Symbols and Artifacts

Views of the Corporate Landscape

Pasquale Gagliardi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780202304281
• eBook ISBN: 9781351487290
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

A selection of 18 papers from an international conference in Milan, June 1987, organized by the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism. Details how corporate artifacts are invested with meaning, are related to control, and can be used as cultural indicators in research. Among the topics are office design, housing modifications, computer systems, and the space shuttle. Fairly devoid of specialist jargon.

Part I:
Designing Physical Settings in Organizations

Corporate Architecture: Turning Physical Settings into Symbolic Resources

Per Olof Berg and Kristian Kreiner

1 Corporate Architecture – Vanity or Asset

It is an indisputable fact that organizations increasingly care about their physical appearance. Huge amounts of money are being invested in improved corporate “looks,” in terms of slick, stylish corporate buildings, new office lay-outs and decorations, landscape gardening, graphic designs, corporate “uniforms” and colour codes, visual identities, etc. This apparent “corporate vanity” has infected organizations in most industrial sectors, for example in the corporate identity programmes in the petrol industry (Q8, Statoil, Mobil Oil, Caltex, Norsk Hydro, etc.), in corporate graphics in the airline industry (e.g. British Airways’ visual identity programme), and in image programmes in the telecommunication industry (e. g. AT & T and KTAS, Copenhagen). Even contractors, ordinarily known for their stolidity and distaste for bureaucratic red tape, nowadays paint their heavy equipment in carefully selected colours and develop professional graphic design for their stationery and forms. Also hospitals now renovate their facilities in order to look more inviting (Sponseller/Hatfield 1986)! The “styling” of corporations is, however, not limited to the surface of the organization but includes also the interior design and the lay-out of production plants and retail outlets (e. g. as in McDonald’s restaurants and Pizza Huts).

In this chapter we will focus on one facet of the physical appearance of organizations, i.e. the physical setting (the immediate built environment) in which organizations operate and with which they are identified. By physical setting we simply mean the exterior and interior design of corporate buildings. Of particular interest to us in this study are those aspects of the physical settings which are said to express particular and strategic aspects of the organization or its business (the corporate profile), or which delineate the organization as a whole, as experienced by its members (its identity). In modern managerial terms, this is often referred to as “corporate architecture” (when referring to the overall architectonic aspects of the buildings), as “interior design” (when referring to the inside of the buildings with their space lay-out, choice of colours, furniture, etc.), as “visual identity” (when referring to all forms of visual material, such as logos, office design, retail outlet design, colours, and uniforms), and as “corporate design” (when referring to products – and the way in which they are packaged and sold –, buildings and settings). In this chapter we will mainly use examples of corporate architecture. However, our discussion can be used in a discourse on any of the corporate activities mentioned above.

In a strictly “instrumental” perspective it is easy to ridicule this preoccupation with corporate surfaces and physical appearance. How could one ever justify a $ 50 million investment in a corporate identity programme? Are not the buildings of many new corporate headquarters signs of megalomania or self-inflation on behalf of a corporate president rather than the result of a carefully calculated facility plan?

However, when seen in a symbolic perspective, buildings and other physical artifacts take on a new meaning that does not lend itself easily to pure instrumental explanations. In this perspective, buildings may be seen as symbolic artifacts that reflect (and as such may inform us about) some basic traits of the organization inhabiting them. While the physical setting is not ascribed great significance in conventional organization theory, it is indeed a common understanding that the individuality of organizations somehow surfaces in the way they build and dwell:

The individuality of the great [British Railway] companies was expressed in styles of architecture, typography and liveries of engines and carriages, even down to the knives and forks and crockery used in refreshment rooms and dining cars. The Midland favoured Gothic, and so, in a less expensive way, did the Great Eastern. The Great Western remained its strong Gooch-and-Brunel self. Greek learning dominated the London and North Western. The Great Northern went in for a reliable homeliness rather than beauty. The Midland Railway was the line for comfort rather than speed. It introduced dining cars in the very early days and its rolling stock was always particularly agreeable to travel on, although rarely quite as fast as its competitors. St Pancras Station, its scarlet brick terminal in London, was much grander than next door King’s Cross, London terminal of the rival Great Northern Railway. The Great Northern was, as Betjeman says, “noted more for its trains than its buildings.” The Midland put Sir Gilbert Scott’s fantastical Gothic palace in front of Barlow’s magnificent engine shed, but the Great Northern’s workman-like King’s Cross was designed by Lewis Cubitt with the minimum delay, cost and fuss (Olins 1978: 19–21).

While the individuality of organizations, presumably to a large degree unwittingly, is expressed in their physical settings, the phenomenon of corporate vanity signifies a greater intentionality in the choice of physical expression. Coinciding with the enlarged notion of management, now also to include the task of meaning creation and maintenance (Pfeffer 1981), corporate buildings have in the hands of contemporary management been transformed from “containers” of organized behaviour to impelling symbols of corporate virtues and managerial intentions. As such, buildings and other physical artifacts have become powerful managerial tools as well as tools of production. This is almost an institutionalized truth by now, and at any rate the kind of argument which is brought forward as managerial justification for the often heavy investments in the physical appearance of the organization.

Furthermore, the emphasis on corporate surfaces can be seen as a purposeful adaptation to postmodern society with its emphasis on appearance and mass communication. What counts today is as much the appearance of an organization – and thus its credibility – as its performance.

However, as we will show in this chapter, the relationship between the building as such and what it is meant to signify in the life of the organization or in society is not only a largely unexplored empirical field, but also a highly problematic theoretical territory. How do we, for example, know that a certain design will evoke a certain emotional, aesthetic, or intellectual collective response, and through which processes is the dead material of buildings (the bricks and beams) turned into living symbolic assets?

Thus, the aim of our study is to clarify the mechanisms by means of which the physical settings of organizations may indeed become symbolic resources. We are convinced that the intended symbolism in corporate buildings is commonly known by organizational members and others. At the same time, however, the technology of symbolic management appears, in our analysis, to be extremely unclear. Untangling this paradox helps us to understand more precisely which role physical symbols play in contemporary organizations.

2 The State of the Art

The symbolic aspects of the physical settings, especially the built environments which man inhabits, have been recognized as important and valid phenomena in most of the social sciences. Archaeologists have studied the remains of buildings of past civilizations, which has enabled them to grasp the way in which people of a particular civilization lived, produced, and interacted. Anthropologists and sociologists have studied existing buildings and recognized the social structure and social relationships of the cultures under study. There are even today sub-sciences primarily concerned with the way in which man interacts with his physical settings in symbolic terms. One example is “environmental psychology” which is dealing with the subtle and complex consequences of physical conditions on human behaviour.

While earlier research in this field was mostly concerned with physical structures and physical stimuli and their effects on performance and comfort, recent efforts have been directed also towards studying physical settings as symbolic artifacts (Davis 1984). This leads to a perspective which claims that:

… the dominant influence of the physical surroundings … is via its significance. It is what the existing surroundings and proposed modifications mean to people involved which carry their influence, much more than any direct effects on behaviour (Canter 1983: 12).

Theory of architecture has undergone a parallel development. Recent reformulations of the role of architecture amend the previous preoccupation with manipulating only space:

… an essential aspect of people’s interaction with buildings is the meanings they associate with those buildings; therefore, good design should encompass a conscious manipulation of intended meanings (Groat/Canter 1979: 84).

When applied to the business world, there is even a greater emphasis on the meaning-bridging aspect of buildings. Corporate architecture, as well as plant and environmental design, is seen as a way of infusing the corporation, its activities, and its products with meaning.

However, within organization theory the interest in physical settings (in physical as well as in symbolic terms) is conspicuously little. This void has been noticed occasionally, and a few exceptions to the above rule can be found (Davis 1984, Pfeffer 1981, Steel 1973). However, these studies mainly fail to integrate the physical settings into an overall theoretical framework relevant to organizations, and, instead, tend to consider buildings another variable in the organization equation.

Even in the organizational symbolism literature corporate buildings are studied as symbols only occasionally (Grafton-Small 1985, Grafton-Small/Linstead 1986, Schneider/Powley 1986).

We are bound to conclude that at the level of organizations the significance of physical settings (especially that of corporate buildings) is almost entirely without theoretical underpinnings. On the other hand, much practical experience on this issue seems to have been gained in the field of corporate architecture and environmental design. The practical use of corporate buildings as symbolic artifacts seems to have been spurred by two developments.

First, there is an increased demand among employees (or at least an increased awareness of such demand) for physical signs of their standing within the organization (in terms of status, reputation, performance, etc). This is also manifested in the increase of narrative or popular accounts of corporate culture (Holm-Löfgren 1980, Page 1974). A quick review of the vast bulk of literature on corporate culture has convinced us that buildings, settings, equipment, products, and other physical artifacts are not only recognized but also considered important in the shaping and maintenance of corporate culture.

Second, there seems to be an increased desire among corporate managers for giving the corporate profile a physical expression in the buildings they inhabit, for internal as well as external purposes. Whether this is only an expression of managerial megalomania or a purposeful corporate adaptation to postmodern society, we do not know. The fact remains, however, that buildings tend to become increasingly important in expressing corporate identity.

Assertions as to the symbolic functions of corporate buildings on which corporate architecture is practiced are frequently explicitly stated in corporate communications. The intended meanings of newly constructed or remodelled buildings are recurrent topics in annual reports, anniversary brochures, information leaflets, public statements, and circulated anecdotes. The same is true of reviews of commercial buildings which more and more business and professional magazines run on a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Preface
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: Designing Physical Settings in Organizations
• Part II: Disclosing Organizational Cultures Through Artifacts
• Part III: Root Metaphors Embedded in Artifacts
• Part IV: Artifacts and Organizational Control
• Part V: De-Constructing Artifacts
• The Authors