Personal branding has become an important concept in management literature in recent years. Yet, with more than 100 scholarly papers published on the concept to date, it has developed into a fragmented area of research with a diversity of definitions and conceptual boundaries. This paper posits that this heterogeneity of extant research impedes theoretical and empirical advancement. To strengthen the foundation for future work, we review the extant literature and offer an integrative model of personal branding. Through our systematic literature review we identify the key attributes of the construct, establish its clarity by comparing it with similar concepts in its nomological network, and suggest the definitions of personal branding and personal brand based on the reviewed literature. Further, we propose a theoretical model of personal branding summarizing the findings from the reviewed papers. The proposed model outlines the trends conducive to personal branding, as well as its drivers, processes, and outcomes. Finally, we discuss ethical implications of personal branding for both scholarly work and practice. In conclusion, we outline a further research agenda for studying personal branding as a critical career and organizational behavior activity in contemporary working environment.

There is a growing amount of attention being brought to personal branding as an effective career behavior, but little is known about the factors that predict personal branding behaviors and their outcomes. In two studies (N = 477) across two distinctly different cultural contexts (Western and Asian) based on a newly developed and validated scale of personal branding, we have examined the antecedents and outcomes of personal branding. The findings confirm that personal branding leads to greater career satisfaction, fully mediated by perceived employability. Career achievement aspiration was the strongest predictor of engaging in personal branding, while career feedback negatively related to personal branding intention and career self-efficacy positively related to personal branding but not to personal branding intention. These findings highlight the importance of personal branding as a contemporary career technique in promoting one's personal brand identity to achieve beneficial career outcomes.

Crafting a personal brand has become an important factor for career success. Despite the growing literature on topics associated with personal brands, the conceptualization and measurement of personal brand equity (PBE) have received little attention. By drawing upon and integrating the marketing and careers literatures on branding, we reconceptualized the definition of PBE and delineated its dimensions and conceptual boundaries. Furthermore, we developed a 12‐item scale to measure PBE. Among seven different samples (total N = 3,273), including two samples of employees, this study tested the construct and criterion‐related validity of the PBE scale. First, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a three‐dimensional structure of PBE (brand appeal, brand differentiation, and brand recognition). In two samples, the convergent and discriminant validity of the PBE scale was established. Finally, this study showed that PBE predicts perceived employability, career success, and job performance. The PBE scale offers new opportunities to understand and measure career behaviors by considering individuals’ personal brand positioning.

This paper discusses one of the actual problems of examination and quality management of education in a pedagogical university - evaluation of its electronic information and educational environment (EIEE). The analysis of this problem is carried out in the light of the digitalization of the Russian Federation economy, which could not but affect the sphere of education. The current steps in the development of electronic educational environments of pedagogical universities and the construction of a single electronic educational space of pedagogical universities in Russia are primarily the result of this process. The authors consider traditional approaches to the development of complex distributed social engineering systems, which can be divided into two large groups descending (from top to bottom, developed under the auspices of the government of the Russian Federation) and ascending (from bottom to top, developed by individual universities or associations of universities) design. The paper describes eight integrated parameters (consistency, mobility, openness, informality, completeness, freedom/determinism, accessibility, security (information security)), by which it is possible to assess the state of a particular EIEE. The authors propose how to evaluate the current state of a university EIEE by machine learning methods. The obtained materials can serve as a basis for the development of EIEE monitoring system of pedagogical universities in Russia.

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