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Corporate Social Responsibility has multiple faces that contradict each other. On the one hand there is the communication of great aspirations and ambitions. On the other hand, there is the unruly practice that complicates living up to those ambitions. These contradictions are, without being exhaustive, caused by a focus on economic performance, organizational behavior, adherence to leading supply chain paradigms, and reputation management. In general, corporate communication about social responsibility is perceived as hypocritical. This research looks at how these communications initiate sustainability measures in the distribution and supply chain functions of a large multinational company. In a single embedded case study, data collection took place using semi-structured interviews complemented with document research. The empirical results show that the supply chain managers were positively critical of the communication about implemented sustainability measures and considered them as an invitation to act. However, they assessed the organization that surrounded them to be less lenient due to the different objectives of the various functions. The respondents diverged about which sustainability measures to apply and embed in the supply chain organization. It became clear that the knowledge base of the respondents was fragmented and incoherent. Reflecting on the research results, the role of top management seems crucial when it comes to coherent policy, knowledge development, and the prioritization of sustainability measures.

PurposeThis study aims to get a deeper understanding of one of the antecedents of opportunistic behavior in strategic supplier relationships at the individual level of analysis. The authors specifically focus on self-justification, which could be seen as a mechanism that relaxes the moral scruples of purchasing professionals and, hence, facilitates actual opportunistic behavior.Design/methodology/approachThe critical incident technique was deployed to interview purchasing professionals in the Netherlands about their personal opportunistic behavior in strategic supplier relationships. This resulted in rich autobiographical accounts of 29 critical incidents of opportunistic behavior. The data were analyzed through the lens of the self-justification theory.FindingsThe study identified a set of self-justification strategies underlying opportunistic purchasing behavior in strategic supplier relationships. Opportunistic professionals tended to deploy six strategies: acknowledgement, denial, rationalization, attributional egotism, sense of entitlement and ego aggrandizement.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is limited to Dutch industrial purchasers and was exploratory by nature. Future research could extend the perspective to other sectors, cultures and professional roles.Practical implicationsThe study draws attention to radically new interventions at the individual level of analysis. To understand and minimize opportunistic behavior in strategic supplier relationships, organizations should acknowledge and address the important issue of self-justifications of purchasing professionals.Originality/valueIn contrast to the existing literature at the firm level of analysis, this study sheds new light on the antecedents of buyer opportunism from an alternative theoretical perspective at the individual level of analysis. The authors do not draw on the narrow perspective of personality psychology, but rather focus on the role of self-justification as an antecedent of buyer opportunism in strategic supplier relationships.

Research on branding is an established sub-discipline in the higher education literature. However, studies in this field have somehow produced contradictory results: some studies point at isomorphism, others find differentiation. Our study wants to offer a possible explanation for this paradox, by proposing a more nuanced view on brand communication. Based on a multiple case study of three Flemish universities, our results mainly point at isomorphism in communication channels with a general focus that are addressed towards a broad audience. In specific communication channels, targeted towards specific stakeholders, we identify high levels of differentiation. We discuss these findings against the background of the strategic ambiguity perspective on communication in complex stakeholder environments. ispartof: Higher Education Policy vol:34 issue:4 pages:1-21 status: Published online

In higher education research, theoretical approaches stressing isomorphism dominate the discourse on how higher education institutions ‘behave’ in their higher education and research systems. We argue that research should address both instances of similarity and differences. Using theoretical notions from institutionalism and the branding/marketing literature, and focusing on how UK universities are different and similar in their welcome addresses—as expressions of the institutions’ images—we are able to offer a balanced view of patterns of similarities and differences as well as share findings of patterns over time (2005–2015). Using quantitative and qualitative content analysis, our findings show overall high levels of homogeneity of images across the universities. But younger and less prestigious institutions were (both in 2005 and 2015) more inclined to show distinctive images.

This book focuses on reputation management in contemporary higher education, defined as the communication of who higher education institutions (HEIs) are and what they stand for. The first part of ...

In this paper, we explore the delegitimation of contemporary student protest against market-oriented reforms in higher education. Theoretically, we draw on an extended version of the Public Nuisance Paradigm, a theoretical paradigm that emphasizes the role of mass media discourse in the delegitimation of social protest. We illustrate our argument in a case study of the 2014 student protest against a market-oriented reform in Flemish higher education, that is, higher tuition fees. We identify four specific discursive strategies underlying the delegitimation of this student protest through mass media discourse: authorization, rationalization, moralization and predication. The major contribution of our study is that it extends the Public Nuisance Paradigm that has been introduced in the recent higher education literature focused on student movements, by zooming in on the micro level of analysis.

In contemporary higher education, stakeholder management is increasingly important given the growing number and complexity of stakeholder groups. Defensive stakeholder management (DSM), defined as verbal responses of universities to stakeholder criticism, is a largely neglected topic in the higher education literature. Drawing from a combination of theoretical perspectives in the organisation science literature, we explore how three Serbian universities engage with DSM (in relation to allegations of academic misconduct). We focus on the antecedents of inter-institutional differences in responses to stakeholder criticism and its antecedents, in particular, decision-making structures and core missions. Our findings suggest that different universities do respond differently to the same type of criticism and as such this is an important contribution to the debate on DSM in higher education and beyond.

This article explores the factors affecting the content of universities' mission statements. We conceptualize missions as identity narratives, a type of symbolic representation of an organization. Based on the literature on organizational identity we argue that universities need to address two major challenges when crafting their mission statements, (i) to pursuit legitimacy in spite of multiple and competing expectations, and (ii) to properly balance similarity and distinctiveness from other universities. We identify factors that affect this strategic effort and develop hypotheses that we test in the empirical context of the United Kingdom's higher education system. Results show that (i) among competing expectations, universities choose claims that are plausible to external constituents and consistent with the values of internal members, and that (ii) they adopt claims similar to universities belonging to the same organizational form while differentiating from geographically closer universities in order to reduce competitive overlap.

Most studies on branding in higher education focus on external branding or image-building towards external stakeholders such as students. Internal branding is an underexplored topic, even though it should be considered as important as external branding. Internal branding is about achieving the necessary internal support for the external brand. Drawing on the theoretical concept of discursive legitimation, we explore the strategies that contribute to an internally supported new brand with student diversity as brand value. We conducted a case study of a Flemish university college that has (largely) succeeded in achieving internal support for its new external brand of student diversity. Analyzing the case from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis, we specifically zoomed in on the dialectical tensions underlying the discursive legitimation of this new brand. We identified three specific tensions, which illustrate the inherent complexity of the internal branding process: authorization as (dis)empowerment, normalization as (dis)empowerment and moralization as (dis)empowerment.

The transformation to a more market-oriented steering approach in European higher education challenges universities and other higher education institutions to consider developing branding or image management activities. The existing literature focuses either on the content or the style, but we argue that an integra­ted perspective is needed to fully grasp the processes underlying branding. In a comparative case study of ten UK higher education institutions with varying re­putations – five highly reputed versus five low(er) reputed institutions – we de­monstrate how and why branding is deployed in welcome addresses of institutional leaders. Our findings indicate that isomorphic tendencies are visible, although brand differentiation could also be identified between highly and lowly reputed institutions. Our findings provide support for the competitive group perspective on branding activities.

In times when universities are becoming less self-evident, these organisations may be confounded in terms of which aspects of their activities and performances they should communicate with their stakeholders. A related question – central to our study – is how they communicate. This paper analyses the style of one particular type of communication: welcome addresses of key spokespersons of UK universities. Building on the pertinent image and identity literature and using Speech Act Theory, we expected to find differences between universities by prestige and age and over time. We found that older universities use different styles compared to younger universities, and that there were also differences by prestige. We also found considerable changes over time. The findings suggest we should not see these welcome addresses as purely ceremonial, but as intentional messages with communication styles that reflect the organisational attributes of the university.

In the higher education literature, there seems to be a growing consensus that contemporary higher education institutions (HEIs) are trapped in conformity. From a new institutional perspective, higher education scholars argue that HEIs tend to comply with widely endorsed institutionalized values (e.g. academic excellence) and this widespread compliance leads to field homogeneity, at least in the missions of HEIs. In this paper, we introduce an alternative perspective drawing on recent insights in Scandinavian institutionalism. From this perspective, it has been argued that organizations tend to develop organization specific, heterogeneous definitions of institutionalized values to establish a fit with the modalities of the specific organizational context. Based on a comparative case study in Flanders, we investigate translation rules that shape heterogeneous definitions of the institutionalized value of socio-demographic diversity. The major contribution of our study is that it sheds new light on ...

This chapter investigates similarities and differences in brand communication between different types of higher education institutions (HEIs) in Flanders. Earlier research on HEIs branding have consistently focused on branding content, but this chapter provides a more holistic analysis by examining content-and style-related processes underlying brand communication. Theoretically, it approaches branding content by drawing from earlier research on communicated values in higher education. Branding style is conceptualized based on Searle’s Speech Act Theory. Empirically, it focuses on the mission statements of 20 Flemish HEIs. The study identifies similarities in branding content and style, as well as some subtle differences. Then it discusses its findings in light of recent debates in the higher education branding literature.

Branding of higher education institutions (HEIs) is an expanding area of research. The existing literature mainly draws on the strategic management perspective that argues that HEIs are pressured to develop brands which differentiate them from their competitors. Past studies, however, do insufficiently take into account that most HEIs are positioned in systems that contain both competitive pressures (to differentiate) and institutional pressures (to meet taken-for-granted expectations), where neither of the pressures is clearly dominant. Our multiple case study of the five Flemish universities finds that branding can simultaneously address competitive and institutional pressures and that the universities studied combine aspects of distinctiveness with elements of similarity.

We explore organisational mechanisms underlying social exclusion in higher education, the latter defined as the underrepresentation of students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. We focus on "decoupling," which is a central concept in organisational institutionalism referring to the construction of gaps between public commitment and core organisational practices, a common phenomenon in organisations worldwide. In the context of social inclusion this implies that universities are often publicly committed to social inclusion whereas their actual practices reproduce social exclusion. Drawing on an in-depth case study of a Flemish university, we identify four possible antecedents of decoupling: institutional contradictions resulting from the neo-liberalisation of higher education, uncertainty about effective inclusive practices, resistance of key constituencies and resource stringency resulting from experiences of lacking public funding.