The dynamics of corporate brand charisma:Routinization and activation at Carlsberg IT

Mary Jo Hatch a,*, Majken Schultz b

aDepartment of Organization, Copenhagen Business School, Kilevej 14 A-2000, Copenhagen F., DenmarkbCopenhagen Business School, USA

Scandinavian Journal of Management (2013) 29, 147—162

KEYWORDSBrand charisma;Corporate branding;Weber’s routinization ofcharisma theory;Reception and activationof charisma;Carlsberg Group;Management of IT

Summary This article describes how Carlsberg Group’s IT unit (CIT) made use of Carlsberg’scorporate brand to develop its identity following centralization and downsizing of the IT function.Our observations suggested using the concept of brand charisma and thereafter we framed ouranalysis with Weber’s theory of the routinization of charisma. The study took place in therelatively unusual context of a truncated rollout of a formal corporate branding program, whichallowed us to study the processes by which brand charisma was routinized. Findings indicate theimportant intermediary role played by middle managers who selected and systematized the set ofbrand beliefs taken up within the CIT project, and how employees accommodated these beliefs totheir everyday work life. Accommodation was found to take place within four subdomains ofactivity: subculture, communication, technology, and hierarchical control. A key finding is that,through their reception and activation of brand charisma, the CITemployees contributed greatlyto the endowment of charisma their brand carried. A revised Weberian model of the dynamicrelationships between the routinization of charisma and its reception and activation constitutesour contribution to corporate branding theory. The article also offers empirical evidence insupport of extending Weberian scholarship further into the field of brand management.# 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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In response to Marshall Meyer (1990), who questioned MaxWeber’s relevance to contemporary organization studies,Lounsbury and Carberry (2005) countered that, althoughWeberian scholarship in organization studies has dwindled,Weber’s theories continue to offer fertile ground to organi-zational researchers. To illustrate their point, Lounsbury andCarberry used Weber’s work to explain globalization, post-industrialism, and varieties of capitalism in the informationage. We think that corporate branding is another contem-porary phenomenon amenable to Weberian analysis and

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 978 356 8742; fax: +1 978 356 8742.E-mail address: mjhatch@virginia.edu (M.J. Hatch).

0956-5221/$ — see front matter # 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reservehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2013.03.005

devote this article to exploring what Weber’s theory of theroutinization of charisma might reveal about corporatebranding.

Interest in corporate branding migrated into organizationstudies from marketing, mainly in relation to research onorganizational identity. In the realm of management prac-tice, Olins (1989), Kapferer (1992), Ind (2001, 2003), Hatchand Schultz (2001) and Balmer and Greyser (2003) wereamong those who made connections between organizationalidentity and corporate brand management. Somewhat later,in the academic literature, Hatch and Schultz (2008) pro-posed organizational identity theory as a foundation forunderstanding how corporate branding works, while Karre-man and Rylander (2008) and Tarnovskaya (2011) presented

d.

148 M.J. Hatch, M. Schultz

empirical evidence of how employees used corporate brandsas sources of meaning in their organizational identity work.

Our study of the role corporate branding played in a caseof organizational identity building in Carlsberg Group’s ITfunction prompted us to investigate the concept of brandcharisma, a term Smothers (1993) introduced into marketingin relation to product branding. Following Weber (1922/66),Smothers argued that brand charisma is a social constructionof the consumers and customers who give a product brand itslegitimacy. This article extends Smothers’ concept of brandcharisma from product to corporate branding and therebyturns empirical attention from consumers’ relationships tobrands to those of employees. We then move considerablybeyond Smothers’ thesis to investigate whether Weber’stheory of the routinization of charisma explains how Carls-berg’s corporate brand exercised charisma.

We begin by reviewing the literature on brand charismaand Weber’s definition and theory of how charismatic leader-ship becomes routinized. We then abstract from Weber aframework for the analysis of our case consisting of threemore or less sequential stages, each operating in a differenthierarchical domain: (1) introduction of brand beliefs by topmanagement; (2) their systematization by middle manage-ment; and (3) their reception and activation by employees.The empirical data to which we apply the framework comesprimarily from interviews conducted with members of the ITunit of Carlsberg Group (CIT), and from material they createdto document their process. In conformance to the theory ofroutinization laid out by Weber, our data analysis describesthe role middle management played in systematizing brandbeliefs, and the CIT employees’ accommodation of thesebeliefs to their everyday life.

Discussion then focuses on how the activities we observednot only accomplished the routinization of charisma, but alsoaccount for the endowment of charisma the brand carries.Endowment, we postulate, consists of at least two interre-lated processes defined as the reception $ activation ofbrand charisma. We conclude that interactions betweenthe endowment and routinization of brand charismaobserved in our case study extend Weber’s theory and revealthe dynamics of corporate brand charisma. Finally we pre-sent some implications of our findings for practicing brandmanagers.

Corporate brands and Weber’s theory ofcharisma

Although Smothers introduced the concept of brand char-isma back in 1993, few have followed up on this idea. Thosereferring to his work tend either to underplay or dismiss it. Intheir review of brand equity theory, Thakor and Kohli (1996)lumped brand charisma together with brand image, brandpersonality, brand affinity, brand relationships and brandattitude, as if there were no significant differences betweenthese constructs. Meanwhile McWilliam (1997), in justifyinghis study of low involvement brands, accused Smothers ofreifying brands by suggesting they could have charisma.Reification being at the time and for some time since con-sidered a mortal sin among the ranks of social scientists, thedebate seems to have ended with McWilliam’s critique.However, after studying Carlsberg Group employees’

strongly emotional reception of a corporate brand initiativeand what prompted it, we are inclined to come down onSmothers’ side.

The case for brand charisma Smothers (1993) presenteddeparts from the observation that many more powerfulbrands exist than can be accounted for by the presence ofcharismatic leaders, for example, Coke, Nike and BMW.Although instances of leaders providing significant personalcharisma to their corporate brands can be found — Apple’sSteve Jobs and Richard Branson’s Virgin — considerably moreproducts and brands ignite the fervent passions of theirconstituents than there are charismatic corporate leadersto account for their power and influence.

Smothers (1993) relied on Weber (1922/66) to provide adefinition and an explanation for product brand charisma.Weber (1947: 329) defined charisma as ‘‘a certain quality ofan individual personality by virtue of which he is set apartfrom ordinary men and treated as endowed with superna-tural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional qua-lities.’’ According to Smothers, establishing that a brand hascharisma amounts to demonstrating it is endowed withexceptional qualities by those it touches.

Reasoning by analogy, Smothers then argued that, if thesocial construction of a leader’s charisma occurs among his orher followers, consumers similarly construct what charisma abrand or product can claim. Although Smothers followsWeber in assigning responsibility for the social constructionof brand charisma to consumers, he does not specify clearlyhow this process unfolds, which is one contribution thisarticle will make. Another contribution is the extension ofSmothers reasoning to employees’ constructions of corporatebrand charisma. A third is to bring the routinization ofcharisma into view. A major premise of our argument is thatemployees engage in the same processes that consumers usewhen they endow product brands with charisma, and thatthese processes are similar if not identical to those Weberused to explain the endowment of a leader with charisma andhow that charisma comes to be routinized.

Weber had much to say on the matter of the processesthrough which charisma is routinized, somewhat less to sayabout its endowment. According to Weber (1968/78),although significant societal change originates in the intro-duction of new beliefs by a charismatic leader, the processesby which such change comes about take place within every-day life where the beliefs are subjected to routinization,which includes both systematization and accommodationprocesses (see Fig. 1).

According to Weberian scholar Schroeder (1992: 17, 20),Weber claimed that:

. . . the struggle between charisma and routinizationdescribes the flux between the initially revolutionizingimpact of beliefs and their eventual accommodation toeveryday life. Not the origin of world-views, but theirsubsequent force in shaping conduct and social relationsis important . . . once beliefs have come into existencethrough the assertion of charisma, their reception amongcertain strata depends on the predispositions of thesestrata . . . These predispositions, in turn, depend on thesocial circumstances of the various strata, on their posi-tion in relation to other strata and on their common wayof life.

Figure 1 A model of Weber’s theory of the routinization ofcharisma.

The dynamics of corporate brand charisma 149

Weber argued that in systematization disciples of thecharismatic leader extend charismatic authority into every-day life, in the process dissipating some of the revolutionaryappeal of the initial influence through association with themundane, but also bringing it into alignment with culture. ‘‘Astratum of interpreters elaborates the belief-system so thatit constitutes a coherent whole and its tenets are extended toapply to various aspects of everyday life’’ (Schroeder, 1992:10). Thereafter accommodation involves negotiations aroundthe interpretations and implementations of the new beliefswhereby extant obligations shape and alter the charismaticinfluence in ways that bring it further into line with thefamiliar and which cause it to conform to existing material,economic, political and social relations.

As Schroeder (1992: 10) noted: ‘‘. . . there is an accom-modation of the belief-system to the interests of variousstrata of believers. As a result, its content corresponds moreand more closely with what these strata, on the basis of theirsocial position, had already been predisposed to believe orwith their everyday conduct.’’ According to Weber (1968/78:146), charisma does not stabilize; rather charismatic influ-ence interacts with traditional or rational-legal influencespresent within the society or organization. Weber thusexplained the dynamism of charisma as the result of demandsmade by everyday life on those who endow a leader withcharisma. These demands push the recipients of charismaticinfluence to maintain the stability of their social position andmaterial wellbeing (e.g., serve their family obligations, andtheir political and economic interests), even as charismapropels them toward change. This places the conflictbetween stability and change within those who respond toand thereby activate charisma.

Based on our review of Weber’s theory about the routini-zation of charisma we propose to examine the sequence ofdevelopments shown from left to right in Fig. 1 throughanalysis of our case study materials. Our data and methodsare presented next, followed by analysis of how Carlsberg’scorporate brand became routinized within CIT through thesystematization and accommodation of charismatic brandbeliefs. The endowment and reception $ activation of cor-porate brand charisma by CIT employees is treated in thediscussion that follows the case presentation and analysis.We conclude the article by addressing the simultaneousunfolding of two processes Weber’s theory suggested tous underpin corporate brand charisma: (1) the process of

routinizing beliefs associated with the brand, systematizingand accommodating them to everyday life within the orga-nization, and (2) the process of endowing the brand withcharisma, within which middle managers and employees, inreceiving selected beliefs about the brand, activate itspotential to influence them.

Data and methods

We studied the organizational developments following Carls-berg Group’s corporate brand rollout starting with its formallaunch in the spring of 2009. Intended to support post-acquisition integration, one manifestation of the corporatebranding process was the articulation of a new aspirationalcorporate brand platform known internally as The Stand,shorthand for ‘‘what we stand for’’. It was while exploringhow various subsidiaries perceived and made use of TheStand that we came across the CIT project described below.

Late in 2010 a key informant alerted us to a Virtual FridayBar celebrating the end of CIT’s Brewing Greatness project.In January 2011 we conducted interviews with Carlsberg’sthen CIO who headed CIT, and two middle managers who ledthe project: the Senior Manager of Corporate CommunicationIT, and a Communication Consultant who had been hired on aproject basis to do identity building within CIT. At this timewe viewed four videos documenting the project and weregiven an extensive PowerPoint-presentation summarizing itsplanning and implementation. In addition two project parti-cipants who happened to be available while we were on thepremises shared their impressions with us.

After visiting several different subsidiaries we realizedthat Brewing Greatness represented one of the first and todate most comprehensive uses of The Stand within CarlsbergGroup. We therefore conducted a second round of inter-views, some virtual, at CIT’s offices in Copenhagen duringAugust—September 2011. Ten project participants and themaster brewer who helped design and manage the beerbrewing process that comprised the main attraction of theproject were interviewed at that time. We specifically soughtpeople with diverse opinions and conducted interviews withall those recommended. Because we worked retrospectively,we were able to question whether the participants’ experi-ences had had a lasting influence on everyday life in CIT andif/how the brand ideas had affected their work or theirorganization.

At this time we also re-interviewed the two CIT middlemanagers responsible for designing and delivering the pro-ject, the head of CIT, and the corporate brand manager fromCarlsberg Group, focusing on their impressions of the impactand reactions to the project in both CIT and elsewhere in thecompany. We also re-interviewed the senior executivesdirectly involved in initiating The Stand in order to capturetheir knowledge of CIT’s Brewing Greatness Project andresponses to it outside of CIT. Table 1 describes our datasources. All interviews ranged from 30 min to 1.5 h, wereconducted in an open-ended style either face-to-face orusing the company’s intranet platform, and all were tapedand transcribed.

Data analysis involved derivation of themes followingSpradley’s (1979) ethnographic methods and the groundedtheory of Glaser and Strauss (1967). We relied primarily on

Table 1 Data sources.

Type of data Specification of data Origin of data

The Stand PowerPoint slide presentationVideo introducing The Stand internally

Produced by consultants in consultationwith Exec Committee (ExCom)

Documentary Videos Four 3—5 min videos showingemployees in action,The Stand music track playingBrewing Greatness: Kick OffBrewing Greatness: Starting the BrewBrewing Greatness: The LabelBrewing Greatness: Bottling

Produced by student employee inCorporate CommunicationDepartment November 2010

Presentations Brewing Greatness: 40 slides showingdetailed presentation of stages of process

Produced by CorporateCommunication teamNovember 2010

IT Game plan for Carlsberg Group2011—2013

Produced by CIO

Interviews with Project Organizers(Based in Denmark)

Total interviews: 7CIO (January/Jan 2010 & September/Sep 2011)Senior Manager Corp.com (Jan & Sep)Internal Communication Consultant(Jan & Sep)Master brewer (Sep)Corporate Brand Manager (Sep)

Face-to-face interviewsLasting between 1 and 2 hAll interview were taped andtranscribed

Interviews with Participants(multiple locations)

Total interviews: 12Manager France (Jan & Sep*)2 Employees Denmark (Sep)Employee Finland (Sep*)2 Employees France (Sep)Employee Germany (Sep*)Employee Croatia (Sep*)Employee Switzerland (Jan* & Sep*)Employee, Office Coach UK (Sep*)

Interviews marked � conductedvirtually at Carlsberg HQLasting between 30 and 45 minAll interviews were taped andtranscribed

Interviews with Top Management(ExCom)

Total Interviews 4:SVP Communications & CSR(November/Nov, Jan & Sep)SVP Group Innovation, Marketing &Sale (Sep)

Face-to-face interviewsLasting between 1 and 2 hAll interview were taped andtranscribed

150 M.J. Hatch, M. Schultz

interview data to detail how the project came into being andwhat it involved, and to document employees’ interpreta-tions of the project including characterizing their own andthe reactions of their colleagues. As our analysis progressedwe fed preliminary findings back to our key informants fortheir comments and further reflections.

Very few negative reactions to Brewing Greatness wereregistered within the CIT community. One, echoing top man-agement concerns that IT needed to stay focused on itsinternal problems, mentioned wasted resources, whileanother criticized the project for not involving more people.Informants interpreted the largely positive, often enthusias-tic responses to the project in relation to the context ofuncertainty and feelings of local isolation and lack of appre-ciation that followed the downsizing and centralizing of CIT,conditions that had prompted development of the project.None of the participants claimed that Brewing Greatness

transformed the day-to-day reality of this context, but nearlyall we spoke with experienced the process as contributing toa stronger sense of belonging and the formation of a morecohesive and collaborative culture within CIT. We note thatthese effects would be expected from any form of partici-patory engagement in team-building and organizationaldevelopment (Kahn, 1990; Macey & Schneider, 2008; Mirvis,2001), but argue that the charismatic qualities of Carlsberg’sbrand brought an added dimension to these experiences.

One obvious weakness of our study is that we did notcanvas a larger sample of CIT employees. The time demandsof the larger study, of which this one was but a part, limitedour exposure to the process. Also, having heard about theproject at its conclusion, our only option was to study it inretrospect. Future studies of the routinization of brandcharisma should aim to follow routinization processesmore fully in real time, paying particular attention to

Figure 2 Carlsberg Group Stand.

The dynamics of corporate brand charisma 151

accommodation, which is difficult to capture as it is a widelydistributed phenomenon happening among numerous peopleworking in many places at the same time.

Case analysis: brewing greatness at CarlsbergIT

This section explores routinization activities conductedwithin three domains through which The Stand passed onits way to becoming part of CIT’s identity reconstructionprocess: introduction by Carlsberg Group executives, system-atization within the ranks of CIT managers, and accommoda-tion by CIT employees. Applying the framework shown inFig. 1, our data analysis reveals the importance of ‘‘hand-offs’’ from one domain to the next, and indicates multiplesubdomains of accommodation activity: subculture, commu-nication, technology, and hierarchical control.

Introduction of the stand: corporate branding atCarlsberg Group

Until the late 1990s, Carlsberg Group was a regional brewingcompany operating mainly in the Nordic countries, UK andMalaysia. However a decade of growth through major acqui-sitions, including in 2008 Brasserie Kronenbourg (France) andBaltika Breweries (Russia), elevated the company to theposition of fourth largest brewer worldwide, moving ittoward globalization and bringing with it the need for severalsignificant organizational changes.

Creation of a regional structure to which local marketserving organizations would report was one of the changesintroduced to manage the much larger firm. To internatio-nalize its leadership and better support its strategy to ‘‘bethe fastest growing global beer company’’ the company hireda number of executives from several globally recognized fastmoving consumer goods (FMCG) companies; we note that thisresponse to recent marketplace developments occurredthroughout the brewing industry at that time.

During our study we observed top executives committedto FMCG principles moving management hard in the directionof cost cutting and centralizing the key functions of IT,procurement, and supply chain management, while simulta-neously voicing respect for the belief that ‘‘brewing willalways be local’’. This paradox was encapsulated be theterm ‘‘glocal’’, which was nearly always mentioned in thenext breath after intoning desire for Carlsberg Group to bemore like an FMCG company, though considerable confusionabout the meaning of this term was manifest in our discussionwith employees.

A corporate response to post-acquisition integration chal-lenges of the much larger more international organizationinvolved a corporate sponsored HR program called WinningBehaviors believed internally to have provided a more effec-tive and expedient path to cultural change than had earliervalue-driven efforts (see Gertsen & Søderberg, 2012). How-ever one executive in particular felt that Winning Behaviorsfailed to articulate an identity for the now much largerCarlsberg Group as it simply stated, pragmatically, whatemployees should and could do to help the company andthemselves within it. The desire on the part of the SVP ofCorporate Communication to initiate a corporate branding

effort as a follow on to Winning Behaviors was a move tosymbolically integrate the now much larger organizationalculture by promoting a cohesive identity.

Responding to the new business environment created bygrowth, the SVP of Group Sales, Marketing and Innovation(GSMI), recently hired away from a noted FMCG company,repositioned and re-launched its flagship Carlsberg Beerbrand in international markets. To help with this effort hecontracted a US-based consulting firm. With potential syner-gies to the re-launch of the product brand in mind, the SVP ofCorporate Communication proposed jointly developing theCarlsberg Beer product brand and the Carlsberg Group cor-porate brand. In agreement, the SVP of GSMI funded devel-opment of a corporate brand positioning statement by theconsultants. The consultants and the Carlsberg Group Execu-tive Committee (ExCom) collaborated in the preparation ofthe corporate brand statement, timed to launch with therelease of the repositioned Carlsberg Beer brand in March2010. To avoid confusion, the product brand was knowninternally as The Brand while the identity statement wascalled The Stand (see Fig. 2).

The Stand was presented to employees as lying at theheart of the corporate growth strategy. The slogan ‘‘Thirst forGreat: Great people. Great brands. Great moments’’ was itsheadline. The Stand was presented to employees in a videowith high production value and glossy eye-catching posterspromoting key beliefs about Carlsberg including: ‘‘We neversettle, but always thirst for the better’’, ‘‘We brand as many,but stand as one’’, ‘‘We constantly raise the bar’’, ‘‘We brewa greater future,’’ all under the headline ‘‘Thirst for Great’’(view the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?-v=kRclbnqlvws&list=FLA7InOd4K6Ksz0SuwFf7Mjw&index=5).The video also made references to company heritage throughthe symbolically laden word ‘‘brewing’’ and the corporatemotto ‘‘Semper Ardens’’ (Always Burning).

While ExCom developed and introduced The Stand toCarlsberg’s employees, we argue it was employees whoultimately ‘‘endowed [The Stand] with . . . specifically excep-tional qualities’’. According to Weber (1947: 359), charismaarises ‘‘out of enthusiasm, or of despair and hope’’. Ourinformants often tied the enthusiasm they expressed forThe Stand to their passion for brewing beer. A number ofold timers we met throughout the company felt that thispassion had languished following the recent shift to thinkingof beer as a fast moving consumer good (FMCG), and

152 M.J. Hatch, M. Schultz

Carlsberg Group as an FMCG company. While the changesbrought a sense of despair to these old timers, The Stand gavethem hope that passion for beer and brewing would riseagain. Interestingly, in the case of those newly hired intoCarlsberg from the FMCG world, enthusiasm came fromfinding beer more engaging than toilet paper, soapsuds orrazor blades. Thus, although devotion to the brand came inmany shapes and sizes, it seems reasonable to conclude thatemployees from all parts of the company associated enthu-siasm for the future with The Stand, in some instancesdelivering them from feelings of despair by calling forthhope. Thus all three of the sources of charisma cited byWeber manifested within Carlsberg at the time of our study.

Against the consultants’ advice, the company decided notto follow up the announcement of The Stand with an immedi-ate formal corporate rollout. There were several reasonsgiven for this decision. First, HR worried that a new programlaunched so soon after Winning Behaviors would confuseemployees. Second, the CEO felt that corporate brandingshould develop ‘‘glocally’’ rather than being forced ontosubsidiaries and functions. Third, available budget for brand-ing was tight due to heavy investment in recent acquisitionsand in the global re-launch of Carlsberg Beer.

As a consequence of these considerations, implementa-tion of The Stand was left primarily in the hands of thoseoperating outside corporate headquarters. As they, too, wereunder significant pressure to decrease costs and streamlineactivities, most felt little incentive to do anything other thanshow The Stand video and display the posters. Many reasonedit was corporate’s responsibility to carry The Stand forward,not theirs. In the case of CIT, however, a different scenariounfolded.

Routinization: brewing greatness in Carlsberg IT

In this section we show how CIT middle managers system-atized The Stand as introduced by top management byselectively embedding some of its key beliefs in their identitybuilding effort. This first ‘‘handoff,’’ from top to middlemanagement, saw the CIT middle managers (the first ‘‘stra-tum of interpreters’’) engage in systematization by linkingThe Stand’s ‘‘Thirst for Great’’ theme to the physical act ofbrewing a beer. This activity was followed by a second‘‘handoff’’ from the middle managers to CIT employeeswho, by brewing the beer and sharing it with their colleagues,accommodated beliefs about the corporate brand to theireveryday lives.

From introduction to systematization: linking ‘‘Thirstfor Great’’ to brewing a beerSeptember 2010 saw 17 local IT organizations spread acrossNorthern and Western Europe downsized and centralized intoone global IT function consisting of about 350 IT employees.This made CIT one of the first functions to experience theshift from a collection of local brewing operations to oneintegrated unit — at least in the European markets where IT’scentralization was first attempted. Integration involved out-sourcing the help desk call center and redistributing retainedroles and responsibilities through a new reporting structure.As the Senior Manager of Corporate Communication for ITexplained, looking back:

So, for them and for us, this was new managers. You couldhave a new manager sitting in another country and for thefirst time in your life and you would have a new role. Youshould start working your new processes and you did notknow where to find those processes. And people weregetting quite frustrated and anxious about the future. Andalso now their chief IT man was no longer there.

CIT had long faced a less than positive image within thecompany. Some of its image problem stemmed from insati-able demand for IT services familiar to all IT professionals,some from problems CIT had not been able to resolve andwhich the reorganization was meant to address, and somefrom the effects of that reorganization. Particularly frustrat-ing to employees was tension with local colleagues createdby the transfer of local IT support to the outsourced callcenter. The Senior Manager for Corporate Communication ITexplained:

They’re squeezed from group and from the local people allthe time, sitting in this gap, trying to fill it out, trying tostill make it to be local because they’re sitting in the localcompany. . .. So suddenly you’re working across countriesbut your colleagues are not.

The confluence of these factors generated uncertainty,low self-esteem, and consequently a lack of enthusiasmamong CIT employees. In this context two CIT middle man-agers, one of whom was the first in CIT to be introduced toThe Stand through her reporting relationship to the SVP ofCorporate Communication, regarded its ‘‘Thirst for Great’’theme as a means to unleash the motivating potential ofshared identity. This Senior Manager for Corporate Commu-nication ITwas working with an event management specialistwho had been hired on a project basis as an Internal Com-munication Consultant to the IT Group, specifically to helpbuild a shared identity and common culture within CIT. TheInternal Consultant hit upon the idea of brewing a beer:

We were talking about how [to] get us closer together . . .and we had a beer at one point. We’re sitting up in [theCIO’s] office . . . on a Friday, and we’re talking about it, andsuddenly . . . it [the beer they were drinking] was some-thing that had been produced up here for an event orsomething, where somebody had been here for 20 yearsand they brewed a [special] beer for him. And I was like,oh, you can do that? Ooh, that sounds interesting, and thatsounds like there’s our symbol, that is what we’re doing.We had to find out . . . what everybody is proud of, whatwe’re representing. That’s like OK, how can we link all ofthis history together? And duh — it’s right there in front ofyou, it’s a beer — that is technically what we’re doing, andthere is where we have a common ground.

Thus the original inspiration for the CIT Brewing GreatnessProject arose from the Consultant’s act of linking the ‘‘Thirstfor Great’’ theme from The Stand to the idea of brewing abeer with her IT colleagues. For further inspiration she spenttime in the historically preserved office of Carl Jacobsen, thesecond-generation owner of Carlsberg Breweries. There shefound herself asking:

OK how can we do this? And mainly I was brainwashingmyself with listening to The Stand, and playing the movie

The dynamics of corporate brand charisma 153

constantly for a week, and trying to get some words out ofit, and putting that together. And then linking it where Icould say OK, what phrases can we put into our campaign,and then where would it be possible to link it to thebrewing part — so trying to meld them together.

When the two middle managers presented their idea tothe CIO, he welcomed their initiative, expressing tremendousenthusiasm and offering his own ideas. As reported by theConsultant, he said: ‘‘It was really important for us to havesomething to build up our identity upon, and something thatreflected the company, and the strategy, and the identity ofthe Carlsberg Group, and not only an IT department.’’ To thisthe Senior Corporate Communication Manager for IT added:‘‘it was meant to be a process that built on The Stand, andwhat we stand for, and how we could Thirst for Great.’’ Shecontinued: ‘‘For [the CIT employees] to feel like we’redelivering beer, we’re not making artists, we’re not IBM,we are Carlsberg. For me that identity is so important, sothat, for me, . . . whatever I do, I’ll try to put it on the beeragenda.’’

The CIO claimed he immediately recognized charisma inthe proposal:

The concept was so appealing that the people said let’s dothis, this is, oh why don’t we do that, so things which werenormally impossible . . . [became]. . . possible. So I thinkthat a lot of the credit is actually down to the team andthe people developing the idea on the fly as it sort of mademore and more sense.

But once approved, the middle managers had a great dealof work to do to make their proposed project a reality. To helpthem get the project underway, the CIO called the head ofthe Carlsberg Research Center (where experimental brewingtakes place) to ask for his support and involvement in thebrewing part of the project. Referring to the corporateemphasis on cost cutting as well as the good relationshiphe shared with the head of research, the CIO explained: ‘‘weteamed up because this was a zero cost thing, so we had touse our network to get a master brewer. . . I told [the masterbrewer] how important it was for me, and so of course hestepped up.’’

The brewmaster would oversee all brewing done by the ITparticipants, took sole responsibility for fermentation (whichrequired little action), and coordinated distribution with thelegal department. The brewmaster recalled how heexplained the steps of brewing to the CIT middle managers,and where in the process he thought the project leaderscould involve the Brewing Greatness participants:

Brewing is a one-day exercise where [the participants] mixthe mould and water and then they create this liquid fullof sugars which we then ferment with all the ingredientsin. That’s the one-day exercise, so they were here forthat. Then the fermentation itself is not that sexy. Basi-cally you add the yeast and I think they were also hereseeing that. And then sit . . . We will do some sampling justto control where we are in the process and making surethat we know when the fermentation is over. But that’s aone to two week process, where there’s not much to do. Sowe decided this part plus the filtration which is not thatinteresting either we will do, and then they could come

back and do the actual bottling and putting [on the capsand labels] . . . [At that stage] you can basically see yourproduct going into the bottle . . . Normally [you experiencebeer] the opposite way. Normally you see the bottle andtake the product out; here you put in. So for them I thinkthat was a good exercise and they all tried to see how theycould get the beer into the bottle without having too muchover-foaming and things like that.

With the brewmaster’s help, the CIT middle managersdesigned a participatory experience for representatives ofCIT that would connect to The Stand, as this comment by theCommunication Consultant shows:

So it’s like OK, what are the major steps, and somethingthat I could link together with a campaign, or for what ourpurpose are within this? So I spoke with [the Brewmaster],went through [the stages of the brewing process] and gotinto this whole brewing thought. Then I sat — and forpeople around me looking, it’s like you’re nuts — I had TheStand music going, and the video going, nonstop. I was juston a roll, and then just brainstorming, and just thinkingand trying to take some (like taking them out of thecomputer), I was like taking out the images, and thepictures, and the thoughts, and the wording, and thentrying to think brewing, brewing, brewing, and then TheStand is within it.

Thus one way the design of the Brewing Greatness Projectsystematized brand charisma was by adapting it to the con-straints imposed by the brewing process (see Fig. 3).

Further systematization came from decisions about whoshould participate and how to align involvement with thehierarchical structure of CIT. As the Consultant explained:

We decided OK, this is going to be a bottom up process —we need to involve people in this. We need people to brewthis. We need people to be part of this, not just make abeer and launch it. So we started the brew, and with thatwe had some teams put together, and that was actuallyabout eight people on each team up here at the CarlsbergResearch Centre. And of course what was important wasthat it was being mixed of as many countries as possible,and as many levels as possible. So it’s not just somebodywho always was up here because they are a manager forsomething, but it was on all levels.

More constraints on the Brewing Greatness Project camefrom executive directives to lower costs. In light of theseconstraints, the CIT middle managers deliberately scheduledthe brewing activities to coincide with dates when theselected participants were to travel to Denmark for otherreasons.

Conforming to the requirements of the brewing process,linking these to scheduled activities of the project, confront-ing budget limitations and cost concerns, and dealing withthe consequences for who would represent the various partsof the CIT organization, all systematized the corporatebrand’s charisma by shaping its influence. As suggested byWeber’s routinization theory, systematization focused themessage of the brand on a subset of the beliefs it expressed,namely on the ‘‘Thirst for Great’’ slogan and passion forbrewing. It also limited involvement in the brewing processto 30 CITrepresentatives and caused the managers to build in

Figure 3 Carlsberg IT internal communication showing how the Brewing Greatness Project linked to the brewing process.

154 M.J. Hatch, M. Schultz

several virtual participation events to engage the others(e.g., voting on ingredients; naming the brew). Thus thecharismatic ambition of ‘‘Thirst for Great’’ and the passionfor brewing had to be scaled back to the demands of everydaylife in CIT, just as the focus given to these themes narrowedthe scope of cultural beliefs tapped by The Stand.

From Systematization to Accommodation: Brewing aBeer Becomes Drinking Their Beer.Between the months of June and October 2010, 17 countriessent representatives to form two Brewing Teams to engagecollaboratively in one or more of the various stages ofdesigning, branding, brewing, and bottling a beer (shownin Fig. 3). Our efforts to document the routinization of brandcharisma that occurred before and during these eventsrevealed four subdomains of accommodation: subculture,communication, technology, and hierarchical control.

Subcultural Accommodation. Before any of the partici-pants engaged in the Brewing Greatness Project, the brandcharisma the project would see them activate had alreadybeen accommodated to two subcultures: that of the masterbrewers and that of the CIT management board. This part ofaccommodation overlapped with systematization (indicatedby the intersecting circles linking systematization andaccommodation in Fig. 1).

Within the occupational subculture of the master brewerthe taste of a brewed beer indicates competence. For thisreason the brewmaster felt he needed to accommodate therange of ingredients participants could use in creating the CITbrew to those he knew would produce a potable beverage:

I knew that the beer was supposed to be evaluated at somepoint in time and if everyone was looking first in the glass,

then at me and saying ‘‘What the hell is this?’’ even thoughthey have been involved themselves, I’m pretty sure theywill point at me and say ‘‘But you were the one choosingthis and that’’ . . . You don’t want to brew a beer where yousay ‘‘OK it’s not me that’s going to drink it, so that’s theirproblem’’. I mean you basically know that somebodyknows that you have been involved in it and you don’twant your name linked to something that is barelydrinkable. . . on the other hand I also wanted to makesomething a bit special.

In addition to accommodating brand charisma to thebrewmasters’ subculture, the designers of the BrewingGreatness Project faced subcultural issues of their own inthat they needed to respond to the interests and concerns ofthe CIT management board.

Discussion with the CIT board revealed a strong desire tohave the final selection of ingredients symbolically representCIT values, as the board understood them. To accommodatethis need, the board made explicit links between the 10ingredients the brewmaster had already specified, and 10values they felt were important for rebuilding CIT’s subcul-tural identity. Thus the ingredient list from which partici-pants in Brewing Greatness would select accommodated itsquotient of brand charisma to the mundane demands ofbrewing a potable beverage in conformance to both thebrewmasters’ subculture and to designing an identity-build-ing project acceptable to the CIT management board.

Accommodation then continued as the Brewing GreatnessProject was handed off to CIT employees whose first activitywas to make choices from the list of 10 pre-selected ingre-dients offered, each accompanied by a value associationdefined by the CIT management board. All CIT employees

The dynamics of corporate brand charisma 155

had the chance to vote, from which a consensus emergedaround: Chili — we are passionate; Rosemary — alwaysresponsible; and Honey — naturally helpful.

Those selected to participate in the first stage of thebrewing process were then assembled in Copenhagen andasked to make a connection between the selected ingredi-ents and The Stand. As the Consultant explained:

There was chili, and rosemary, and honey, all over thetable . . . and then they had these posters, and they had bigpieces of white paper, and pencils, and everything. Andthen we divided them up in some groups, and then wentOK, go to town. Now you have to find out what is CIT’s‘‘Thirst for Great’’, using what you’re colleagues havebeen providing you with.

The Consultant described how she related one of theingredients — chili — and the idea of passion as expressedin The Stand:

But how does CIT taste? Well, the fact that we knew thatwe have all what I’m talking about before, we have all thebrands, we have everybody out there standing therebeing, and their pride in their Brewer, and their brands,and we have many recipes with one common ingredient —always burning — again with a passion to raise the bar forgreat.

In the film CIT produced to document the Brewing Great-ness Project a narrator summarizes the connection madebetween the IT brew, CIT subculture, and identity thisway: ‘‘This is not just any kind of beer that you can enjoy.It is a symbol of Carlsberg IT, with ingredients we want in ourorganization.’’ Referring to the label showing the ingredientsand values printed by the second group of participants, thenarrator announces: ‘‘This label is the label of our CarlsbergIT, it holds the ingredients that shape us today and capturesthe values that are the fuel to keep us thirsty for great in thefuture on our journey together.’’

By selecting 3 of the 10 ingredient-value associationsdefined by the CIT board, participating CITemployees accom-modated the charisma of The Stand to their identity and indoing so further narrowed the scope of The Stand as itoperated in their subcultural context. But the substance ofThe Stand was also subject to accommodation, as the portionof the Brewing Greatness video depicting the fermentationprocess indicates. During fermentation, employees wereasked to create a unique expression of CIT’s ‘‘Thirst forGreat’’, in direct reference to the part of The Stand on whichBrewing Greatness focused:

When the beer was fermenting, you gave input on thequestion what is CIT’s thirst for great? The comments wereused by the CIT board in a creative workshop to come upwith a creative description of us. The outcome was:‘Carlsberg IT’s the heart of our business. It is the heartof our business, defines who we are, and captures thevalue words and comments given by you . . . The heart is anorgan, a muscle that pumps the blood around, we aredependent on it, it needs to be reliable. It is a symbol ofpassion and helpful, and it is red and hot as chili.’

Ultimately the CIT board chose among several names andlabel designs suggested by CIT employees. As the Brewing

Greatness video explains: ‘‘When we were designing thelabel, names were suggested, with the winning nameChillIT, combining chili, our secret ingredient and IT andplaying with the words, that it is so spicy, it needs to bechilled.’’

By this point the part of The Stand that inspired BrewingGreatness had been repackaged in a bottle of customdesigned and labeled beer that served as a material artifactand symbol within the CIT subculture. We noted many ChillITbeer bottles, some full and others empty, standing on thedesks and shelves of CIT employees as we continued ourinterviews across Carlsberg Group, indicating that the beerhad become part of CIT’s history, its symbolic associationsmarked by the pride inherent in display, providing evidenceof the accommodation of The Stand’s charisma to everydaylife in CIT. The selected ingredients and their associatedvalues, printed on the beer label affixed to the often nowempty bottles, provided symbolic reminders of what theBrewing Greatness Project represented for CIT employees,undoubtedly standing at some substantive remove from theintentions of those who had introduced The Stand.

Accommodation to Communication Practices. On October8, 2010 at 14:30 in Copenhagen, ChillITwas launched during a‘‘Virtual Friday Bar’’. All participating CIT locations had beensent a portion of the beer and 350 IT employees were invitedto join the launch. That nearly all of them attended indicatesthe significance this event held for them. Using internal videocommunication technology, for which CIT was responsible,each location toasted the others in their native tongue. Theevent began with the CIO giving an introductory speech fromPoland where he was visiting at the time, a trip he inten-tionally scheduled during the Virtual Friday Bar to symboli-cally represent the distributed nature of CIT’s new identity.

The Consultant noted the symbolic importance of thevirtual social technology and the fact that it worked seam-lessly:

For the launching celebration we had this European hap-pening here [e.g., like the EuroSong competition], todrink our CIT beer and celebrate the new organization,a virtual event. So each country had a contact person whowas participating in this whole part of course, and then wehad a rehearsal, and we had been going through hoops andloops for this, and they got a little manual on how to do it,and they had a presentation, and they had the movies,they had everything.

She explained that people got involved in the Virtual FridayBar in different ways, in part because each country had toaccommodate its engagement to local laws and policies.

For example, one employee sitting in the UK, wheredrinking at work is not allowed, recalled:

So on the . . . evening before, I went to the supermarketand I bought some potato crisps which were rosemary andsome other flavour. I bought some chilli chocolate and Ibought some of the ingredients that were within the beer.I took those into work and we sat down and we had a littlebuffet thing with the chocolate and the crisps.

Meanwhile, people sitting in Copenhagen had the oppor-tunity to experience the environment in which the beer hadbeen brewed:

156 M.J. Hatch, M. Schultz

The facility we’d used was at the Research Centre overhere — they have a big auditorium. So it was great, and wecould have people walking through the actual breweryarea, where it had been produced. And then upstairs,where we then had our IT facility. . . what was happeningwas that people came in, which was an amazing feeling toknow that right now this is happening in 16 other places atthe same time’’ (Communication Consultant).

In other countries the Brewing Greatness documentarywas shown as a warm up for those attending the Virtual FridayBar as a UK participant explained: ‘‘We played through thevideo so you could see what was happening in the brewingprocess.’’

During and after the Friday bar, all participants wereencouraged to upload pictures and video from their localevents to the Brewing Greatness Team site, which is a Face-book-like application on the Carlsberg intranet. Later someof these pictures were made into a poster that groups dis-played in their work areas. Here is a sample of messagesposted on the Brewing Greatness ‘Wall’:

[From Feldschlossen Brewery, Switzerland:] You can besure that we drank all of them already!] Response toFeldschlossen:] How many have you been drinking inFeldschlossen?Greetings to all our European colleagues attending thevirtual Friday Bar!Great beer! Thanks to all the brewing teams for putting somuch passion into brewing it — and thanks to Julie forfacilitating this fantastic event.Where can we buy more?Maybe its a good idea to do this now every Friday, let’s sayat 14:00I’m impressed.Send more beer

Employees who participated in brewing ChillIT almost uni-versally reported feeling more connected to CIT followingtheir involvement in the Brewing Greatness Project. For exam-ple, one of the UK participants claimed: ‘‘I think the importantthing that came out of [the project] was, it brought everybodytogether as a group. And when you see the videos, you canactually point to the people and go: ‘I think it’s important justto see us all working together.’’’ Another cited the example ofa new willingness to pick up the phone and speak directly with aremote colleague, regardless of whether they knew thatperson to be the ‘‘right one’’ to respond to the request.According to a participant from France:

I think people liked this [project] because the rest of thetime they work far away and are a bit alone at their workstation and they know they also have colleagues in othercountries but they don’t meet them and perhaps they havethe courage to phone and ask them if they could help, butafter they meet them and talk a bit to them they say ‘I knowsomeone and am more confident to talk to them’.

It seems that calling upon a person for help simply becauseyou know them breeched a former barrier to directcommunication — Carlsberg Group’s cultural norm to ‘‘talkto the right person’’. While this might suggest a lessening ofefficiency, it seems instead to have nearly always led toqueries to reach the right person faster, that is via relayed

telephone connections as opposed to writing an email andawaiting a response that could take hours or even a day tocomplete. Moreover, some participants reported believingthat telephone connections with people met face-to-faceduring Brewing Greatness extended the collegiality devel-oped during the project further into CIT. In these waysBrewing Greatness and The Stand charisma it carried wasaccommodated into the communication practices of at leastsome CIT employees.

Technological Accommodation. From the start the CITmiddle managers and their CIO saw parallels between brew-ing a beer and brewing an organization. They played up thismetaphorical link, for example, by naming the project Brew-ing Greatness. But some employees took the metaphor a stepfurther by connecting the brewing process to the processes ofdelivering IT, either as a group or individually. This persona-lized Carlsberg Group for them and made them feel a part ofsomething bigger, rather than serving a company withoutcaring about its core business, an attitude FMCG companiesare often accused of promoting.

Technological accommodation took two forms in ourobservations. First it linked the Brewing Greatness Projectwith CIT’s technological competence. One of the posts tothe Brewing Greatness project wall stated ‘‘Its great hav-ing such a technical background to join each other’’. As aparticipant from France told us: ‘‘A meeting was organisedin Strasbourg and we had of course the beers for each oneand also had small appetizers to eat and we all sat arounda table and each country waited and when the momentcomes to France we all say ‘hello, we are here! Cheers!’So, it was funny.’’ These and other quotes refer to the ITcommunication platform, which had not always workedconsistently, so both pride and a little relief were feltwhen the Virtual Friday Bar that relied upon it came offwithout a hitch.

As a Danish participant expressed it: ‘‘That Friday Bar gotexecuted to perfection. And it was a very, very nice way oftying a little bow on the entire present.’’ The Senior ManagerCorporate Communication IT commented on this aspect oftechnological accommodation as well:

. . . that was also very important for us because as a newvirtual organization, not seeing each other, not seeingyour manager every day and so on, we needed to startusing this platform as our office. So this is what we’retrying to do all the time, and this was more or less the firststep also in trying to say that we can actually do thisvirtually, and do something together, without seeing eachother.

Thus part of the Brewing Greatness Project involved publicconfirmation that CIT could do its technological work effec-tively and thus transferred some of the charisma of TheStand’s ‘‘Thirst for Great’’ onto CIT giving a boost to itsself-esteem and identity.

The second form of technological accommodationoccurred when Brewing Greatness gave insight into howCIT contributes to the core of Carlsberg’s business to someof the participants. The connection forged between what CITdoes on a daily basis and the physical activity of brewingenabled several participants to experience both a sense ofbelonging, not just to an IT unit, but to a brewing business.

The dynamics of corporate brand charisma 157

Using the brewing process as a metaphor for their own work,these individuals began to see their IT work as a form ofbrewing. One of the Danish participants put it this way:

Just asking myself the question what is this now? Is this yetanother touchy feel good project, or is this something witha distinctive outcome? And it was only when we startedand there was posted news on the intranet that this wasmimicking the exact same journey as we were on, thatprocess of: you get all the raw materials and then process,by process, by process, by process.’’

A French participant, who described IT as ‘‘part of thebusiness’’, claimed that Brewing Greatness is also a very goodinitiative to show that ITcould help the business and this partof the business. In this sense I think it is symbolic . . . to showthe brewing process to integrate IT was a good idea.’’ TheDanish participant commented further: ‘‘this part of thebrewing process is mimicking totally my part of the ITprocess’, you had a tangible reference to where the ITbusiness was moving as [illustrated by] the basic core processwithin the company.’’

Reflections like these link CIT technology and Carlsberg’score technology of brewing to the Brewing Greatness Projectand indicate to us that at least some employees took own-ership of the branding and identity building processes startedby the CIT managers in ways that these managers did notforesee and which the employees found personally and orga-nizationally beneficial. Their insights also reveal how brandcharisma became accommodated to the technologicalaspects of daily life in that the ITwork they were responsiblefor doing seemed more significant for being connected to‘‘Thirst for Great’’ and the Brewing Greatness Project.

Accommodation to Hierarchical Control. Although itmight seem that CIT middle managers were simply promotingthe interests of their superiors, there is considerable evi-dence to suggest that this was not the case. The lack ofexecutive level leadership in implementing a formal corpo-rate branding program was one indicator. While the CIO’ssupport of the Brewing Greatness Project responded to seniormanagement’s wishes as expressed in The Stand, it violatedother expectations concerning maintaining focus on CIT’simmediate problems as the IT function moved toward cen-tralization. The CIO acknowledged the risks and the price hepaid by supporting Brewing Greatness with his own authorityand resources:

It is also taking a risk because doing these movies . . . Icould look silly. But even though I spent [only] 10,000[DKK, about 2000 USD] on doing the brewing and so on, it isstill using money for something, and that’s a waste. Andwithin Carlsberg whether it’s a thousand or a million, it’sstill a waste. And again, am I actually using my time fordoing something like that? Why are you not fixing theproject? So it’s a huge risk to do that.

The price paid by the CIO became clear in his report ofwhat happened at the budget meeting during which he firstformally presented the Brewing Greatness Project to hissuperiors and peers:

I had a presentation for ExCom and I had to present thebudgets. A part of that was also giving a status on IT, which

is extremely cumbersome. So I was thinking about IT —what is the difference that makes the difference? And Ithink actually the brew was a part of making the differ-ence. So I had a 3-liter beer [bottle] with a huge label. Iwas number six going in, and they were sitting like thisafter four hours of this [pointing to the slide deck he hasbeen showing us on his computer]. So I had this [points tothe bottle] — I have a gift for you, this is it, I just want tospend five minutes telling you what I have done. It’s aboutpeople. And I had ExCom sitting there, and half of themsaid huh, he’s totally out! . . . Show me the figures. Andthen the other half said OK, this was different. And thefunny part was that I got a lot of very bad feedback, andthen I got a very positive feedback from individuals [afterthe meeting].

Indeed, from a member of ExCom we heard that it was notso much the cost of Brewing Greatness that was of concern,but rather the overall rising costs of IT coupled with persis-tent problems in the ITorganization. As our informant told uslater:

Brewing Greatness was all about creating unity and to-getherness within the IT organization across geographiesand cultures and didn’t include any process with stake-holders outside the organization, for example with ExCommembers or key customers and users. To put it simply:ExCom didn’t experience any Greatness coming out of theIT-bottle, so many found it hard to respond with enthusi-asm. The gap between what was said and what wasexperienced was simply too big.

Although the CIO told us that one or two peer levelmanagers did come to him in private to inquire about theBrewing Greatness Project and to learn more about theresults, he nonetheless recoiled at the negative attitudeexpressed by his superiors and some peers. He told us:

I got the feedback, so having done that, having had thefeedback, would I do it again? If the only thing I wasmissing was the result within Carlsberg IT I would no doubtdo something similar . . . But having received the criticism. . . I would actually have to be honest, I would re-think it.

Upon further reflection he tempered his initial defensivereaction, revealing that:

I would probably do some things again, say be free ofcharge or whatever. We are [already] doing similar stuffactually . . . and the point was that I wanted to do some-thing extremely ambitious and I wanted to do somethingthat the IT community would talk about the next one ortwo years.

The CIO’s reaction to ExCom’s reception of the BrewingGreatness Project obviously put a damper on his enthusiasmand we argue damaged the brand charisma activated beforethis reception became known to him. If his reaction is anyindication of the fate of The Stand’s charisma, it clearlyshows that accommodation of brand beliefs to hierarchicalcontrol can sometimes work perversely to undermine topmanagement’s intentions in brand building. Furthermore,the Brewing Greatness Project has to date gone untappedby anyone within the corporate communication function,which has responsibility for managing the corporate brand.

158 M.J. Hatch, M. Schultz

We speculate that corporate communication might havecommunicated this project as an example of local accom-modation of The Stand if its reception had been more posi-tive. Instead silence surrounding Brewing Greatnesscontinues to accommodate further brand activity to theinterests of hierarchical control thereby limiting the char-isma it can generate. In this case, we argue, hierarchicalcontrol all but obliterated the spirit as reflected in this lastcomment by the Consultant concerning the brand charismagenerated by Brewing Greatness:

[It] was . . . fun to see the reaction from people, becausesuddenly they were standing there with their beer, and[saying] see, we’ve made this! . . . I was sitting with a tableof people and colleagues that I didn’t know, starting totalk about Brewing Greatness, and this beer that wasbeing brewed.

After reading a draft of this paper, the SVP of CorporateCommunication gave us her views on why Brewing Greatnesshas not had more impact within the company:

There is no doubt that Brewing Greatness is a reallycreative concept and a great idea to enable the develop-ment of the ONE IT organization. I also think the concepthas the potential to be used in other parts of the Carlsbergorganization. The challenge with promoting it to othersubcultures as a best practice has been that apart from thefirst immediate reactions, IT has not been able to demon-strate positive business or organizational results comingout of the process. Other subcultures with the samechallenges have therefore not seen Brewing Greatnessas a role model for how to create a more unified culture.A version 2.0 of Brewing Greatness would benefit fromincluding key stakeholders in the (brewing) process as wellas describing what a Great Brew looks like.

Our case ends here, although the endowment and routi-nizing of corporate brand charisma associated with The Standcontinues throughout Carlsberg Group. The next section ofthis article explores the processes by which CIT employees

Figure 4 Elaboration of the Weberian model to include the dynprocesses and to specify the domains of hierarchical activity within

endowed their corporate brand with charisma and how theseprocesses of reception $ activation relate to routinization toform a dynamic theory of brand charisma.

The dynamics of brand charisma

We began this article by asserting that Carlsberg Group’srecently initiated corporate branding effort, known as TheStand, had charisma. Following Weber, we postulated thatany such charisma would have been routinized. These ideasguided our analysis of the empirical case of CIT’s BrewingGreatness Project on the basis of which we conclude there issupport for the finding that Carlsberg’s corporate brandcharisma was routinized by CIT middle managers and employ-ees through processes of systematization and accommoda-tion.

This section addresses the as yet unexamined questions:where did brand charisma come from and how did it work?Below we explore the ways CIT middle managers and employ-ees endowed the Carlsberg corporate brand with charisma,and then suggest what the relationship between endowmentand routinization processes might look like (see Fig. 4). Theseinteracting and mutually influential processes, we propose,constitute the dynamics of corporate brand charisma.

How Cycles of Reception $ Activation Endow aBrand with Charisma

Extending Weber (1947) and Smothers (1993), we located TheStand’s charisma in its reception and activation by employ-ees. Our evidence that employees were receptive to thecharisma of Carlsberg’s corporate brand was found in remarkslike this one: ‘‘It really got to people. It was the mostemotional thing that we’ve had for years because Carlsberg’snot that emotional.’’ Many other interviewees reportedfeeling happy or excited by The Stand. One of the two CITmiddle managers responsible for the Brewing Greatness Pro-ject observed: ‘‘people . . . were very emotional about it.

amics of reception $ activation interacting with routinization which these dynamics of brand charisma flow.

The dynamics of corporate brand charisma 159

They thought it was really exciting and really good and Iheard a lot of people saying ‘Hey, this is professional and thiswill get me up in the morning not the cost cutting.’’’

Others repeated the idea of The Stand getting employeesup in the morning, and we interpreted such remarks asindicating not just reception to, but also the activation ofbrand charisma. In a similar instance indicating activation, anemployee told us that: ‘‘my buy-in was less than two sec-onds!’’ Furthermore, on multiple occasions we witnessedfirsthand how The Stand video roused nearly everyone whoencountered it to high levels of positive emotion and enthu-siasm, unusual for this corporate workplace. More than oncewe saw multiple audience members with tears in their eyes,while others responded with broad smiles. It was rare to seesomeone remain untouched by the words and images, thoughsome responded with embarrassment and complained thatthe film was a bit over the top (these were predominantlyScandinavians).

Our observations suggest that there is something excep-tional contained in the corporate brand symbolism thatencouraged the reception and activation of its charisma byCIT employees. Eisenstadt (1968: xix), a commentator andeditor of Weber’s charisma theory, referred to the responseswe point to here as ‘‘charismatic fervor’’ and interpretedWeber as claiming that: ‘‘charismatic fervor is rooted in theattempt to come into contact with the very essence of being,to go to the very roots of existence, of cosmic, social, andcultural order, to what is seen as sacred and fundamental.’’The presence of such an existential object was indicated byone of our informants who said The Stand ‘‘hit a nerve in, letus say, the DNA of the company.’’ A key informant told us:‘‘we’re not talking about being an IT guy first, it’s about beingan IT guy in the Carlsberg Group.’’

We contend that what was referred to as Carlsberg DNAtaps into something sacred and fundamental within thecompany’s culture, something hard to name but which reso-nated with the employees who then activated corporatebrand charisma through their receptiveness to its influence.Receiving ‘‘Thirst for Great’’ as charged with charisma andthen designing the Brewing Greatness Project to activate it,and encourage further reception $ activation by others,occurred as CIT middle managers linked The Stand to thebeer brewing process. The project implementation repeatedthis reception $ activation cycle multiple times as theselected CIT participants brewed a beer and all CIT employ-ees shared their beer at the Virtual Friday Bar. In otherwords, through their engagement in Brewing Greatness,CIT employees, each in their own way, accommodated thecharisma they associated with their beliefs about The Standto multiple subdomains of everyday activity (culture, com-munication, technology and hierarchical control), and alongwith their receptiveness, activated the corporate brand’scharisma.

While their reactions and actions reduced the scope andscale of The Stand’s influence to fit within their everydaylives as ITspecialists, reception $ activation also carried theculturally meaningful passion for brewing beer into daily lifewithin CIT. For instance, through the acts of brewing andsharing a beer, CIT employees redefined their role withinCarlsberg Group in ways that made the significance of theirwork more tangible and clarified their operational responsi-bilities within the larger organization. Thus the substance of

The Stand went from being esoteric and abstract, to beingconcrete and operational, a move that simultaneously gaveback to The Stand a dose of charisma in the form of passionfor Carlsberg as a company. Ironically, by being restricted inits scope and scale to the everyday concerns of CIT, theinfluence of The Stand grew as its endowment of charismatapped the heritage and art of brewing. It is thus our con-clusion that routinization coincided with reception $ activa-activation and that cultural heritage was also a factor inexplaining the dynamics of brand charisma we observedwithin CIT.

So was McWilliam (1997) wrong in accusing Smothers(1993) of reifying brands by attributing charisma to them?Based on our case analysis we do not believe such criticism isjustified. In line with Weber’s theory, we find that brands donot have a full complement of charisma from the start, nomatter how well they are designed and introduced, rathercharisma is equally, or even more so, an endowment offeredby stakeholders. Just as Weber contended that charisma is atype of authority (an endowment) bestowed on leaders bytheir followers, our study indicated that stakeholders endowa brand with charisma (e.g., employees of CIT in our study, orconsumers of the product brands studied by Smothers, 1993).

The reception $ activation of charisma constitutes char-isma moment-by-moment, and it is in this sense thatSmothers (1993) turned to social construction as an explana-tion for the endowment of brand charisma. However, ourobservations suggest that reception $ activation processesare more broadly based than social construction (Berger &Luckmann, 1966) or for that matter enactment (Weick, 1979)allows. The processes we observed included emotional andesthetic reception, perception, interpretation and action(e.g., brewing a beer, naming and making a label to symbolizethe beer’s relationship to CIT’s identity). The mutuality ofreception $ activation indicated by the double arrow (withperception and interpretation sandwiched in between),implies that activation produces reception as much as theother way round. Importantly, our study also indicated thatthe likelihood of reception $ activation is contextualized bybrand beliefs deeply seated in cultural heritage. All theseconnections, though grounded in empirical observation, cryout for further study. We theorize them here and below as acontribution to the literature on branding and to Weberianscholarship.

The mutuality of routinization and endowment

Mutuality between the processes of endowment and routi-nization occurs in ways similar to the mutuality of recep-tion $ activation cycles. This mutuality implies thatcharisma only comes to life moment by moment throughcycles of reception $ activation that are embedded in orat least co-occur with the routinization processes of system-atization and accommodation.

Moreover, charisma, being deeply rooted in symbolicassociations, also arises from the cultural depths that reso-nate with and inform new beliefs, or as Weber would have it,out of enthusiasm, hope and despair. We therefore confronta chicken and egg problem when we try to work out thecauses of charisma, an indication that causality may not beeasily or ever disentangled when processes are in view. Wesuggest instead that esthetic and emotional experience

160 M.J. Hatch, M. Schultz

(i.e., subjectivity) is the proper domain of charisma. Insubjective terms, if you experience a brand as having char-isma, then it has charisma for you; your reception of it assuch activates charisma for yourself and, by contagion, forothers. The link to activation is important to managers,because it is in activating employees that any organizationalchange in response to branding is going to occur.

One implication of our theorizing is that, because brandsare largely symbolic, their meanings are distributed and willbe both more and less varied than the meaning intended bythe top managers who introduced them. In the case of CIT,meanings were less varied in the sense that not all brandbeliefs put into The Stand were adopted by those designingand implementing the Brewing Greatness Project. At thesame time, those beliefs that were featured experiencedwider variance in attributed meaning as more and morepeople came into contact with them in different contextsover time (e.g., conversations with the master brewer, CITmanagement board meetings, participation in brewingChillIT, attendance at the Virtual Friday Bar, ExCom’squarterly review of functions).

It was this unlocking of significance within everyday life,we contend, that endowed Carlsberg’s corporate brandingprocess with charisma for members of CIT, and it was thecareful planning and design by middle management of theBrewing Greatness Project that unleashed the potential ofThe Stand within CIT employees’ domain of action. Thus webelieve that the processes of routinization (systematizationand accommodation) were inseparable from the cycles ofreception $ activation that endowed The Stand with char-isma, as can be seen in our revision of the model based onWeber’s theory (compare Figs. 1 and 4).

Our elaboration of Weber’s model indicates the uniquerole middle managers assume in the dynamics of corporatebranding. The model indicates that, in the main, middlemanagers link the routinization processes (primarily system-atization, but to some extent also accommodation) withendowment processes of reception $ activation. Middlemanagers participate centrally in both routinization andendowment because they sit at the interface of the threedomains of activity that embed the dynamics of brand char-isma — introduction, systematization and accommodation. Itis this double centrality that we believe gives middle man-agers, and particularly brand managers, a pivotal role in theendowment and routinization of brand charisma. Their posi-tion makes them the most credible role models for a brandingeffort because they sit with one foot in all the processes aswell as the domains of action through which brand beliefs areroutinized and endowed with charisma. At this point in itsdevelopment our reasoning sorely needs further empiricalstudy to confirm or deny the interpretations we drew fromour empirical observations.

Conclusions and implications for practice

The CIT case reported here stands in contrast to studies oflarge scale rollouts of formal corporate identity programssuch as those described by Schultz and Hatch (2003), Ravasiand Schultz (2006) and Karreman and Rylander (2008) andrecommended by Olins (2003), Aaker and Joachimstahler(2000) and Davis and Dunn (2002), among others. By doingnothing more than developing and presenting The Stand,

leaving it to be led by those positioned further down theorganizational hierarchy, Carlsberg Group’s Executive Com-mittee stopped what might have been a typical top-downformal implementation process in its tracks during the timeof our study. We argue that this situation gave us unusualaccess to the processes through which brand charisma oper-ates in an organization, and it has been these processes thatoccupied our efforts to understand the dynamics of brandcharisma.

By following the halted corporate branding program intomiddle level management and lower hierarchical levels wewere able to show that it was ultimately the CIT employeeswho activated the corporate brand’s charisma within theirspheres of action, in this case by receiving and activating oneof their brand’s slogans (‘‘Thirst for Great’’) and the com-pany’s heritage of passion for brewing beer, as evidenced bytheir enthusiastic engagement in brewing and drinking theirown beer together.

That ‘‘Thirst for Great’’ and a passion for brewing beer areonly two parts of Carlsberg’s corporate branding platform,and that their meanings were elaborated and extended byCIT employees in ways that carried these meanings far fromtheir origins in top management’s introduction of The Stand,shows how routinization reduced the scope and scale of TheStand’s charismatic potential while at the same time elabor-ating and enriching its substance. From this finding we con-clude that a charismatic brand conforms to the highly variedneeds and purposes of those most in control of endowing itwith charisma — the brand’s stakeholders.

Among the stakeholders of corporate branding our theo-rizing gave a central position to middle managers, but thisdoes not imply that middle managers should or even can beprogrammed to align their beliefs about the brand with topmanagement’s wishes. If employees sense that their immedi-ate managers are only towing the corporate line, the pro-cesses of reception $ activation may be undercut and evenreversed. What is more, middle managers themselves requireactivation to engage in the endowment process and if theyare faking it, this activation will not occur. This is because themanagers will have been cut off from receiving the brandbeliefs that license and inspire their action. As was seen withthe head of CIT, brand beliefs inspired him to go againstexpressed wishes of top management that he focus entirelyon IT problems and cost containment. In other words, webelieve our case study shows that middle managers, and inparticular brand managers, must have the freedom to act inaccordance with their own emotional and esthetic recep-tion $ activation cycles.

We imagine that, if the corporate brand were to take holdin other parts of Carlsberg Group to the extent that it did inCIT, it would undergo further routinization within othersubcultures, with additional instances of scope and scalereductions and substance enrichment. Such routinizationwould also unleash the potential for even greater activationof brand beliefs, and with critical mass could lead to con-tagion, unleashing the much greater force of charismaticfervor that characterizes the charismatic brand.

In practical terms we conclude that it is unwise to expectthe implementation of a corporate branding initiative toconform to expectations that accompany its formal introduc-tion. We suggest that by anticipating this, brand managerscan help executives appreciate the richness added to brand

The dynamics of corporate brand charisma 161

symbolism by the activation of employees who respond to it,each in their own unique ways. This can be done, for exam-ple, by celebrating local interpretations of brand ideas andlicensing mid-level managers to engage employees in brand-ing processes designed to serve their units’ unique purposesin relation to subculture and identity building, as the BrewingGreatness Project illustrates. Once this activity begins, con-tagion to other parts of the organization can be nurturedthrough communication and collaboration with first movers.Within this process executives should anticipate the simul-taneous restrictions on the initial uptake of their ideas as wellas appreciating the blossoming variability of ensuing meaningmaking activity. They should also guard against difficultiespresented by top management strategies and objectives thatrun at cross-purposes to branding messages.

In particular our study indicated how hierarchical controlcan obstruct brand charisma and that such obstructions needto be anticipated and deflected. Threats to brand charisma,such as the one we observed, present a challenge to execu-tives who, by introducing corporate branding initiatives,hope to achieve predictable and sustainable outcomes. Forexample efforts to control costs need to be balanced againstthe enthusiasm small investments in corporate branding cangenerate. Executives should bear in mind that the work ofactivation $ routinization done by middle managers andemployees is where the real action of charismatic corporatebranding is to be found. This places responsibility for brandcharisma within the domain of everyday organizational lifewhere it remains in the control of employees and otherstakeholders, and where middle managers can play pivotalroles.

Finally, our application and extension of Weber’s theoryimplies that instead of seeing the concept of ‘‘beingbranded’’ only in employees who act as brand champions(e.g., Ind, 2001, 2003; Maxwell & Knox, 2009), organizationscan experience the state of ‘‘being branded’’ when employ-ees and external stakeholders respond to and thereby acti-vate the charisma of their corporate brands. In thisorganizational sense, ‘‘being branded’’ is driven by stake-holder and employee reception $ activation that lies withintheir personal and interpersonal domains of influence,wherein middle managers, standing at the interface betweenemployees and executives, can play crucial creative andfacilitative roles. We conclude from our extension of Weber’sideas that ‘‘being branded’’ is as much about what employeesand other stakeholders do to an organization as it is aboutwhat organizations do to them.

Acknowledgements

We thank the Tuborgfoundation for their support of ourresearch and Anne Marie Skov, Hanne Luke, Julie Elmo andKenneth Egelund of Carlsberg Group for their assistance withcollecting and interpreting the data. We are grateful for thehelp and encouragement of our three reviewers and KateSullivan for her expert editorial advice.

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