Anonymous Agencies, Backstreet Businesses, and Covert Collectives: Rethinking Organizations in the 21st Century / Edition 1

by Craig Scott

Overview

Many of today's organizations "live in public"; they devote extensive resources to branding, catching the public eye, and capitalizing on the age of transparency. But, at the same time, a growing number of companies and other collectives are flying under the radar, concealing their identities and activities.

This book offers a framework for thinking about how organizations and their members communicate identity to relevant audiences. Considering the degree to which organizations reveal themselves, the extent to which members express their identification with the organization, and whether the audience is public or local, author Craig R. Scott describes collectives as residing in "regions" that range from transparent to shaded, from shadowed to dark. Taking a closer look at groups like EarthFirst!, the Church of Scientology, Alcoholics Anonymous, the KKK, Skull and Bones, U.S. special mission units, men's bathhouses, and various terrorist organizations, this book draws attention to shaded, shadowed, and dark collectives as important organizations in the contemporary landscape.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804781381
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	03/27/2013
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Craig R. Scott is Professor of Organizational Communication in the School of Communication & Information at Rutgers University.

Read an Excerpt

ANONYMOUS AGENCIES, BACKSTREET BUSINESSES, AND COVERT COLLECTIVES

Rethinking Organizations in the 21st Century

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By Craig R. Scott

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2013 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-8138-1

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Chapter One

To Name or Not to Name, That Is the Question

Even after working in what are essentially the suburbs of New York City for over six years, I still marvel at Times Square with every visit to uptown Manhattan. My amazement is driven not only by the people and the buildings but also by the mass of multistory neon advertisements promoting a vast range of organizations and products. A recent effort to document every ad appearing in one day in the few blocks that make up Times Square (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/ironicsans/sets/72157594496838152/) inspired me to do something similar. Standing in the middle of Times Square one summer afternoon, I observed in less than thirty minutes what I consider to be the following organizational names seen only on the stores and buildings along Broadway and Seventh: Disney, LG, Forever 21, Swarovski, Planet Hollywood, Swatch, Pepsi, Spike TV, NASDAQ, Clear Channel Advertising, Fox News, TGI Fridays, TD Bank, Ambassador Theater, Walgreens, Wilson Theatre, Sbarro, Tad's Steakhouse, Neil Simon Theatre, (Doubletree) Guest Suites, Eugene O'Neill Theatre, Lamar Advertising, Broadway Theater, Barclays, 47th Digital, The Change Group, ABC, Budweiser, Dunkin' Donuts, TDK, Toshiba, Sony, Hard Rock Cafe, WGN America, Levi's, Aéropostale, Thomson Reuters, Marriott, Kodak, Hankook (tires), McDonald's, Facebook, Twitter, Bank of America, UFC, American Eagle Outfitters, T-Mobile, Roxy Deli, Grand Slam New York, W Hotels, Prudential, CNN, Blue Fin, New York Police Department, Morgan Stanley, Allianz, Aerie, Corona (beer), Coca-Cola, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Hyundai, Xinhua News Agency, H&M, Times Square Visitor Center, Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, Olive Garden, Hershey's, Duane Reade, TKTS, Times Square Alliance, Merrill Lynch, Sunglass Hut, Sabrett, and Viacom. If you include the organizations mentioned on taxis, buses, trucks, shirts, bags, camera straps, handouts, garbage cans, and other handheld signs, we could add Century 21, LAN Airlines, Super Shuttle, Under Armour, American Girl, Aerosoles, Hollister, Nike, Sony, M&M, Crate & Barrel, Lamborghini, United States of America, Toys "R" Us, JC Penney, Nikon, RBK, Quicksilver, Birkenstock, Grayline, Moishe's Self Storage, Broadhurst Theater, City Sights Tours, Boston Bruins, Boston Red Sox, New England Patriots, Cincinnati Reds, Chicago Blackhawks, Rutgers University, and seemingly every New York sports team—as well as several different comedy clubs and taxi companies. Many of these names are known globally while others are well known only locally.

Even if Times Square and its $70 million annual advertising business (Times Square 2005) is in many ways unique, it is also something of a microcosm of the extreme lengths some organizations take to promote themselves. Many of the companies we know and often love spend incredible amounts of time and money in efforts to ensure they are highly visible. Chief communications officers and other professionals in corporate communication, public relations, and public affairs are tasked with activities such as managing the image, branding the organization, maintaining a positive reputation, and ensuring proper visual identification. The multibillion-dollar public relations industry provides some evidence for the magnitude of this effort. Organizational communication and identity experts note the corporate communication function has expanded dramatically in recent decades as a variety of organizations attempt to closely manage communication—and as organizations brand themselves to various audiences (Christensen, Morsing, and Cheney 2008). As a society, we regularly celebrate visible organizations—seeking employment with them, purchasing their products and services, and praising them as good corporate citizens.

But this focus on what is visible and known can sometimes lead us to overlook what is less visible and less known. We become so enamored with the high-profile companies and the glitzy ad campaigns that we forget about those organizations that may be more discreet and/or not blitzing us with various commercial messages. Even when all that is interrupted by messages about important issues in our society—terrorist attacks, financial backing of political candidates, human trafficking, anonymous donations to a troubled school system, and so on—we too often fail to think of these issues as fundamentally organizational ones as well. Returning to my opening example, it is easy enough to see the millions of dollars worth of corporate names in Times Square—but what do we not see? What do we have to look harder to notice? In Times Square itself we see knockoff products pretending to be from a certain manufacturing organization and vendors whose organization is not clear. We also see the big screen and camera that shows people in the square, which can be a reminder that there are numerous other surveillance cameras (with security organizations watching). It even occurred to me that one might think I was a criminal or terrorist making detailed notes of organizations in the area—which suggests that other terrorist or criminal organizations could also have a hidden presence here as well. In fact, one could see from my vantage point the approximate spot of the failed car bomb attempt in Times Square in 2010.

Much of what we cannot readily see is somehow behind (or above or below) the scene also. In this area, also known as the "theater district," this is what we might think of as somewhat backstage. On the immediate side streets one quickly sees doors with only a street number and an incomplete/ outdated directory of obscure-sounding businesses; large garage doors that only open on appointment to reveal some company and its goods; and spray-painted information that sometimes reflects a temporary address for some organization and at other times is likely to signify graffiti from a gang. As you look above the street level and behind the advertising signs, there are what appear to be offices for otherwise unmarked businesses—and even higher up in the skyscrapers are the numerous organizations whose existence to most is found only in a small directory on a first-floor lobby. The subways that run underneath are perhaps symbolic of what are surely multiple underground clubs and other organizations kept largely out of public sight. Beyond all that, would we even begin to recognize elements of a criminal organization, shadow economy, counterintelligence agency, or secret religious movement operating amid everything else? Unfortunately we as citizens, consumers, and students of organizations have failed to adequately consider these various forms of hidden organizations—creating both missed opportunities and potential dangers. Our focus on the familiar organizational foreground of predominantly large for-profit businesses, easily recognized governmental agencies, and a few high-profile nonprofits and NGOs contributes to a lack of vision on what may be an even larger arena of other less visible collectives.

It is not especially difficult to imagine how this happens. After all, you do not need to be in Times Square to know we live in a world where too often the name of the game is the name game: being known and identifiable to all the appropriate audiences. We teach our MBAs about branding and identity creation, our professional associations conduct training workshops to improve our skills in reputation and image management, and we draw primarily on these recognizable organizations in our teaching and consulting. Furthermore, there is a general bias in much of the world for openness and transparency—while anything hidden or kept secret arouses suspicion and feels less than democratic. Thus, it should be of little surprise how powerful these forces related to organizational identity have become. Consider a few examples illustrating this organizational need for visibility and recognition.

Reputation

McKinsey & Company's recent international survey of executives argues that reputation now matters more that it has for decades (Bonini, Court, and Marchi 2009). Considering that claim, we should not be surprised to find reputational studies ranking everything from the top colleges/universities to the best steakhouses on the planet, or from the world's top 10 golf courses to America's top 100 Teddy Roosevelt Terrier breeders. One of the best-known reputation lists is Fortune's "World's Most Admired Companies" (World's Most Admired Companies 2012). The 2012 top 20 list is not surprising and reflects the success of the identity efforts of these organizations (ranked in order): Apple, Google, Amazon.com, Coca-Cola, IBM, FedEx, Berkshire Hathaway, Starbucks, Procter & Gamble, Southwest Airlines, McDonald's, Johnson & Johnson, Walt Disney, BMW, General Electric, American Express, Microsoft, 3M, Caterpillar, and Costco Wholesale.

The Reputation Institute, a global private consulting firm, recently conducted a survey of consumers in fifteen different global markets to assess the global reputation of the world's most recognized companies. Organizations were rated on their products and services, innovation, workplace, governance, citizenship, financial performance, and leadership, and the list was then published in Forbes (Smith 2012b). BMW (Germany), Sony (Japan), Walt Disney (United States), Daimler (Germany), Apple (United States), Google (United States), Microsoft (United States), Volkswagen (Germany), Canon (Japan), LEGO (Denmark), Adidas Group (Germany), Nestle (Switzerland), Colgate-Palmolive (United States), Panasonic (Japan), Nike (United States), Intel (United States), Michelin (France), Johnson & Johnson (United States), IBM (United States ), and Ferrero (Italy) comprise this more international listing. Similar lists even exist for nonprofit organizations. The American Institute of Philanthropy grades nonprofits as part of its charity watch (Top Rated Charities 2011), though the names here are often somewhat less recognizable.

Individual countries may publish their own organizational reputation studies. New Zealand, for example, rates a wide variety of organizations (Birchfield 2010)—noting not only Air New Zealand (most reputable business) but also Kiwibank (most reputable state-owned enterprise), New Zealand Police (most reputable government department), and the Salvation Army (most reputable nonprofit). Of course, having a reputation does not necessarily mean it is a good one, which can affect the degree to which one wishes to push their name at certain times (and the need to improve reactions associated with a given identity). The reputation institute and Forbes (Smith 2012a) published a similar study identifying the least reputable U.S. organizations in 2012: Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Goldman Sachs, Halliburton, Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG, News Corporation, ExxonMobil, and Altria.

The names on these lists are relatively well known to many of us. But what about all those organizations that do not have a very strong or very weak reputation or that perhaps have little reputation at all? Consider the vast majority of businesses without an expensive public relations or corporate communication arm to constantly engage in image/identity management. How important is reputation for those organizations that do not produce a product or service relevant to most of the public? Consider all the nonbusiness and even nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) for whom having a reputation of any sort might even be problematic. For obvious reasons, one is quite unlikely to find a list of those organizations published in Fortune or Forbes; but perhaps such a list would be useful. Of even greater concern is the obsession with reputation without the recognition that reputation is not a driving force for all organizations.

Organizational Naming

An organization's name is not only the first impression we have of it but also a central part of the collective's identity. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why organizations regularly change their names—a phenomenon often referred to as "corporate rebranding." According to one of the many corporate-naming firms, a company changes its name approximately every hour of each business day in the United States alone (Strategic Name Development 2007). That is close to 2,000 name changes every year because of some challenge or opportunity in the environment—ranging from mergers and changes in an organization's focus to spectacular successes or scandals for the company in question. According to companies like Strategic Name Development, the changes range from mild (Amerada Hess Corp. to Hess Corp.) to wild (Citisource, Inc. to China Shuangji Cement Corp.) but often focus on trends such as going green (Radiant Technology Group to GreenBridge Technology, Inc.), going global (Yellow Roadway Corp. to YRC Worldwide), and finding short/catchy names (America Online, Washington Mutual, and Outdoor Life Network to AOL, WaMu, and Versus, respectively).

Although the frequency of and reasons for name changes are noteworthy, the costs of such alterations reveal the incredible importance we place on naming. It is difficult to find an exact estimate, but industry experts typically put the cost of planning and conducting organizational rebranding between $75,000 to $455,000 per change depending on the extensiveness of the effort—and that does not even include costs for announcing/launching the change, new signage/stationery/cards, and other needed realignment (see Dawson 2011; Shalit 1999; Spaeth n.d.). At that rate, the $70,000 spent by US Air to become US Airways was quite a bargain, especially compared to the more than $1 million Hewlett-Packard eventually paid to come up with Agilent for its spinoff company (Shalit).

This naming business may be sizable, but what about the millions of organizations whose names do not communicate identity information? Some names simply reference a largely overlooked owner/founder (e.g., Akai, a consumer electronics brand founded by Saburo Akai in Japan), a product/service that may no longer be primary (e.g., England's WPP stands for Wire and Plastic Products, but it is now one of the world's largest global media companies), the geographic location of the original company or other key facilities (e.g., Lexmark, which references a production facility in Lexington, Kentucky), or perhaps little at all that may be recognizable to most (e.g., U.S. retailer Pamida, whose name is formed by the first two letters of the cofounder's three boys). More important, what about organizations that change their name to escape negative public attention (e.g., Anderson Consulting rebrands itself as Accenture; ValuJet merges with and takes the name of AirTran; the large private security contractor Blackwater Worldwide becomes Xe Services) rather than attract it? Consider also the hidden organizations who do business as (d/b/a, also known as "operating as" or "trading as" in certain countries and sometimes referred to as "assumed business names" or "fictitious business names" in the United States) some other company or who create front organizations and shell corporations so that their name is not easily known. None of this necessarily includes criminal organizations or underground collectives that are largely nameless to most. Names are an important part of most organizations' identity; but being strongly identified by a powerful moniker—regardless of its cost—is not a goal of all organizations.

Visual Identity

Efforts to brand organizations extend well beyond names to include a variety of visual elements related to logos, trademark symbols, various graphic standards, colors, fonts, and emblems—which may appear on buildings, letterhead, emails, uniforms, trucks, business cards, promotional items, websites, custom signs, and so on. The relevance of corporate visual identity (CVI) efforts extends to various types of organizations. "The importance of CVI is quite obvious for organizations that operate in a competitive environment. But it may be equally important for governmental organizations that ... still need to be recognized as of use to society" (van den Bosch, de Jong, and Elving 2006, 140). Indeed, a variety of for-profit and nonprofit organizations have highly recognizable logos (without the name): for example, United Way's supporting hand, the Michelin Man, Apple's apple, Nike's swoosh, Playboy's bunny ears, the Red Cross's cross, Shell Oil's shell, and the Olympics' rings.

Other evidence suggests the importance and scope of these efforts. The U.S. Patent and Trademark office reports 1,655,542 total active trademark registrations on the federal register as of the second quarter of 2011—a number that is steadily growing even though one is not required to register such marks with the federal government. The U.S. sign industry reports that manufacturing of signs has steadily increased even while other forms of manufacturing have steadily declined. The sign industry had shipments of $50 billion in 2006 alone according to industry statistics (International Sign Association 2008). Of course, the most visible place of all for such visual information is online. It is difficult to find a Fortune 1000 company without a website today, and 70 percent of the largest small businesses have one as well (Campbell 2009). Additionally, among Fortune 500 companies in 2012, you will find 73 percent using Twitter and 66 percent with their own Facebook page (Barnes, Lescault, and Andonian 2012).

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from ANONYMOUS AGENCIES, BACKSTREET BUSINESSES, AND COVERT COLLECTIVES by Craig R. Scott Copyright © 2013 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Preface: Necessary Disclosures ix

1 To Name or Not to Name, That Is the Question 1

2 Unmasking What We Know about Hidden Organizations 25

3 Revealing Research on Organizational Identity and Related Issues 53

4 Unveiling a New Framework of Organizations and Organizational Regions 81

5 Taking It to the Extremes: Transparent and Dark Organizations 106

6 Hiding Only a Little: Shaded Organizations 130

7 Under the Radar and Out of the Spotlight: Shadowed Organizations 160

8 Classified Conclusions, Implications of Invisibility, and a Faceless Future 197

References 219

Index 245

Editorial Reviews

"Scott's engaging examination of hidden organizations makes a vivid argument that established ideas about organizations and their public communication do not apply uniformly. This is an important contribution demonstrating to organizational communication students and researchers that there's more to the organizational landscape than meets the eye."

University of Kansas - Tracy Russo

"Organizational identity is commonly seen by organizational communication scholars as offering distinct survival advantages. But is that really true? Nature offers alternative models such as the predatory wolf who survives by passing himself off as a harmless sheep—the proverbial 'wolf in sheep's clothing.' Scott calls on us to challenge the dominant assumption that a distinct identity is a key advantage, and takes us on an enlightening tour of a variety of organizations that benefit from being more or less hidden. As you immerse yourself in this must-read treatise, you will come away intrigued, challenged, and ultimately motivated to explore the controversial fringes where hidden organizations reside."

University of Southern California - Janet Fulk

"Scott's analysis of organizational visibility, secrecy, and identity extends the horizons of our understanding about the types and behaviors of organizations in today's world. To play on the central theme of the work, I find the book illuminating."

Kent State University - George Cheney

"Drawing on his life-long interest in opaque organizations, Craig Scott combines the best of academic research and engaging writing to provide a rich, thoughtful, and thought-provoking examination of 'hidden' organizations. His topic is both timely and timeless, as backstreet businesses promise to become increasingly important in our world."

Brigham Young University - Paul Godfrey

"As Scott's title suggests, in the twenty-first century, the action in organizational innovation and evolution seems unlikely to take place in an organizational form designed for a different time, technology, and public temperament. Anonymous Agencies opens a window to our collective understanding of one place where that action is likely to occur: within the set of organizations that, for whatever reason, choose to operate in the shadows of social life."—Paul Godfrey, Administrative Science Quarterly


"Scott's analysis of organizational visibility, secrecy, and identity extends the horizons of our understanding about the types and behaviors of organizations in today's world. To play on the central theme of the work, I find the book illuminating."—George Cheney, Kent State University


"Scott's engaging examination of hidden organizations makes a vivid argument that established ideas about organizations and their public communication do not apply uniformly. This is an important contribution demonstrating to organizational communication students and researchers that there's more to the organizational landscape than meets the eye."—Tracy Russo, University of Kansas


"Drawing on his life-long interest in opaque organizations, Craig Scott combines the best of academic research and engaging writing to provide a rich, thoughtful, and thought-provoking examination of 'hidden' organizations. His topic is both timely and timeless, as backstreet businesses promise to become increasingly important in our world."—Paul Godfrey, Brigham Young University


"Organizational identity is commonly seen by organizational communication scholars as offering distinct survival advantages. But is that really true? Nature offers alternative models such as the predatory wolf who survives by passing himself off as a harmless sheep—the proverbial 'wolf in sheep's clothing.' Scott calls on us to challenge the dominant assumption that a distinct identity is a key advantage, and takes us on an enlightening tour of a variety of organizations that benefit from being more or less hidden. As you immerse yourself in this must-read treatise, you will come away intrigued, challenged, and ultimately motivated to explore the controversial fringes where hidden organizations reside."—Janet Fulk, University of Southern California

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