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Facets of Corporate Identity,
Communication, and Reputation
Corporate branding and communication is big business. Companies throughout the world
invest millions in strategies which aim to reinvent their proﬁle in subtle yet important
ways. The investment must be working, but what is it being spent on, and how do these
rebranding exercises work?
Including contributions from academics and practitioners, this important collection
unravels the complexities of this growing ﬁeld of study. The text is split into three co-
herent parts, focusing in turn on identity, communication, and reputation. Case studies
are used throughout the book to illustrate important issues, such as the basic principles
of visual communication, the importance of reaching both internal and external stake-
holders, and the challenges faced by companies working in multi-cultural environments.
This book brings clarity and new theoretical insights to an important aspect of
modern business. It is an invaluable companion for all students, researchers, and
practitioners with an interest in marketing, communications, and international business.
Professor T. C. Melewar is Professor of Marketing and Strategy at Brunel Business
School, Brunel University, London. He teaches on a range of undergraduate, MBA, and
executive courses with companies such as Nestlé, Safeway, Corus, and Sony, and is a
Visiting Professor at Groupe ECS Grenoble, France, and Humboldt University, Berlin,
Germany.
He is also the Joint Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Brand Management, and on
the Editorial Advisory Board for the Journal of Marketing Communications, Corporate
Reputation Review, the Journal of International Consumer Marketing, Corporate Com-
munications: An International Journal, and the Journal of Euro-Marketing.

Facets of
Corporate Identity,
Communication,
and Reputation
Edited by
T. C. Melewar

First published 2008 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2008 T. C. Melewar for selection and editorial matter; individual contributors, their
contributions
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Facets of corporate identity, communication, and reputation / edited by T. C. Melewar.
p. cm.
ISBN 978–0–415–40527–0 (hardback)—ISBN 978–0–415–40528–7 (pbk)
1. Corporate identity. 2, Corporate image. 3. Communication in marketing.
4. Industrial publicity. 5. Corporations—Public relations. I. Melewar, T. C. II. Title.
HD59.2.F33 2007
659.2—dc22
2007032018
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN13: 978–0–415–40527–0 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–40528–7 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–93194–3 (ebk)
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
ISBN 0-203-93194-7 Master e-book ISBN

Contents
List of illustrations vii
Notes on contributors ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Part I CORPORATE IDENTITY 1
1 Explicating the relationship between identity and culture:
a multi-perspective conceptual model 3
Kevin James Vella and T. C. Melewar
2 An epiphany of three: corporate identity, corporate brand management,
and corporate marketing 35
John M. T. Balmer
3 Non-traditional expressions of organizational visual identity: reaching
consumers through alternative means 55
Sue Westcott Alessandri
4 Illustrations of the internal management of corporate identity 66
Cláudia Simões and Sally Dibb
Part II CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS 81
5 Corporate communications and corporate reputation: understanding how
(best) practices make a difference 83
Tibor van Bekkum, Joep P. Cornelissen, and Betteke van Ruler
6 How speciﬁc should corporate communication be? The role of advertising
language in establishing a corporate reputation for CSR 96
Guido Berens and Johan van Rekom
v

7 Corporate Communication: reputation in action 121
Tom Watson and Philip J. Kitchen
8 Employing effective leadership in a crisis: a case study of Malden Mills,
corporate reputation, and the limits of socially responsible public relations 141
Richard Alan Nelson and Ali M. Kanso
Part III CORPORATE REPUTATION 161
9 Projecting corporate character in the branding of business schools 163
Gary Davies and Rosa Chun
10 Creating better corporate reputations: an Australian perspective 178
Grahame Dowling
11 An attitudinal measure of corporate reputation 197
Albert Caruana
12 Corporate reputation building: an Asian perspective 211
Nopporn Srivoravilai and T. C. Melewar
Index 229
vi
CONTENTS

Illustrations
FIGURES
1.1 Melewar’s corporate identity taxonomy 10
1.2 Hatch’s cultural dynamics model 21
1.3 The IFMD model: identity formation, maturation, and dissemination at
the cultural level of analysis 26
2.1 Balmer’s corporate marketing mix 49
4.1 Corporate identity management triangle 70
6.1 The inﬂuence of perceived CSR ad factualness on diagnostic value, ad
credibility, and corporate associations 105
6.2 The factual (above) and impressionistic ads (below) used in the experiment 107
6.3 Results 111
8.1 Factors inﬂuencing corporate reputation 143
8.2 A model of how corporate reputation develops 144
8.3 A more comprehensive model of the corporate identity and reputation
management process 145
9.1 The image and identity of MBS as seen in 1998 172
9.2 Final version of the MBS logo 174
9.3 Example of sub-logo signage 174
9.4 Example of sub-branding: the Center for Business Research logo 175
10.1 The family of corporate reputation constructs 184
10.2 Creating a desired corporate image 187
11.1 Matrix indicating domains of corporate identity and corporate image 200
vii

TABLES
2.1 Comparing corporate with product brands 47
5.1 A practice perspective versus traditional perspectives on corporate
communications 85
5.2 The differences between best practice and signature practices 89
5.3 Signature practices in three European corporations 90
6.1 Examples of advertisements in corporate communication 97
6.2 Overview of hypotheses 105
6.3 Means, standard deviations, and correlations for the impressionistic ad 109
6.4 Means, standard deviations, and correlations for the factual ad 110
7.1 What % of your company’s corporate reputation is based on the CEO’s
reputation? 133
9.1a Mission 169
9.1b Vision 169
9.2 The seven dimensions of corporate character 171
9.3 Correlations of the seven dimensions of corporate character with
respondent satisfaction 171
12.1 Drivers of corporate reputation suggested by respondents 221
viii
ILLUSTRATIONS

Contributors
Sue Westcott Alessandri (Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
is an Assistant Professor at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communica-
tions at Syracuse University. She holds a joint appointment with the adver-
tising and public relations departments. Dr. Alessandri’s research has been
published in a variety of books and journals.
John M.T. Balmer (BA, MBA (Dunelm), Ph.D.) is Professor of Corporate
Marketing at Brunel University, London. Previously, he was Professor of
Corporate Identity at Bradford University School of Management and then
Professor of Corporate Brand/Identity Management at the same school.
Earlier on he was Director of the International Centre for Corporate Identity
Studies at Strathclyde Business School, Glasgow. His work has appeared in
the California Management Review, European Journal of Marketing, Long Range
Planning, and the British Journal of Management, among others. He is the
founder/chairman of the International Corporate Identity Group (ICIG)
which regularly holds conferences on identity as well as co-founder of the
International Centre for Corporate and Organisational Marketing Studies.
Guido Berens is Assistant Professor of Corporate Communication at the
department of Business-Society Management at RSM Erasmus University,
Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His research interests include corporate
branding, corporate social responsibility, and reputation management
Albert Caruana is Professor of Marketing at the University of Malta. His
research interests include marketing communications and services marketing.
He was Fulbright Scholar at San Diego State University, in the U.S.A., in
2004. He sits on the editorial board of several journals and has published in
numerous refereed journals.
ix

Rosa Chun is Professor of Business and Ethics and Corporate Social Responsi-
bility at Manchester Business School, England. Her work on testing the link
between corporate reputation, stakeholder satisfaction, and performance;
aligning image and identity; and virtue ethics, appears in over thirty publica-
tions including the Journal of Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS), Harvard
Business Review, and a co-authored book, Corporate Reputation and Competitive-
ness. She serves on the editorial boards of Corporate Reputation Review and
Creativity and Innovation Management.
Joep P. Cornelissen is Professor in Corporate Communication at Leeds
University Business School, University of Leeds. He is the author of Corporate
Communication: Theory and Practice.
Gary Davies is Professor of Corporate Reputation at Manchester Business
School, England. He has published inter alia in the Journal of the Academy of
Marketing Science, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Advertising
Research, and Industrial Marketing Management. His books include What Price
Reputation?, a study of how companies manage their corporate reputations
and Corporate Reputation and Competitiveness, the latter covering much of the
work of the Corporate Reputation Group at MBS.
Sally Dibb is Professor of Marketing at the Open University Business School,
UK. She graduated in Management Science and has a research master’s from
the University of Manchester and a Ph.D. in marketing from Warwick Uni-
versity. She has published widely in U.S. and European marketing journals
on the marketing of services, marketing planning, market segmentation, and
corporate identity, as well as textbooks and practitioner-oriented workbooks
on these themes.
Grahame Dowling is a Professor in the Australian School of Business at the
University of New South Wales and the Australian representative of the U.S.
and European think tank, the Reputation Institute. He has published over ﬁfty
academic papers and two books: Creating Corporate Reputations and The Art &
Science of Marketing.
Ali M. Kanso (Ph.D., Ohio University) is a Professor in the Department of
Communication at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Kanso’s research
focuses on international advertising, marketing, and public relations strategies.
His work has appeared in the Journal of Advertising Research, International
Journal of Advertising, International Marketing Review, Journal of Marketing Com-
munication, Journal of Promotion Management, and elsewhere.
x
CONTRIBUTORS

Philip J. Kitchen (Ph.D.) is Professor of Strategic Marketing at Hull University
Business School, Hull, UK. He is editor of the Journal of Marketing Communica-
tions. He has published 11 books and over 100 articles in leading journals
around the world. He was listed in “The Top 50 Gurus who have inﬂuenced
the Future of Marketing,” Marketing Business, December 2003, pp. 12–16.
He is a Fellow of CIM, the RSA, and Member of the Institute of Directors. A
recent report for the CIPR, UK, was A Marketing Communications Scenario for
2010. Recent co-authored books which relate to the topic of public relations
and marketing are: Raising the Corporate Umbrella: Corporate Communications in
the 21st Century and Integrated Marketing Communications: A Primer.
T. C. Melewar is Professor of Marketing and Strategy at Brunel University
London. He has previous experience at Warwick Business School, University
of Warwick, MARA Institute of Technology in Malaysia, Loughborough
University, UK, and De Montfort University, UK. T. C. teaches Marketing
Management, Marketing Communications, and International Marketing on a
range of undergraduate, MBA, and executive courses with companies such
as Nestlé, Safeway, Corus, and Sony. He is a Visiting Professor at Groupe ECS
Grenoble, France, and Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. His research
interests are global corporate identity, corporate branding, corporate
reputation, marketing communications, and international marketing strategy.
Richard Alan Nelson (Ph.D., Florida State University) is a Professor in the
Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University and
editor of the Journal of Promotion Management and Journal of Website Promotion.
His public relations and integrated marketing communications research
appears in the Journal of Advertising Research, International Marketing Review,
Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Communications, Public Relations
Review, and other leading journals.
Cláudia Simões is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management at
the University of Minho, Portugal. She holds a Ph.D. in Business and Indus-
trial Studies from Warwick Business School. Her research interests and publi-
cations are in corporate identity, image, brand, and reputation, as applied to
service organizations.
Nopporn Srivoravilai is a Lecturer in Marketing and Strategic Management at
the Faculty of Business Administration, Dhurakij Pundit University, Thailand.
He received his doctorate in industrial and business administration from
Warwick Business School, the University of Warwick, UK. His research
interests include corporate reputation and identity, brand management,
entrepreneurship, and the social dimension of strategic management. He also
xi
CONTRIBUTORS

has ten years of industry experience in the banking sector and is currently a
consultant to various Thai SMEs.
Tibor van Bekkum (M.Sc.) is a senior consultant for the Positioning Group
(www.positioneringsgroep.org): a European brand strategy consultancy
based in the Netherlands. His main focus is on positioning strategy issues for
corporate brands. In 2005 he published a booklet on the development of
positioning strategy: “Analyze This!”
Johan van Rekom is Assistant Professor at the Department of Marketing
Management at RSM Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands,
where he received his Ph.D. His research interests include organizational
identity, its eﬀects on employee motivation, cognitive structures at the
individual and at the organizational level, and brand essence.
Betteke van Ruler is full Professor of Communication and Organization at the
University of Amsterdam and member of the Amsterdam School of Com-
munications Research (ASCoR). Her research focuses on the inﬂuence of
public relations on journalism and the mediatization of organizations, on the
practice of communication management, and on the organization of the
communication of the organization. She has published in Public Relations
Review, Journal of Communication Management, Journal of Public Relations Research,
and in many Dutch scientiﬁc and professional journals. Recent books include
Communication Management: A Communication Scientiﬁc Approach and Career in
Communication (both in Dutch).
Kevin James Vella has an extensive track record in international sales and
marketing for several IT blue-chip brands, and is presently VP Sales and
Operations for Acunetix, a global web-security vendor. Kevin graduated
in Business Management with Honours from the University of Malta and
read an MBA in e-business from the Grenoble Graduate School of Business
(France).
Tom Watson is Deputy Dean (Education) and Reader in Communications at
Bournemouth University’s Media School. Before becoming a full-time
academic, he was managing director of a public relations consultancy and
chaired the U.K.’s Public Relations Consultants Association from 2000 to
2002.
xii
CONTRIBUTORS

Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION
The facets of corporate identity, corporate communications, and reputation
management have become increasingly important in theory and practice.
In theory, the volume of literature contributing to corporate identity, corporate
communications, and reputation through academic journals and conferences is
increasing exponentially. There is now a rise in the number of academics research-
ing these concepts at some well-reputed business schools since the 1980s. Many
research-led institutions, notably Brunel Business School, Birmingham Business
School, RSM Erasmus, Manchester Business School, Copenhagen Business School,
Queens School of Business, McIntire School of Commerce, Corporate Communi-
cations Institute, William S. Spears School of Business, Leeds University Business
School, Australian Graduate School of Management (just to mention a few) have
now become the hub of world-class research in these disciplines.
In practice, these facets are now recognized as strategic tools driving and
enhancing the achievement of competitive advantage. It is now certain that the
presentation of corporate identity through corporate communications is inﬂuen-
tial and bears on corporate reputation. Thus, many national, multinational, and
even SMEs that are smart enough to quickly recognize the beneﬁts and impor-
tance of the management of these tools, are devoting millions of dollars to them.
The rising importance of these tools reﬂects the enormous amount of resources
devoted to them. For instance, after a consolidation exercise in 2000 with Amoco
and ARCO, BP committed a whopping sum of $US7m on researching and
preparing its new corporate identity and corporate communications and pro-
tecting its corporate reputation around the world. The sum of $US25m was
further proposed to support the changes in BP’s retail signage. In 2003, BT
(British Telecom) dedicated about £5m to the development of a new visual
identity (i.e. connected world) to represent its incursion into a wide range of
xiii

business activities, project its multimedia capabilities and express its inter-
nationalization.
Increasingly, ﬁrms have realized that the management of these tools can
increase return on investment, motivate employees, attract the most intelligent
and talented executives, and serve as a means of diﬀerentiating their products and
services. Many ﬁrms that would never have included the management of these
tools within the corporate strategy framework are now taking greater interest in
them. Consequently, the facets of corporate identity, corporate communications,
and reputation, have attracted the interest of many senior managers—and these
facets are increasingly becoming one of the key responsibilities of the CEO.
In spite of the rising prominence of the facets of corporate identity, corporate
communications, and reputation, many issues surround them remains ambiguous.
For instance, it is not clear how corporate identity functions within the context of
organizational culture; neither is theoretical literature clear on the quintessential
nature of corporate identity, corporate branding, and corporate marketing and
these have not been fully explored. In another vein, there is limited understanding
of how integrated marketing communications (IMC) frames non-traditional
expressions of identity; neither are we clear on how corporate internalities can be
deployed to enhance the eﬀective management of a ﬁrm’s visual identity.
This book bridges these gaps and attempts to ﬁll several other vacuums in
literature by providing readers with insights into a range of exciting dialogues
taking place across the facets of corporate identity, corporate communications, and
corporate reputation management. Contributions to this book are momentous in
implication, reﬂecting the currency of thought, ideas, analysis, and practices
taking place within these disciplines. The debate in this book does not only
unsettle the conceptual landscape within the disciplines of corporate marketing
but it also complements existing theory, oﬀering unparallel opportunities for
further academic deliberation in the future. This book invites readers to view
new theories from which a greater understanding of the management of these
disciplines can emerge.
The ﬁrst part of this book contains four chapters, which squarely addresses
the facet of corporate identity. Chapter 1 provides a focus on the understanding
of corporate identity within the context of organizational culture. It fertilizes
corporate identity literature within cultural theory perspectives in order to
amplify present understanding of the concept of identity. The chapter attempts to
achieve these objectives by proposing a conceptual model, which explains identity
formation, maturation, and dissemination at the cultural level of analysis. Chapter
2 explores the quintessential natures of corporate identity, corporate branding
and corporate marketing. The chapter explains the importance and practical
utility of adopting an identity-based view of the corporation and identity-based
view of corporate branding. It addresses the paradigm shift that has led to the
introduction and adaptation of the marketing orientation and corporate marketing
xiv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

philosophy in business organizations. The chapter draws attention to the six
elements of corporate marketing mix, namely, character, culture, constituencies,
communications, conceptualization, and covenant.
Chapter 3 addresses how IMC can be deployed in the framing of non-
traditional expressions of identity. Additionally, this chapter traces the historical
roots of non-traditional expressions of identity in order to establish how and why
organizations depend on non-traditional expressions. The chapter also attempts to
explain the meaning of non-traditional expressions of visual identity and addresses
how these expressions can be strategically deployed to reach customers. Speciﬁc
examples are drawn to illustrate the relevance of non-traditional expressions of
corporate identity and how they reinforce visual identity. Chapter 4 (the last
chapter in this part) concerns the internalities of managing a corporate identity.
Speciﬁcally it considers how diﬀerent aspects of corporate identity (including
visuals) can be internally managed by organizations. In addition, the chapter
examines corporate identity together with other related concepts and gives focus
to the features of corporate identity management.
The second part contains four chapters and it addresses the facet of corporate
communications and the management of this discipline. The ﬁfth chapter in this
part of the book is devoted to how best practices (within corporate brand
management and corporate communications framework) can be deployed to
focus on describing and understanding the ways that organizations build and
maintain strong corporate reputations with stakeholders. In so doing, the chapter
attempts to distinguish between best practices and signature practices, highlight-
ing why signature practices make a diﬀerence. The chapter also attempts to
explain the issues and challenges facing corporate communication professionals.
The main objective in Chapter 6 is to establish whether factual information (in
corporate advertisements) about an organization’s corporate social responsibility
(CSR) activities inﬂuences corporate reputation. More importantly, the chapter
addresses the importance of providing factual information in relation to the
advertisement of an organization’s corporate social responsibilities. In addition,
trade-oﬀs between the persuasion of external stakeholders through factual infor-
mation and the fostering of the identiﬁcation of internal stakeholders through
impressionistic information is comprehensively addressed.
Chapter 7 takes a look at ‘reputation in action’ as a key driver of corporate
communication and explores case studies of reputation. The chapter aims to
create a better understanding of the various notions and deﬁnition of corporate
reputation by giving insight into the nature of the current debates about this
concept. The chapter highlights the nature of corporate reputation management
and underscores its relationship with corporate communications strategy. In
addition an attempt is made in this chapter to explain the factors enhancing best
practices in reputation-led corporate communication. Chapter 8 determines how
corporate reputation is understood and evaluated and explores the importance
xv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

and limitations of public relations in the management of business crises. The
chapter also applies a case study method to corporate identity challenges as
witnessed by organizations.
Part III draws together contributions towards the corporate reputation facet—
and it begins with an insight into the practicalities of implementing a new direc-
tion for the corporate reputation of an organization by drawing from a study of
Manchester Business School, repositioning experience and using the corporate
character scale to measure an organization’s corporate reputation. In addition, this
chapter also provides insight into how organizations can use visual identity as
part of their reputation management process together with how a visioning pro-
cess can work collaboratively with market research on the reputation perceptions
of internal and external stakeholders.
Chapter 10 looks at how organizations can build and restore their good names
in a multicultural society like Australia. It highlights some aspects of the Australian
business culture that aﬀect the creation of corporate reputations and provides a
blueprint for corporate reputation development. The chapter also discusses some
of the challenges and issues facing corporate reputation managers.
Chapter 11 considers the concept of corporate reputation from an attitudinal
approach drawing on Ajzen’s (1991) theory of planned behavior. By drawing
together an established theory with recognized questionnaire-building procedures,
the chapter provides a platform for a better understanding the role of corporate
reputation in relation to other corporate marketing concepts. In addition, this
chapter addresses the concepts of corporate identity, corporate image, and
corporate reputation, highlighting the main ways in which corporate reputation is
currently measured. Importantly, the introduction and inclusion of an alternative
attitudinal measure within the theory of planned behavior is advocated. The
chapter maps this theory to the development of questionnaires in order to
measure corporate reputation. The advantage and implications of the study are
highlighted and possible limitations are discussed. This book ends with Chapter
12, which addresses the gap in understanding the development and maintenance
of corporate reputation in organizations outside Europe and the United States. A
qualitative research approach (including a semi-structured interview and focus
group) was deployed to investigate the determinants of corporate reputation
of companies in Asia. This chapter attempts to give an insight into the nature of
economic and non-economic determinants of corporate reputation together
with the importance of long-term corporate reputation, particularly in Asia.
It highlights cultural complexities and how they impinge on the understanding of
corporate reputation.
It has been a highly challenging and stimulating experience to edit this book.
I have gathered a collection of refreshing views on corporate identity, emanating
from a diverse spectrum of perspectives. Academics and practitioners have con-
tributed to this collection and to this diversity through the diﬀerent countries that
xvi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

are included in their research. Special thanks go to Francesca Heslop, senior
commissioning editor, whose enthusiasm for the ﬁeld and constant encourage-
ment have contributed to the high caliber the publication has achieved. A note of
thank you to Tayo Otubanjo and Suraksha Gupta for assisting in compiling the
book. We hope you will ﬁnd the book interesting and thought-provoking. This
collection of research material aims to push the boundaries of our knowledge and
understanding of corporate branding, identity, and communication, and to steer
future research agendas towards newer horizons.
REFERENCES
Ajzen, I. (1991) “The theory of planned behaviour.” Organizational Behaviour and
Human Decision Process, 50: 179–211.
xvii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Part I
Corporate identity

Chapter 1
Explicating the relationship
between identity and culture
A multi-perspective conceptual model
Kevin James Vella and T. C. Melewar
AT THE END OF THIS CHAPTER READERS SHOULD BE
ABLE TO:
1 Understand corporate identity, related concepts, and beneﬁts of corporate
identity management to internal and external stakeholders
2 Appreciate the dire need in the present case of affairs for furthering a uniﬁed
and multi-disciplinary approach within the parameters set out by leading
authors in the ﬁeld
3 Specify internal corporate identity management dimensions
4 Specify the role of culture within corporate identity and the interplay of
related variables in the formation, maturation, and dissemination of identity
at the cultural level of analysis
KEY POINTS
A strong identity is an avenue for achieving positive images among internal stakeholders, a favorable reputation in the labor market, and, thus, a means to secure and sustain competitive advantage
Practitioners and academics have shown consistency in the concepts of identity for a number of years; however, an impasse has been reached and the area requires a move towards addressing an empirical paralysis
Central to the identity formation, maturation, and dissemination process, are management and employees
Organizational culture is central to the study of identity. However, identity literature shows weakness in the treatment of the concept with regard to several aspects including the approach that culture is shared by most, if not
3

all, organizational members, thus disregarding aspects of conﬂict and
ambiguity
Organizational culture is an important frame of reference and an interpretive
mechanism also used by all organizational members to translate
management-transmitted identity programs into images, perceptions,
cognitions, and emotions towards their organization, colleagues, and
subordinates. Cultural processes are dynamic and require close attention
Identity studies necessitate the study of meanings behind all cultural manifestations deposited by management and employees
An identity formation, maturation, and formation process model is presented and is aimed at galvanizing empirical research
INTRODUCTION
Although not the panacea to modern corporate ills, identity provides managers
with a strategic resource for building and delivering value among employees and,
consequently, enhancing employee retention, recruitment and loyalty. Over time,
such desirable outcomes result in strong and enduring reputations that fuel proﬁt-
ability, growth, and competitive advantage.
Whereas organizations may deploy similar products, marketing campaigns,
business strategies, and structural conﬁgurations, there exist characteristics that
are inimitable elsewhere. These characteristics emerge from the synergic con-
glomeration of unique individuals who come together, bringing to bear their skills,
personalities, expectations, and behavior upon and within organizational life while
developing corporate culture through daily interaction. Moreover, from time to
time, management make statements to reﬂect their perceptions of and aspirations
for the organization they lead. Managerial inﬂuences and frames of reference are
diverse and include organizational culture. Managers must expose and present
these elements eﬀectively to all organizational members (corporate identity)
while attuning themselves closely to how all members perceive, think, feel, and
behave towards their organizations (organizational identity). Although formal
marketing communications programs may be important, research has shown
that external stakeholder images are heavily inﬂuenced by interactions with
employees.
Internal identity management programs, therefore, should encompass
management-initiated eﬀorts to manifest the central characteristics of their
organization to its members. Equal attention, on the other hand, should be
awarded to employee images of, responses to and aﬃnity with these and other
organizational characteristics. Identity programs are developed within and driven
by a contextual triumvirate, namely, strategy, structure, and culture, and are
4
KEVIN JAMES VELLA AND T. C. MELEWAR

brought to life by organizational members through mediated communication and
behavior and a wide range of symbolic manifestations ranging from graphic
design to oﬃce décor to cultural artefacts. Failure or success of identity manage-
ment programs depends entirely on the resultant perceptions, beliefs, emotions,
and behaviour of organizational members. The dynamics of organizational culture
are also paramount.
Identity is thus a holistic construct enveloping most salient aspects of organiza-
tions. It is strategic in nature embracing all functions and aspects of organizational
life.
This chapter aims to provide an understanding of the identity concepts within
the context of organizational culture and to fertilize identity studies with the rich
perspectives found within cultural theory, thus amplifying present understanding.
We propose a conceptual model that explains identity formation, maturation,
and dissemination at the cultural level of analysis and that facilitates empirical
research.
The chapter is divided into four sections with the ﬁrst part brieﬂy outlining the
main issues within the area and delineating the emergent multi-disciplinary
movement that seeks a uniﬁed approach to identity. The second part of the
chapter applies the uniﬁed cross-disciplinary approach to extract, from extant
literature, working deﬁnitions of the identity concepts sometimes used, and, often
confusingly so, interchangeably. We use a functionalist lens when exploring cor-
porate identity, image, and reputation, and an interpretivist one when analyzing
organizational identity. In the third part, we explore the nature of organizational
culture from a symbolic perspective to address the gaps and weaknesses of extant
identity models. The chapter concludes by combining the concepts of identity into
a single multi-perspective conceptual model that explains identity formation,
maturation, and dissemination at the cultural level of analysis.
A UNIFIED AND MULTI-DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE
Identity literature is rich with contributions from practitioners and academics
and reﬂects unanimous agreement on the importance of identity to organizations
(Balmer and Greyser 2003) and on its instrumental role as a resource of strategic
import (Melewar et al. 2005, 2003; Balmer 2001, 1998). However, a set of
problems has hampered theoretical growth and empirical progress (Cornelissen
and Elving 2003).
Considerable debate surrounds the plethora of deﬁnitions of and the relation-
ships between the concepts of corporate identity (Melewar and Jenkins 2002)
and the related terms of corporate image, organizational identity and identiﬁca-
tion, corporate reputation, and corporate branding (Balmer 2001). Although
these concepts diﬀer in meaning, often authors use the terms interchangeably and
5
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IDENTITY AND CULTURE

eﬀectively. The consequent theoretical vagueness (Cornelissen and Elving 2003)
and fragmentation (Balmer 1998) have created problems in operationalizing the
construct and the empirical dimension of identity studies is extremely weak
(Cornelissen and Elving 2003).
A second problem relates to the contrasting perspectives and paradigms exist-
ing within identity literature (Balmer 2001). Three philosophical underpinnings
inform identity scholars, namely, functionalist, interpretivist, and post-modern
paradigms (Gioia 1998 as cited in Balmer 2001). Authors writing in the func-
tionalist tradition (e.g., the marketing perspective) frequently regard identity
from a management viewpoint, arguing that corporate identity is an objective
phenomenon, and, therefore, may be forged and managed. A quantitative research
design is preferred with an emphasis on psychometric instruments. Interpretivist
studies (e.g., the organizational behaviorist perspective), on the other hand,
regard identity as subjective, arguing that employees do not merely react to the
cues created by identity management programs. Rather, they actively interpret the
environment and their subsequent behavior is based upon these interpretations.
Thus, studies focus on interpretations and on how organizational members
(predominantly employees) perceive their organizations and what meanings
they aﬃx to them (organizational identity) (Balmer 2001). Studies search for
“thick descriptions” (Martin 2002: 4) that are provided by ethnographies and
other qualitative studies. These contrasting paradigmatic traditions and per-
spectives, however, should not be viewed as contradictory but rather as
complementary (Balmer and Greyser 2003; Martin 2002; Balmer 1998): the
individual points of view and paradigms do not provide the powerful per-
spective needed by academics and practitioners to understand fully the identity
taxonomy (Balmer and Greyser 2003, 2002; Martin 2002). Rather, together they
provide a depth of understanding that neither alone could ever reach (Martin
2002).
A third problem relates to the anthropomorphization and the indiscriminate
use of metaphor (Cornelissen and Harris 2001). Through metaphor analysis,
numerous authors have drawn analogies from some of the concepts used to
describe humans to endow organizations with identity, character, and personality
by drawing generally from psychology (Cornelissen and Harris 2001). The main
use of metaphors is to describe complex ideas and abstractions in more easily
understood and common terminology, and for conjectural reasons. However,
metaphor analysis is dangerous (Balmer 1998; Cornelissen and Harris 2001;
Albert and Whetten 1985). Cornelissen and Harris (2001) argue that when
used ﬁguratively and to draw similarities from human and social psychology,
such terms as corporate identity and personality have been reiﬁed, thus creating
distortions in our views and limiting our understanding. This has given rise
to multiple perspectives and deﬁnitions. Identity theories proposed through
analogies drawn from “human identities” may be “conceptually ﬂawed and
6
KEVIN JAMES VELLA AND T. C. MELEWAR

empirically false” (Cornelissen and Harris 2001: 50) since there is no agreement
within the source domain on the concepts of identity and personality. The main
arguments in the source domain revolve around whether or not identity is an
inner property, a product of the mind; whether identity is an inherent physical
characteristic; or, whether identity emerges through behavior. Similarly, the
authors conclude, the corporate identity metaphor may face grave diﬃculties
when used to describe and explain company behavior and communications. To
promote clarity and coherence in the ﬁeld, we have abandoned the metaphorical
use of such concepts as corporate personality and refer to terms in their literal
meaning or as “a convenient label for a particular set of variables” (Nunnally and
Bernstein 1994: 104).
This necessitates an interdisciplinary approach (for example, Balmer and
Greyser 2003; Balmer 1998; Melewar et al. 2003; Hatch and Schultz 1997)
harmonising and combining the various perspectives with a drive to be holistic
(Melewar 2003; Melewar and Jenkins 2002) and eclectic (Balmer and Greyser
2003). Such a perspective takes stock of a variety of disciplines including market-
ing, public relations, graphic design, organizational behavior studies, strategic
management, and corporate communications within one area of study (Balmer
and Greyser 2003, 2002; Melewar 2003; Balmer 2001). More recently, Hatch
and Schultz (2000) suggest the idea of “combining the understanding oﬀered
by all contributing disciplines into a single concept of identity deﬁned at the
organizational level of analysis” (Hatch and Schultz 2000: 19). Few multi-
disciplinary models of identity have been proposed, and, with the growing
importance of the area, the need to have such frameworks is becoming
increasingly felt (Balmer and Greyser 2002).
The remainder of this chapter is written in the spirit of a uniﬁed and cross-
disciplinary approach to identity studies while a combined concept of identity is
also proposed.
IDENTITY, IMAGE AND REPUTATION
A resource-based view
Sustainable competitive advantage may be built by managing how an organization
is perceived (Aaker 1996 as cited in Simões and Dibb 2002) and corporate
identity is an important avenue to achieve this (Melewar et al. 2005; Simões and
Dibb 2002).
Through corporate identity, organizations manifest salient characteristics to
all their stakeholders and develop a strong channel for diﬀerentiation (Balmer
2001; Abratt 1989), an instrument for creating enduring and reliable relation-
ships (Melewar et al. 2005) and a robust mechanism for delivering value. By
7
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IDENTITY AND CULTURE

building, maintaining, and enhancing this value over time through a strong, distinct,
inimitable, and immediately recognizable identity, ﬁrms attain their strategic
objectives and gain sustainable competitive advantage over rivals.
Corporate identity is transmitted to various stakeholders who then formulate
images that, in turn, form the basis of the company’s reputation (Melewar 2003).
Stakeholders include all organizational members (internal), customers, share-
holders, and investors, ﬁnancial institutions, suppliers, government, industry
associations, and non-government organizations and the community at large
(external). By extending the marketing concept to corporate identity, it is
reasonable to conclude that corporate identity managers require the focus to be
on individual stakeholder target groups at a time to deliver superior value. Hence,
by focusing on transmitting corporate identity to employees, a number of key
outcomes accrue. Qualitative research ﬁndings show that ﬁrms leverage their
identities to motivate, recruit, and retain high-quality employees (Melewar et al.
2005). Employees derive superior value from their organization from a variety of
sources including such extrinsic measures as competitive pay structures and
intrinsic means such as challenging and self-actualizing jobs. Through internal
corporate identity management programs, managers also communicate these
extrinsic and intrinsic beneﬁts. Such beneﬁts form the basis of positive employee
images, organizational identity and aﬃnity. Over time, a favorable reputation is
created within the labor market, for example, “one of the nation’s top employers”.
Depending on market conditions (Balmer and Greyser 2003; Balmer 1998),
reputation becomes a key diﬀerentiator (Balmer and Wilson 1998) allowing the
organization access to better skills, thus oﬀering an avenue for creating and sus-
taining advantage, and contributing to proﬁtability and growth.
Kennedy (1977) found important empirical evidence as to the signiﬁcance of
employees in image formation and dissemination. Her ﬁndings show that images
held by external stakeholders are a function and a reﬂection of those held by
employees. She concludes that building positive images among existing employees
is likely to lead to a more favorable disposition among them and, hence, is instru-
mental in recruitment, for example. Therefore, the way organizational members
perceive, feel, and think about (organizational identity) and the extent to which
they identify with their organizations becomes inextricable from corporate
identity. Organizational behaviorists have long since emphasized the importance
of focusing on employees,
1
arguing, in parallel, the signiﬁcance of management in
the formation and dissemination process of identity (Simões and Dibb 2002).
Therefore, we posit that central to any discussion of the identity formation,
maturation, and dissemination process intended to lead to sustainable advantage
are management and employees.
8
KEVIN JAMES VELLA AND T. C. MELEWAR

CORPORATE IDENTITY
A number of authors have transposed the concept of human identity to the
organization (Simões and Dibb 2002). Companies, therefore, have their own
personalities and character (Simões and Dibb 2002), individuality and distinctive-
ness, meaning and essence (Balmer and Greyser 2003), and behavior (Hatch
and Schultz 1997; Albert and Whetten 1985). As argued earlier, however, the
identity metaphor has come under scrutiny of late and, thus, it is more appro-
priate to view corporate identity as relating to a set of dimensions without
drawing from the domain of human and social psychology.
Consequently, corporate identity is “the set of meanings by which a company
allows itself to be known and through which it allows people to describe, remem-
ber, and relate to it” (Topalian 1984 as cited in Melewar 2003: 195). The concept
is an outward-looking perspective (Simões and Dibb 2002) and relates closely to
the “the ways a company chooses to identify itself to all its publics” (Zinkhan et al.
2003, as cited in Simões et al. 2005: 154).
Albert and Whetten (1985) provide an inﬂuential deﬁnition (Balmer and
Greyser 2003; Hatch and Schultz 1997) and state three criteria for an organiza-
tion’s identity: “claimed central character” or the central characteristics of an
organization, “claimed distinctiveness” or those unique characteristics in relation
to other organizations, and “claimed temporal continuity” or a “sense of continuity
over time” or “sameness” (Albert and Whetten 1985: 85). The concept of con-
tinuity has been challenged and is now better conceived as the “evolving” nature
of corporate identity (Balmer and Greyser 2003). The notion of identity is
related to such diverse components as business deﬁnition, objectives, strategies,
and resource conﬁgurations, capabilities, direction, leadership, and vision, mission
and central focus of the organization, management ideology, corporate culture,
rituals, history, values, and organizational roles over time. Environmental forces
have a bearing on identity as do such economic rationales as proﬁtability, costs,
and return on investment. Managerial and employee competence and skill,
together with employee commitment and orientation towards the organization,
are signiﬁcant factors inﬂuencing identity (Albert and Whetten 1985). Besides,
corporate identity has links to products and services and formal and informal
communications of the organization (Melewar and Jenkins 2002). Corporate
identity is about how an organization presents, positions and diﬀerentiates
itself visually and verbally at corporate, business, and product levels (Melewar
2003).
Figure 1.1 presents Melewar’s holistic and multi-disciplinary taxonomy
(Melewar 2003: 198) that deﬁnes identity as “the presentation of an organization
to every stakeholder. It is what makes an organization unique and it incorporates
the organization’s communication, design, culture, behaviour, structure, industry
identity, and strategy” (Melewar and Karaosmanoglu 2005).
9
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IDENTITY AND CULTURE

Recent ﬁndings (Melewar et al. 2005, 2003) show a diversity of opinions
among practitioners with regard to the meaning of corporate identity (Melewar et
al. 2003): some perceive the concept as having solely a marketing function
while others conceive identity to be more generic and all-encompassing (see
Figure 1.1Melewar’s corporate identity taxonomy
Source: Melewar 2003: 198.
10
KEVIN JAMES VELLA AND T. C. MELEWAR

Figure 1.1). There is agreement that design, communications, behavior, and
strategy are components of corporate identity. Mixed responses regarding the
inclusion of culture and structure are registered.
THE BENEFITS OF CORPORATE IDENTITY
Competitive advantage accrues from a set of resources that provide superior
business performance over the long term (De Wit and Meyer 2004). Research (as
cited in Simões and Dibb 2002) indicates that positive correlations exist between
a positive corporate image or identity of a business to superior performance.
The aim of corporate identity management is to acquire a favorable corporate
image among key internal and external stakeholders so that, in the long run, this
image can result in the acquisition of a favorable corporate reputation, which
leads to key stakeholders having a favorable disposition towards the organization.
Studies have shown that reputation and image reduce risk and increase market
share. Researchers have also found linkages between reputation and historical
performance. Thus, the general view in literature is that eﬀective management
of corporate identity provides a potential avenue to competitive advantage (Simões
et al. 2005).
Corporate identity management brings about several beneﬁts to employees
(Melewar 2003). Identity acts as a force to motivate and obtain a greater degree of
support from employees. Corporate identity allows employees to adapt to the
prevailing organizational culture with less diﬃculty and acts as an integrative force
in the case of mergers or acquisition. Management’s ability to recruit employees
with the necessary skills is indirectly improved through corporate identity.
Enhanced employee retention and morale, higher labor productivity and lower
staﬀ turnover are other beneﬁts attributed to corporate identity management
(Melewar et al. 2005). Recent researchers have found considerable agreement
among respondents over such beneﬁts (Melewar et al. 2005, 2003).
Hence, we argue, the importance of managing corporate identity for internal
audiences is undisputable.
IMAGE
In general, image refers to how stakeholders perceive and interpret the ways
in which an organization manifests itself (Melewar 2003; Hatch and Schultz
1997). It relates to the experiences, beliefs, feelings, knowledge, associations, and
impressions that each stakeholder has about an organization. In contrast to
corporate identity, image resides in the minds of audiences (Melewar 2003).
Corporate identity is largely the foundation for company image (Simões and
11
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IDENTITY AND CULTURE

Dibb 2002; Hatch and Schultz 2000). Culture is the cognitive instrument that
translates corporate identity into image (Hatch and Schultz 1997).
Employees have a signiﬁcant role in forming and disseminating image to
external stakeholders (Kennedy, 1977), encompassing even “behavioural relation-
ships” of employees with external stakeholders (Balmer and Greyser 2003).
Kennedy (1977) presents empirical evidence suggesting that images held by
employees are reﬂected among those they come into contact with. She also found
that company marketing communications achieved limited success in forming
images among external stakeholders (e.g., suppliers). However, top management
play a key role in inﬂuencing the extent of the image formed within the minds of
employees and such inﬂuence may be aﬀected through other dimensions such as
communicating policies and behaviour.
Kennedy’s research uncovered ﬁve areas stakeholders (including employees)
are concerned with when describing a single company:
1 physical concerns;
2 work-related concerns including work content and people’s attitude towards
it;
3 management style and personality concerns;
4 supervisory concerns including the atmosphere between supervisors and
their subordinates; and,
5 general concerns about the company, its products and future.
Kennedy found that an image has to be enduring and based on fact. Similarly,
corporate identity is concerned with organizational reality (Balmer 1998).
Identity and image must be consistent in the sense that the projected image and
reality must coincide (Simões and Dibb 2002). In addition, the images broadcast
by managers to external stakeholders must be consistent with those broadcast by
employees (Kennedy 1977).
Behavior towards an organization is regarded as a consequence of the image
held of it (Balmer and Greyser 2003). Thus, in a world where the internal and
external boundaries of organizations are becoming increasingly blurry and almost
all organizational members have become key stakeholder touch-points,
2
employee-held images and, consequently, their behavior should take a pivotal role
within any model that attempts to explain the identity formation, maturation, and
dissemination processes within an organization.
REPUTATION
Whereas image reﬂects the more recent beliefs about the organization, reputation
is the perception of an organization built over time (Balmer 1998). Reputation
12
KEVIN JAMES VELLA AND T. C. MELEWAR

results from a reﬂection upon historical accumulated impacts of previously
observed identity cues and transactional experiences (Melewar 2003). In other
words, it is evaluative and is image endowed with judgment (Simões and Dibb
2002) on what the organization has done and how it has behaved (Balmer and
Greyser 2003). Image may be changed relatively quickly while reputation
requires consistency of image and nurturing over a relatively longer time period.
Hence, reputation is an enduring perception (Balmer 2001). A consequence of
identity, reputation is believed to yield distinctiveness (Balmer and Greyser 2003)
and provide an organization competitive advantage (Balmer 2001); however,
favorable market conditions must prevail (Balmer and Greyser 2003; Balmer
1998). Multiple reputations of a single organization may exist (Balmer and
Greyser 2003).
Reputation may be seen as a standard against which decisions are evaluated
(Balmer and Greyser 2003; Balmer 1998). In recruitment, executives might
consider the question whether the prospective employee would maintain the
organization’s reputation (Balmer and Greyser 2003). Similarly, when assessing
employment vacancies, an increasing number of prospective employees would
consider a company’s reputation in their decisions (Melewar et al. 2005). Thus,
ultimately, reputation also has an inﬂuence on corporate identity management
programs and, to a certain extent, organizational identity.
ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY
Based on Albert and Whetten’s (1985) notion of identity, organizational identity
largely refers to how members perceive, think, and feel about their organizations
(Hatch and Schultz 1997). Thus, organizational identity is “assumed to be a
collective, commonly shared understanding of the organization’s distinctive values
and characteristics” (Hatch and Schultz 1997: 357) and results from associations,
interpretations, and understandings (Hatch and Schultz 1997). Organizational
identity provides the emotional and cognitive foundation upon which employees
build an attachment and a meaningful relationship with their organization.
It relates to such questions as “who we are” and “what do we stand for” and is
reﬂexive (Hatch and Schultz 2000).
Whereas corporate identity is generally a managerial viewpoint, organizational
identity is its “alter-ego” (Balmer and Greyser 2003) and requires taking an
employee perspective. The emphasis in corporate identity is on management’s
role in expressing and communicating the vision, strategy (Hatch and Schultz
1997), and mission (Hatch and Schultz 2000) through a variety of instruments
including design and behavior (Melewar 2003). Similarly, Kennedy (1977) stated
the importance of formulating and communicating company policies to employees
in image creation. Vision, mission, strategy, and policies are all statements of
13
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IDENTITY AND CULTURE

organizational purpose
3
that shift the aims of corporate identity management
programs to include elements of what organizational members will become and
not simply what they are (Hatch and Schultz 2000). Organizational identity, on
the other hand, deals with relationships, speciﬁcally those between employees
and their organization. This perspective, however, recognizes management’s key
role in identity formation both as leaders cum builders of corporate identity, and
as members of the organization.
Consensus within literature reveals that organizational identity is shaped by
the degree of cohesion (Melewar et al. 2003) between the organization and its
employees. In other words, organizational identity is driven by the extent of
enthusiasm, commitment, and participation shown by employees towards the
organization’s operation, long-term survival, and development (Melewar 2003).
It is reasonable to conclude that the degree of empowerment, congruent manage-
ment behavior, and self-direction, for example, will have an impact on this (and
consequently, on the success of corporate identity management) depending
upon on such external factors as national culture and predominant workplace
orientations (e.g., theory X versus theory Y: Sheldrake 2003). Organizational
identity is antecedent to behaviour.
Organizational identity also concerns identiﬁcation and the inﬂuence of image
and reputation on members (Simões and Dibb 2002). Identiﬁcation relates to
aﬃnity (Hatch and Schultz 2000) or the degree to which employees deﬁne
themselves by the same characteristics they believe are attributable to their
organization (Stuart 2002). Identiﬁcation may increase the extent by which
organizational norms and values are internalized and observed while promoting a
greater degree of attitudinal and behavioral homogeneity (Simões and Dibb
2002). Organizational identiﬁcation is a consequence of organizational identity
(Hatch and Schultz 2000). Management have an important role to play in inﬂu-
encing organizational identity and identiﬁcation through corporate identity
management that seeks to create favorable images in the minds of their employees
(Simões and Dibb 2002). Issues of credibility, trust (Simões and Dibb 2002), and
managerial competence (Kennedy 1977) are, therefore, of extreme importance.
Management behavior should also be consistent over time and congruent with
transmitted images and corporate identity for a favorable organizational identity
(and hence, a greater degree of identiﬁcation) to come about. After all, everything
the organization does will communicate the organization’s identity in one way or
another (Stuart 1999; Balmer 1998).
IDENTITY AND CULTURE
Authors writing in the interpretivist tradition conceive culture as the symbolic
context within which identity is developed and maintained (Hatch and Schultz
14
KEVIN JAMES VELLA AND T. C. MELEWAR

1997). Corporate identity is a “symbolic construction” (Hatch and Schultz
1997: 358) that is communicated and enacted by management to employees.
Organizational members, in turn, interpret these symbols based on organizational
culture, on their work experience, on interactions with management and other
employees, and on other external inﬂuences (Hatch and Schultz 1997) (pro-
fessional subcultures, external relations with stakeholders). Thus, the concepts of
identity, image, and culture are inextricably linked (Balmer and Wilson 1998)
and mutually interdependent (Hatch and Schultz 1997). Therefore, it is reason-
able to conclude that behavior, communication, and design (including such forms
as logos, buildings, décor, rituals, and other symbols) are mediating inﬂuences
used by management in delivering corporate identity and interpreted by organiza-
tional members to create, sustain, or change organizational identity. On the other
hand, organizational identity is transmitted through interaction with others via
language and behavior within the context of organizational culture (Hatch and
Schultz 2000). It is assumed that employees will behave cooperatively and spon-
taneously in the interests of the organization if they have genuinely internalized
organizational values (Balmer and Wilson 1998) and characteristics.
The symbolic construction of corporate identity becomes part of corporate
identity when members of an organization start using them in everyday life.
Moreover, the symbols that members use to describe themselves are resources
that management use for corporate identity management programs (Hatch
and Schultz 2000). This also implies the overlap between corporate and
organizational identity.
Since “culture theory has much more to oﬀer [to identity studies] than has thus
far been acknowledged” (Hatch and Schultz 1997: 357), we now turn to cultural
research to specify further the construct of identity at the cultural level of
analysis.
ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
Culture is now widely recognized as a component of corporate identity (Melewar
2003). However, recent empirical research studies (Melewar et al. 2005, 2003)
show that there is no unanimity among business managers regarding the inclusion
of culture as a dimension of corporate identity: while some participants felt that
culture was an integral part of identity, others believed that although aﬃliations
exist between the two constructs, culture is not necessarily a component. How-
ever, most viewed corporate culture as an eﬀective instrument used to support
and reinforce corporate identity to achieve such goals as labor ﬂexibility. All
participants emphasized that one of the main beneﬁts corporate identity could
have is employee motivation, retention, and recruitment.
Other research (Melewar et al. 2005) indicates:
15
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IDENTITY AND CULTURE

1 Corporate culture is a context that leads to behavior and strategy.
2 Those working in the same company share a similar view on the central
characteristics that comprise their organization’s identity.
3 Employees are instrumental in communicating these characteristics to
external stakeholders. This implies that the greater the reﬂection of these
characteristics via employees, the more positive the corporate image among
external stakeholders (Melewar et al. 2005). This is similar to the ﬁndings by
Kennedy (1977).
4 Corporate history, founder of the organization, country of origin (with links
to national culture characteristics such as working principles and practices),
and divisional and regional subcultures all have an impact on corporate
culture and corporate identity (Melewar et al. 2005).
Identity literature shows weakness with respect to the deﬁnition and treatment
of organizational culture. Many models do not give appropriate attention to the
concept and a simplistic approach is often applied (Balmer 2001; Balmer and
Wilson 1998). Balmer and Wilson (1998) argue that the dominant view within
corporate identity literature emphasizes a one-dimensional corporate culture
where values, beliefs, and assumptions are largely shared by all members of the
organization. Martin (2002) reaches a similar conclusion. Thus, ignoring certain
views on organizational culture may lead to corporate identity transmission
eﬀorts to fail. Although most organizational members may share the same
values as management, others may be in conﬂict with and yet others may be
ambivalent about them. In addition, within one organization, an individual may
identify with the organization on some issues, with these values his or her sub-
culture on others, and be ambiguous on others (Martin 2002; Balmer and Wilson
1998). Therefore, corporate identity management programs must address all
these internal audiences to eﬀectively achieve the desired outcomes.
Hatch and Schultz (1997), writing within the interpretivist and symbolic
perspective, argue that organizational culture should be conceived as a context
and as an interpretive or sense-making mechanism that can neither be measured
nor controlled. On the other hand, functionalist perspectives approach culture
as an observable, measurable, and controllable variable (Melewar 2003). Recent
models of corporate identity have adopted the view of culture as a context
(Cornelissen and Elving 2003; Stuart 1999).
The ﬁndings reported earlier (Melewar et al. 2005) seem to indicate the
notion of corporate culture being an interpretive mechanism and support the
argument for the need for management to deploy necessary cultural artefacts and
symbols that sustain organizational development. Moreover, we argue that the
functionalist perspective fails to capture the meanings behind symbols decorating,
and at times, littering organizational life.
4
We also view two other issues emerging:
16
KEVIN JAMES VELLA AND T. C. MELEWAR

1 Cultural processes are rarely, if ever, mentioned within the literature, and
when they are, these processes are based on Schein’s (2004) model and,
hence, are implicitly assumed as static (Hatch 1993), leader-generated
(Martin 2002), and linear. There is also debate with regard to the extent
culture can be created by the organization’s leaders in contrast to being a
phenomenon that emerges from social interaction (Melewar et al. 2003).
2 Operationalization of the culture component within the context of identity is
daunting.
A variety of related issues such as trade-oﬀs rising from qualitative and quantita-
tive approaches and depth of understanding and breadth of research focus
(Martin 2002) give rise to this diﬃculty which will not be solved easily or
quickly.
THE PREDOMINANT VIEW OF CULTURE
Schein’s model of culture remains a pivotal inﬂuence within cultural research
(Hatch 1993). His model has also been the basis of most conceptualizations
within corporate identity models to date (e.g., Abratt 1989).
Schein (2004) suggests that culture exists on three levels each of which
decreases in visibility to observers: artefacts, espoused beliefs, and values, and
underlying assumptions or paradigm. At the surface of culture are cultural arte-
facts or visible, audible, and emotive phenomena that one encounters within an
organization. Easily visible to an outsider, such artefacts include buildings, oﬃces,
products, décor, uniforms, value and mission statements, and rituals. However,
outsiders cannot easily interpret the meanings behind these artefacts. Insight is
possible only if investigations dig deeper into the other less visible layers of
culture; otherwise, serious misinterpretations may occur. At an intermediate level
of visibility, closer to the heart of corporate culture, lies the layer of beliefs and
values (Schein 2004).
Over time, group-learning outcomes tend to create a shared system of con-
scious beliefs and values about what works and what does not, what is right and
what is not. Some beliefs and values are tested while others are acquired through a
socially validated and reinforced process of consensus among members. These
beliefs and values eventually become part of the paradigm as long as they continue
either to work reliably or to be socially reinforced. Such assumptions are
supported by explicit statements (e.g., rules) that govern the behavior of existing
and new members and act as a way of handling uncertainty within the organization
and prevailing environmental conditions. These beliefs and values may be
espoused so that they may act as predictors of what some people will say but they
will not reﬂect what they will do. Hence, the best predictors of behavior are the
17
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IDENTITY AND CULTURE

basic underlying assumptions. When beliefs and values continually solve problems
of “external adaptation and internal integration” (Schein 2004: 17), the solutions
and supporting system of shared beliefs and values become assumptions about
reality. Sharing results from the repeated success of these beliefs and values in
solving problems to the extent that if basic assumptions become strongly held
within an organization, members will ﬁnd incongruent behavior inconceivable.
Basic assumptions are implicit, guide behavior, and are also the ultimate predictors
of values. They also “proposed to group members how to perceive, think about,
and feel about things” (Schein 2004: 31).
Culture is formed by group leaders and is propagated through a process of
consensus and socialization. During formation, the founder of an organization
brings in his/her own visions, goals, beliefs, values, and assumptions, and selects
members with whom he/she perceives commonalities. In facing decisions, he will
impose solutions on the group based on his leadership position. If group action
results in success, the founder’s beliefs and assumptions are conﬁrmed,
reinforced, and become a shared system of beliefs and values. If success continues
to hold, then such beliefs and values are fully internalized as basic assumptions and
unconscious guides to “correct” behavior. Failure, on the other hand, will lead
either to the disappearance of the group or to the replacement of the leader.
Dissent is treated with marginalization or “excommunication” from the group and
the shared culture will prevail (Schein 2004).
Schein assumes that culture (organizational and national) is largely antecedent
to behavior. Hatch (1993) argues that not everything that happens within the
organization can be attributed to culture. Rather, culture has signiﬁcant eﬀects on
behavior and other sources of inﬂuence apply.
PERSPECTIVES IN CULTURAL THEORY
Three perspectives dominate cultural theory, each with its own set of deﬁnitions
and conceptualizations of the phenomenon. Although several diﬀerences exist,
signiﬁcant intellectual debates revolve around what should be included in a
cultural study and around the notion of “shared” (Martin 2002).
In contrast to Schein, Martin (2002) argues that artefacts, values, and assump-
tions are all cultural elements that do not necessarily reﬂect varying levels
of depth. Rather, when the greatest understanding of the culture of an organiza-
tion is required, a deep analysis of all the meanings behind each of these cultural
elements should be sought. Martin identiﬁes four cultural manifestations that
together will reveal these meanings, namely, cultural forms, formal and informal
practices, and content themes. All these elements represent an entire culture and
studies must analyze the broad range of manifestations if they are to be said to be
representative of the culture in question (Martin 2002). Therefore, it seems,
18
KEVIN JAMES VELLA AND T. C. MELEWAR

conceptualizations of identity based on Schein’s notion of cultural levels have
failed to provide us with the understanding we require to further identity theory
and empirical research. By studying the meanings behind cultural manifestations,
we may realize a better understanding about how an organization manifests itself
to its members and how, in turn, members represent and embed their percep-
tions, feelings, and emotions in their work environment. Naturally, this implies
trade-oﬀs in and consequences on research designs such as pursuing the func-
tionalist aim of generalization through more “superﬁcial” quantitative methods as
opposed to taking a qualitative approach and developing ethnographies or case
studies with a deeper content.
Again in contrast to Schein, research (as cited in Martin 2002) shows culture,
is an incompletely shared system that also encompasses degrees of conﬂict and
ambiguity (Martin 2002; Balmer and Wilson 1998). The integration perspective
views culture as a monolith where everything is clear and ambiguity does not
exist. Each cultural manifestation is consistent with the rest to create a system of
mutually supportive and reinforcing elements. Meanings and interpretations are
also consistent across the organization and hence consensus permeates at all levels
of the collective. Thus, there is shared sense of commitment and loyalty towards
the organization. Where deviation is acknowledged the integration perspective
suggests harmony through retraining, performance appraisals or closer super-
vision to iron out conﬂict or ambiguity. The key words are consistency, harmony,
pervasive consensus, and clarity of meaning. Studies taking this approach usually
focus on management or professionals. Schein’s work may be categorized within
this perspective (Martin 2002).
The diﬀerentiation perspective views organizations as comprised of a number
of subcultures that exist either in harmony, or in conﬂict, or in indiﬀerence to each
other and to the dominant organizational culture. The sources of subcultures
are multiple including divisional, functional, hierarchical, or professional sub-
groupings. Consensus exists only within the conﬁnes of the subculture. Studies
focus on the cultural manifestations that have inconsistent meanings (Martin
2002). Extending Martin’s example, top management may announce the need
for curbing costs while subsequently embarking on lavishly refurbishing the
management ﬂoor. Keywords here are inconsistency, subcultural consensus, and
diﬀerentiation, and pockets of clarity of meaning. An individual may hold
membership within several subcultures some of which may have conﬂicting values
(Martin 2002).
The fragmentation perspective argues that neither consistency nor inconsis-
tency is the norm. Indeed, complexity and ambiguity govern interpretations of
the cultural manifestations so that consensus is ﬂeeting and is speciﬁc to the issue
at hand. Ambiguity is an integral part of organizational life. Keywords here are
lack of clarity, inconsistency, confusion, paradox, and contradiction (Martin
2002).
19
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IDENTITY AND CULTURE

Looking at culture only through one or two of these lenses, therefore, consti-
tutes only a partial and simpliﬁed view. It is only through a three-perspective
approach that a full understanding of corporate culture may be achieved. There is
a need for ﬁeld-of-identity studies that largely assume the integration perspective
that looks towards the other perspectives on corporate culture in order to shed
light on what really may be happening inside and outside the conﬁnes of an
organization (Martin 2002).
Therefore, as do other authors (for example, Melewar 2003; Balmer and
Wilson 1998), we argue the need for a broader perspective that looks at harmony
within an organization as well as diﬀerentiation and ambiguity simultaneously.
Once management understands the three patterns in existence within their
organization, they may be able to design more eﬀective corporate identity
management programs. Moreover, they will be in a better position to understand
how employees perceive, think, and feel about their organization.
CULTURAL DYNAMICS
With respect to cultural processes, Hatch (1993) proposes an alternative and
more dynamic model that draws from the symbolic perspective speciﬁcally to
counteract the under-speciﬁcation of Schein’s theories. We argue that this alterna-
tive provides a greater understanding on (1) how employees internalize the
meanings behind artefacts deposited by corporate identity management programs
and (2) how organizational identity comes about in a cultural context. We
believe that this model will help uncover the meanings behind cultural manifest-
ations as ideated by Martin. Hatch’s model is depicted in Figure 1.2.
This model shifts the focus away from the elements of culture to the relation-
ships that link them—manifestation, realization, symbolization, and interpretation
(Hatch 1993). Thus, it answers an important question: “How is culture consti-
tuted by assumptions, values, artefacts, symbols and the process that links them?”
(Hatch 1993: 660). In comparison to Schein’s static model, all these processes
occur simultaneously in a continual constitution and reconstitution of culture
(Hatch 1993).
MANIFESTATION
Manifestation processes allow assumptions to be perceived, known, and felt,
and translate intangible assumptions into conscious values. In proactive (forward
along the arrow) manifestation, what employees assume to be true will shape
what they value (Hatch 1993). For example, if a manager assumes a theory Y
orientation, he will assume that employees do not dislike work and that they are
20
KEVIN JAMES VELLA AND T. C. MELEWAR

internally motivated to reach the goals to which they are committed (Sheldrake
2003). Therefore, initiative will be seen in a positive light and eventually
management may develop such values that reward initiative and empower
employees. In parallel, if an employee assumes a theory Y orientation then he
would expect and value a workplace that allows for initiative and empowerment.
Such assumptions create expectations and aspirations that, in turn, inﬂuence what
organizational members perceive, think, and feel about the organization. It is
through such reﬂections that organizational members realize what they like and
dislike and, hence, become conscious of what they value. These values and expect-
ations lead to action and experience. Retroactive (backward) manifestation refers
to the processes that change or keep assumptions in line with the values that are
acknowledged actively within the organizational culture (Hatch 1993).
REALIZATION
Realization processes translate values and expectations into artefacts (proactive
realization). Such processes also maintain or alter existing values and expectations
through such artefacts (retroactive realization) (Hatch 1993). Hence, theory Y
values and expectations are reiﬁed in such cultural artefacts as company policies
that would allow for self-direction and schemes that reward initiative and
achievement. Other examples of artefacts would include prize-giving ceremonies
and “employee of the month” awards.
Figure 1.2Hatch’s cultural dynamics model
Source: Hatch 1993: 660.
21
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IDENTITY AND CULTURE

SYMBOLIZATION
Hatch argues that although all symbols are artefacts, not all artefacts become
symbols. Whereas artefacts are literal, symbols are artefacts laden with inter-
pretation and, thus, ﬁgurative meaning. Literal meaning becomes ﬁgurative and
symbolic through the additional cultural process of symbolizations. Prospective
symbolization processes refer to the manner by which artefacts become symbols
through a series of associations that reﬂect both the objects that are being sym-
bolized and the creators of the symbol. The process also includes retrospective
processes that enhance the awareness of the literal meaning of the symbols (Hatch
1993).
Hence, a scheme introduced by management to motivate initiative will become
a symbol when organizational members view the artefact as promoting their
expectations and values and view the policy as a means of self-actualization. Some
members with diﬀerent values and expectations may interpret the artefact, how-
ever, as a management ploy (e.g., to weed out non-performers) that is not con-
gruent with the reality they perceive. In both situations, the artefact becomes a
symbol.
Schein’s model does not specify this symbolization aspect and, therefore, fails
to increase understanding of culture within identity studies.
INTERPRETATION
Organizational members use their assumptions to experience, interpret, and give
meaning to symbols. In parallel, the assumptions themselves are exposed during
interpretation and may be inﬂuenced by new symbols. Basic assumptions are, thus,
either challenged or maintained (Hatch 1993).
By providing a framework for interpretation, organizational culture has signiﬁ-
cant eﬀects on behavior within and expectations of the internal and external
environment.
MEANINGS IN ORGANIZATIONAL LIFE
Several authors writing outside culture theory have recognized the importance of
cultural manifestations and their meanings. In the strategic management ﬁeld,
Johnson (1992) and later Johnson and Scholes (2002) proposed a model of
organizational culture based on Schein’s layers of culture. They conceive the
three cultural elements as overlapping and interrelated concentric layers that
form the cognitive structure or the interpretive mechanism of the particular
culture and that mould the view the organization has of itself and its environment.
22
KEVIN JAMES VELLA AND T. C. MELEWAR

Assumptions lie at the core of an organization’s culture and are shared widely
among culture members. “Cultural webs” of the organization represent these
assumptions and are the physical displays of corporate culture by way of symbols
(logos, titles, cars), stories (history, anecdotes, founder of the company), routines
of behaviour (the way things are done here), rituals (special events, meetings,
training programs), power structures (position and expert power), control sys-
tems (rewards, measurements), and organizational structure. To uncover and
understand an organization’s culture requires studying these physical manifest-
ations (Johnson and Scholes 2002; Johnson 1992). This is in contrast to Schein’s
arguments and similar to the position taken by Martin and several other cultural
researchers.
Although the concept of cultural webs as applied by Johnson (Johnson 1998,
1992), and Heracleous (1995) assumes a managerial perspective and an inte-
grationist approach, we believe that this framework is an elaborate and appro-
priate instrument that may help in uncovering hidden meanings and in moving us
further towards operationalizing the identity construct. If applied at all levels of
the organization, cultural webs become maps that reveal shared elements, aspects
of conﬂict as well as areas of ambiguity. When taking a functionalist perspective
the cultural webs may uncover cultural inventories and commonalities of cultural
manifestations across a large sample of organizations and their members. Such
studies may reveal typologies of cultural artefacts deployed by management
through corporate identity programs. They may also highlight typologies of arte-
facts and symbols deposited by organizational members to reveal organizational
identity. From a symbolic perspective, cultural webs may be used to dig deeper
and map sediments of meanings and interpretations within a single organization.
The items of the cultural web are regrouped according to the four cultural
manifestation types envisaged by Martin.
CULTURAL FORMS
Cultural forms are recognized as providing fundamental clues to the thoughts,
beliefs, and actions of employees and thus require study. Examples of cultural
forms include rituals, ceremonies, organizational stories, humor and jokes, lan-
guage and jargon, physical layout including architectural and oﬃce arrangements,
décor, dress codes, and uniforms (Martin 2002). Cultural forms justify behaviour
and become instruments for telling organizational members what is valued within
the organization. They highlight what is important within the organization and
support “the way we do things around here” (Johnson and Scholes 2002). A
thorough analysis of meanings yields vital information on the extent of consist-
ency, diﬀerentiation, and fragmentation within a single culture (Martin 2002).
23
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IDENTITY AND CULTURE

FORMAL PRACTICES
Formal practices have been frequently studied since they are usually written
and thus more controllable by management. These include routines of behaviour,
pay and reward structures, organizational structure and related lines of power,
authority and reporting, rules, procedures, and control systems (Martin 2002).
Logos, oﬃces, cars, and titles (Johnson and Scholes 2002) are also included here
and usually reﬂect management-initiated eﬀorts. Again, the symbolic inter-
pretation is also important: titles may be literal in some national cultures, while in
other they denote status with a variety of associated connotations.
INFORMAL PRACTICES
Informal practices are not written and come about through social interaction.
These may include social rules and norms, informal routines of behavior, rites,
and informal power structures that are not attached to hierarchical structures.
Inconsistencies with formal practices are often enacted here (Martin 2002).
CONTENT THEMES
Content themes may be espoused or inferred and refer to beliefs, assumptions,
and values that underlie interpretations of the various cultural manifestations.
Espoused themes may be superﬁcially embraced to make impressions whereas
inferred themes would reveal what is really occurring. Hence, mission and value
statements may not be enough to yield the true values of top management and
deeper investigation should be sought. Examples of content themes include
employee well-being, improved productivity, proﬁtability, social responsibility,
and quality (Martin 2002)
A DEFINITION OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
Thus, the view on culture being presented here is best reﬂected through Martin’s
own informal deﬁnition: “when organizations are examined from a cultural view-
point, attention is drawn to aspects of organizational life . . . such as stories
people tell to newcomers to explain ‘how things are done around here’, the ways
in which oﬃces are arranged and personal items are or are not displayed, jokes
people tell, the working atmosphere (hushed and luxurious or dirty and noisy),
the relations among people (aﬀectionate in some areas of an oﬃce and obviously
angry and perhaps competitive in another place) . . . organization’s oﬃcial
24
KEVIN JAMES VELLA AND T. C. MELEWAR

policies, the amounts of money diﬀerent employees earn, reporting relationships,
and, so on. A cultural observer is interested in the surfaces of these cultural
manifestations because details can be informative, but . . . also seeks an in-depth
understanding of the patterns of meanings that link these manifestations together,
sometimes in harmony, sometimes in bitter conﬂicts between groups, and some-
times in webs of ambiguity, paradox and contradiction” (Martin 2002: 3).
THE IFMD MODEL: A UNIFIED FRAMEWORK
Within the conceptual framework described above, it is now appropriate to
explain the identity formation, maturation, and dissemination (IFMD) process
model that combines the understanding of identity into a single concept at the
cultural level of analysis.
Based on Melewar’s taxonomy (Melewar 2003), the model is depicted below
and shows the focus on management and employees as the main sources of
identity formation, maturation, and dissemination. Organizational members have
direct inﬂuence on and cause such desirable outcomes as favorable images and
durable reputations among external stakeholders. Strategy, structure, and culture
are important moderating inﬂuences and represent fundamental frames of
reference for identity to be formed, nurtured, and disseminated. Mediating
inﬂuences include management and employee behaviour, oﬃcial communications
programs, formal and informal practices, communications, language, corporate
design, cultural forms, artefacts and symbols, and content themes. Other frames
of reference and inﬂuences exist and these include national culture and industry
identity.
We envisage that the IFMD model (Figure 1.3) will smooth the progress of
research since:
1 The model facilititates interaction among those disciplines emphasizing cor-
porate identity and those accentuating organizational identity. The model
is also intended to bridge the diﬀerences between functionalist and interpre-
tivist approaches.
2 It is parsimonious by emphasizing a single stakeholder grouping (organiza-
tional members) rather than the blanket term “stakeholders” generally used in
literature and by studying identity within a single context, that of culture.
3 It identiﬁes speciﬁc measurable consequences such as productivity and
turnover.
4 It explicates the main relationships between the variables at play.
5 It is an eclectic combination of disciplines including marketing, communica-
tions, public relations, strategic management, culture, and organizational
behaviour.
25
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IDENTITY AND CULTURE

Figure 1.3The IFMD model: identity formation, maturation, and dissemination at the cultural level of analysis

6 It addresses weaknesses in identity theory by drawing heavily from cultural
research and organizational theory to explain the phenomenon of culture and
its inextricable link to identity.
The focal points of the IFMD process are management and their corporate
identity management programs and organizational members who interpret and
translate these programs into images, organizational identity, and aﬃnity.
In deﬁning corporate identity, management makes general statements about
the central characteristics of the organization. These characteristics are the set
of meanings that management wants employees to use in viewing, describing, and
relating to the organization. For example, on such dimensions as “treatment of
employees,” three distinct sub-attributes may be “transformational management
style,” “work environment that awards initiative” and “enthusiasm and commit-
ment.” Such reﬂections are based on several facets of the organization including
mission, strategy, organizational purpose, structure, products, and organizational
culture. These reﬂections may also be intentions or aspirations for the future. For
example, desirable attributes that management have gleaned from an examination
of labor market opportunities and threats and identiﬁcation of organizational
strengths and weaknesses. Other organizations may want to be known by the
same characteristics; it is commonsense to assume that most if not all companies
want to be known as good employers. The key diﬀerentiators, however, lie not in
the general statements per se but in such tangible factors as the eﬀectiveness
in transmitting the chosen corporate identity through behavior, communication,
and design. Furthermore, the degree of management commitment to the values
they want to portray lies in how congruent their behavior is to the same, and in
the extent to which they will deploy the necessary supporting strategic and
structural frameworks (e.g., ﬂat hierarchy that facilitates the desired management
style and work environment). In addition, as leaders of corporate identity pro-
grams, management deploy such cultural artefacts and symbols to reﬂect these
characteristics such as competitive pay structures, ﬂat hierarchies, delegation and
employee empowerment policies, theory Y orientations, and, in general, work
settings that instil trust, that provide employees with opportunities to ﬂourish and
that encourage initiative and self-direction. It is assumed that for the organization
to function, a large majority of employees accepts the values chosen by manage-
ment: for example, such transformational style may not function in cultures that
would prefer transactional and autocratic leadership. Conﬂict and ambiguity will
occur and management might have to address these problems through speciﬁc and
special attention to the subcultures in conﬂict and the individuals who are ambiva-
lent. As argued by Martin, these may be important signals and predictors of the
future.
The objective of corporate identity management is to acquire a favorable
corporate image and consequently organizational identity among employees so
27
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IDENTITY AND CULTURE

that, in the long run, it can result in the acquisition of a favorable corporate
reputation, which leads to employees having a favorable disposition towards their
organization. Such a favorable disposition should also result in employees trans-
mitting a favorable image to external stakeholders through their everyday contact
with them.
Corporate identity, management behavior, communications, and corporate
design become grist for the cultural mill as managers interact, socialize and work
with and relate to other organizational members. Within a cultural context,
all these management cues and interactions are interpreted and laden with
meaning to build, validate, and/or alter beliefs, values, and existing assumptions.
This results in favorable images, aﬃnity towards the organization and a positive
organizational identity. After all, organizational identity and images come about
largely through cultural processes (Hatch 1993). Employees deposit symbols
to be interpreted by management within the existing cultural context through
dynamic cultural processes as a reﬂection of organizational identity by way of
behavior, artefacts, and language.
In designing eﬀective corporate identity management programs, therefore,
management should themselves heed such cultural artefacts to understand the
prevailing climate. Moreover, viewing culture from the three-perspective
approach suggested by Martin allows for the possibility of conceiving diﬀeren-
tiation and ambiguity. Thinking in integrationist terms may lead management to
marginalize or disregard employees or initiate training programs that may create
further dissention or ambiguity. The degree of cohesiveness, diﬀerentiation,
and/or fragmentation is also a function of the strength of corporate identity
programs and the mediating inﬂuences of management behavior, communica-
tions, and design. Other inﬂuences may also come to fruition (e.g., the strength of
professional subcultures).
Meanings are crucial to the study of organizational culture and, thus, require
full management attention in designing successful corporate identity programs. If
an artefact is introduced by management to sediment its theory Y values into the
culture and produce a favorable image, how organizational members symbolize
the artefact and what meanings they associate with it become paramount and
critical in realizing whether the program is successful. The reasons for failure
may not lie with corporate identity management per se, but with a lack of
understanding of the meanings associated with, and the interpretations of each,
cultural manifestation deployed.
In this light, the cultural dynamics process model is a useful predictor of the
success of corporate identity management programs. It is also an important gauge
for organizational identity at the cultural level of analysis. The model allows
answering such questions as “are the assumptions, values, artefacts deposited by
management appropriately symbolised within the organization?,” “are the artefacts
interpreted to reﬂect the associated assumptions and values?,” and “are the
28
KEVIN JAMES VELLA AND T. C. MELEWAR

symbols deposited by organizational members in line with assumptions, values
and artefacts deposited by management?”
The desired outcomes of the IFMD process include increased employee motiv-
ation and morale, decreased staﬀ turnover (greater staﬀ retention and loyalty),
enhanced labor ﬂexibility and productivity, and the ability to recruit the necessary
and the best skills within the marketplace. Other consequences include improved
images among external stakeholders with more favorable dispositions for purchas-
ing the organization’s products and services, better access to ﬁnancing and
investment, improved and enduring customer and supplier relationships, durable
relationships with government and non-government bodies and the community at
large. These, in turn, aﬀect revenues, proﬁtability, growth, and survival. If such
consequences are sustainable over time, competitive advantage comes about. Such
consequences are inﬂuenced by and dependent on a number of environmental
forces including prevailing market conditions of demand and supply, industry
identity, national, regional, and professional cultures, and reputation among
target stakeholders.
CONCLUSION
In this chapter, we have examined literature in order to apply an interdisciplinary
approach that combines the concepts of identity into a single cogent conceptual
model to explain identity formation, maturation, and dissemination at the cultural
level of analysis. The model responds to the calls of several academics to fertilize
the identity construct with views from cultural research. Organizational culture
was explored from a symbolic perspective to attend to gaps and weaknesses in
existing conceptualizations. We addressed the existing paucity of empirical
research by drawing on a number of existing studies and theories to further
specify and conﬁgure an existing holistic and eclectic taxonomy in terms of
speciﬁc relationships and consequences and by enunciating the linkages between
the identity concepts through the processes of cultural dynamics.
The main protagonists of organizational life are management and employees.
Managers, as leaders, champion organizational purpose, marshal human and
other resources into speciﬁc conﬁgurations, and strategize for success. Managers
envision a set of characteristics they want their organization to be associated with
and these characteristics formulate a corporate identity that is transmitted to
employees through a complex and congruent system of communication,
behavior, and design. Employees implement strategies and call upon their skills
and competences to perform them. In so doing, they draw images, interpret-
ations, and meanings from the transmitted corporate identity and from a nexus
of cultural and other frames of reference and express what they perceive, think,
and feel about their organization through behavior, symbols, and language.
29
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IDENTITY AND CULTURE

Consequences of aligned corporate and organizational identity include positive
internal and external images that lead to enhanced employee retention and to
recruitment through favorable reputations respectively. These, it is argued, will
lead to competitive advantage. Culture is one of the three contextual elements
that serve as interpretive mechanisms for all organizational members. Traditional
viewpoints of culture within identity studies do not allow a wider scope of analysis
and management should realize that diﬀerentiation and fragmentation are also
prevalent within organizations and may lead to the failure of corporate identity
programs in the same way as incongruent behaviour and managerial incompe-
tence. Studies of identity at the cultural level of analysis should include cultural
artefacts, formal and informal practices, as well as espoused and inferred content
themes. Moreover, cultural processes, are not static but dynamic and help explain
how corporate identity is translated into favorable images and organizational
identity that, in turn, should form primary inputs to any formal corporate identity
program.
For an academic audience, this model lays important groundwork for a theory
of identity and calls into motion the need for a combined multi-disciplinary eﬀort
towards further empirical research. The theory bridges, not blurs, existing
paradigmatic underpinnings that are considered as complementary. Functionalist
approaches reveal important elements, typologies, relationships, and common-
alities. On the other hand, symbolic approaches uncover interpretations and
meanings, ingredients essential to corporate identity strategies and programs.
Future contributions to identity theory might be made to operationalize the
components and empirically test the relationships presented. Further empirical
research is also needed on the consequences of managed corporate identity
programs including the eﬀect on organizational identity.
For a managerial audience, we have highlighted the consensus within literature
as to the deﬁnitions and components of identity. We have also presented an
alternative view to the mainstream cultural literature that presents corporate
culture as a monolith of consistency, clarity, and harmony. Our framework shifts
the focus away from the more tangible aspects of corporate identity management
such as graphic design and looks at the more abstract and subconscious forces that
inﬂuence, in part, all behavior within organizations.
CASE VIGNETTE: NHS
The Cultural Webs of the NHS produced by managers in the 1990s
Routines and rituals
This took form, for example, in routines of consultation and of prescribing drugs.
Rituals had to do with what managers termed “infantilizing,” which “put patients
in their place”—making them wait, putting them to bed, waking them up and so
30
KEVIN JAMES VELLA AND T. C. MELEWAR

on. The subservience of patients was further emphasized by the elevation of clini-
cians with ritual consultation ceremonies and ward rounds. These are routines and
rituals which emphasize that it is the professionals who are in control.
Stories
Most of the stories within health services concern developments in curing—
particularly terminal illnesses. The heroes of the health services are in curing not so
much in caring. There are also stories about villainous politicians trying to change
the system, the failure of those who try to make changes and of heroic acts by
those defending the systems (often well-known medical ﬁgures).
Symbols
Symbols reﬂected the various institutions within the organization, with uniforms
for clinical and nursing staff, distinct symbols for clinicians, such as their staff
retinues, and status symbols such as mobile phones and dining rooms. The impor-
tance of size and status of hospitals was reﬂected, not least, in the designation of
“Royal” in the name, seen as a key means of ensuring that it might withstand
closure.
Power structures
The power structure was fragmented between clinicians, nurses and managers.
However historically, senior clinicians were the most powerful and managers had
hitherto been seen as “administration.” As with many other organizations, there
was also a strong informal network of individuals and groups that coalesced
around speciﬁc issues to promote or resist a particular view.
Organizational structures
Structures were hierarchical and mechanistic. There was a clear pecking order
between services, with the “caring” services low down the list—for example, men-
tal health. At the informal level there was lots of “tribalism” between functions
and professional groups.
Control systems
In hospitals the key measure has been “complete clinical episodes,” i.e., activity
rather than results. Control over staff is exerted by senior professionals. Patronage
is a key feature in this professional culture.
The paradigm
The assumptions which constitute the paradigm reﬂect the common public per-
ception in the UK that the NHS is a “good thing”; a public service which should
be provided equally, free of charge at the point of delivery. However, it is
medical values that are central and the view that “medics know best.” This is an
31
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hat and calling to the fugitives to come on, to come to the ford.
The gray-haired woman in the counterpane, now begrimed with
mud and smoke, was the first to meet him.
She shouted back joyfully, "The good wahini [woman] at the ford
has sent to fetch us. She hear the cry of the child. Good! good!"
But the invitation met with no response from Whero and his
mother.
"Shall it be said by morning light Nga-Hepé's wife was sleeping in
the Ingarangi [English] bed, and he a dead man lying on the floor of
his forefathers' whare, with none to do tangi above him!" she
exclaimed, tearing fresh handfuls from her long dark hair in her fury.
"Oh to be bigger and stronger," groaned Whero, "that I might
play my game with the greenstone club! but my turn will come."
The blaze of passion in the boy's star-like eyes recalled his
mother to calmness. "What are you," she asked, "but an angry child
to court the blow of the warrior's club that would end your days? A
man can bide his hour. Go with the Ingarangi, boy."
"Yes, go," urged her companion.
A bright thought struck the gray-haired woman, and she
whispered to Edwin, "Get him away; get him safe to the Ingarangi
school. Nothing can reach him there. He loves their learning; it will
make him a mightier man than his fathers have ever been. If he stays
with us, we can't hold him back. He will never rest till he gets himself
killed."
"Ah, but my Whero will go back with the Ingarangi boy and beg a
blanket to keep the babies from the cold night wind," added his
mother coaxingly.
"Come along," said Edwin, linking his arm in Whero's and setting
off with a run. "Now tell me all you want—blankets, and what else?"

But the boy had turned sullen, and would not speak. He put his
hands before his face and sobbed as if his heart would break.
"Where is the horse?" he asked abruptly, as they reached Mrs.
Hirpington's gate.
"In there," said Edwin, pointing to the stable.
The Maori boy sprang over the bar which Dunter had fixed across
the entrance to keep the horse in, and threw his arms round the neck
of his black favourite, crying more passionately than ever.
"He is really yours," put in Edwin, trying to console him. "I do not
want to keep the horse when you can take him back. Indeed, I am
not sure my father will let me keep him."
But he was speaking to deaf ears; so he left Whero hugging his
four-footed friend, and went in-doors for the blankets. Mrs. Hirpington
was very ready to send them; but when Edwin returned to the stable,
he found poor Whero fast asleep.
"Just like those Maoris," laughed Dunter. "They drop off whatever
they are doing; it makes no difference. But remember, my man, there
is a good old saying, 'Let sleeping dogs lie.'"
So, instead of waking Whero, they gently closed the stable-door;
and Edwin went off alone with the blankets on his shoulder. He found
Nga-Hepé's wife still seated by the roadside rocking her baby, with
her two bigger children asleep beside her. One dark head was resting
on her knee, the other nestling close against her shoulder. Edwin
unfolded one of the blankets he was bringing and wrapped it round
her, carefully covering up the little sleepers. Her companions had not
been idle. To the Maori the resources of the bush are all but
inexhaustible. They were making a bed of freshly-gathered fern, and
twisting a perfect cable from the fibrous flax-leaves. This they tied
from tree to tree, and flung another blanket across it, making a tent

over the unfortunate mother. Then they crept behind her, under the
blanket, keeping their impromptu tent in shape with their own backs.
"Goo'-night," they whispered, "goo' boy. Go bush a' right."
But Edwin lingered another moment to tell the disconsolate
mother how he had left Whero sleeping by the horse.
"Wake up—no find us—then he go school," she said, wrinkling
the patch of tattoo on her lip and chin with the ghost of a smile.
CHAPTER III.
A RIDE THROUGH THE BUSH.
The fire by the white pines had died away, but a cloud of smoke rose
from the midst of the trees and obscured the view. A faint rumbling
sound and the dull thud of horses' feet reached Edwin from time to
time as he ran back to the ford.
A lantern was swinging in the acacia tree. The white gate was
flung open, and Dunter, with his hand to his ear, stood listening to the
far-off echo.
A splash of oars among the rushes, and the shock of a boat
against the stairs, recalled him to the house. Edwin ran joyfully down
the steps, and gave a hand to Mr. Bowen.
"We are not all here now," the old gentleman said. "Your father
stuck by the coach, and he would have his daughters with him, afraid
of an open boat on a night like this."
Then Edwin felt a hand in the dark, which he knew was
Cuthbert's; and heard Mr. Hirpington's cheery voice exclaiming,
"Which is home first—boat or coach?"

"Hard to say," answered Dunter, as the coach drove down the
road at a rapid pace, followed by a party of roadmen with pickaxe on
shoulder, coming on with hasty strides and a resolute air about them,
very unusual in men returning from a hard day's labour.
The coach drew up, and Mr. Lee was the first to alight. He looked
sharply round, evidently counting heads.
"All here, all right," answered Mr. Hirpington. "Safe, safe at home,
as I hope you will all feel it," he added, in his heartiest tones.
There was no exact reply. His men gathered round him,
exclaiming, "We heard the war-cry from the Rota Pah. There's
mischief in the wind to-night. So we turned our steps the other way
and waited for the coach, and all came on together."
"It is a row among the Maoris themselves," put in Dunter, "as
that lad can tell you."
The man looked sceptical. A new chum, as fresh arrivals from the
mother country are always termed, and a youngster to boot, what
could he know?
Mr. Hirpington stepped out from the midst of the group and laid
his hand on Mr. Lee's shoulder, who was bending down to ask Edwin
what all this meant, and drew him aside.
"I trust, old friend," he said, "I have not blundered on your
behalf, but all the heavy luggage you sent on by packet arrived last
week, and I, not knowing how to take care of it, telegraphed to
headquarters for permission to put it in the old school-house until you
could build your own. I thought to do you a service; but if our dusky
neighbours have taken offence, that is the cause, I fear."
Mr. Lee made a sign to his children to go in-doors. Edwin led his
sisters up the terrace-steps, and came back to his father. The coach
was drawn inside the gate, and the bar was replaced. The driver was

attending to his horses; but all the others were holding earnest
council under the acacia tree, where the lantern was still swinging.
"But I do not understand about this old schoolhouse," Mr. Lee
was saying; "where is it?"
"Over the river," answered several voices. "The government built
it for the Maoris before the last disturbance, when the Hau-Hau
[pronounced How How] tribe turned against us, and went back to
their old superstitions, and banded together to sell us no more land.
It was then the school was shut up, but the house was left; and now
we are growing friendly again," added Mr. Hirpington, "I thought all
was right."
"So it is," interposed Mr. Bowen, confidently. "My sheep-run
comes up very near to the King country, as they like to call their
district, and I want no better neighbours than the Maoris."
Then Edwin spoke out. "Father, I can tell you something about it.
Do listen."
They did listen, one and all, with troubled, anxious faces. "This
tana," they said, "may not disperse without doing more mischief.
Carry on their work of confiscation at the old school-house, perhaps."
"No, no; no fear of that," argued Mr. Bowen and the coachman,
who knew the Maoris best.
"I'll run no risk of losing all my ploughs and spades," persisted
Mr. Lee. "How far off is the place?"
"Not five miles across country," returned his friend. "I have left it
in the care of a gang of rabbiters, who have set up their tents just
outside the garden wall—safe enough, as it seemed, when I left."
"Lend me a horse and a guide," said Mr. Lee, "and I'll push on to-
night."

The children, of course, were to be left at the ford; but Edwin
wanted to go with his father. Dunter and another man were getting
ready to accompany him.
"Father," whispered Edwin, "there is the black horse; you can
take him. Come and have a look at him."
He raised the heavy wooden latch of the stable-door, and glanced
round for Whero. There was the hole in the straw where he had been
sleeping, but the boy was gone.
"He must have stolen out as we drove in," remarked the
coachman, who was filling the manger with corn for his horses.
The man had far more sympathy with Nga-Hepé in his trouble
than any of the others. He leaned against the side of the manger,
talking to Edwin about him. When Mr. Lee looked in he stooped down
to examine the horse, feeling its legs, and the height of its shoulder.
On such a congenial subject the coachman could not help giving an
opinion. Edwin heard, with considerable satisfaction, that the horse
was a beauty.
"But I do not like this business at all, and if I had had any idea
Mr. Hirpington's messenger was a native, you should never have gone
with him, Edwin," Mr. Lee began, in a very decided tone. "However,"
he added, "I'll buy this horse, I don't mind doing that; but as to taking
presents from the natives, it is out of the question. I will not begin it."
"But, father," put in Edwin, "there is nobody here to buy the
horse of; there is nobody to take the money."
"I'll take the money for Nga-Hepé," said the coachman. "I will
make that all right. You saw how it was as we came along. The
farmers and the natives are on the watch for my coming, and they
load me with all sorts of commissions. You would laugh at the things
these Maoris get me to bring them from the towns I pass through. I

don't mind the bother of it, because they will take no end of trouble in
return, and help me at every pinch. I ought to carry Nga-Hepé ten
pounds."
Mr. Lee thought that cheap for so good a horse, and turned to
the half light at the open door to count out the money.
"But I shall not take him away with me to-night. I will not be
seen riding a Maori's horse if Hirpington can lend me another,"
persisted Mr. Lee.
Then Mr. Bowen limped up to the stable-door, and Edwin slipped
out, looking for Whero behind the farm buildings and round by the
back of the house. But the Maori boy was nowhere to be seen. The
coachman was right after all. Mr. Hirpington went indoors and called
to Edwin to join him. He had the satisfaction of making the boy go
over the ground again. But there was nothing more to tell, and Edwin
was dismissed to his supper with an exhortation to be careful, like a
good brother, not to frighten his sisters.
He crossed over and leaned against the back of Audrey's chair,
simply observing, "Father is going on to-night."
"Well?" she returned eagerly.
"It won't be either well or fountain here," he retorted, "but a
boiling geyser. I've seen one in the distance already."
"Isn't he doing it nicely?" whispered Effie, nodding. "They told
him to turn a dark lantern on us. We heard—Audrey and I."
"Oh yes," smiled her sister; "every word can be heard in these
New Zealand houses, and no one ever seems to remember that. I
give you fair warning."
"It is a rare field for the little long-eared pitchers people are so
fond of talking about—present representatives, self and Cuthbert. We
of course must expect to fill our curiosity a drop at a time; but you

must have been snapped up in a crab-shell if you mean to keep
Audrey in the dark," retorted Effie.
"Cuthbert! Cuthbert!" called Edwin, "here is a buzzing bee about
to sting me. Come and catch it, if you can."
Cuthbert ran round and began to tickle his sister in spite of
Audrey's horrified "My dear!"
The other men came in, and a look from Mr. Lee recalled the
young ones to order. But the grave faces, the low words so briefly
interchanged among them, the business-like air with which the supper
was got through, in the shortest possible time, kept Audrey in a flutter
of alarm, which she did her best to conceal. But Mr. Bowen detected
the nervous tremor in her hand as she passed his cup of coffee, and
tried to reassure her with the welcome intelligence that he had just
discovered they were going to be neighbours. What were five-and-
twenty miles in the colonies?
"A very long way off," thought the despondent Audrey.
At a sign from Mr. Lee, Mrs. Hirpington conducted the girls to one
of the tiny bedrooms which ran along the back of the house, where
the "coach habitually slept." As the door closed behind her motherly
good-night, Effie seized upon her sister, exclaiming,—
"What are we in for now?"
"Sleep and silence," returned Audrey; "for we might as well
disclose our secret feelings in the market-place as within these iron
walls."
"I always thought you were cousin-german to the discreet
princess; but if you reduce us to dummies, you will make us into
eaves-droppers as well, and we used to think that was something
baddish," retorted Effie.

"You need not let it trouble your conscience to-night, for we
cannot help hearing as long as we are awake; therefore I vote for
sleep," replied her sister.
But sleep was effectually banished, for every sound on the other
side of the thin sheet of corrugated iron which divided them from
their neighbours seemed increased by its resonance.
They knew when Mr. Lee drove off. They knew that a party of
men were keeping watch all night by the kitchen fire. But when the
wind rose, and a cold, pelting rain swept across the river, and
thundered on the metal roof with a noise which could only be out-
rivalled by the iron hail of a bombardment, every other sound was
drowned, and they did not hear what the coachman was saying to
Edwin as they parted for the night. So it was possible even in that
house of corrugated iron not always to let the left hand know what
the right was doing. Only a few words passed between them.
"You are a kind-hearted lad. Will you come across to the stables
and help me in the morning? I must be up before the dawn."
There was an earnestness in the coachman's request which
Edwin could not refuse.
With the first faint peep of gray, before the morning stars had
faded, the coachman was at Edwin's door. The boy answered the low-
breathed summons without waking his little brother, and the two were
soon standing on the terraced path outside the house in the fresh,
clear, bracing air of a New Zealand morning, to which a touch of frost
had been superadded. They saw it sparkling on the leaves of the
stately heliotropes, which shaded the path and waved their clustering
flowers above the coachman's head as they swayed in the rising
breeze. He opened the gate in the hedge of scarlet geraniums, which
divided the garden from the stable-yard, and went out with Edwin,

carrying the sweet perfume of the heliotropes with them. Even the
horses were all asleep.
"Yes, it is early," remarked Edwin's companion. "The coach does
not start until six. I have got old time by the forelock, and I've a mind
to go over to the Rota Pah, if you can show me the way."
"I think I can find it," returned Edwin, with a confidence that was
yet on the lee side of certainty.
"Ay, then we'll take the black horse. If we give him the rein, he
will lead us to his old master's door. It is easy work getting lost in the
bush, but I never yet turned my back on a chum in trouble. Once a
chum always a chum with us. Many's the time Nga-Hepé's stood my
friend among these wild hills, and I want to see him after last night's
rough handling. That is levelling down with a vengeance."
The coachman paused, well aware his companions would blame
him for interfering in such a business, and very probably his
employers also, if it ever reached their ears. So he led the horse out
quietly, and saddled him on the road. The ground was white with
frost. The moon and stars were gradually paling and fading slowly out
of sight. The forest was still enwrapped in stately gloom, but the
distant hills were already catching the first faint tinge of rosy light.
Edwin got up behind the coachman, as he had behind Nga-Hepé.
They gave the horse its head, and rode briskly on, trusting to its
sagacity to guide them safely across the bush with all its dangers—
dangers such as Edwin never even imagined. But the coachman knew
that one unwary step might mean death to all three. For the great
white leaves of the deadly puka-puka shone here and there,
conspicuous in the general blue-green hue of the varying foliage; a
poison quickly fatal to the horse, but a poison which he loves. The
difficulty of getting out of the thicket, where it was growing so freely,

without suffering the horse to crop a single leaf kept them from
talking.
"If I had known that beastly white-leaved thing was growing
here, I would not have dared to have brought him, unless I had tied
up his head in a net," grumbled the coachman, making another
desperate effort to leave the puka-puka behind by changing his
course. They struggled out of the thicket, only to get themselves tied
up in a detestable supple-jack—a creeper possessing the power to
cling which we faintly perceive in scratch-grass, but in the supple-jack
this power is intensified and multiplied until it ties together everything
which comes within its reach, making it the traveller's plague and
another terrible foe to a horse, a riderless horse especially, who soon
gets so tied up and fettered that he cannot extricate himself, and dies.
By mutual help they broke away from the supple-jack, and stumbled
upon a mud-hole. But here the good horse started back of his own
accord, and saved them all from a morning header in its awful depths.
For the mud was seething, hissing, boiling like some witch's caldron—
a horrid, bluish mud, leaving a yellow crust round the edge of the
hole, and sending up a sulphurous smell, which set Edwin coughing.
The coachman alighted, and led the horse cautiously away. Then he
turned back to break off a piece of the yellow crust and examine it.
Edwin remembered his last night's ride with the Maori, how he
shot fearlessly forward, avoiding all these insidious dangers as if by
instinct, "So that I did not even know they existed," exclaimed the
boy, with renewed admiration for the fallen chief.
"'The rank puts on the guinea stamp,
But the man's the gold for a' that,'"

he cried, with growing enthusiasm.
"Gold or stamp," retorted the coachman; "well, I can't lay claim
to either. I'm a blockhead, and yet not altogether one of nature's
making, for I could have done better. When I was your age, lad, who
would have thought of seeing me, Dilworth Ottley, driving a four-in-
hand over such a breakneck path as we crossed yesterday? Yet I've
done it, until I thought all sense of danger was deadened and gone.
But that horrid hole brings back the shudder."
"What is it?" asked Edwin.
"One of the many vents through which the volcanic matter
escapes. In my Cantab days—you stare; but I was a Cantab, and got
ploughed, and rusticated—I was crack whip among the freshmen. The
horses lost me the 'exam;' and I went on losing, until it seemed that
all was gone. Then I picked up my whip once more; and here you find
me driving the cross-country mail for so much a week. But it makes a
fellow feel when he sees another down in his luck like this Maori, so
that one cannot turn away with an easy conscience when it is in one's
power to help him, or I'd go back this very moment."
"No, don't," said Edwin earnestly; "we are almost there."
The exceeding stillness of the dawn was broken by the wailing
cry of the women. The horse pricked up his ears, and cantered
forward through the basket willows and acacias which bordered the
sleeping lake. Along its margin in every little creek and curve canoes
were moored, but from the tiny bay-like indentation by the lonely
whare the canoe had vanished.
The sudden jets of steam uprising in the very midst of the Maori
pah looked weird and ghostlike in the gray of the dawn. Only one
wild-cat crept stealthily across their path. Far in the background rose
the dim outline of the sacred hills where the Maori chiefs lie buried.

Edwin looked upward to their cloud-capped summits awestruck,
as the wild traditionary tales he had heard from Hepé's lips only last
night rushed back upon his recollection.
There before him was the place of graves; but where was the still
more sacred Te Tara, the mysterious lake of beauty, with its terraced
banks, where fairy-like arcades of exquisite tracery rise tier above tier,
shading baths fed by a stream of liquid sun in which it is happiness to
bathe?
Edwin had listened to the Maori's description as if it had been a
page from some fairy tale; but Ottley, in his matter-of-fact way,
confirmed it all.
"This Maori's paradise," he said, "may well be called the last-
discovered wonder of the world. I bring a lot of fellows up here to see
it every year; that is what old Bowen is after now. 'A thing of beauty
is a joy for ever.' This magic geyser has built a bathing-house of fair
white coral and enamel lace, with basins of shell and fringes of pearl.
What is it like? there is nothing it is like but a Staffa, with its
stalactites in the daylight and the sunshine. If Nature forms the baths,
she fills them, too, with boiling water, which she cools to suit every
fancy as she pours it in pearly cascades from terrace to terrace,
except in a north-east wind, which dries them up. All these Maoris
care for is to spend their days like the ducks, swimming in these pools
of delight. It is a jealously-guarded treasure. But they are wide
awake. The pay of the sightseer fills their pockets without working,
and they all disdain work."
They were talking so earnestly they did not perceive a patch of
hot, crumbling ground until the horse's fore feet went down to the
fetlocks as if it were a quicksand, shooting Ottley and Edwin over his

head among the reeds by the lake. Ottley picked himself up in no
time, and flew to extricate the horse, warning Edwin off.
"Whatever you may say of the lake, there are a lot of ugly places
outside it," grumbled Edwin, provoked at being told to keep his
distance when he really felt alight with curiosity and wonder as to
what strange thing would happen next. Having got eyes, as he said,
he was not content to gape and stare; he wanted to investigate a bit.
Once more the wail of the women was borne across the lake,
rising to a fearsome howl, and then it suddenly ceased. The two
pressed forward, and tying the horse to a tree, hastened to intercept
the agonized wife venturing homewards with the peep of light, only to
discover how thoroughly the tana had done its work.
But the poor women fled shrieking into the bush once more when
they perceived the figure of a man advancing toward them.
"A friend! a friend!" shouted Ottley, hoping that the sound of an
Englishman's voice would reassure them.
There was a crashing in the bushes, and something leaped out of
the wild tangle.
"It is Whero!" exclaimed Edwin, running to meet him. They
grasped hands in a very hearty fashion, as Edwin whispered almost
breathlessly, "How have they left your father?"
"You have come to tangi with us!" cried Whero, in gratified
surprise; and to show his warm appreciation of the unexpected
sympathy, he gravely rubbed his nose against Edwin's.
"Oh, don't," interposed the English boy, feeling strangely foolish.
Ottley laughed, as he saw him wipe his face with considerable
energy to recover from his embarrassment.
"Oh, bother!" he exclaimed. "I shall be up to it soon, but I did not
know what you meant by it. Never mind."

"Let us have a look round," said the coachman, turning to Whero,
"before your mother gets here."
"I have been watching in the long grass all night," sobbed the
boy; "and when the tramp of the last footsteps died away, I crept out
and groped my way in the darkness. I got to the door, and called to
my father, but there was no answer. Then I turned again to the bush
to find my mother, until I heard our own horse neigh, and I thought
he had followed me."
Ottley soothed the poor boy as best he could as they surveyed
the scene of desolation. The fences were all pulled up and flung into
the lake, and the gates thrown down. The garden had been
thoroughly ploughed, and every shrub and tree uprooted. The patch
of cultivated ground at the back of the whare had shared the same
fate.
It was so late in the autumn Ottley hoped the harvest had been
gathered in. It mattered little. The empty storehouse echoed to their
footsteps. All, all was gone. They could not tell whether the great
drove of pigs had been scared away into the bush or driven off to the
pah. Whero was leading the way to the door of the principal whare,
where he had last seen his father. In the path lay a huge, flat stone
smashed to pieces. The hard, cold, sullen manner which Whero had
assumed gave way at the sight, and he sobbed aloud.
Edwin was close behind them; he took up a splinter from the
stone and threw it into the circle of bubbling mud from which it had
been hurled. Down it went with a splash—down, down; but he never
heard it reach the bottom.
"Did that make anything rise?" asked Ottley anxiously, as he
looked into the awful hole with a shudder.

"They could not fill this up," retorted Whero exultantly. "Throw in
what you will, it swallows it all."
To him the hot stone made by covering the dangerous jet was
the embodiment of all home comfort. It was sacred in his eyes—a fire
which had been lighted for the race of Hepé by the powers of heaven
and earth; a fire which nothing could extinguish. He pitied the
Ingarangi boy by his side, who had never known so priceless a
possession.
"Watch it," said Ottley earnestly. "If anything has been thrown in,
it will rise to the surface after a while incrusted with sulphur; but now
—" He pushed before the boys and entered the whare.
There lay Nga-Hepé, a senseless heap, covered with blood and
bruises. A stream of light from the open door fell full on the prostrate
warrior. The rest of the whare was in shadow.
Whero sprang forward, and kneeling down beside his father,
patted him fondly on his cheek and arm, as he renewed his sobbing.
After the tana had feasted to their heart's content. after they had
carried off everything movable, Nga-Hepé had been called upon to
defend himself against their clubs. Careful to regulate their ruthless
proceedings by ancient custom, his assailants came upon him one at
a time, until his powerful arm had measured its strength with more
than half the invading band. At last he fell, exhausted and bereft of
everything but the greenstone club his unconscious hand was
grasping still.
"He is not dead," said Ottley, leaning over him; "his chest is
heaving."
An exclamation of thankfulness burst from Edwin's lips.
Ottley was looking about in vain for something to hold a little
water, for he knew that the day was breaking, and his time was nearly

gone. All that he could do must be done quickly. He was leaving the
whare to pursue his quest without, when he perceived the
unfortunate women stealing through the shadows. He beckoned the
gray-haired Maori, who had waited on Marileha from her birth, to join
him. A few brief words and many significant gestures were exchanged
before old Ronga comprehended that the life yet lingered in the fallen
chief. She caught her mistress by the arm and whispered in her native
tongue.
The death-wail died away. Marileha gazed into the much-loved
face in breathless silence. A murmur of joy broke from her quivering
lips, and she looked to Whero.
He went out noiselessly, and Edwin followed. A hissing column of
steam was still rising unchecked from a rough cleft in the ground,
rendered bare and barren by the scalding spray with which it was
continually watered. Old Ronga was already at work, making a little
gutter in the soft mud with her hands, to carry the refreshing stream
to the bed of a dried-up pond. Edwin watched it slowly filling as she
dug on in silence.
"The bath is ready," she exclaimed at last. The word was passed
on to her companions, who had laid down the sleepy children they
had just brought home in a corner of the great whare, still huddled
together in Mrs. Hirpington's blanket. With Ottley's assistance they
carried out the all but lifeless body of Nga-Hepé, and laid him gently
in the refreshing pool, with all a Maori's faith in its restorative powers.
Marileha knelt upon the brink, and washed the blood-stains from
his face. The large dark eyes opened, and gazed dreamily into her
own. Her heart revived. What to her were loss and danger if her
warrior's life was spared? She glanced at Ottley and said, "Whilst the
healing spring still flows by his father's door there is no despair for

me. Here he will bathe for hours, and strength and manhood will
come back. Whilst he lies here helpless he is safe. Could he rise up it
would only be to fight again. Go, good friend, and leave me. It would
set the jealous fury of his tribe on fire if they found you here. Take
away my Whero. My loneliness will be my defence. What Maori would
hurt a weeping woman with her hungry babes? There are kind hearts
in the pah; they will not leave me to starve."
She held out her wet hand as she spoke. Ottley saw she was
afraid to receive the help he was so anxious to give. Whilst they were
speaking, Edwin went to find Whero.
He had heard the black horse neigh, and was looking round for
his favourite. "They will seize him!" he muttered between his set
teeth. "Why will you bring him here?"
"Come along with us," answered Edwin quickly, "and we will go
back as fast as we can."
But the friendly ruse did not succeed.
"I'll guide you to the road, but not a step beyond it. Shall men
say I fled in terror from the sound of clubs—a son of Hepé?"
exclaimed Whero. "Should I listen to the women's fears?"
"All very fine," retorted Edwin. "If I had a mother, Whero, I'd
listen to what she said, and I'd do as she asked me, if all the world
laughed. They might call me a coward and a jackass as often as they
liked, what would I care? Shouldn't I know in my heart I had done
right?"
"Have not you a mother?" said Whero.
Edwin's "No" was scarcely audible, but it touched the Maori boy.
He buried his face on the horse's shoulder, then suddenly lifting it up
with a defiant toss, he asked, "Would you be faithless and desert her
if she prayed you to do it?"

This was a home-thrust; but Edwin was not to be driven from his
position.
"Well," he retorted, "even then I should say to myself, 'Perhaps
she knows best.'"
He had made an impression, and he had the good sense not to
prolong the argument.
CHAPTER IV.
THE NEW HOME.
The sun had risen when Edwin and the coach man started on their
way to the ford. With Whero running by the horse's head for a guide,
the dangers of the bush were avoided, and they rode back faster than
they came. The gloom had vanished from the forest. The distant hills
were painted with violet, pink, and gold. Sunbeams danced on scarlet
creepers and bright-hued berries, and sparkled in a thousand frosted
spiders' webs nestling in the forks of the trees. Whero led them to the
road, and there they parted. "If food runs low," he said, "I shall go to
school. With all our winter stores carried away it must; I know it."
"Don't try starving before schooling," said Ottley, cheerily. "Watch
for me as I come back with the coach, and I'll take you down to
Cambridge and on to the nearest government school.—Not the
Cambridge you and I were talking of, Edwin, but a little township in
the bush which borrows the grand old name.—You will love it for a
while, Whero; you tried it once."
"And I'll try it again," he answered, with a smile. "There is a lot
more that I want to know about—why the water boils through the

earth here and not everywhere. We love our mud-hole and our boiling
spring, and you are afraid of them."
"They are such awful places," said Edwin, as Whero turned back
among the trees and left them, not altogether envious of a Maori's
patrimony. "It is such a step from fairy-land to Sodom and Gomorrah,"
persisted Edwin, reverting to Nga-Hepé's legends.
"Don't talk," interrupted Ottley. "There is an awful place among
these hills which goes by that name, filled with sulphurous smoke and
hissing mud. The men who made that greenstone club would have
finished last night's work by hurling Nga-Hepé into its chasms. Thank
God, that day is done. We have overcome the cannibal among them;
and as we draw their young lads down to our schools, it will never
revive." They rode on, talking, to the gate of the ford-house.
"I shall be late getting off," exclaimed Ottley, as he saw the
household was astir. He gave the bridle to Edwin and leaped down.
The boy was in no hurry to follow. He lingered outside, just to try if
he could sit his powerful steed and manage him single-handed. When
he rode through the gate at last, Ottley was coming out of the stable
as intent upon his own affairs as if nothing had occurred.
Breakfast was half-way through. The passengers were growing
impatient. One or two strangers had been added to their number. The
starting of the coach was the grand event of the day. Mrs. Hirpington
was engrossed, and Edwin's entrance passed unquestioned. His
appetite was sharpened by his morning ride across the bush, and he
was working away with knife and fork when the coach began to fill.
"If ever you find your way to Bowen's Run, you will not be
forgotten," said the genial colonist, as he shook hands with the young
Lees and wished them all success in their new home.

The boys ran out to help him to his seat, and see the old ford-
horse pilot the coach across the river.
Ottley laid his hand on Edwin's shoulder for a parting word.
"Tell your father poor Marileha—I mean Whero's mother—dare
not keep the money for the horse; but I shall leave all sorts of things
for her at the roadman's hut, which she can fetch away unnoticed at
her own time. When you are settled in your new home, you must not
forget I'm general letter-box."
"We are safe to use you," laughed Edwin; and so they parted.
The boys climbed up on the garden-gate to watch the crossing.
The clever old pilot-horse, which Mr. Hirpington was bound by his
lease to keep, was yoked in front of the team. Good roadsters as the
coach-horses were, they could not manage the river without him.
Their feet were sure to slip, and one and all might be thrown down by
the force of the current. But this steady old fellow, who spent his life
crossing and recrossing the river, loved his work. It was a sight no
admirer of horses could ever forget to see him stepping down into the
river, taking such care of his load, cautiously advancing a few paces,
and stopping to throw himself back on his haunches and try the
bottom of the river with one of his fore feet. If he found a boulder
had been washed down in the night too big for him to step over, he
swept the coach round it as easily and readily as if it were a matter of
course, instead of a most unexpected obstruction. The boys were in
ecstasies. Then the sudden energy he put forth to drag the coach up
the steep bank on the opposite side was truly marvellous. When he
considered his work was done, he stood stock-still, and no power on
earth could make him stir another step. As soon as he was released,
splash he went back into the water, and trotted through it as merrily
as a four-year-old.

"Cuthbert," said Edwin, in a confidential whisper, "we've got just
such another of our own. Come along and have a look at him."
Away went the boys to the stable, where Mr. Hirpington found
them two hours after making friends with "Beauty," as they told him.
At that hour in the morning every one at the ford was hard at
work, and they were glad to leave the boys to their own devices.
Audrey and Effie occupied themselves in assisting Mrs. Hirpington.
When they all met together at the one-o'clock dinner, Edwin was quite
ready to indemnify his sisters for his last night's silence, and launched
into glowing descriptions of his peep into wonderland.
"Shut up," said Mr. Hirpington, who saw the terror gathering in
Effie's eyes. "You'll be persuading these young ladies we are next-
door neighbours to another Vesuvius.—Don't believe him, my dears.
These mud-jets and geysers that he is talking about are nature's
safety-valves. I do not deny we are living in a volcanic region. We feel
the earth tremble every now and then, setting all the dishes rattling,
and tumbling down our books; but it is nothing more than the
tempests in other places."
"I'm thinking more of the Maoris than of their mud," put in Effie,
shyly; while Audrey quietly observed, everything was strange at
present, but they should get used to it by-and-by.
"The Maoris have been living among nature's water-works for
hundreds of years, and they would not change homes with anybody in
the world; neither would we. Mr. Bowen almost thinks New Zealand
beats old England hollow," laughed Mr. Hirpington. "If that is going a
little too far, she is the gem of the Southern Ocean. But seriously
now," he added, "although the pumice-stone we can pick up any day
tells us how this island was made, there has been no volcanic
disturbance worth the name of an eruption since we English set foot

on the island. The Maoris were here some hundreds of years before
us, and their traditions have been handed down from father to son,
but they never heard of anything of the kind."
Mr. Hirpington spoke confidently, and all New Zealand would have
agreed with him.
Edwin thought of Whero. "There are a great many things I want
to understand," he said, thoughtfully.
"Wife," laughed Mr. Hirpington, "is not there a book of Paulett
Scroope's somewhere about? He is our big gun on these matters."
As Mrs. Hirpington rose to find the book, she tried to divert Effie's
attention by admitting her numerous family of cats: seven energetic
mousers, with a goodly following of impudent kittens—tabby, tortoise-
shell, and black. When Effie understood she was to choose a pet from
among them, mud and Maoris seemed banished by their round green
eyes and whisking tails. The very title of Edwin's book proved
consolatory to Audrey—"Geology and Extinct Volcanoes in Central
France." A book in the bush is a book indeed, and Edwin held his
treasure with a loving clasp. He knew it was a parting gift; and
looking through the river-window, he saw Dunter and his companion
returning in a big lumbering cart. They drew up on the opposite bank
of the river and waved their hats.
"They have come to fetch us," cried Audrey. Mrs. Hirpington
would hardly believe it. "I meant to have kept you with me for some
days at least," she said; but the very real regret was set aside to
speed the parting of her juvenile guests.
According to New Zealand custom, Mr. Lee had been obliged to
buy the horse and cart which brought his luggage up country, so he
had sent it with Dunter to fetch his children.

The men had half filled it with freshly-gathered fern; and Edwin
was delighted to see how easily his Beauty could swim the stream, to
take the place of Mr. Hirpington's horse.
"He would make a good pilot," exclaimed the man who was riding
him.
Mrs. Hirpington was almost affectionate in her leave-taking,
lamenting as she fastened Effie's cloak that she could not keep one of
them with her. But not one of the four would have been willing to be
left behind.
The boat was at the stairs; rugs and portmanteaus were already
thrown in.
Mr. Hirpington had seized the oar. "I take you myself," he said;
"that was the bargain with your father."
In a few minutes they had crossed the river, and were safely
seated in the midst of a heap of fern, and found it as pleasant as a
ride in a hay-cart. Mr. Hirpington sat on the side of the cart teaching
Cuthbert how to hold the reins.
The road which they had taken was a mere cart-track, which the
men had improved as they came; for they had been obliged to use
their hatchets freely to get the cart along. Many a great branch which
they had lopped off was lying under the tree from which it had fallen,
and served as a way-mark. The trees through which they were driving
were tall and dark, but so overgrown with creepers and parasites it
was often difficult to tell what trees they were. A hundred and fifty
feet above their heads the red blossoms of the rata were streaming
like banners, and wreathing themselves into gigantic nests. Beneath
were an infinite variety of shrubs, with large, glossy leaves, like
magnolias or laurels; sweetly fragrant aromatic bushes, burying the
fallen trunk of some old tree, shrouded in velvet moss and mouse-ear.

Little green and yellow birds were hopping from spray to spray
through the rich harvest of berries the bushes afforded.
The drive was in itself a pleasure. A breath of summer still
lingered in the glinting sunlight, as if it longed to stay the falling
leaves. The trees were parted by a wandering brook overgrown with
brilliant scarlet duckweed. An enormous willow hanging over its pretty
bank, with a peep between its drooping branches of a grassy slope
just dotted with the ever-present ti tree told them they had reached
their journey's end. They saw the rush-thatched roof and somewhat
dilapidated veranda of the disused schoolhouse. Before it stretched a
lovely valley, where the brook became a foaming rivulet. A little group
of tents and a long line of silvery-looking streamers marked the camp
of the rabbiters.
But the children's eyes were fastened on the moss-grown thatch.
Soon they could distinguish the broken-down paling and the recently-
mended gate, at which Mr. Lee was hammering. A shout, in which
three voices at least united, made him look round. Down went bill and
hammer as he ran to meet them, answering with his cheeriest "All
right!" the welcome cry of, "Father, father, here we are!"
Mr. Hirpington sprang out and lifted Audrey to the ground. Mr.
Lee had Effie in his arms already. The boys, disdaining assistance,
climbed over the back of the cart, laughing merrily. The garden had
long since gone back to wilderness, but the fruit still hung on the
unpruned trees—apples and peaches dwindling for want of the
gardener's care, but oh, so nice in boyish eyes! Cuthbert had shied a
stone amongst the over-ripe peaches before his father had answered
his friend's inquiries.
No, not the shadow of a disturbance had reached his happy
valley, so Mr. Lee asserted, looking round the sweet, secluded nook

with unbounded satisfaction.
"You could not have chosen better for me," he went on, and
Edwin's beaming face echoed his father's content.
Mr. Hirpington was pulling out from beneath the fern-leaves a
store of good things of which his friend knew nothing—-wild pig and
hare, butter and eggs, nice new-made bread; just a transfer from the
larder at the ford to please the children.
Age had given to the school-house a touch of the picturesque. Its
log-built walls were embowered in creepers, and the sweet-brier,
which had formerly edged the worn-out path, was now choking the
doorway. Although Mr. Lee's tenancy could be counted by hours, he
had not been idle. A wood fire was blazing in the room once sacred to
desk and form. The windows looking to the garden behind the house
had been all forced open, and the sunny air they admitted so freely
was fast dispelling the damp and mould which attach to shut-up
houses in all parts of the world.
One end of the room was piled with heterogeneous bales and
packages, but around the fire-place a sense of comfort began to show
itself already. A camp-table had been unpacked and screwed together,
and seats, after a fashion, were provided for all the party. The
colonist's "billy," the all-useful iron pot for camp fire or farmhouse
kitchen, was singing merrily, and even the family teapot had been
brought back to daylight from its chrysalis of straw and packing-case.
There was a home-like feeling in this quiet taking possession.
"I thought it would be better than having your boys and girls
shivering under canvas until your house was built," remarked Mr.
Hirpington, rubbing his hands with the pleasant assurance of success.
"You can rent the old place as long as you like. It may be a bit shaky
at the other corner, but a good prop will make it all right."

The two friends went out to examine, and the brothers and
sisters drew together. Effie was hugging her kitten; Cuthbert was
thinking of the fruit; but Beauty, who had been left grazing outside,
was beforehand with him. There he stood, with his fore feet on the
broken-down paling, gathering it for himself. It was fun to see him
part the peach and throw away the stone, and Cuthbert shouted with
delight to Edwin. They were not altogether pleased to find Mr.
Hirpington regarded it as a very ordinary accomplishment in a New
Zealand horse.
"We are in another hemisphere," exclaimed Edwin, "and
everything about us is so delightfully new."
"Except these decaying beams," returned his father, coming
round to examine the state of the roof above the window at which
Edwin and Effie were standing after their survey of the bedrooms.
Audrey, who had deferred her curiosity to prepare the family
meal, was glad to learn that, besides the room in which Mr. Lee had
slept last night, each end of the veranda had been enclosed, making
two more tiny ones. A bedstead was already put up in one, and such
stores as had been unpacked were shut in the other.
When Audrey's call to tea brought back the explorers, and the
little party gathered around their own fireside, Edwin could but think
of the dismantled hearth by the Rota Pah, and as he heard his father's
energetic conversation with Mr. Hirpington, his indignation against the
merciless tana was ready to effervesce once more.
"Now," Mr. Lee went on, "I cannot bring my mind to clear my
land by burning down the trees. You say it is the easiest way."
"Don't begin to dispute with me over that," laughed his friend.
"You can light a fire, but how will you fell a tree single-handed?"

The boys were listening with eager interest to their father's plans.
To swing the axe and load the faggot-cart would be jolly work indeed
in those lovely woods.
Mr. Hirpington was to ride back on the horse he had lent to Mr.
Lee on the preceding evening. When he started, the brothers ran
down the valley to get a peep at the rabbiter's camp. Three or four
men were lying round their fire eating their supper. The line of silver
streamers fluttering in the wind proved to be an innumerable
multitude of rabbit-skins hanging up to dry. A party of sea-gulls, which
had followed the camp as the rabbiters moved on, were hovering
about, crying like cats, until they awakened the sleeping echoes.
The men told Edwin they had been clearing the great sheep-runs
between his father's land and the sea-shore, and the birds had
followed them all those miles for the sake of the nightly feast they
could pick up in their track.
"You can none of you do without us," they said. "We are always
at work, moving from place to place, or the little brown Bunny would
lord it over you all."
The boys had hardly time to exchange a good-night with the
rabbiters, when the daylight suddenly faded, and night came down
upon vale and bush without the sweet interlude of twilight. They were
groping their way back to the house, when the fire-flies began their
nightly dance, and the flowering shrubs poured forth their perfume.
The stars shone out in all their southern splendour, and the boys
became aware of a moving army in the grass. Poor Bunny was
mustering his myriads.

CHAPTER V.
POSTING A LETTER.
Mr. Lee and his boys found so much to do in their new home, days
sped away like hours. The bright autumn weather which had
welcomed them to Wairoa (to give their habitation its Maori name)
had changed suddenly for rain—a long, deluging rain, lasting more
than a week.
The prop which Mr. Hirpington had recommended was necessarily
left for the return of fine weather. But within doors comfort was
growing rapidly. One end of the large room was screened off for a
workshop, and shelves and pegs multiplied in convenient corners.
They were yet a good way off from that happy condition of a place for
everything, and everything in its place. It was still picnic under a roof,
as Audrey said; but they were on the highroad to comfort and better
things. When darkness fell they gathered round the blazing wood-fire.
Mr. Lee wrote the first letters for England, while Edwin studied
"Extinct Volcanoes." Audrey added her quota to the packet preparing
for Edwin's old friend, "the perambulating letter-box," and Effie and
Cuthbert played interminable games of draughts, until Edwin shut up
his book and evolved from his own brains a new and enlarged edition
of Maori folk-lore which sent them "creepy" to bed.
It seemed a contradiction of terms to say May-day was bringing
winter; but winter might come upon them in haste, and the letters
must be posted before the road to the ford was changed to a muddy
rivulet.
Mr. Lee, who had everything to do with his own hands, knew not
how to spare a day. He made up his mind at last to trust Edwin to ride

over with them. To be sure of seeing Ottley, Edwin must stay all night
at the ford, for after the coach came in it would be too late for him to
return through the bush alone.
Edwin was overjoyed at the prospect, for Ottley would tell him all
he longed to know. Was Nga-Hepé still alive? Had Whero gone to
school? He might even propose another early morning walk across the
bush to the banks of the lake.
Edwin was to ride the Maori Beauty, which had become the family
name for the chieftain's horse. Remembering his past experiences
with the white-leaved puka-puka, he coaxed Audrey to lend him a
curtain she was netting for the window of her own bedroom. She had
not much faith in Edwin's assurances that it would not hurt it a bit just
to use it for once for a veil or muzzle; but she was horrified into
compliance by his energetic assertion that her refusal might cost his
Beauty's life. Cuthbert, mounted on an upturned pail, so that he could
reach the horse's head, did good service in the difficult task of putting
it on. The veil was not at all to the Beauty's mind, and he did his best
to get rid of it. But the four corners were drawn through his collar at
last, and securely tied.
With Mr. Lee's parting exhortation to mind what he was about
and look well to Beauty's steps, Edwin started.
The road was changed to a black, oozy, slimy track. Here and
there the earth had been completely washed away, and horse and
rider were floundering in a boggy swamp. A little farther on a perfect
landslip from the hills above had obliterated every trace of road, and
Edwin was obliged to wind his way through the trees, trusting to his
Beauty's instinct to find it again.
With the many wanderings from the right path time sped away.
The lamp was swinging in the acacia tree as he trotted up to the

friendly gate of the ford-house.
"Coach in?" he shouted, as he caught sight of Dunter shovelling
away the mud from the entrance.
"Not yet; but she's overdue," returned the man, anxiously. "Even
Ottley will never get his horses through much longer. We may lock our
stable-doors until the May frosts begin. It is a tempting of Providence
to start with wheels through such a swamp, and I told him so last
week."
"Then I am just in time," cried Edwin joyfully, walking his horse
up to the great flat stone in the middle of the yard and alighting. He
slipped his hand into his coat to satisfy himself the bulky letters in his
breast-pocket were all right, and then led his Beauty to the horse-
trough. He had half a mind not to go in-doors until he had had his
talk with Ottley.
Dunter, who was looking forward to the brief holiday the stopping
of the coach secured him, leaned on his spade and prepared for a
gossip.
"Did Mr. Lee think of building a saw-mill?" Edwin's reply ended
with the counter-inquiry, "Had Mr. Hirpington got home?"
Dunter shook his head. "Not he: we all hold on as long as the
light lasts. He is away with the men, laying down a bit of corduroy
road over an earthslip, just to keep a horse-track through the worst of
the winter."
Whilst Edwin was being initiated into the mysteries of road-
making in the bush, the coach drove up.
Horses and driver were alike covered with mud, and the coach
itself exhibited more than its usual quota of flax-leaf bandages—all
testifying to the roughness of the journey.

"It is the last time you will see me this season," groaned Ottley,
as he got off the box. "I shall get no farther." He caught sight of
Edwin, and recognized his presence with a friendly nod. The
passengers, looking in as dilapidated and battered condition as the
coach, were slowly getting out, thankful to find themselves at a
stopping-place. Among them Edwin noticed a remarkable old man.
His snowy hair spoke of extreme old age, and when he turned a
tattooed cheek towards the boy, Edwin's attention was riveted upon
him at once. Lean, lank, and active still, his every air and gesture was
that of a man accustomed to command.
"Look at him well," whispered Dunter. "He is a true old tribal chief
from the other side of the mountains, if I know anything; one of the
invincibles, the gallant old warrior-chiefs that are dying out fast. You
will never see his like again. If you had heard them, as I have, vow to
stand true for ever and ever and ever, you would never forget it.—Am
I not right, coachee?" he added in a low aside to Ottley, as he took
the fore horse by the head.
The lantern flickered across the wet ground. The weary
passengers were stamping their numbed feet, and shaking the heavy
drops of moisture from hat-brims and overcoats. Edwin pressed
resolutely between, that he might catch the murmur of Ottley's reply.
"He got in at the last stopping-place, but I do not know him."
There was such a look of Whero in the proud flash of the aged
Maori's eye, that Edwin felt a secret conviction, be he who he might,
they must be kith and kin. He held his letter aloft to attract the
coachman's attention, calling out at his loudest, "Here, Mr. Ottley, I
have brought a letter for you to post at last."
"All right," answered the coachman, opening a capacious pocket
to receive it, in which a dozen others were already reposing. "Hand it

over, my boy; there is scarcely a letter reaches the post from this
district which does not go through my hands."
"Did you post this?" asked the aged Maori, taking another from
the folds of his blanket.
"I did more," said Ottley, as he glanced at the crumpled
envelope, "for I wrote it to Kakiki Mahane, the father of Nga-Hepé's
wife, at her request."
"I am that father," returned the old chief.
"And I," added Ottley, "was the eye-witness of her destitution, as
that letter tells you."
They were almost alone now in the great wet yard. The other
passengers were hurrying in-doors, and Dunter was leading away the
horses; but Edwin lingered, regardless of the heavy drops falling from
the acacia, in his anxiety to hear more.
"I have brought no following with me to the mountain-lake, for
by your letter famine is brooding in the whare of my child. Well, I
know if the men of the Kota Pah heard of my coming, they would
spread the feast in my honour. But how should I eat with the enemies
of my child? I wait for the rising of the stars to find her, that none
may know I am near."
"I'll go with you," offered Ottley.
"You need not wait for the stars," interposed Edwin; "I'll carry the
big coach-lantern before you with pleasure. Do let me go with you,"
he urged, appealing to Ottley.
"How is this?" asked Kakiki. "Does the pakeha pity when the
Maori frowns? What has my son-in-law been about, to bring down
upon himself the vengeance of his tribe?"
"Let your daughter answer that question," remarked Ottley
discreetly.

But Edwin put in warmly: "Nga-Hepé was too rich and too
powerful, and the chief grew jealous. It was a big shame; and if I had
been Whero, I should have been worse than he was."
Whero's grandfather deigned no reply. He stalked up the well-
worn steps into Mrs. Hirpington's kitchen, and seating himself at the
long table called out for supper. Edwin just peeped in at the door,
avoiding Mrs. Hirpington's eye, for fear she should interfere to prevent
him going with the old Maori.
"I shall see her when I come back," he thought, as he strolled on
towards the stable, keeping an anxious watch over the gate, afraid
lest the fordmaster should himself appear at the last moment and
detain him.
"You have brought Nga-Hepé's horse," said Ottley. as he entered
the nearest stall. "We must have him, for he knows the way. We have
only to give him his head, and he is safe to take the road to his
master's door."
"If you have him you must have me," persisted Edwin, and the
thing was settled. He nestled down in the clean straw under Beauty's
manger, and waited, elate with the prospect of a night of adventure,
and stoutly resisted all Dunter's persuasions to go in to supper.
Wondering at the shy fit which had seized the boy, Dunter
brought him a hunch of bread and cheese, and left the lantern
swinging in the stable from the hook in the ceiling, ere he went in
with Ottley to share the good feed always to be found in Mrs.
Hirpington's kitchen, leaving Edwin alone with the horses. He latched
the stable-door, as the nights were growing cold. The gates were not
yet barred, for Mr. Hirpington and his men were now expected every
minute.

Edwin's thoughts had gone back to the corduroy road, which
Dunter had told him was made of the trunks of trees laid close
together, with a layer of saplings on the top to fill up the interstices.
He was making it in miniature with some bits of rush and reed
scattered about the stables, when the latch was softly lifted, and
Whero stood before him. Not the Whero he had parted from by the
white pines, but the lean skeleton of a boy with big, staring eyes, and
bony arms coming out from the loose folds of the blanket he was
wearing, like the arms of a harlequin. Edwin sprang up to meet him,
exclaiming, "Your grandfather is here." But instead of replying, Whero
was vigorously rubbing faces with his good old Beauty.
"Have you come to meet your grandfather?" asked Edwin.
"No," answered the boy abruptly. "I've come to ask Ottley to take
me to school." His voice was hollow, and his teeth seemed to snap
together at the sight of the bread in Edwin's hand.
"Whero, you are starving!" exclaimed Edwin, putting the
remainder of his supper into the dusky, skinny fingers smoothing
Beauty's mane.
"A man must learn to starve," retorted Whero. "The mother here
will give me food when I come of nights and talk to Ottley."
"But your own mother, Whero, and Ronga, and the children, how
do they live?" Edwin held back from asking after Nga-Hepé, "for," he
said, as he looked at Whero, "he must be dead."
"How do they live?" repeated Whero, with a laugh. "Is the door
of the whare ever shut against the hungry? They go to the pah daily,
but I will not go. I will not eat with the men who struck down my
father in his pride. I wander through the bush. Let him eat the food
they bring him—he knows not yet how it comes; but his eyes are
opening to the world again. When he sees me hunger-bitten, and my

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Facets Of Corporate Identity Communication And Reputation 1st Edition Tc Melewar

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7-10. STP + Branding and Product & Services Strategies.pptx