INTRODUCTION

Much of the current organisational literature has discussed 'ambiguity' as a state that a firm passes through, rather than an environment it constantly has to operate in,¹ as would be the case for those based around creativity. Indeed, creative organisations often differentiate themselves through the successful use of ongoing ambiguous operating conditions. Such organisations, where ambiguity is a core component of the service offered and task faced, may, however, find problems in the relationship with clients and others due to a lack of ways to tangibly or quantitatively predict or define the outcome for their creative processes or products beforehand. Hence they often rely upon word of mouth and referrals from previous and current clients, as well as media publicity and industry awards to gain future work. In this case, 'creative reputation' becomes a key consideration during the maintenance and building of the organisational brand. Here the extent that the owners, managers and employees identify with the desired organisational identity leads to an impact on the image that they will potentially project to clients and other stakeholders.^{2, 3, 4 and 5} Thus behaviour within the organisation, their creative output and the way they interface with their clients, become key components for consideration for the organisations brand.

The first section of this paper will identify and define the creative industries and workers from a UK perspective. The second section focuses upon previous research relating to organisational marketing, creativity and identity. The third section outlines the methodological aspects of the study. The fourth and fifth sections present the findings and discussion. The paper is then concluded with areas for future research identified.

CREATIVE INDUSTRIES AND CREATIVE KNOWLEDGE WORKERS

The UK government has defined creative industries as comprising 'activities which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent, and which have the potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property'.⁶ The UK creative industries accounted for 8.2 per cent of gross value added during 2001 and grew by an average of 6 per cent per annum between 1997 and 2001, compared to 3 per cent for the economy as a whole. They also contributed £11.4bn to the balance of trade in 2002. Between 1997 and 2003 creative employment within the creative industries increased by 3 per cent per annum compared to 1 per cent for the economy as a whole, and by 2003 totalled at least 1.1 million jobs within approximately 122,000 companies.⁷ Hence creative industries are significant in terms of growth, revenue generation, exports and employment within the UK.

Within these industries, many of the creative employees can be thought of as 'knowledge workers', that is, professional or expert workers who use nontangible inputs, such as intellect, to specifically produce a creative output. Knowledge worker loyalty is often to the expertise rather than the employer or any other stakeholder group, and the expertise they offer often leads to a high level of autonomy and discretion over the design and execution of their daily work and tasks.⁸ Some have also suggested that due to the increased levels of complexity and ambiguity, exceptionally high levels of management skills are needed within knowledge-based organisations.^{1, 9} In this context, the individual qualities of the creative employee, the approach or methods used by owners and managers, as well as the contextual environment around them, are all seen as significant elements for the creative process and output. Organisational creativity research, in comparison to research on individual creativity, needs to attempt to uncover and outline the influence of organisational factors on individual creativity, as well as integrate extra-organisational aspects that influence creative ideas or processes. For example, many influencing sources may come from far beyond the organisation, including the clients.¹⁰ In addition, the small to medium size nature of many creative organisations leads to a common issue of the evolving nature of the organisational identity and brand as the company grows, where both are often seen to be in a state of ongoing flux. Research by Ensor et al.¹¹ has revealed that employees may in fact only have a vague understanding of a creative organisation's vision due to rapid growth, structural changes and changes in ownership.

Creative employees also often have their identity bound closely with the work or process they are involved with.¹² This means that the use of work as a source of identity and greater opportunities for professional achievement, via autonomy, may be powerful motivators for creative knowledge workers. Evaluation for creative employees, however, has often been reported to be more important via their peers and/or profession than their current organisation. Hence the need for achievement and autonomy, with an often associated lack of concern for power and organisational attachment or affiliation, may lead to creatives being seen as 'out of kilter' in some organisational settings.¹³ This sets a particular challenge for creative organisations, namely: under high and sustained ambiguous operating conditions, should the owners and managers try to ensure that employees identify with and have an affinity with the desired organisational identity, and what management problems may be faced along the way?

ORGANISATIONAL MARKETING, IDENTITY AND CREATIVITY

Balmer and Powell¹⁴ have compared the concept of 'corporate marketing'¹⁵ with their own definition of 'organisational marketing' as follows: 'Corporate marketing has a general applicability to entities, whether they are corporations as well as other categories such as business alliances, cities, government bodies and departments, or branches of the armed forces and so on. Organizational marketing can apply to various kinds of organizations from Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) through to charitable, publicly funded or large multinational companies, however it is not restricted to such traditional business enterprises. Further, it is concerned with organizational level issues relating to the marketing of the organization, while also considering the interaction between its various products and services with various stakeholders. For example, client or consumer psychology, identity and behaviour are also considered to have a part to play. Key for both corporate and organizational marketing is their common concern with multiple exchange relationships with multiple stakeholder groups and networks, both internally (eg with and between owners, managers and employees) and externally with various constituencies.'¹⁴

A number of key aspects when considering corporate marketing can be presented by the star in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

The 6Cs of Corporate Marketing
Source: Balmer and Greyser¹⁶ (p. 735). (The 6Cs star also originally appears in Balmer 2006, Working paper series, Bradford School of Management)

Full figure and legend (28K)

Within Figure 1 organisational identity has been outlined as part of the 6Cs linking more broadly to culture. From this perspective, organisational identity 'refers to the collective feeling of employees as to what they feel they are in the setting of the entity. These beliefs are derived from the values, beliefs and assumptions about the organisation and its historical roots and heritage. Individuals may, in part, define themselves in terms of organisational membership and may, in turn, feel that they, as individuals, share common values with the organisation'(Balmer and Greyser,¹⁶ p. 735).

Gioia et al.¹⁷ have further highlighted that identity is essentially a social construction, drawn from repeated interactions with others, where identity is partly based on how others see us. Those identities are often different depending on the roles, context or the situation faced. If this view of identity and identity construction is accepted, then the interaction between those outside such as customers and clients must also be borne into account.^{18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25}

Turning to the creativity literature, creativity is often modelled as a discrete task, conducted by individuals who form part of a small group and are sometimes seen as somewhat isolated from the broader organisational and/or occupational environment. Such research tends to indicate that only that group may therefore have influence on the employee. Indeed until more recently, this appeared to be the dominant viewpoint taken by many leading researchers within creative organisations. By taking an alternative, 'cross-level perspective' within creative organisations, that is, by ensuring all levels of employees are included and from all divisions if applicable, research can open up relatively newer avenues for sense making within a creative context.²⁶ Project-based creative work, for example, often with long time frames, means that multifunctional, interdependent teams engaging with different communities and teams, whose memberships naturally grow and shrink over time, are more likely to be the norm than in other forms of organisations. Employees who have only partial inclusion in any one group will probably occupy many organisational roles and group memberships along the way, and are thus likely to be influenced by each of these different groups and levels. In addition, for such employees, particular situational or contextual circumstances within the organisation, perhaps relating to the project stage, may make a particular group more relevant to the exclusion of others.^{18, 26} The extent to which this applies, is in most cases, possibly directly related to the size of the projects and/or the size of the creative organisation and/or client. For example, in the case of creative Small to Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs), small group settings are more likely to be characterised by a higher degree of employee inclusiveness with many differing groups both internally and externally throughout a project.

Acknowledging that owners, managers and employees may occupy many organisational roles and internal and external group memberships, due to the evolving nature of creative processes, naturally complicates the research process. Effects can no longer be simply attributed and discussed based on membership in a single group or category, but to multiple groups and categories.²⁷ This may explain why a great deal of the previous organisational identity and individual creativity research has preferred to stay focused at one particular level of analysis than attempting multiple levels of analysis. Nevertheless, for organisational creativity, identity and branding research to be relevant within creative organisations, it has been argued that it needs to accept and account for these multiple and perhaps even competing influences, that impact on the way that individuals situate and identify themselves within this relatively complex and ambiguous creative environment.^{18, 26}

For example, Ford^{28, 29} has highlighted that other voices should and need to be added to the negotiations over belief structures that drive creative projects, voices such as suppliers and clients/customers. Calls have also been made for studies on organisational creativity that seek to identify both process and content sense-making, and for future creativity research to be based on 'rich descriptions that depict co-evolution processes among multiple domains with redundant, independent and/or conflicting interests and requirements' (Ford,²⁹ p. 285). Some research has looked at identity from a monolithic or fixed perspective, but also increasingly from the perspective of multiple identities that are constructed through discursive practices. More research is, however, needed upon identity processes. Although there are some at the conceptual level, there are relatively few empirical studies addressing processes of identity construction at the personal level, where people may often engage in a identity struggle 'forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening or revising the constructions that help them to produce a sense of coherence and distinctiveness' (Sveningsson and Alvesson,³⁰ p. 1165).

A number of authors have also stated the need for a redress of the limited amount of empirical work that has been conducted to date in the context of knowledge work, identity, and normative and non-normative control,^{15, 31, 32} with calls for more substantive empirical support and analysis in such organisations.¹ This is because many studies of the processes of identification within organisations have often used such a broad-brush approach that the complexities of the dynamics of these processes have rarely been adequately captured.³³ This is particularly challenging in the case of research focused upon creative employees who 'tend to take responsibility for their own actions rather than point to outside causes or influences. They also tend to be more highly orientated to the job than to the organisation or the profession...' (Pierson,³⁴ p. 17).

Therefore the research presented within this paper orientates and differentiates itself from much of the previous research within creative organisations in a number of important ways based on the various calls uncovered within the literature, as highlighted in Table 1.

Table 1 - Orientation of the study.

Full table

The research conducted within this paper is also an attempt to produce substantive empirical support and analysis within ambiguous creative organisational settings with the specific aim to investigate the following research questions:

• To uncover and explore some of the complexities involved when taking a mainly internal, employee perspective to creativity and the organisational brand.
• To highlight and draw attention to the general relevance as well as the potential barriers to achieving a desired or effective creative brand.

METHODOLOGY

A qualitative case study approach was deemed the most appropriate because a '"how" or "why" question is being asked about a contemporary set of events over which the investigator has little or no control.... allowing the development of a rich explanation for the complex pattern of outcomes' (Yin,³⁶ p. 115). In addition, the case study design is seen as useful where the researcher is aiming to gain an in-depth understanding of a situation and is one more of discovery than confirmation, and of the process and context, than any outcomes. Thus by undertaking qualitative in-depth interviews, it was intended to limit possible misinterpretations of the questions asked by checking for understanding, to help identify how individuals construct the meaning and significance of their situations.³⁷ In addition, using a qualitative paradigm allowed for the research to be focused on 'discovery, insight, and understanding from the perspectives of those being studied' (Merriam,³⁸ p. 3).

Selection criteria and approach for case studies

The three case study organisations were geographically located within central London, England. London was selected due to its relative high density of creative organisations within the UK and its dominant role in the creative industries both as a location for enterprises and as a major cultural influence.^{39, 40} The specific type of case studies were chosen for their ability to demonstrate that their competitive strategy was based upon a highly customised service to clients in the form of a creative solution, which primarily relied upon the employees' own knowledge and skills base.

Case study background and structure

1. Designers: This organisation had been in existence for approximately five years at the time of the interviews and had grown to 13 people plus administrative staff. The structure of the organisation was fairly flat, with two supervisors taking up position under the two directors, with the rest of the employees broken up into senior and junior creative designers.
2. Corporate branders: This organisation was a relatively new start up of approximately 18 months at the time of the interviews and consisted of approximately ten people including administrative support. The company had been set up by three directors who had worked together in a much larger national company for a number of years beforehand. The structure of the organisation consisted of one managing director and two directors, but each seemed to have more or less an equal say into the running or direction of the organisation.
3. Architect practice: This organisation had been in practice for over 20 years and was the largest of the three case studies with approximately 150 employees within London, and 250 within the UK. The offices were spread over many floors of an office building with the practice as the only occupant. The structure consisted of a director followed by a board of senior directors, with divisional directors below them. At divisional level, a formal structure of managers and supervisors above senior and junior architects and engineering teams was evident.

Data collection

The primary field research was conducted in three phases with a total of 36 interviews, including a limited number of interviews with clients. The clients included senior members of some well-known companies within the UK, including British Airways, Slazenger/Dunlop, Abbey National and Diagio.

The first phase consisted of several weeks of visits to the three case study creative organisations to conduct initial exploratory interviews. The interviewees included various levels of seniority, right through to junior members of each case study organisation. The second phase occurred several months after the first phase of interviews had been transcribed and analysed with a revisit of the case study organisations. These interviews included the same members as initially interviewed wherever possible. Observation of the working environment was also noted within the offices and workplaces during the visits. The final phase of interviews, undertaken with clients, occurred a number of months after the second phase had been completed and analysed.

Transcription

In an attempt to limit possible misunderstandings, errors of fact, omissions or interpretation, the full verbatim transcription was undertaken by the author with no third-party assistance. The transcription process lead to the creation of approximately 210,000 words generated from across the three case studies, plus additional content generated by the use of reflective research diaries throughout the project. Once transcribed, the interview transcripts were transferred into computer software for storage and as an administrative aid to the analysis of the data.

Thematic analysis

QSR NVivo, a Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) software package was used to aid the process of analysis through coding, thematic network analysis and visual modelling, as the main methodological aids in the analysis of the collected and transcribed data.

During the first stage of the analysis, the data produced from transcription were broadly coded both factually and heuristically. Using the capabilities within NVivo, the transcribed interviews were coded to produce inductively generated concepts, leading eventually to key themes which highlight specific aspects relating to that piece of text.⁴¹ The transcripts were effectively 'micro analysed' (Strauss and Corbin,⁴² p. 57), by scrutinising the transcripts line by line, while inductively developing and applying analytical-level codes and associated theoretical memos to represent identified categories, patterns and themes along the way. Hence codes were created 'up' from the data early in the coding process, as ideas emerged from the data, rather than 'down' from prior ideas, project designs or theories.^{43, 44} These codes and their associated notes are similar to 'open codes' and 'theoretical memos' as found within 'grounded theory'.⁴²

The more frequently occurring of these, that is, those that appeared as common within a minimum of four or more individual interviews from across the three case studies were then selected for further analysis. Some of these are presented shortly while others are presented elsewhere.

Coding reliability checks

Two experienced researchers, independent of the author, checked and judged the relevance of the codes generated, upon which the interpretations discussed shortly have been based. As the version of NVivo used for the bulk of the project did not allow for inter-reliability checks to be conducted from within the programme, an alternative was also used, namely 'Qualitative Data Analysis Miner' (QDA Miner) from Provalis Software.⁴⁵ Within qualitative exploratory research, where the codes are inductively generated along with their descriptions, and not taken 'deductively' from the pre-existing literature or hypothesis, a figure of greater than 70 per cent is normally acceptable. In addition, in relation to the free marginal figure, a figure of greater than 0.7 is seen as significant. The inter-reliability rating outcomes for this research, following the above procedures, led to agreement of 86.4 per cent using a simple percentage rating, and 0.73 using the adjusted free marginal calculation.

FINDINGS

This section presents some of the findings from the case studies. Various forms of identification and commitment were apparent within the data, each with implications for creative organisations and their brand. Ten significant sub-themes were uncovered and each will be discussed in the following order:

• Expert egos, creative egos and individual identification
• Identifying with projects and clients
• Levels of identification and identifying through previous life
• Team commitment, organisational commitment and emotional commitment

Expert egos, creative egos and individual identification

Egos, particularly the expert ego, and individual identification issues were often evident within the data. Whenever the clients attempted to control the creative process, friction would be evident between the creatives and the clients, with the creative 'expert' ego seemingly under direct threat. In addition, a more specific 'creative' ego was uncovered, meaning the desire to create something new and different that leaves their own personal mark on whatever creative output they are working upon. For example, one of the directors in the architect case study stated: 'all the young guys and girls want.. aspire to have their own project to run that's what they all want so that they can make their mark if you like.. it's part of the ego centered sort of feeling that we all have as creative people I guess.. if you can create something of your own you can say that's mine.. sounds almost like a selfish thing but it is ego.'

Despite their own expert and creative egos, the owners, managers and employees also indicated that they like to encourage creative input from many of the clients, but this was often a difficult balance to achieve. Further, from later interviews with the clients it was obvious that these expert and creative egos often led to the organisations tending to be seen as a mixture of individuals with many single visions than a collective or common whole. This created, in effect, multiple identities and images of the creative organisations brand. Single visions could sit at any level within the organisation and were even apparent at the senior layers of one of the case studies' guiding coalitions.

The 'control' of single visions within a creative environment was also an emergent issue within the data, leading to the important questions of what is control in a creative environment? and should control be autonomous or internally generated? a point made by one of the directors of the corporate branding case study: 'there are bounds between control and creativity if you like.. and you can say well those are not opposites anyway but... we are trying to get to this thing which is the sort of very essence of what we are.. what we can do and what makes us different.. what excites us... that should be sufficient to condition expectations as to what is and isn't right for us but allow a great deal of leeway of people to express that in a way that is precisely right for them... right for the occasion or right for the client.'

Interestingly and linking to the discussion above on creativity, identity and control, many of the creatives indicated they avoided any attempts made by management to make them formally identify with the creative organisation, and were more comfortable within organisations that avoided forcing such identification management upon its employees, preferring space for a more individual than group or organisational form of identity. Although this perspective was evident within many of those interviewed, it was particularly pronounced in those who had been identified by the owners or managers as the creative 'mavericks'.

Identifying with projects and clients

In addition to 'identifying with the clients' as discussed shortly, some creatives indicated they often 'identify more with the project' they are working on than their employing creative organisation. This is particularly relevant in relation to brand management as highlighted from the literature, as many of the projects within creatively based organisations can last many months or even years, with multiple and varying levels of team members throughout. Under such time frames, managers frequently highlighted that family/team relationships built up, and were often actively encouraged. This also, however, led to a downside in that conflicts or 'turf wars' sometimes occurred if those allegiances became threatened through enforced project change. Managers were acutely aware that identifying with particular projects sometimes led to friction between employees, although it was not clear how they attempted to alleviate this possibility within the data. Junior members in particular preferred the more interesting projects and a lack of access to such projects sometimes lead to frustration and the employee leaving. This is driven by the need to be doing more than they are currently doing. In some ways this links to 'challenge' being seen as a form of reward.

At times, the creatives also indicated that they found themselves identifying externally with the client organisation more than anything else, causing a potential conflict, or at least tension between differing values within the client organisation and the employing creative organisation. This is outlined by one of the senior consultants in the corporate branding case study: 'I feel the need to empathise very closely with a client.. but trying to make sure that the (corporate branding consultancy) values are still upheld... for me personally I would have to feel very close to the client otherwise if you don't that is when you can.. the barriers can come down between you and all sorts of problems can start to arise.'

Indeed, some of the directors believed that employing people with client side experience would help those employees in their intended 'boundary spanning role', that is, interfacing within the client–supplier relationship. Striking within the data was that this also had the unintended likelihood of such creatives also identifying externally than internally with their own organisations brand. It was also noted that one way that project identification and client identification appears to be managed in relation to the creative organisations own brand, is through regular internal meetings as well as open plan and informal office lay outs and informal team structures.

Levels of identification and identifying through previous life

Within the data, a distinction was evident between differing levels of identification, as appropriately outlined by an excerpt below, taken from one of the directors of the corporate branding case study. Here the concept of identifying in a mainly 'exchange' based manner through more immediate 'situational' factors such as increased effort for immediate financial compensation or additional time off, is compared with the perception that there is an alternative, more abstract, 'deeper' and 'intrinsically rewarding' way of identifying with work and the organisation, through example its values, mission and vision:'that it is sort of hygiene factors vs motivation factors and the like... the situational level is the easiest one to describe and to embrace... but the deep structural. I mean that is where the magic lies in the deep structural identification and how you get to it... and that is very complicated. I don't want to be part of something where it is about a transactional relationship which ends up in pounds shillings and pence... working hours... holiday days and stuff like that... I don't really want to be part of an organisation where that... all the primary motivation... that sort of stuff... that is all necessary but not sufficient to me.'

It was also, however, apparent that some of the creative organisations are set up specifically to react very quickly to external situational factors, and this is likely to impact on the way that employees identify with the organisation. This may also lead to multiple identities and images being perceived by the clients, as indicated by one of the directors of the architect case study: 'yeah I find it difficult to think we are a deep structure organisation... I think that's inwards looking... whereas I don't think we are... I think we are outward looking... that's just a gut reaction to that... so therefore it's situational... it is related to people... clients... situations... places... projects... it is all those things that are the influencers and the structure... the organisation is structured to meet those.'

Even within creative organisations that have been set up and structured to encourage more situational identification, others within the organisations have usually been tasked or feel the need to consider the issues relating to deeper levels of identification, particularly within any guiding coalition. This is outlined in the following excerpt from another of the architect divisional directors, discussing the board of directors that sit above him. One implication of this is a heightened risk of a 'disconnect' from a organisational branding perspective, between those client facing employees who are more situation driven, and those offstage senior management and owners who may be identifying with more long-term, deep structural aspects of the organisation and its future: 'people like me are more situational I guess... because we are more driven to client requirements... project requirements... without thinking necessarily about the whole thing behind me... the whole structure behind me... there are other people who are thinking on a different... on a wider scale... maybe that's not the right words but a more cultural level to try and generate the best from within.'

It was also noted that aspects of previous life experiences prior to joining the current creative organisation, for example through similar education and career experiences, often led to common ways of thinking among some of the creative employees, and this impacted upon the way they also identified with one another.

Team commitment, organisational commitment and emotional commitment

It was evident within the data that creatives often felt commitment at work, to either their immediate team or their organisation, and at times the commitment was expressed as an emotional one. Turning first to team commitment, the directors and owners indicated that team work was a major aspect of creative work. Creative employees, themselves, also often indicated a higher level of commitment to the team than the organisation as a whole, especially teams where all individuals were seen to be equal in some ways. It was also apparent that within some of the smaller case study organisations, commitment to the organisation and its vision rather than just the team was a primary requirement from senior management. For example, this is highlighted by one of the directors of the corporate branding case study: 'I think that the need to... you know to do great work... is somehow hard wired into people that want to be part of this... and if it wasn't they wouldn't... they wouldn't be comfortable with us nor we with them... I think there is a higher level of commitment to the partners as a group of three... I think there is a high commitment to what it is that the partners have in common and what the partners want too achieve and deliver.'

Equally, as seen below, the junior members of the design case study also indicated that their commitment could be seen in terms of an emotional form of commitment: 'I think there is an emotional bond... I think probably the emotional bond is stronger and more important to some members of the staff compared to others but that's you know they are all different characters so I don't think that's necessarily that surprising... I think there is definitely... I think it depends on the way they think... ( Junior Designer).'

DISCUSSION

This exploratory, inductive research indicates that complex and inter-relating issues need to be kept in mind by owners, managers and researchers relating to organisational creativity, identity and the brand. These implications can be broadly outlined as

• Potential irrelevance of cultural-ideological management
• Impact of project access and length
• Client side identification
• Motivators and structure
• Vision divergence
• Client size experimentation and risk

Potential irrelevance of cultural-ideological management

Due to their SME status, these smaller organisations were more likely to be seen as a mixture of individuals with many single visions, and this was often driven by their individual creative egos. Interestingly, many of the creatives indicated they avoided any attempts made by management to make them formally identify with the creative organisation, and were more comfortable within those that avoided forcing such identification management upon its employees. Those identified as the creative 'mavericks' in the organisations were especially agitated by any form of identification management. Could this mean that contrary to some other forms of knowledge-based organisations and their workers, creative organisations and creatives cannot effectively be managed through 'cultural-ideological control' via the targeting of the identifications of employees as proposed for example by Alvesson⁴⁶ and Kunda?⁴⁷

Impact of project access and length

Identifying with projects was also a common theme within the data. In particular, junior creative members preferred the more exciting or high-profile projects, in some cases leading to a lowering of organisational loyalty and an intention to quit if denied such access. Many of the projects within creatively orientated organisations could last many years, and often have multiple and varying levels of team members throughout their lifespan. Owners and managers frequently highlighted that family/team relationships were thus built up and conflict sometimes ensued if those allegiances were threatened through enforced project change, which threatened to spill over in some circumstances onto the relationship with the client. Less obvious in the data was how this is alleviated or what if any attempts are made to avoid this occurring in the first place.

Client side identification

It was also noted that some of the creatives had worked for long periods in the client side before joining the creative organisation. The effect was that one could tend to fall-back on their prior knowledge and experience of the client world and overly identify with the client at times as a result, in comparison with their own employing organisation. This could lead to a form of 'disidentification'^{48, 49} with the employer if not monitored and checked. To some extent, owners and management indicated that project and client identification could be reduced where necessary, through regular internal meetings and open and informal office communications. Open plan office spaces were another part of the solution. Interestingly, such open plan office layouts were apparent within all three creative case study organisations. One further note of interest is that it has been suggested that the growth of the internet and associated intranets may potentially have 'a range of implications for both the interaction of organisational subcultures and the internal and external perceptions of organisational culture' (Ogbonna and Harris,⁵⁰ p. 162). Indeed, the use of such technology could be seen as a way to ensure dispersed members of creative teams, if working within client organisations or regularly away from the office, can perhaps remain more identified with their own employing organisation. The use of the internet or other forms of mobile communication to aid in this identification process did not come through as a feature within the data collected for this project. This aspect may have been missing due to the collected time frame of the data, but the suggestion merits further focus and investigation in future studies to see if this could indeed apply within a creative organisational context.

Motivators and structure

Multiple level employee identification also emerged within the data, with owners, managers and employees indicating that they identified with a number of levels. This often linked to situational or nonsituational motivators. It was noted that some of the creative organisations had been specifically set up to react and flex very quickly to situational factors as driven by the client, and this was seen to impact on the way that employees were likely to identify with the organisation. This organisational structure and approach also often led to multiple identities and images being perceived by the clients. This aspect is relatively under reported within the current creativity and identity literature and is an area worthy of further investigation within a creative context.

Vision divergence

The findings also demonstrated that single visions could sit at any level of the creative organisation and were even apparent at senior levels within some of the case studies' guiding coalitions. This would create significant problems for the formation of a consistent organisational identity and brand. For some clients however, rather than being viewed as a problem, the potential for 'vision gaps'⁵¹ actually appealed, as in some circumstances it added to the client's perception of greater organisational creativity. Once again, this finding conflicts with much of the existing organisational identity and corporate branding literature and is worthy of further investigation within this creative environmental context.

Client size experimentation and risk

In addition, the relevance and impact of the single visions often related to the size of the client or project/account, with smaller clients more likely to become exposed to the creative organisation's multiple identities due to having a closer more personal relationship than many of the larger clients. Consequently, it was noted that the creative brand in relation to smaller clients often appeared to be more readily characterised by fragmented and nonuniform identities. This may also be occurring as the creative suppliers seemed more willing to experiment with their creativity and thus take greater risks with the projects for smaller clients. This aspect has been touched upon in previous organisational creativity literature, especially in the advertising client–agency relationship literature. Nevertheless, the impact on the perception of the creative organisational brand, as the result of any increased experimentation and risk behaviour being exhibited towards smaller clients by the creative supplier, within the broader context of the creative industries, may still be worthy of further empirical investigation.

CONCLUSION

Creative organisations rely heavily on their own employees and internal processes for enhancing creativity, which in turn enhances their creative reputation and strengthens their organisational brand. Hence, as seen, issues relating to organisational creativity and identity are of heightened significance. Although some organisational creativity and identity studies have been conducted at the conceptual level, there are relatively few studies addressing processes of creative identity construction at the personal level, as attempted within this paper. This study is also empirically based, whereas to date, much of the pre-existing creativity literature at an organisational level is nonempirically based and not situated around real-life organisational research or settings. By following a rigorous inductive approach based on interviews across all levels within three case study organisations and their clients, complex and inter-relating issues have been uncovered, relating to organisational creativity, identity and the brand. This study has, therefore, started to address the requests to broaden the contours of research into creative organisations and their brands.^{11, 52}

The themes identified have a number of implications for the practitioner and academic communities. It is apparent from this research that organisational creativity and identity management in relation to the brand may present a particular dilemma for creative organisations for a whole host of reasons. Figure 2 summarises the often subtle and complex issues which owners, managers and researchers may need to keep in mind.

Figure 2.

Factors contributing to problematic brand management within creative organisations

Full figure and legend (116K)

Scope for future research

To conclude, the following may prove to be particularly interesting and fruitful avenues for further inductive investigation within a creative branding context:

1. The use of the internet or other forms of mobile communication to aid or manage the organisational identification process for creatives, particularly if working in dispersed project teams, or away from their base among clients or at home telecommuting for long periods.
2. The impact on the perception and management of the creative brand, as the result of any increased experimentation or risk-taking behaviour being exhibited towards projects for smaller clients (than large clients) by the creative supplier.
3. Why and how do multiple organisational identities as generated by the 'disidentification' behaviour of some creative employees, actually appeal to a sub-set of clients, and what are the implications from an organisational identity and corporate branding perspective.
4. Finally, the management of those rarer employees identified as 'mavericks' within a creative team or organisation may present additional issues in relation to the management of the organisational brand than has been discussed here.

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Acknowledgements

I thank Temi Abimbola at the University of Warwick (Journal Joint Editor-in-Chief) for administering the blind peer review process leading to this paper's acceptance in the special edition. Additional gratitude is expressed for the comments provided by the two anonymous reviewers.