Companies on the Runway: Fashion Companies’ Multimodal Presentation of their Organizational Identity in Job Advertisements
Multimodality, Meaning, and Institutions
ISBN: 978-1-78743-332-8, eISBN: 978-1-78743-331-1
Publication date: 30 November 2017
Abstract
In job advertisements, companies present claims about their organizational identity. My study explores how employers use multimodality in visuals and verbal text to construct organizational identity claims and address potential future employees. Drawing on a multimodal analysis of job advertisements used by German fashion companies between 1968 and 2013, I identify three types of job advertisements and analyze their content and latent meanings. I find three specific relationships between identity claims’ verbal and visual dimensions that also influence viewers’ attraction to, perception of the legitimacy of, and identification with organizations. My study contributes to research on multimodality and on organizational identity claims.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
I wish to express my gratitude to Lena Süß, who worked with me on an early version of this chapter. I want to thank the participants of the HRM research seminar at the University of Innsbruck and of the New Institutionalism Workshop, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria, as well as the editors and reviewers of this special issue for their valuable comments. I am grateful to the FWF Austrian Science Fund for financial support in the form of a fellowship grant from the Erwin Schrödinger Program.
Citation
Bullinger, B. (2017), "Companies on the Runway: Fashion Companies’ Multimodal Presentation of their Organizational Identity in Job Advertisements", Höllerer, M.A., Daudigeos, T. and Jancsary, D. (Ed.) Multimodality, Meaning, and Institutions (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 54B), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 145-177. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X2017000054B005
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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