Managing Public Services

9    Brand orientation

Tensions and conflicts in public management

Jon Bertilsson, Jens Rennstam and Katie Sullivan

DOI: 10.4324/9781003154389-13

Introduction

Public institutions such as cities, the police or schools are increasingly adopting a brand orientation, understood as an approach to organization aiming to create coherence around image and identity, such that consistent, precise and coherent messages can be presented about the organization to internal and external stakeholders. This may be seen as an expression of what is sometimes called “brand society,” meaning that branding affects ever more aspects of human life, including public sector organizations (Kornberger, 2010). Similar to other management techniques – like Lean Management ...