Administrative Science Quarterly

57 (3)535536
The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/0001839212462541
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Matthew J. Brannan, Elizabeth Parsons, and Vincenza Priola, eds.: Branded

Lives: The Production and Consumption of Meaning at Work.
Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2011. 224 pp. $110.00 / 65.00, hardback.
This edited volume contains eleven chapters, including the editors introductory
and concluding chapters, on employer branding. This is an important effort
because of the widespread use of branding strategies among todays organizations. The organizations studied are large and small, private and nonprofit, and
span multiple industries; the occupations analyzed include front-line service
workers, warehouse workers, professional employees, and managers. The editors and authors are therefore to be commended for their work in opening up
this new space both theoretically and qualitatively.
The book opens with the claim that this volume explores the experience of
employer branding, a very concrete and specific employment practice, that has
become increasingly popular in recent times (p. 1). After reading this volume, I
think this opening claim is only partially correct. Many of the chapters focus on
case studies, and the depth and diversity of these cases certainly delivers a rich
exploration of the experience of employer branding while also demonstrating
the popularity of employer branding in practice. More problematic is the claim
that employer branding is a very concrete and specific employment practice.
In my view, an important contribution of this volume is a demonstration of the
oppositethat is, employer branding is a diverse and somewhat amorphous
practice. Some of the chapters highlight organizational communication practices, others human resource management policies, and at least one highlights
the importance of physical space. This multidimensional approach to branding
is a stimulating aspect of this volume. At the same time, however, the authors
tend to take differing approaches to conceptualizing branding, and this leaves
the reader, or at least this reader, with a muddied sense of what employer
branding is and how it differs from employee branding (another term used in
multiple places) and from efforts to create organizational culture more
generally.
Based on the volumes subtitle, I was also expecting a deeper treatment of
the types of meanings that employees experience in their work, but this was
not a consistent theme in the volume. Rather, the volume is more successful
in portraying the multiple ways in which organizations attempt to achieve
employer and employee branding and the ways in which organizations are seemingly never able to be completely successful in these pursuits due to
employee agency and resistance.
The chapters are theoretically informed and generally employ a critical frame
of reference that makes the overall tone of the volume skeptical about the
motives, aims, and outcomes of organizations branding efforts. This critical

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Administrative Science Quarterly 57 (2012)

approach is important. As just one example, chapter 10 cautions that strategies

to create a uniform brand with a unitary set of values and beliefs can contradict
the respect for individual differences that should be a part of efforts to promote
diversity. Readers who are looking for this type of critical theoretical and methodological approach will likely find many important insights in this volume.
Other perspectives, however, are not as well represented.
This volume successfully demonstrates that there are many situations in
which the values, vision and culture of organizations become the core of their
unique selling proposition, and in such situations, the role played by employees shifts dramatically from providers/sellers of labour to carriers or intermediaries of such corporate values and visions (p. 193). More importantly, this
volume richly develops the resulting implications for the lived experiences of
workers and provides the foundation for future research on this phenomenon.
John W. Budd
Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies
Carlson School of Management
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455
jbudd@umn.edu