Corporate Image Making and Corporate Sustainability
Chapter One
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The objectives of the study are;
- To ascertain the relationship between corporate image making and corporate sustainability
- To ascertain the impact of corporate image making on organizational productivity
- To examine ways Agip oil and gas company integrated corporate social responsibility strategy with the organization operation
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
CORPORATE IMAGE: CONCEPT AND DEFINITION
Image, in terms of corporations, refers to how stakeholders perceive and interpret the ways in which an organization manifests itself (Melewar, 2003; Hatch & Schultz, 1997), in other words, how others see organizations (Chun, 2005) or what comes to mind when one hears or sees the logo of a corporation (Gray & Balmer, 1998) and make sense of the activities they perform. Balmer and Gray (2000) similarly emphasize the external aspects of corporate image and state that “corporate image is the immediate mental picture that individuals or individual stakeholder groups have of an organization (p. 260), and in the same vein, Bromley (1993) proposes that image is the summary of the impressions or perceptions held by external stakeholders. When carefully reviewing these definitions, one can easily notice that in these definitions, only the perception of the recipient of the image is considered; however, in contrast, Whetten and Mackey (2002) emphasize the image maker’s role in terms of how these perceptions are created or manipulated and state that image is the way organization consistently reflects itself in terms of how they would like to be visualized and defined corporate image as “what organizational agents want their external stakeholders to understand is most central, enduring, and distinctive about their organization”, and in the same vein, Whetten, Lewis and Mischel (1992) later defined image as the way organizational elites would like outsiders to see the organization. Alvesson and Berg (1992) added that companies build a corporate image in order to increase the organization’s attractiveness to customers. These definitions and explanations emphasize the sensory, perception and judgmental aspects of the image, but in here the image is induced by the corporation and thus is formed through various corporate behaviors, which was defined as “fabrication of public impressions” by Bernstein (1984), in order to mold public opinion or judgment in favor of the corporation. Dutton and Dukerich (1991) bring a different perspective by arguing that there are two key organizational images: the first image is what the member believes is distinctive, central, and enduring about the organization, which is defined as perceived organizational identity (in other words, ‘in my opinion, my corporation possesses these distinct characteristics’). The second image is what a member believes outsiders think about the organization (also clearly emphasized in Chun, 2005), which is called the construed external image (see also Dutton, Dukerich & Harquail, 1994) (in other words, ‘in my opinion, my corporation is probably perceived this way’). Berg (1985) fills the gap by stating that the corporate image is “the holistic and vivid impression of a company, held in common by a group and expressing and orienting their basic feelings and attitudes towards the company, which is further supported by the statement that image is what customers believe or feel about the company from their experiences and observation (Bernstein, 1984). Berg (1985) and Bernstein (1984) take into consideration the external audiences’ view in terms of how they associate themselves with the corporations. Based on our literature review, we can conclude by stating that there are five principal aspects of corporate image: (a) perceived identity; in other words, what members think about how their organizations are distinctly characterized (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991); (b) construed image; what members think outsiders think about their organization (Dutton et al., 1994; Dutton & Dukerich, 1991), (c) projected image; what members present or project about their organization to influence how others think about the organization (Alvesson & Berg, 1992; Bernstein, 1984; Whetten et al., 1992, Whetten & Mackey, 2002), (d) perceived image; what outsiders think about an organization (Berg, 1985; Bromley, 1993; Chun, 2005; Gray & Balmer, 1998), and finally (e) espoused image; how members of the public associate themselves with the image of the organization (Berg, 1985; Bernstein, 1984). In summary, corporate image is the mental map that constituencies have about the organization (Belasen, 2008). In line with the aforementioned sensory, perception, and judgmental aspects of corporate image and also in light of the definitions and explanations thus far, our own definition of the corporate image is, ‘the composition of all the information people obtain and subconsciously reserve about an organization during a specific timeframe, which cumulatively culminates in an evaluative perceptional favorable or unfavorable judgment, using all the communication resources available to them’
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research design
The researcher used descriptive research survey design in building up this project work the choice of this research design was considered appropriate because of its advantages of identifying attributes of a large population from a group of individuals. The design was suitable for the study as the study sought to corporate image making and corporate sustainability
Sources of data collection
Data were collected from two main sources namely:
(i)Primary source and
(ii)Secondary source
Primary source:
These are materials of statistical investigation which were collected by the research for a particular purpose. They can be obtained through a survey, observation questionnaire or as experiment; the researcher has adopted the questionnaire method for this study.
Secondary source:
These are data from textbook Journal handset etc. they arise as byproducts of the same other purposes. Example administration, various other unpublished works and write ups were also used.
Population of the study
Population of a study is a group of persons or aggregate items, things the researcher is interested in getting information corporate image making and corporate sustainability. 200 staff of Agip oil and gas company, Rivers state was selected randomly by the researcher as the population of the study.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION ANALYSIS INTERPRETATION OF DATA
Introduction
Efforts will be made at this stage to present, analyze and interpret the data collected during the field survey. This presentation will be based on the responses from the completed questionnaires. The result of this exercise will be summarized in tabular forms for easy references and analysis. It will also show answers to questions relating to the research questions for this research study. The researcher employed simple percentage in the analysis.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Introduction
It is important to ascertain that the objective of this study was to ascertain corporate image making and corporate sustainability
In the preceding chapter, the relevant data collected for this study were presented, critically analyzed and appropriate interpretation given. In this chapter, certain recommendations made which in the opinion of the researcher will be of benefits in addressing the challenges of corporate image making and corporate sustainability
Summary
This study was on corporate image making and corporate sustainability. Three objectives were raised which included: To ascertain the relationship between corporate image making and corporate sustainability, to ascertain the impact of corporate image making on organizational productivity, to examine ways Agip oil and gas company integrated corporate social responsibility strategy with the organization operation. In line with these objectives, two research hypotheses were formulated and two null hypotheses were posited. The total population for the study is 200 staff of Agip oil and gas, Rivers state. The researcher used questionnaires as the instrument for the data collection. Descriptive Survey research design was adopted for this study. A total of 133 respondents made up human resource managers, production managers, senior staff and junior staff was used for the study. The data collected were presented in tables and analyzed using simple percentages and frequencies
Conclusion
There are a lot of similar concepts regarding sustainability in business. To the end, we have pointed out that the research regarding the corporate performance in Julius Berger Plc. After analyzing the responses it can be concluded that CSR activities have a positive impact on a company’s image. A positive image creates good relations with stakeholders, attracts investors, and the company will enjoy positive media reviews. The researchers can thereby conclude that CSR activities by UM have played a significant role on the positive company image they are currently enjoying. This was clearly supported by 85.5% of the respondents agreed that CSR activities enhance company image.
Recommendation
It is recommended that Agip oil and gas management involve employees in choosing the type of corporate philanthropy activity to implement. Employees are also stakeholders and some of them are part of the community, therefore their contributions are important. Involving employees in decision making will result in them taking ownership of not only the corporate philanthropy activities of the company but the company as a whole. Agip oil and gas could also put more investment on the other dimension of CSR as they are doing with corporate philanthropy. The other dimensions of CSR are just as important as corporate philanthropy. Coordinating all the four dimensions of CSR will indeed benefit the company
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