Academic literature on the topic 'Corporate image Australia'

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to use managerial vision of corporate brand in relation to consumers, dealers and frontline employees to generate brand benchmarks. These benchmarks are sets of perceptions on how managers envision corporate brand to be positioned in minds of consumers, dealers and frontline employees. Additionally, this study explores managerial views concerning the importance of corporate branding in relation to an organization and its stakeholders. One of the most important strategic decisions that managers make concerns positioning of a corporate brand in the minds of key internal and external stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach – Insights are drawn from the in-depth semi-structured interviews with 22 senior managers from the three car manufacturers based in Australia and engaged in the corporate branding strategy. Findings – Although managers viewed corporate brand as a “strategic tool” and “the DNA” of an organization, the findings suggest that corporate brand strategy is ultimately driven by consumers rather than multiple stakeholders. Practical (utilitarian) components of the brand value were emphasized by the managers as key brand benefits communicated to consumers and also to dealers and frontline employees. Although managers recognized the importance of being seen as a “trustworthy partner” by dealer principals and customer-facing staff, the idea of dealer networks playing a role of a “supportive mechanism” for enhancing consumer experience, was domineering. Research limitations/implications – The views expressed by the interviewees in this paper may not fully reflect the views of the whole organization regarding the corporate brand. As this study is conducted in the car manufacturing industry, its findings may not be directly applicable in other industries. As corporate branding a relatively new area, organizations do not always appreciate its scope and what such a branding strategy involves. However, organizations need to move beyond a “product branding thinking” to a strategic perspective as corporate brands build the images formed and held by key external and internal stakeholders. Practical implications – Generating benchmarks for corporate brands using top management’s aspirations can assist organizations in generating focused and more nuanced understanding of how they wish corporate brand to be perceived by the key stakeholders and effectively build corporate brand. Originality/value – Managerial vision of corporate brand was used as a starting point in developing reference points (i.e. benchmarks) for the desired brand identity, which may potentially be developed into relevant standards and best practices in corporate branding within an organization.

This article argues that discourses of ‘the national’ in Australia have increasingly come to be treated in commodified terms — that is, in the language of advertising. It looks at the advertising campaign that accompanies the upcoming Sydney Olympic Games, where Australia features as a tourist spectacle of an idealised global culture. Images of natural beauty, multicultural harmony and particularly Indigenous culture are highlighted in this unprecedented opportunity for Australia to sell itself to the world. Treating the Sydney Olympics in this way, as a global media event, allows for some reconsideration of the processes and the images employed in Australia's national imagining.

<em>Introduction</em> We are drowning in data. What kinds of data? - Text. Images. Sound. Numeric. Genome data. Text: Every day vast amounts of textual data are generated. This ranges from private corporate data, personal information, public and private government documents and so on. Much of this data needs to be accessed by many users for many tasks. For example, a corporate call centre needs fast access to documents at a semi-concept level to answer user requests. Another example: large litigations can involve 2 million documents, 200,000 of which are relevant, much fewer significant, and a handful pivotal. Techniques are desperately needer to automate the first few steps of this winnowing. Images: There are video cameras everywhere, trying to protect our safety in car parks, public places, even some lifts. There are huge and ever growing still and video archives of all aspects of our modern world. Access and indexing this data is a huge research enterprise. Much indexing is done manually. Sound: Often in concert with video in multi-media recordings. But what did the Prime Minister say on the 1st of November about the Republic? Did he sound like he meant it? These are currently not easily answered queries except if carried out by an expert human investigator. These kind of queries will need to be commonplace to access sound data in humanly meaningful ways. Numeric: Our industries generate vast amounts of valuable numeric data. In the petroleum industry geologic knowledge must be integrated with data from wells: laboratory core analysis data and on-site well logs, with seismic data generated from controlled explosions and dispersed recording devices. Then there is GIS data collected from satellites and so on. In the service industry, the stock exchange generates large amounts of hard to analyse data vital to the wellbeing of Australian companies. Genome data: The human genome project is almost complete. Researchers are finding genes by a mix of laboratory work and computerised database searches (e.g. as reported in the Weekend Australian 30 October). This is just the first step, the next will be sequencing of a number of individuals, and of course there are currently over 100 whole genome sequencing projects on other species. Fast genome sequencing is just around the corner. We will soon be drowning in this kind of data also. Multimedia data: Includes all of audio, text, graphics, images, video, animation, music. More data! <em>What Is The Real Problem?</em> Manual extraction of information from any large corpus is time con-suming and expensive, requiring specialised experience in the material. Even worse, beyond a certain point it is incredibly boring, and hence error prone. Human intelligence is best suited to dealing with information, as distinct to data! <em>A Solution</em> The development of automated systems for information extraction, and for the synthesis of the extracted information into humanly useful information resources. To avoid drowning in the ever increasing flow of multi-modal electronic information available, automated tools are required to reduce the cognitive load on users. <em>STEPS TOWARDS A SOLUTION</em> The key step towards a solution is the notion of information compression, being the compression of data to yield an information rich(er) resource. This is distinct from data compression which is merely the efficient storage of data. Further, the information compression must work on multi-model complex data, exemplified by multimedia data. Some of the techniques for doing this kind of information compression exist in a scattered way in areas such as fuzzy systems, and image analysis. We have identified a nascent field, which we can coalesce in an intensive short workshop. The first Australia-Japan Joint Workshop on Applications of Soft and Intelligent Computing to Multimodal and Multimedia Information Compression Technologies was held at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia from the 29 March to 5 April 2000. This special issue contains selected papers from the workshop.

Subject area Strategy, Emiratisation (national policy); human resources (recruitment, training and development, organizational culture and values) and marketing (branding, communication), tourism (destination image). Study level/applicability Undergraduate and Postgraduate Business and Management. Case overview This case highlights the strategy and initiatives taken by Etihad to attract Emirati employees (local nationals) to join the organization. Etihad Airways is the national airline of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), based in Abu Dhabi, the national capital. Since its inception in 2003, the airline has grown faster than any other in commercial aviation history; it currently flies to more than 60 destinations in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. In the UAE, nationals or Emiratis comprise only 20 per cent of the overall population. According to the UAE 2021 Vision, the government's focus is on building the human capabilities on knowledge and innovation for Emiratis. This vision is reinforced in the Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030, which aims to boost national participation, encourage women (national women are on average more highly educated than the men) and decrease the education – market demand gap through training. Expected learning outcomes This case can be used to teach strategy from the point of view of government, human resources and marketing. From the government point of view parallels can be drawn to other nations whose government have focused on policies to create opportunities for and to encourage local employability. An example of a similar programme that was very successful is the “Bumiputra” programme created for indigenous Malaysians in 1971. In the area of human resource strategy, recruitment, training, inculcation of corporate values are some areas that can be reinforced. Form the point of view of marketing; the case can be used to discuss branding from the point of view of people, loyalty building (internal) and communication (internal and external). Destination branding and the role airlines play can also be a discussion point from the strategic point of view with some opportunity for macro-environmental analysis using the PESTLE model. Supplementary materials A teaching note available upon request.

AbstractObjective:To assess the nutritional quality of Australian supermarket own brand chilled convenience foods (SOBCCF), for example, ready meals, pizza, pies and desserts.Design:Cross-sectional.Setting:Two large supermarkets (Coles and Woolworths) in Perth, Western Australia were audited in February 2017.Participants:Data were extracted from photographic images of 291 SOBCCF, including front-of-pack information (i.e. product name, description and nutrition labels including Health Star Rating (HSR)) and back-of-pack information (i.e. nutrition information panel and ingredients list). SOBCCF were classified as healthy or unhealthy consistent with principles of the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating (AGTHE), NOVA classification of level of food processing and HSR score.Results:Fifty-four percentage of SOBCCF were classified as unhealthy according to AGTHE principles, 94 % were ultra-processed foods using NOVA and 81 % scored a HSR of ≥2·5, implying that they were a healthy choice. Some convenience food groups comprised more healthy choices overall including prepared vegetables, salad kits and bowls, soups and vegetarian food. A significantly larger proportion of SOBCCF from Coles were classified as unhealthy compared with Woolworths (70 v. 44 %, P < 0·05) using the AGTHE.Conclusions:The findings suggest there is potential for Australian supermarkets to improve the nutritional quality of their SOBCCF and highlights the differences between supermarkets in applying their corporate social responsibility policies. Policies to assist consumers to select healthier foods should address difficulties in identifying healthy convenience foods. The findings reveal misclassification of unhealthy SOBCCF as healthy by the HSR suggesting that its algorithm should be reformed to align with recommendations of the AGTHE.

Purpose This study aims to explore the use of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures by the “Big Four” Australian banks post the banking royal commission (BRC) to manage their reputational risk. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a case study approach through a thematic analysis of the Big Four banks’ annual and sustainability reports and uses reputation risk management (RRM) as a conceptual lens to explore the image restoration strategies used by these banks. Findings The study finds that a corrective action strategy was disclosed extensively by all four banks whereby each bank outlined the actions that they were undertaking to correct the deficiencies identified by the BRC. However, the impact of these proposed actions was tampered by the fact that each bank sought to use strategies to reduce the offensiveness of their misdemeanours. It is argued that while disclosure on corrective actions and compensation is useful, an emphasis on reducing offensiveness of actions impacts the effectiveness of banks’ responses and their acceptance of full responsibility for their actions. Research limitations/implications This paper applies the RRM perspective to a recent reputation damaging event, thereby expanding the literature on image restoration strategies used by companies during major incidents. Practical implications This study provides useful insights in relation to the approaches used to manage the reputational risk arising from the BRC. It provides insights into the credibility of information disclosed post an incident and has potential implications for the assurance of such information. Social implications Given the critical importance of the banking industry to modern society, misconduct in this sector needs a closer examination, requiring a greater need for responsibility from its key players. Originality/value This study extends the applicability of the RRM perspective to a social incident and highlights that it is reputation, rather than legitimacy, that is critical when organisations in an industry face extensive public scrutiny. A thematic analysis approach adds value to the methods used for analysing CSR disclosures.

Purpose As a key element of corporate accountability, social and environmental accounting (SEA) has failed to yield significant results in terms of firms embracing goals other than financial profitability. Influenced by the work of critical accountants on dialogic accounting, the study rejects binary frameworks and aims to contribute to an essential element of SEA, stakeholder engagement. Design/methodology/approach Business concerned with unconventional gas (UCG) extraction was chosen from numerous vehicles suited to examining multiple views on contested issues. The research explores perspectives expressed by community, while also including perspectives of one gas firm. Research is viewed through the lens of critical futures theory and methodology causal layered analysis (CLA) in the analysis of the interviews at the case study site in Australia. In addition, to broaden the understanding of “accountability”, participants captured their own views through images that they interpreted in the interviews. This methodology is known as photovoice. Findings Findings suggest that CLA enables access to multiple, complex and nuanced perspectives and various ways of knowing, some of which are less conscious. Research limitations/implications Accessing multiple perspectives, including marginalized voices, gives rise to the potential to then collaboratively develop a more inclusive set of solutions to critically examine, and the CLA methodology appears to provide a fuller story, address “blindness” and enable a clearer “seeing”. This suggests access to new understandings. These two potentials should be further explored through follow up research. Practical implications This practice-based methodology involving civil society could provide SEA accounting practitioners with a greater range of possibilities; they would therefore benefit from incorporating “CLA thinking” as a basis in developing a pluralist, democratic and transformative approach to stakeholder engagement. Social implications The study is an initial contribution in an ambitious task of democratizing accounting and accountability. Originality/value The study addresses a gap in accounting and accountability research by applying a critical futures theory and a practice-based method.

SA Water is a State owned organisation that owns and manages South Australia's water supplies, providing reliable drinking water to nearly 1.4 million South Australians. A major issue affecting SA Water's ability to manage water quality effectively has been the difficulty accessing water quality information which has been stored in separate, generally inaccessible databases with poor reporting and decision support capability. To improve SA Water's ability to make timely and effective decisions regarding water quality, an integrated business system has been developed which provides water managers with direct access to comprehensive water quality information. The system includes improved field data collection units which incorporate a barcode system; sample point images and workflow support tools; an integrated water quality data warehouse with automated standard and ad hoc reporting capabilities; a geographical information system containing comprehensive coverages of natural resources and system infrastructure information; and water incident exception reporting and incident management support through a corporate incident management system. Major benefits of the system will include improved management of public health risk through quicker and more accurate reporting of incidents; improved customer confidence in SA Water; improved knowledge capture and visibility of water quality information; increased efficiency of capital utilisation and better understanding of system performance through spatial representation of data and trending of results. WaterScope can also be used and shared by data partners and regulators, making optimal use of the State's limited water quality data sets. It can also be made available commercially to other water management organisations. Future challenges include the integration of wastewater and recycled water data, linking of continuous (on-line) water quality data and links to water demand management systems.

This exploratory study examines industry reputation in the Australian oil and gas sector (AOG). It answers an urgent call by writers in relevant fields including marketing, communications, public relations and management to consider corporate reputation in broader terms and beyond organisational boundaries. The goal of this research is to develop an understanding of the building blocks and communications processes by which industry reputation/s forms.

This thesis comprises research that was undertaken between January 2000 and December 2004 into the organizational culture and identity of Fremantle Football Club, a professional sporting organization that competes in an elite national football competition, the Australian Football League. The thesis began with a review of the contemporary literature on the principal topic, organizational culture and identity. The literature was subsequently used to frame and explain the approach taken in the research, which was to explore culture and identity as distinguishable, inter-dependent concepts integral to the functioning of sports organizations. The justification for the need to explore their impact in professional sporting organizations, because of a gap in our knowledge, was also provided. The research was conducted as a single qualitative case study that enabled an in-depth investigation into how Fremantle Football Club's culture and identity were formed and how they influenced its structure, strategy, behaviour and performance. Significantly, the research covered the entire history of the club since its inception in 1994, revealing three distinct periods in which culture and identity were strongly influenced by the values and beliefs of the club's leaders, particularly the CEOs, as well as board members, senior management and coaches. The first period comprised a time of self-absorption with an inappropriate culture that saw it in frequent conflict with external stakeholders as on-field success eluded it. Despite establishing a strong and clearly defined identity, FFC's inward looking culture undermined its capacity to fully engage with its heavily regulated environment. Subsequently, the club became dysfunctional as little was provided by way of long term planning and direction. The second period was epitomised by a club that was heavily fractured by internal disagreements at different levels of its governance that undermined its performance and created a cultural vacuum into which it withdrew. Little progress was made as the club stagnated. Despite consolidating its identity, individualism took precedence over the collective good with scant regard for the direction or well being of the organization. The club emerged into the third period with new personnel at all levels of its leadership and management adopting a different approach to previous administrations. The club ii embarked on a journey of reconciliation with its governing agencies, and adopted an externally engaged perspective that provided the club's stakeholders with a strong sense of its future direction based on consultation and strategic planning. The results of the research show that organizational culture and identity are dynamic, fluid, systems that respond to the value and beliefs of senior leadership. Importantly for this and other sports organizations, the culture and identity are responsive to short term transformation belying previously held notions of cultural change as a long-term process. This was possible for two reasons. Firstly, because FFC was a small organization in terms of staff numbers, the dissemination of transforming values could be more easily achieved. Secondly, because it was a club with a short history, it was more amenable to transformation, with stakeholders using the dismissal of senior coaches as a catalyst for change. The results also show that organizational performance will flourish if both of the following two conditions are met. Firstly, culture and identity are fully aligned with each other and the organization's vision, which enables clearly defined and consistent strategies to emerge. Secondly, the aligned culture, identity and vision are consistent with the external environment enabling the club to fully engage with that environment.

This thesis comprises research that was undertaken between January 2000 and December 2004 into the organizational culture and identity of Fremantle Football Club, a professional sporting organization that competes in an elite national football competition, the Australian Football League. The thesis began with a review of the contemporary literature on the principal topic, organizational culture and identity. The literature was subsequently used to frame and explain the approach taken in the research, which was to explore culture and identity as distinguishable, inter-dependent concepts integral to the functioning of sports organizations. The justification for the need to explore their impact in professional sporting organizations, because of a gap in our knowledge, was also provided. The research was conducted as a single qualitative case study that enabled an in-depth investigation into how Fremantle Football Club's culture and identity were formed and how they influenced its structure, strategy, behaviour and performance. Significantly, the research covered the entire history of the club since its inception in 1994, revealing three distinct periods in which culture and identity were strongly influenced by the values and beliefs of the club's leaders, particularly the CEOs, as well as board members, senior management and coaches. The first period comprised a time of self-absorption with an inappropriate culture that saw it in frequent conflict with external stakeholders as on-field success eluded it. Despite establishing a strong and clearly defined identity, FFC's inward looking culture undermined its capacity to fully engage with its heavily regulated environment. Subsequently, the club became dysfunctional as little was provided by way of long term planning and direction. The second period was epitomised by a club that was heavily fractured by internal disagreements at different levels of its governance that undermined its performance and created a cultural vacuum into which it withdrew. Little progress was made as the club stagnated. Despite consolidating its identity, individualism took precedence over the collective good with scant regard for the direction or well being of the organization. The club emerged into the third period with new personnel at all levels of its leadership and management adopting a different approach to previous administrations. The club ii embarked on a journey of reconciliation with its governing agencies, and adopted an externally engaged perspective that provided the club's stakeholders with a strong sense of its future direction based on consultation and strategic planning. The results of the research show that organizational culture and identity are dynamic, fluid, systems that respond to the value and beliefs of senior leadership. Importantly for this and other sports organizations, the culture and identity are responsive to short term transformation belying previously held notions of cultural change as a long-term process. This was possible for two reasons. Firstly, because FFC was a small organization in terms of staff numbers, the dissemination of transforming values could be more easily achieved. Secondly, because it was a club with a short history, it was more amenable to transformation, with stakeholders using the dismissal of senior coaches as a catalyst for change. The results also show that organizational performance will flourish if both of the following two conditions are met. Firstly, culture and identity are fully aligned with each other and the organization's vision, which enables clearly defined and consistent strategies to emerge. Secondly, the aligned culture, identity and vision are consistent with the external environment enabling the club to fully engage with that environment.