Artifacts and Organizations

1

Managing Artifacts to Avoid Artifact Myopia

Iris Vilnai-YavetzAnat Rafaeli

Technion-lnstitute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

Israel's national public transportation company recently tried to repair its suffering from increased competition by adopting a new physical image: It began a public relations (PR) campaign that was symbolized by painting its buses a dark green (Rafaeli & Vilnai-Yavetz, 2004a). The color was chosen by management as a symbol of environmental friendliness. However, responses to the color were far from positive, and referred not only to the symbolism of the color. The dark green bus was described as too dark for the hot Middle Eastern climate in which it needs to transport passengers. It was described as too dark for a public ...