A quote from “Organizational Identity, Image and Adaptive Instability”

[T]he fact that organizations have multiple identities in multiple contexts with multiple audiences not only undermines the idea of a holistic identity but also implies that neither identity nor image changes in a uniform or unified fashion.

Dennis A. Gioia, Majken Schultz, Kevin G. Corley (2000): Organizational Identity, Image, and Adaptive Instability. In: The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 63-81.  http://www.jstor.org/stable/259263

Not exactly new, but well-written and with some interesting additional nuggets about change and adaption.

Life’s pretty transdisciplinary: my semester

One of my resolutions for this year was to keep a little journal about what I’m doing and what I’m thinking. So far, I have been pretty miserable with my self-chosen media diet. My “journal” has been what I write on twitter and what I bookmark on delicious. Not exactly what I planned.

People who know me personally are aware of my somewhat nerdy obsession with academia, which means I love it and at the same time hate what is going on inside Austrian universities. That’s why I thought I could put together a little preview of what is waiting for me at the university this term – or what I expect. I’m in the last semester of my International Business bachelor and also do some courses of the Mass Media and Communication Science research master. So I am kind of all over the social sciences, business and arts curricula. Trying to sort things out and not halfway there. So, this is what I’m up to at university this semester:

Business, Economics and Social Sciences

Bachelor Thesis – I’m writing “thesis” at the institute of Advertising and Brand Management about “The Evolving Role of Creativity in Brand Management”. Yes, I know this topic could evolve into a buzzword-clad piece of writing but I’m trying to avoid that. More on the paper in an upcoming post.

Spanish Business Communication III – Just what it sounds like: a lecture with around 20 people and topics such as “la empresa”. Includes a presentation, a midterm and a final exam. Not much conversation and discussion going on though, so chances are I have to talk with Spaniards at that bodega about inflation and unemployment rates and not about more interesting things. Lame, but my fault.

Spanish Business Communication IV – The title doesn’t really fit this one as it’s more a culture and history class as an actual business course. It’s in lecture format, I’ll have to do an oral exam of about 20 minutes and read an academic Spanish book. I think I’ll chose “La familia en Espana”, a sociological perspective on just that. This is going to be hard, really hard.

Spanish Conversation – A training course dedicated to getting people at a level that doesn’t make the prof who does the oral exam cringes once you open your mouth. So we are talking about “La era de la información” and things like that. So far it is the most exciting course of the term. And I really don’t know if that’s a good thing.

Applied Microeconomics – Another group lecture. I first thought we’re going to review neoclassical economic theory, do a lot of formalizing just to hear in the end that the models we built are totally not valid in reality and need to be more refined to make sense. However, it seems we’re going to discuss “real” cases and analyze them from a microeconomic perspective. Game theory and things like that.

Companies from the perspective of social sciences – Can’t go to the lecture but I guess there’s a lot of stakeholder and system theory in that one. Have to read the book and write the exam.

Mass Media and Communication Science

Special Lecture I  – Television and Digital Media: The State of the Art of Media and Audience Research – I was expecting a lot from this lecture, especially as 1) it’s in English 2) the Prof. has been at different Universities including Berkley and 3) runs a movie consulting business. So far I am disappointed beyond belief. The lecture is split in two parts. The first 45 minutes, we are lectured about what can only with a lot of goodwill be described as “the state of the art of media and audience research” and the other 45 minutes students have some 3 minutes to present “something relevant” from either TV or the internet. There is no discussion afterwards and the grading depends on the 3 minutes talk and a 1 A4 description of some case. So far it is very, very uninspiring.

Special Lecture II – History and Theory of Propaganda – I was looking very much forward to this lecture, as the prof giving it has written a book I really liked a lot and is a historian, not a communication scientist. So far it’s a quite impressive display of cultural analysis and dissection. It’s the kind of lecture that makes you start thinking about topics differently. It inspired me for around 5 blog posts in the first 2 hours, so I guess I Just have to find the spirit to get them done.

Research Seminar I – Digital Natives and the Future of Information Usage – Same prof as Television and Digital Media: The State of the Art of Media and Audience Research, same high expectations, so far, same results. However, the topic itself is pretty interesting and there are a bunch of interested and interesting colleagues of mine in the class. I guess we’re going to do empirical research, analyzing the myth of the one digital native and his or her usage of information. I’d love to put the good old news factor theory to the test in the interwebs, but I guess that’s as always “beyond the scope of the class”.

Research Seminar II – Organizational Communication – Held by Peter Szyska, a quite renowned prof on the topic of PR and organizational comms. My group of three has to analyze the vast mass of trade and academic literature on internal communications to establish some sort of systematic body of work. Kind of “towards a great theory of internal communications” without the great. Could be fun. Could be not. We’ll see.

Management Lecture: New Media Management – Had to chose this one and I am not totally happy about it. The lecturer is managing the online part of Austria’s public broadcasting system and is damn proud of it. We’ll see how much reflexion and thorough analysis it’s going to be – or how much self-righteous posing.

That’s it for now. And it’s going to be a heck of a lot.

Some thoughts about concepts, executions and things like that

Haven’t posted in a while. Since coming back from Canada I’ve been reading a lot on- and offline, working on some projects, meeting a lot of interesting people at the remix09 in Hamburg. The following presentation is what I’ve been digesting so far. A work in process, a way for me to frame what I’ve been thinking about lately.

10 reasons Vancouver is a great place for an exchange semester

Good morning Vancouver!
In order of subjective importance.

10. The beer is better than in the US (I know, there are microbreweries …)

Granville Island makes an almost bavarian Hefeweizen. So you are not doomed to drink American light beer.

9. The seafood is awesome

They basically invented Salmon and Tuna here. And they definitely learned how to make great stuff with it.

8. Hawaii is as close as it gets

Chances are, you are not getting much closer to Hawaii anytime soon. (That doesn’t meen the flight from Seattle is actually getting you there quickly but fair enough …)

7. You are not strange if you are actually interested in the stuff you study

More students than in Vienna actually want to study what they study. In addition, the professors I had take pride in teaching the stuff they do. They are disappointed if people fail their exams and they talk to you if you don’t perform to their expectations.

6. Vancouver is a city, but it’s not really big

There is a downtown with skyscrapers, but you can bet there are some wooden houses right across the street.

5. You get a chance to see bears and all kinds of wildlife

A 10 hours drive gets you to the Canadian Rockies, four national parks that are recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. (If you are more into whales and dolphines you can also go to the Vancouver Aquarium or whale watching.)

4. There are mountains, island, beaches, parks and forrests right around the corner

Mount Seymore, Cypress and Grouse. Bowen Island, Vancouver Island. English Bay, Kitsilano Beach. Stanley Park and the Pacific Spirit Park.

3. The people are really nice

They even say “Thank you” to the bus drivers – something you’d be laughed at in Vienna. In return, the bus drivers tell you where to go and even drop you off between stations at night.

2. Vancouver is a very progressive city

There’s the West End, Vancouver’s gay community. There’s Wreck Beach, the famous, hippiesque nude beach. There’s 4-20, the marijuana holiday. So whatever is your thing, there’s probably a place for you in Vancouver.

1. Most people arrived “just recently” (in historical dimensions)

Most people here are first or second generation Vancouverites. Multiculturality is a core part of Vancouver’s identity and I haven’t even heard debate or negative sentence about that while I was here. This is so different to Vienna, where you have to face racism in political campaigns and even newspapers.

420 and bluegrass – Or: Things that I didn’t know before coming to Canada

I have mentioned before that a lot of people in Vancouver tell me about the quality and importance of B.C. marijuana and how the laws or rather their enforcement is lenient compared to the US and Canada’s east. I think I also mentioned that on the other hand alcohol laws and their enforcement are extremely strict compared to those in Austria. So I was already kind of used to seeing the reverse image of Austrian culture: people smoke weed in public or at concerts where there’s a strict “no tobacco” policy, people get arrested for drinking or being drunk in public.

Anyways, when it came to April 20th I was still stunned by how different our two cultures deal with the two drugs. April 20th or 420 (4-20) is a (supposedly) global counterculture holiday to celebrate the use and demonstrate for the legalisation of marijuana. It obviously never made it to Austria, a country where April 20th is more related to the birth of a rather unpleasent historical figure.

So – how would you expect this counterculture holiday to look like? Secret private gatherings? Think again.

(Nope: I do not have original video material as I was not downtown …)

Please take a second to imagine a demonstration like that in Vienna, preferably 1st district.

On the same day, maybe remotly connected in terms of ideology, I agreed to attend a bluegrass concert. The Yonder Mountain String Band was in town and I got some insider information that they would be absolutely amazing live. And they were. (Music starts at 1:40)

The “Holodeck” isn’t that far away …

The folks at the IDEO Lab are kindly sharing their experience at EON Reality’s immersive 3D room.

You can see technology in action in this little video. Read their blog post to learn how it works.


Amazing 3D immersion technology from IDEO Labs on Vimeo.

Looking at this, the amazing video razorfish has recently released, showing their surface, gestual interface physics simulation (emerging experiences) and recent augmented reality research makes you think about the endless possibilities the combination and fine-tuning of these technologies are going to offer in the near future.

Canada, Beer and The Least Common Denominator (or: “Proud to be Canadian”)

Waving Maple Leaf (you didn't know that, did you?)
At the very end of our intercultural training for my exchange semester in Canada, the professor showed us a little video to loosen up and cap our session.

We had talked about culture and intercultural communication in general before, about Austrian an Canadian culture in particular and we had even discussed about some “strange encounters” between Canadians and Austrians. We had heard lots about the “Britishness” of Canadian culture, and how it is different from the US in some way. And still, when we watched the video (which is from 2000 by the way), we had really no clue what it really was about (or “a boot”).

Almost four months and some Canucks games, pints of (not very well-tasting) Molson Canadian and “intercultural interactions” later, I feel like I know a great deal more about Canada. Continue reading Canada, Beer and The Least Common Denominator (or: “Proud to be Canadian”)

AOL, Customer Experience and the “new” realities in 2006.

If members…are trying to provoke the Consultant into being unprofessional, immediately cancel the account. (AOL Offer Matrix 2006, according to Consumerist.com)

The dominating perspective my three courses at Sauder School of Business (Market Research, Consumer Behaviour and Integrated Marketing Communications) use to look at their topic is advertising. Even though market research and consumer behaviour teach other topics and usually look at the broad picture, it often comes down to research about questions concerning the framing and/or distribution of messages. This is great on the one hand, as I never had courses the rigorous, strategic and marketing-orientated North-American way. On the other hand, the consumer behaviours course – as great as it is – hasn’t talked much about experience, satisfaction, post-purchase behaviour, word-of-mouth and all the other things that exist next to advertising. Apparently, this is going to change now. To finish our discussion about overpromising/underpromising, we watched this little clip:

What did Vincent do? He recorded, he blogged, he got his story on Consumerist.com, he was on national TV not long after that. Hunderts of thousands of people could see first-hand how AOL treated a customer who didn’t want to have the service anymore.

What did AOL do? First, they fired “John” and declined any corporate wrongdoing. Then, after serveral other customers and even employees came up with similar stories, they pledged to change the internal procedures. Did that happen? I don’t know. But it is nice to see how the communication model AOL and so many other companies still believe in clashed big-time with the power of losely connected individuals. As AOL’s retention manual was posted on the Consumerist in the course of this events, a perfect example of how they perceive(d) “communication” as a one-directional and not necessarily human distribution of a message were revealed.

This happend to AOL in summer 2006, without twitter and a way less developed “social media” environment. Now, almost 3 years later, things are even faster and even more “unpredictable” for companies. As David Armano described in detail in his case about the Motrin Moms, brands can get in serious trouble within few hours, with all the details saved on the web forever.

So, what’s the good thing? There’s light at the end of the tunnel. Budgets are reallocated, broadcast media is losing and new companies with a more egalitarian view on people’s role in marketing emerge. And hopefully even more business school students are going to see the following bullet points in consumer behaviour courses:

  • Listen to the squeaky wheel
  • Look for complaints – make complaining easy
  • Accept responsibility
  • Quick action
    • Replacement
    • Repair
    • Refund
    • Exchange
  • Empower and train employees

In my case, they were accompanied by the words “Earlier in the days, you could’ve ignored things. There were not enough journalists to write about everything. Nowadays, everybody is a journalist. There is no way you can ignore things now.”