corporation goes far enough in explaining just how powerful a company's identity really is. In particular, there are two ideas in the book that actually get in the way of understanding how identity shapes the lives and welfare of institutions. The first, is the notion that you can change a company's identity, if and as needed. My experience says otherwise: the identity of a company - like that of a person's - is fixed, transcending time and place, while its manifestations are constantly changing. To "change" a company's identity would require literally dissassembling it completely.

The second concern I have is the idea of dividing a company's identity into its internal form and its external form. This notion flies in the face of what identity is all about: creating an integrated, highly efficient whole. Here is where identity, when effectively managed, becomes a force for alignment.

If the subject of identity - organizational and personal - interests you, check out two books written by me: Identity Is Destiny and The Identity Code. Each has a website by that name.

In sum, The Soul of the Corporation makes a useful, well-researched contribution to a field that is only now starting to come into its own and that deserves the time and attention of writers who understand the power identity contains.

For centuries, corporations have been treated as "fictitious persons" for legal purposes. Since the mid-20th century, academics have been interested in "corporate culture" and how that influenced performance by employees. In the late 20th century, people began to write books about the customer, employee, and stakeholder benefits of companies standing for accomplishing something more than making a profit . . . citing firms like Timberland, Ben and Jerry's, Starbucks, and other consumer products and services firms.

With The Soul of the Corporation, identity is separated from reality to explore as a central manifestation of these and other effects on living, breathing people who are somehow affected or influenced by corporations. The concept is encapsulated into something called The I*Dimension which is the cumulative effect of shared values and beliefs; structures, systems, and policies; ownership mode and governance structure; goals and strategies; products and technologies; and people characteristics and skills feeding back into shared values and beliefs again.

Is it real or is it an academic concept? My experience suggests it is real. When I start working with a new client company, I interview the leaders I will be working with to see what the shared values and beliefs are. I always find a very strong core of those values and beliefs . . . as well as assumptions about the world and the future. Usually, the leadership team is unaware of this consensus because these areas aren't much talked about. When you do surveys of customer and potential customer perceptions, there is usually a strong identity among the customers that's different from the non-customers. And on it goes.

This is the first book I've read about identifying, managing, and improving identity as opposed to the company's purpose. I thought it was a useful addition to the literature with its examples and paradigm. I suspect that an in-depth study of how one company changed all of the elements will be needed before the field will seem very meaty. I hope the authors will have a chance to explore such a situation and report on it to us.

The Soul of the Corporation: How to manage the identity of your company by Hamid Bouchikhi and John R. Kimberly is one of those books that seems like it will be dealing with a lot of ethereal concepts and not much in the way of hard facts. Surprisingly, the book was far more reality-based than I expected, and business leaders would do well to consider their business in terms of its identity.

Contents:
Leadership Challenges in the Age of Identity; The I*Dimension; The Bright Side of the I*Dimension; The Dark Side of the I*Dimension; Casualties of the I*Dimension; To Blend or Not to Blend - Identity Integration in Mergers and Acquisitions; When Should the Cord Be Cut? Managing Identity in Spin-Offs; Identity in Strategic Alliances and Joint Ventures; Managing the I*Dimension at Organizational and Brand Levels; Masters of the I*Dimension; Diagnosing Your Firm's Identity; Leading in the Age of Identity; Epilogue; Index

For better or worse, your business has an identity in the eyes of the employees and the public. It's quite possible that those two identities are complete mismatches when it comes to reality. Bouchikhi and Kimberly examine how an organization's identity comes into play in the global marketplace, as well as how that can be a strength or weakness. For instance, Phillip Morris had an identity tied to tobacco sales and products. Not a good thing with today's view of smoking. The Board felt that a name change to Altria could help remove that association in the mind of the public. But in reality, they still continued to market heavily in tobacco. As a result, their identity change failed. On the flip side, the change of BSN to Danone marked the shift from manufacturing to food production. This identity shift was highly successful, as it marked the end of an old mindset (and product focus) to what the company had become. Obviously, there's a lot more to identity than just the name of a company, but the authors do a very good job in exploring all the facets of corporate identity. They use a wide number of examples, so very little of the book came across as "theory" rather than fact-based practice. In addition, the examples are global in nature, so the concepts span cultures and geography (which is good given the global and cross-culture nature of so many businesses these days).

It's tempting to look at a book like this (or any other book that focuses on a narrow element of business) and declare this the missing link in the success or failure of an organization. The authors acknowledge that other factors can be in play, but argue that the identity factor is more important than many think. In hindsight, it's easy to pick out the winners and losers in the identity battle, while it is far harder to tell how those decisions will play out over time when they are made. Still, taking the time to consider identity issues can't help but increase the chances that your organizational moves will be successful. You may still make some bone-headed mistakes, but at least you'll be able to recognize them... :)

Definitely a worthwhile read for anyone in the executive suite of a company...

The claim that a corporation has a soul is one that many commentators and capitalist watchers will consider absurd to the point of stupidity. In their minds, a corporation is a callous non-entity, given legal rights but existing only to further its' own economic advancement by whatever means. While true to a large extent, the cynical exploitative actions of the leaders of Enron are the prime example; many corporations do have a collective identity with a moral compass. It is the expression of that moral compass that is the purpose of this book.
Many founders of corporate organizations did so because they truly had a vision for what they wanted to do, and that vision was positive. Corporations have been formed where the goal was to heal the sick, produce food that was cheap enough so that formerly hungry people could eat and to make other positive changes in the world that would benefit all. The early workers joined those companies believing that what they were doing mattered more than simply bringing home a paycheck where the numbers were bigger than they could get elsewhere.
This book is about those companies and others where there is a common and somewhat noble purpose to what the company does. It is also about the collective personality that a company can take on early and over time and how new blood can come in and believe that they can change it into something that it has not been before. While the new management sometimes is able to make the changes, in many cases they find that the end result is early success and then a greater disaster than if they had never set foot in the door.
The authors refer to the collective soul of a company as I*Dimension, and they list several case histories where they describe the I*Dimension of a particular company and how that feature has successfully been altered by persons or altered those who tried to alter it. In their hands, it is not some mystical entity, hard to define but easy to "see." As the authors relate it, I*Dimension is the expression of a personality, which like living personalities can be a formidable force for positive or negative change. Managing that personality correctly can lead to a dynamic and growing company; but if it is mismanaged, a company can grow just as dysfunctional as the most disturbed human psyche.
Crowd psychology is a well-known and heavily studied phenomenon. However, when the crowd is composed of the people who work for a corporation, much less is known. In this book, the authors trek into that unknown arena and conclude that distinct personalities can emerge. Those personalities must be understood and managed if that company is to succeed and reading this book is the first step on that route.

"Who am I?" In this angst-ridden age, no question cries out more insistently for an answer. If establishing identity is difficult for individuals, it is even tougher for commercial entities. Indeed, for many businesses, identity is a truly baffling issue. Executives, directors, employees, investors, customers and other stakeholders may have radically different notions regarding a company's basic identity. Such corporate schizophrenia can lead to serious problems. Functioning as "corporate psychiatrists," authors Hamid Bouchikhi and John R. Kimberly explain why few subjects are more timely or vital to commercial achievement. Companies that don't define who and what they are are like headless chickens, dashing back and forth around the marketplace. They develop the wrong products. They target inappropriate customers. Their strategies make no sense. If you want to see the organizations in which you work or invest perform well, getAbstract advises you to read this thoughtful treatise.