Institutionalizing the brand at the multinational enterprise: towards a qualitative diagnosis

In view of the progressive globalization of markets, multinational enterprises (MNEs) are focusing on the need to harmonize their internal brand identities in the interest of long-term strength and coherency. Drawing from organization studies, brand theorists have responded to these developments by directing research not just on the alignment of outward employee actions and behaviours but more specifically on their values and beliefs - and how to align these with the core values of the organizational brand. However, at the cross-national level our understanding of how far differing employee values - conditioned by the specific socio-cultural context in which they are embedded - may challenge and obfuscate these efforts at alignment is sparse and inadequate. The purpose of this article is to address this knowledge gap at its logical entry point by conceptualizing the extent of assimilated values using existing constructs from institutional theory. More precisely, we develop a qualitative scale to describe and measure comparative brand institutionalization at both individual and collective levels using the concepts of implementation versus internalization - thereby furnishing both theorists and practitioners with a rich and coherent model to diagnose and evaluate internal brand consistency across the MNE subsidiary network.