Working It: Managing Professional Brands in Prestigious Posts

Abstract

The authors address the challenges individuals face when managing their professional brands while working in “prestigious posts” (high-profile jobs in established organizations) and striving to maintain career mobility. Using a case study approach and drawing on sociological field theories, the authors identify two types of tensions (resource-based and identity-based) that are triggered by prestigious posts and four practices conducive to mitigating tensions and maintaining mobility. Beyond extending prior theory on person brands to include consideration of career mobility, this work has implications for better understanding the complexities of affiliations between professionals and the brands they work for. It suggests that individuals who are managing their professional brands while holding prestigious posts need to strike a balance between benefiting from the affiliation in the eyes of external stakeholders and at the same time maintaining their professional independence to maintain career mobility.

Personal branding of top managers

“…On-eld visibility through professional publications early in one's career, as well as o -eld visibility through personal engagement in societal issues as a top manager, leads to being known as a personal brand in one's eld of practice (Close et al, 2011;Parmentier et al, 2013;Zamudio et al, 2013), but also to a eldspeci c capital that increases personal brand equity (McQuarrie et al, 2013;Rein et al, 2006). Our study can con rm that the activities of professional brands in the two relevant elds from a eld theory perspective, i.e., in the eld of the speci c organization the professional brand is currently working for and in the broader eld of which this organization is a member (Parmentier and Fischer, 2021), are also relevant for the emergence of top managers' personal brands. Smith and Fischer's (2020) summarizing statement that "person brands are built by accumulating eld speci c capital forged through forming high status social connections, achieving institutionally well-recognized accomplishments, and/or receiving prestigious awards regarded as valuable by others in the eld" (ibid., p. 259) also applies to our results.…”

“…On the other, the comparison between di erent companies and industries seems to be necessary to consider contextual characteristics that in uence the brand building process over the course of careers. Sociological eld theories o er a lens that has already been applied to understand how professional brands are managed simultaneously in the eld of the speci c organization the top manager is currently working for and in the broader eld of which this organization is a member (Parmentier and Fischer, 2021). These insights may be transferred to other sectors in order to identify to what extent, for instance, regulatory framework conditions of industries such as the nancial sector and the energy and telecommunication industries have an impact on personal branding in comparison to non-regulated industries such as the event industry.…”

Assessing Hermès' Brand Management Capabilities

“…The market is currently extremely competitive in all industries, which has resulted in products becoming increasingly similar to one another. In this context, customer demand for brands is increasing [4]. Branding provides the function of identification, which can assist businesses in differentiating their products from competitors.…”