Scandinavian Journal of Management (2013) 29, 123—134

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : h t t p : / / w w w. e l s e v i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / s c a m a n

Branding in the sacrificial mode — A study of the

consumptive side of brand value production
Jens Rennstam *

Lund University, Department of Business Administration, Box 7080, 220 07 Lund, Sweden

KEYWORDS Summary Scholarship on branding has made important contributions in terms of the function of
Branding; branding and how it produces value for organizations. However, there has been an overemphasis
Production; on the production of value, at the expense of an understanding of the value that is consumed in
Consumption; branding processes. This paper explores the consumptive side of branding by drawing on the
Sacrifice; anthropological concept of ‘‘sacrifice,’’ arguing that branding may take place in a ‘‘sacrificial
Value; mode,’’ which facilitates a theorization of branding as a double-edged process of complexity
Disgrace reduction, in which value is simultaneously produced and consumed. The article draws on an
empirical study of branding in a Swedish police organization that fell in disgrace, and suggests that
organizational identification as well as the potential for an organization to reflect on the effects of
its own activity may be consumed in the branding processes.
# 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Branding has relatively recently made its way into organiza-
tion studies and has arguably made three major contribu-
tions. First, it has highlighted how organizations increasingly
understand themselves from the outside in, i.e., through the
understanding of external stakeholders (e.g., Kornberger,
2010). Second, it has developed the understanding of brand-
ing processes as not only the management of external orga-
nizational relationships, but also as a tool for managing the
internal functioning of the organization by communicating
the organization’s preferred values and identities to its
members (Hatch & Schulz, 2003; Kärreman & Rylander,
2008; Moor, 2007). Third, it has introduced branding as a
lens through which qualitative value production can be
understood. Brand value arises through relationships
between various stakeholders, and measuring the value of
these relationships is not so much a quantitative exercise as it
is a matter of negotiating quality (Kornberger, 2010; Lury,
* Tel.: +46 70 677 89 59.
E-mail address: jens.rennstam@fek.lu.se.
2004; Lury & Moor, 2010). Even though this has extended the
understanding of branding and valuation, there has been an
overemphasis on branding as production of value, at the
expense of insight into that which is consumed–—in the sense
of ‘‘used up’’ or ‘‘destroyed’’–—as a result of branding prac-
tices. This article sets out to contribute to the understanding
of the consumptive side of branding.
Attending to branding’s consumptive side enables a broa-
dened interpretive repertoire as well as a more critical
theory of branding. Consumption is an inevitable aspect of
production. Just as the production of commodities involves
the consumption of, for example, labor and capital, the
production of qualitative brand value ought to be associated
with consumption of resources–—not only financial resources,
but discursive and human resources too. Studies of branding–
—marketing management (e.g., Aaker, 1991; Keller & Leh-
mann, 2006) as well as interpretivist scholarship (e.g., Kärre-
man & Rylander, 2008)–—tend to emphasize how branding
leads to an association of organizations or products with
positive values, whereas inquiry into negative valuation or
destruction of value as a result of branding is scarcer. A

0956-5221/$ — see front matter # 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2013.03.002
124
consideration of the consumptive side of branding may, thus,
serve both interpretive interests of understanding what
branding means, and critical inquiry into potentially proble-
matic consequences of branding practice.
The present paper explores the consumptive side of
branding by analyzing an attempt of branding in the Swedish
Police after an incident that was perceived as jeopardizing
the organizations’ reputation.1 The situation is thus of a
special kind–—a branding logic was followed to prevent the
organization from falling in disgrace. In the analysis, in order
to empower the branding literature, I make use of the
concept of ‘‘sacrifice’’ (Girard, 1972, 1982; Hubert & Mauss,
1964) to theorize branding as a double-edged process char-
acterized by complexity reduction, in which value is simul-
taneously produced through the ‘‘tangibilization’’ of
qualitative resources, and consumed through the destruction
of other resources. I bring out the simultaneously productive
and consumptive side of branding by showing how an attempt
to re-establish a brand value was based on assumptions of an
outsider’s view, how complexity was reduced, and how orga-
nizational resources were consequently ‘‘sacrificed,’’ thus
pointing at the cost at which brand value was created. The
study shows that the potential for organizational identifica-
tion as well as organizational reflexivity–—i.e., the ability of
the organization to take into account and reflect on the
effects of its own activity–—may be consumed for the sake
of producing brand value. Thus, the paper enables critical
insight into branding processes and suggests that the analy-
tical power of branding will increase if it is understood as a
social practice of simultaneous production and consumption
of value.
Branding–—from quality marking to internal
communication
In the sense of attempts to attach meaning to products and
organizations, branding is not a novel phenomenon. Never-
theless, the meaning of branding has changed over time, its
importance is increasing, and as a management concept it is
relatively new (Moor, 2007). Once a marker of quality and
origin, ‘‘brand’’ has become a symbol of identity and status as
well as a financial asset (Moor, 2007; Willmott, 2010).
Most work on branding has taken place in the marketing
field, with a focus on building and measuring brand equity as
a central corporate asset (Aaker, 1991; Kapferer, 2008; Keller
& Lehmann, 2006). These studies offer good insight into
established assumptions about what brands are–—they may
be markers of quality, trust, and financial value–—what brands
do–—they may simplify choice by promising quality and
trust, and they may ‘‘reflect the complete experience that
1
Reputation is, thus, relevant here in terms of something that
needs to be ‘‘good,’’ and branding is, partly, work to prevent the
reputation from declining. However, reputation–—typically referring
to the ‘‘general opinion or estimate of a person’s [or organization’s]
character’’ (Oxford English Dictionary)–—does not capture very well
the interactions between the inside and outside of an organization.
Rather than the content of the general opinion, this study highlights
these inside-outside movements, and, as the literature review fur-
ther down will highlight, this is precisely the phenomenon that the
notion of branding represents and interrogates.
J. Rennstam
customers have with products’’–—and how brands are pro-
duced–—they are based on the product, accompanied by
‘‘marketing activity, and the use (or nonuse) by customers
as well as others’’ (Keller & Lehmann, 2006, p. 740).
Complexity reduction runs as a common thread through
these definitions of what a brand is and does. Brands are
understood as distillates of larger wholes, expected to mark
quality rather than making people delve into the substantial
aspects of a product, and they are supposed to simplify
choice rather than encourage an investigation of alterna-
tives. Largely, they are meant to produce a reflex rather than
reflexive action (Ashcraft, Muhr, Rennstam & Sullivan, 2012).
The attention of the marketing scholarship is mainly
directed toward (marketing) managers and aims to assist
them in their attempts to measure brand performance
(e.g., should the measurement be based on customers’
views, the company’s views of how the brand provides a
competitive advantage, or the brands’ financial value?), and
guiding marketing initiatives (e.g., should the brand extend
into higher/lower price ranges and what would be the con-
sequences of this?). Although useful for those who manage
through branding, what this literature does not do so well is
offer insights into the organizational, social, and political
consequences of branding efforts.
Lately, more sociologically and organizationally oriented
scholarship on branding has been added to the marketing
management texts. In addition to outlining how branding and
brands are affecting an increasing number of aspects of social
life and are being applied to everything from celebrities to
cities (Aronczyk & Powers, 2010), this literature probes the
meaning and consequences of a branding logic. First, brand-
ing is understood as a practice that operates ‘‘from the
outside in.’’ That is, a branding logic converts the old premise
that organizations understand their environments through
themselves into a new assumption that organizations under-
stand themselves through their environment (Kornberger,
2010, p. xiii). As an attempt to conceptualize this, ‘‘the
brand’’ has been defined as ‘‘the interface for [the] rapidly
expanding conversation between consumers and producers’’
(Kornberger, 2010, p. xii; Lury, 2004).
Second, the branding scholarship combines the outside-in-
dynamic, which is not new but has also been indicated by the
image-identity literature (e.g., Alvesson, 1990), with a the-
ory of qualitative value. As Lury (2004, p. 6) states, branding
introduces ‘‘qualitative intensivity into the [. . .] conventional
market economy of price.’’ Measuring brand value largely
becomes a matter of measuring quality, the modus of value
production becomes increasingly relational, and its locus
moves from the workplace into society in general (Ashcraft
et al., 2012; Land & Taylor, 2010; Lury, 2004; Moor, 2007).
Therefore, brand value arises not from pricing tangible
assets, but from the quality of the relationship with various
stakeholders such as customers, the public, or the media.
Branding is primarily a matter of managing these relation-
ships, and thereby engaging in the practice of valuing them.
Accordingly, production of value is less about production of
products than production of meaning associated with the
products (Land & Taylor, 2010), and the value of work is
constructed less at the site of production and more through
the relationships in which meaning is ascribed to the work. In
terms of product branding, this means that the value of a
t-shirt is produced less in the clothing factory and more in the
Branding in the sacrificial mode
relationships established outside of the factory. In the pro-
duction of services such as police work, value is admittedly
produced in the service encounter; however, this is only the
immediate value for those exposed to police ‘‘service.’’ The
overall value of police work is largely–—as my case shall
illustrate–—produced in the subsequent construction of the
meaning of this work in relation to other societal actors.
A third consequence of a branding logic is the insight that,
as organizations brand themselves, the effects of this are not
only directed outwards, but also inwards. The marketing
management scholarship mainly sees this as ‘‘internal brand-
ing,’’ a managerial tool that can be optimized and used on
one’s own workforce to align employee behaviors with the
values of the brand (e.g., Foster, Punjraisi, & Cheng, 2010;
Punjaisri, Evanschitsky, & Wilson, 2009). The interpretivist
organizational literature focuses more on how to understand
the internal effects of (external) branding. Kärreman and
Rylander (2008), for example, conceptualize branding as the
‘‘management of meaning’’ and they found that the external
management of meaning also informed meanings as per-
ceived by organizational members. Similarly, Moor (2007)
argues for a generally broadened view of branding as a
‘‘managerial or organizational technique’’ that is today
employed ‘‘to govern conduct across a range of fields,’’
(pp. 68—69) that takes place in a context where ‘‘customers’
activities have become increasingly valuable,’’ and that is
‘‘feeding [the customer activities] back into the production
process’’ (p. 7). Furthermore, Hatch and Schulz (2003, p.
1045) point out that ‘‘corporate brands also contribute to the
images formed and held by organizational and community
members.’’ And finally, perhaps being the one who takes the
argument for organizational consequences of branding the
furthest, Kornberger (2010, p. 10) notes: ‘‘Today, branding is
management’s weapon of choice to structure the internal
functioning of organizations’’ [italics in original].
As much as I acknowledge these ideas, the increasing
importance of the outside, the relational and qualitative
view of value creation, and the function of branding as a
managerial tool of internal meaning management, I contend
that the branding literature still poses a theoretical problem;
brand value production is theorized without theorizing its
corresponding consumption side. This is not to say that
brands and consumption have not been studied together. It
is well known that people may ‘‘consume’’ brands rather than
products, both as a way to simplify choice (e.g., Keller &
Lehmann, 2006) and as a means to construct a sense of self
(e.g., Schrembi, Merilees, & Kristiansen, 2010). Also, scho-
larship has asked intriguing questions about the changing
role of ‘‘the consumer’’ (e.g., Gabriel & Lang, 2008),
explored value production in consumer labor, and argued
that brands may exploit, or ‘‘consume,’’ people (e.g., Arvids-
son, 2005; Zwick, Bonsu, & Darmody, 2008). But what this
study highlights is not brands as an object of consumption,
but branding as a practice of simultaneous value production
and consumption.
As indicated, branding practice is commonly understood
as a value producing process that operates through complex-
ity reduction and thereby through making the intangible
tangible, the most extreme example being when the brand
value becomes a financial asset (Willmott, 2010). Complexity
reduction is, thus, at the heart of branding (e.g., Keller &
Lehmann, 2006), implying that something is consumed
125
(reduced) as value is produced, which calls for the following
question: at what cost and with what consequences is com-
plexity reduced as branding is undertaken? I shall argue that
managerial branding practice is a double-edged sword that,
as it cuts off complexity, on the one hand, produces value by
making qualitative resources tangible, but on the other hand,
consumes other, potentially valuable resources. In light of
this argument, it is the aim of this study to bring out and
theorize the simultaneous production and consumption of
value in branding practice.
Sacrifice as a mode of practicing branding
As a means of bringing out the simultaneous production and
consumption of value in branding, I draw on the anthropo-
logical concept of sacrifice and the related notion of scape-
goating (Girard, 1972, 1982; Hubert & Mauss, 1964).
Organizationally oriented literature in the genre has focused
on scapegoating as a way in which organizations clean up the
mess and minimize the damage of organizational disasters by
hiding systemic flaws (e.g., Bonazzi, 1983; Drabeck & Quar-
antelli, 1967; Grint, 2010). However, the scholarship has not
related sacrifice to branding, addressed the value producing
aspects of sacrifice, or the dialectic between production and
consumption.
Sacrifice relates to branding in at least three ways. First,
sacrifice involves complexity reduction through substitution
and tangibilization. In sacrifice, a person or a thing (a ‘‘sca-
pegoat’’) is substituted for the problems of a whole commu-
nity, and thereby ‘‘becomes the repository of all the
community’s ills’’ (Girard, 1972, p. 77) and ‘‘absorbs all other
causality’’ (Girard, 1982, p. 43). This thing or person is then
offered to the outside of the community in order to make
peace. In traditional sacrificial rituals, this ‘‘outside’’ is of a
divine character, such as in the religions of many indigenous
people, where sacrifices are made to make peace with the
gods to prevent natural disasters (Hubert & Mauss, 1964). In
branding, this represents complexity reduction through the
offering of a simplified image of the organization in order to
make peace with or please an external audience. It also
represents the complexity reduction through tangibilization.
When an organization offers a scapegoat to represent its ills,
it makes its problems tangible and thus easier to see for an
outsider.
Second, sacrifice is not mainly about the sacrificed, but
about the sacrificer, whose value is positively affected.
Although there is focus on the sacrificed at the actual ritual,
the effects of the ritual extend beyond the sacrificed to the
sacrificer. That is, they extend to the provider of the
sacrifice, who is ‘‘the subject to whom the benefits of
sacrifice thus accrue, or who undergoes its effects’’ (Hubert
& Mauss, 1964, p. 9). After the ritual, the sacrificer, which
may be a person or an organization, will be transformed and
have ‘‘rid himself [sic] of an unfavorable character with
which he was affected’’ (p. 9—10). In branding terms, this is
the value-producing element. The sacrifice not only reduces
the complexity and makes it easier for the outside to see
what the problem is, but it also makes it easier to assess
the value of the organization because after the scapegoats
have been identified and punished, the original problem is
(temporarily) gone.
126
Third, sacrifice brings out the consumptive side of an
exchange. At the same time as sacrifice involves the produc-
tion of peace, it also involves consumption, through destruc-
tion or punishment, of something that is perceived as useful
in the community, for the sake of pleasing something external
(e.g., Hubert & Mauss, 1964). In traditional sacrifice, things
or people may be destroyed to make peace (burned or killed,
for example). In branding terms, organizations consume
financial resources, but they may also consume human- or
other organizational resources, as a result of complexity
reduction and attempts to please the outside by sacrificing
something that is perceived as useful.
These elements of sacrifice, as I will elaborate shortly,
may be used to enrich the scholarship by stressing that
sacrifice is one mode in which branding may be practiced,
thereby enabling a theory that brings out the dialectic
between the productive and the consumptive sides of
branding.
Method–—studying a critical incident
The dialectic between value production and consumption in
branding is investigated by drawing on a study of an incident
at a Swedish police organization that urgently needed to, as
they said, ‘‘save the police brand’’ because of accusations of
racism. The case is particularly useful for analyzing this
dialectic because there was a clear aspect of value produc-
tion, in the sense that there were evident attempts to restore
the legitimacy of the police, combined with a clear aspect of
consumption in the sense that the police management
offered ‘‘scapegoats’’ as a ‘‘sacrifice’’ in order to establish
this value.
The collection of data about the incident was part of a
broader, ethnographically inspired (e.g., Prasad, 2005;
Schwartzman, 1993) initiative to study the Swedish police.
Access, in terms of interviews with individuals and observa-
tions of their work, was formally granted2 with the only
provision that individuals had the right to decline participa-
tion in the study.
Forty-five open-ended interviews were conducted with 42
persons, whereof 40 were police officers and two were
civilians working for the police. All interviews were recorded
and lasted 1—2 h. Furthermore, the quotes appearing in this
paper have been anonymized and translated from Swedish
into English by the author. The respondents were asked
general questions about their work, such as: ‘‘How would
you describe your work?’’, ‘‘What type of knowledge is
necessary to conduct your work?’’, and ‘‘What type of
demands are placed on you?’’ They were also asked about
the role of ‘‘incidents’’ in the organization, that is, situations
when inappropriate police behavior has become a public
concern and exposed in the media. Although such incidents
are quite common in the police, the majority of the inter-
viewees spontaneously brought up and talked most about the
‘‘Rosengård-incident,’’ which is studied in this paper. Sub-
sequently, the interviewees were asked to describe the
Rosengård-incident from their point of view, what role it
2
Access was granted through decision number AA 189-26474/10,
Polismyndigheten i Skåne (The Skåne Police).
J. Rennstam
had played in the organization, and how they thought it was
managed. The incident was discussed with all interviewees,
but it was assigned more time in interviews with those who
had been immediately involved.
It became apparent early in the study that the incident
played an important role for the police employees as a means
to make sense of the management of the organization. In
addition, the media coverage as well as my general observa-
tions in the organization indicated that this was by far the
most significant incident that took place in the police depart-
ment from 2008 to 2009. This led me to delve deeper into the
details. I, thus, followed a version of the ‘‘critical incident
technique,’’ which focuses on ‘‘significant occurrences
(events, incidents, processes, or issues), identified by the
respondent’’ to make sense of ‘‘the way they are managed,
and the outcomes in terms of perceived effects’’ (Chell,
2004, p. 48). An advantage of this method is that it ‘‘yields
in-depth material, which is grounded in concrete experience
[. . .], presents a holistic picture, and gives rich detail’’
(Fitzgerald & Dopson, 2009, p. 479). Arguably, this is espe-
cially true if the method, as in the present case, is combined
with observation and document studies.
In addition to the interviews, the media representations in
the major Swedish newspapers as well as the formal docu-
mentation of the incident were collected and analyzed
(especially from the Disciplinary Council of the Swedish
Police, the National Police-Related Crimes Unit, as well as
from the Swedish Prosecution Authority). Furthermore, in
order to gain more general insight into police work, 100 h of
participant observation of outside police work were logged. I
rode along with 11 different teams (the Swedish police
typically work in pairs), following them in their everyday
work, sitting in the back seat, documenting through note
taking what was said and done, and observing them doing
their tasks, from catching shoplifters and dealing with
domestic violence to negotiating with a kidnapper. I also
studied a diversity training initiative arranged for the police
officers. Specifically, I was present at four 3-hour sessions
where the police received lectures and training about human
rights and democracy, the situation of minorities in Sweden
(e.g., the LGBT-community, the Romani, Muslims), and had
discussions about stereotypes based on race, gender, and
sexuality. These observations were not directly aimed at
analyzing the Rosengård-incident. However, the incident
was occasionally brought up in police cars as well as at the
diversity training; moreover, the observations provided me
with deepened insight about the incident based on naturally
occurring talk (cf. Dingwall, 1997).
The data was collected based on the ideals of openness
and proximity to the field, expressed through my broad
approach, open-ended interviews, and close observation of
police work, which are tenets of ethnography (e.g., Prasad,
2005) as well as interpretivist versions of grounded theory
(Charmaz, 2006). Following Charmaz (2006, p. 22), I focused
on the process of managing the incident rather than on a
single setting, which led me to move across settings and
actors to gain knowledge about the incident. Accordingly, I
searched for representations of the incident among police
managers, HR-personnel, police officers, as well as in the
formal police documentations and media. The representa-
tions were then analyzed through close reading to produce
different perspectives of the incident (Charmaz, 2006).
Branding in the sacrificial mode
This analytical process enabled a broad description of the
incident with voices both from the inside (management-,
employee-, and documentation-based) and outside (media-
based) to represent the meanings ascribed to the incident
and its management. The analysis showed that the process
was managed mostly based on an outside-in perspective, and
that the meaning ascribed to the incident differed greatly
depending on whether it was extracted from the manage-
ment’s ‘‘branding discourse,’’ their ‘‘internal discourse’’ (cf.
Kärreman & Rylander, 2008), or from the experiences of the
employees. Finally, the notion of ‘‘sacrifice’’ was used as an
analytical concept (Becker, 1998; Charmaz, 2006) to inter-
pret and theorize the relationship between the inside and the
outside of the organization.
Below, the presentation of the incident follows. It adheres
to an iterative logic. First, a crude description of the incident
is presented, then low-abstract interpretations of how value
was produced and consumed are offered, and finally, the
more abstract notion of sacrifice is drawn upon to concep-
tualize the mode in which value was simultaneously produced
and consumed through the complexity reduction that char-
acterized the branding process.
The incident in brief
On December 18, 2008 there were riots in Rosengård, a
district in the city of Malmö, Sweden. Things were chaotic.
Cars and trailers were set ablaze, a gas station was vanda-
lized, people were throwing cobblestones and homemade
bombs at the police and firefighters, and police vans that are
supposed to withstand stones were severely damaged. The
day after, the police’s PR-officer likened the scene to a
‘‘battle field,’’ the media called the area a ‘‘war zone’’
(Sydsvenskan, 2008), and participating police officers said
that it was the worst riot they had ever faced and that they
feared for their lives.
During this turmoil, two officers, Karl and Albin (all names
are pseudonyms), inside a van made offensive utterances
with racist connotations. They used the terms ‘‘blattedjäv-
lar’’ and ‘‘apadjävel’’3 when discussing the people who were
throwing stones at them and setting things on fire. Nobody
outside of the van would have heard this if it were not for the
fact that one of their colleagues (Niklas) was filming through
the window. He was attempting to document the riots and
possibly catch some of the rioters on film, but he also caught
the conversation inside the van.
The day after the riots, the film was taken by the top
management. 47 days later, on the morning of February 4,
2009, it was used in a trial against two of the rioters. When
the film was played in court, it was not possible to identify
3
The Swedish term ‘‘blattedjävel’’ is somewhat difficult to trans-
late. ‘‘Blatte’’ is a general and derogatory term for (dark-haired)
foreigner, and ‘‘djävel’’ means devil and can be used as a suffix
attached to basically any noun. Then it fills a similar function as, for
example, ‘‘damn’’ as a prefix, i.e., it makes the term more aggres-
sive and offensive. For example: svenskdjävel = damn Swede; snutd-
jävel = damn cop; blattedjävel = damn (dark-haired) foreigner.
Similarly, ‘‘apa’’ in Swedish means monkey, and ‘‘apadjävel’’ thus
means approximately damn monkey.
127
the rioters, but the court audience, which included journal-
ists, heard the utterances from the two officers.
Niklas, who was present in court as a witness, immediately
went to his superior after this incident and told him what had
happened stating that ‘‘very soon, the phones are gonna start
ringing like hell.’’ The manager responded by telling Niklas
that he had to inform higher management about this, perso-
nified by Sven, the head of the Criminal Investigations divi-
sion. In the early afternoon there was a meeting between
Niklas and Sven and another manager. Niklas told them what
had happened, whereby Sven said that this must be reported,
and at 2:22 p.m., he filed a report with the National Police-
Related Crimes Unit4 (The Skåne Police, 2009, February).
The following day, the utterances and the courtroom hap-
penings were all over the news (e.g., Aftonbladet, 2009;
Dagens Nyheter, 2009; Debatt, 2009), with quotes from several
police authorities as well as the Minister of Justice. The
authorities all strongly denounced the utterances. The Head
of the Swedish Police exclaimed, ‘‘I’m god-damned furious,’’
and the Minister of Justice said, ‘‘I became terribly upset when
I heard this on the news this morning. I know that the police
management are equally upset, and they will report this, I
assume’’ (Sydsvenskan, 2009a). Similarly, the Head of the
Malmö Police stated in an interview, ‘‘It makes me extremely
distressed that there exists such an attitude to human beings
among our employees,’’ but he also reassured that:
already yesterday a report was written to the National
Police-Related Crimes Unit in order to find out if the
utterances are criminal. There is also a disciplinary pro-
cess in line with the Law of Public Employment. That’s the
formal part and that will take some time. What will
happen right now is that these officers will be dismissed
from their current work, immediately, and we’re now
evaluating how to go on with the issue (Sydsvenskan
Web-TV, 2009; see also Sydsvenskan, 2009b).
As the media representations indicate, the police man-
agement in Malmö did not wait long to take measures against
the offending officers. They reported three employees–—
Albin, Karl, and Maria (Maria was also in the van, and was
heard to say ‘‘den djäveln’’5)–—to the National Police-Related
Crimes Unit to find out if the utterances were to be con-
sidered as criminal acts (of hate speech, or any other type of
malpractice). Also, the police immediately dismissed the
three officers from their regular service, and transferred
them to desk jobs that disconnected them from all contact
with the public.
In June 2009 the officers were freed of the charge of hate
speech. The reason was that nobody outside of the van could
hear what the police officers were saying (at the time of
utterance). However, investigations of the officers based on
labor law6 continued through fall 2009 and resulted in a
4
In Swedish: ‘‘Riksenheten för polismål,’’ which belongs to the
Swedish Prosecution Authority and deals, among other things, with
matters of crime committed by employees of the police organiza-
tion.
5
‘‘Den djäveln’’ literally translates to ‘‘that devil.’’ It is a rela-
tively moderate swear word in Swedish, without racist connotation.
6
That is, an investigation because the employees were suspected
of violating against the Police Law or Regulation.
128
request as of December 2 from the Skåne Police7 to the
Disciplinary Council8 (The Skåne Police, 2009, December).
The request was for disciplinary action to be taken against
the officers. This included Niklas and another officer who
were suspected of violating Chapter 4.7 of the Police Regula-
tion, which says that ‘‘Police officers shall report to their
immediate superior general work conditions that are of such
kind that the superior ought to know about them’’ (Police
Regulation, 4.7). The request was signed by the Chief Com-
missioner of the Skåne Police and their senior lawyer.
On March 18, 2010, 15-months after the incident, the
Disciplinary Council decided to discipline Karl and Albin with
a five-day salary deduction and the other involved officer
with a warning, whereas Niklas was cleared of suspicion (PAN,
2010). After this last decision, Karl and Albin were allowed to
go back to their regular service.
Value production through complexity
reduction: essentialization of individuals and
normalization of the organization
The process of dealing with the incident outlined above
centered almost exclusively on the individuals who made
the utterances, whereas, sometimes directly and sometimes
indirectly, the organization (and occupation) was con-
structed as normal. In this way, through what can be seen
as essentialization of individuals and normalization of the
organization, the police management reduced the complex-
ity of the incident and attempted to produce value in terms
of regained legitimacy.
This was perhaps most clearly manifested in the media
statements by leading police officials. The essence of the
matter was constructed as a case of two bad individuals with,
as the Head of the Malmö police pointed out, a disgraceful
‘‘attitude toward human beings.’’ In the same vein, anger
and distress were directed toward the officers by the Head of
the Swedish Police and the Minister of Justice.
In addition to the media statements, the tendency to
essentialize the individuals and normalize the organization
and its management also became manifest in interviews with
the Head of the Skåne Police, who stressed that the organi-
zational means for preventing things like these are in place,
and therefore it must be the individuals who have failed.
When we have this, this type of intervention [referring to
the riots in Rosengård], then there is an organization for
that too, that is, the Special Police Tactics . . . Those
officers who are trained in it, they know, I mean they’ve
trained to deal with themselves also in a stressful situa-
tion. Then in addition, we have start-up talks and closing
talks, and then we have relief talks if it has been a tough
shift and so on. So we have tried to control this [. . .].
A similar emphasis on how management has done what it
could is found in the formal request on December 2, 2009 from
the Skåne Police to the Disciplinary Council that formal
7
The Swedish Police is divided into 21 police authorities. The
Skåne County Police Department is one of them, and Malmö is the
largest city in the Skåne county.
8
Personalansvarsnämnden.
J. Rennstam
disciplinary action be taken against the officers. In the request,
it is pointed out that the officers working during the riot in
Rosengård were ‘‘specially selected, educated, and trained for
this task’’ (The Skåne Police, 2009, December, p. 5).
According to the Head of the Skåne Police, this stance has
to do with clarity, with communicating the message that they
have ‘‘zero tolerance’’ toward this type of behavior.
It’s very hard for me to defend it [a more problematizing
stance]. Because then I wouldn’t be clear enough. Then
there would easily be a shift, and interpretation and so on.
Therefore, one has to be crystal clear, that’s what I feel,
from my position. Because if there is just a little bit of
space for interpretation, then there will be more and
more the further down [in the organization] it goes. (p. 5)
Thus, the incident–—arguably a highly complex one
allowing for multiple interpretations–—was reduced to a
not so complex issue of individuals with essentially bad
attitudes that failed despite the training provided by their
organization.
In terms of the normalization of the organization and its
management, this happened partly indirectly through the
essentialization of the officers (that is, if the incident was a
case of failing officers, then there is no reason to complicate
the issue by questioning the organization as a whole or its
management) but also directly. First, the Head of the Skåne
Police and the Disciplinary Council demonstrate normaliza-
tion of the organization through the reference to training and
pointing out how there ‘‘is an organization’’ for situations like
this one. Second, the swift action of Sven who filed a report to
the National Police-Related Crimes unit filled a normalizing
function. Sven filed the report only a few hours after the trial
and thereby conveyed the impression that as soon as manage-
ment knew about this, they proceeded to act. Thereby, at
least on the surface, they did what they were supposed to do
when there is reason to suspect malpractice. Third, in a
similar vein as Sven’s swift turn to the bureaucratic system
of dealing with malpractice, the Head of the Malmö Police
(Fred) also refers frequently to bureaucracy when his role in
this process is discussed.
You know, our work is very tightly controlled. When it is
claimed that we have done something wrong or have been
neglectful, then we are not allowed to act on this ourselves.
Instead, we hand over these errands to internal investiga-
tions [. . .] so we don’t have anything to do with this.
There were thus various attempts of portraying the orga-
nization and its top management as functioning normally,
stressing that training systems and special tactics are in
place, and that they reacted swiftly and according to the
standard rules when it came to dealing with the offending
officers. This all gives the impression that the incident was
not very complex, and that the police organization is a well-
oiled machine with practices in place to prevent and deal
with this type of temporary malfunction.
Seen through the sacrifice lens, the complexity of the
situation was reduced by substituting the two individuals for
the whole organization and its management, and offering
them to the outside to make peace and thereby restoring the
value of the police as a social institution. Attention is, thus,
directed toward the individuals, the scapegoats, but it is not
Branding in the sacrificial mode
the individuals who are the intended receivers of the effects
of the ritual. Instead, the receiver of the positive value-
effects is the sacrificer, that is, the organization and its
management. The individuals sacrificed thereby function
as an intermediary between the sacrificer and something
external that is perceived as wanting the sacrifice.
This is the production side of brand valuation. Now let’s
turn to the consumption side. At what cost was the restora-
tion of the value of the police organization attempted?
Value consumption through complexity
reduction: saving the brand, sacrificing
members and identification
There is more to this case than the ascription of essential
features to the officers and normality to the organization. In
order to gain insight into the consumptive side of this
process, let us first make some more sense of how this
was a matter of organizational branding, i.e., of the orga-
nization understanding itself ‘‘from the outside in’’ and
acting on the inside in order to restore its value as per-
ceived by the outside. There are two main indications of
this: (1) the management did not act on the inside until they
realized that the video would become known to the outside,
and (2) their understanding of the incident was in many
cases much more complex than their actions implied, and
they presented the punishment of the officers as a ‘‘sacri-
fice’’ to please the external audience and thereby ‘‘save the
brand.’’ Some contextualization is appropriate in order to
establish this.
First, the impression of a well-oiled machine that acts
swiftly to deal with temporary malpractice rests on the
assumption that police management did not know about
the content of the film. Such an assumption, however,
appears questionable considering the fact that they were
quite eager to get the film on the night of December 18, 2008,
and that it had been in their possession from that date until
the day of the trial, which was February 4, 2009. It is quite
likely, thus, that the management knew about this but did not
really act on it, but reacted when they realized that this
would be known outside of the organization. More indications
of this shall be presented further on.
When it comes to indication (2) above, it belongs to the
context that the officers were first time offenders. They
had never been reported for anything with racist connota-
tions before, after 8 (Karl) respective 19 years (Albin) of
service, and they were known by their colleagues as normal
officers (one of Karl’s superiors even labeled him ‘‘one of
the most ethically correct officers I have ever worked
with’’). Also, as noted in the summary of the incident,
the situation in Rosengård was quite extraordinary (media
described it as a ‘‘war zone’’ and experienced officers said
it was the worst thing they had experienced). The police
management were aware of this, of course, but disregarded
it in the management of the incident. The official reason for
their unconditional stance was that this context does not
matter because, as the Head of the Skåne Police pointed
out, they have an ‘‘organization for situations like this
too,’’ and the officers have been trained to ‘‘deal with
themselves in a stressful situation,’’ and therefore must be
punished.
129
Although it seems like the management slightly overesti-
mates the power of training, their stance may be defended,
as least from a highly rational point of view. Nevertheless,
there are strong indications that such an explanation severely
reduces the complexity not only of the incident itself, but
also of how the police management experienced the manage-
rial process.
The present study indicates that the police management
experienced the process as a tension filled dilemma
between pleasing an external and internal audience rather
than as a simple disciplinary procedure. A clear example of
this comes from the somewhat contradictory actions and
statements of the Head of the Malmö Police. He announced
to the media the morning after the trial that he had taken
the officers out of their regular service and placed them in
positions where they had no contact with the public, doing
work that police officers do not usually do. As noted, this
replacement to desk job positions lasted for a long time (15
months). At the same time, however, he expressed in inter-
views that it became clear to him at an early stage that these
officers did not mean what they had said, and that there was
no need to ‘‘convince them to change their values’’ or
‘‘push’’ them in order to make them understand that they
had done wrong:
So you know, I haven’t felt that I needed to convince them
to change their values. They are aware that it was wrong,
that it was unfortunate, and some of them have even
suggested that they would go out there and apologize, and
so on. So there was no real need to push . . . ‘but you have
to understand that [this was wrong] . . .’, because they
have . . . how shall I say . . . according to my judgment, they
have very seriously said that they do not support this
[these values]. They too think it is terrible and that it
has caused us much trouble. So in the discussion with
them, this is resolved.
Thus, to the Head of the Malmö Police, the issue between
him and his employees was ‘‘resolved,’’ but yet he felt that
he needed to punish them for 15 months. This need for
disciplinary action was arguably influenced by an experience
of the ‘‘outside,’’ which tore the police management
between, on the one hand, showing understanding for the
complexities of police work when confronting their employ-
ees, and, on the other, exhibiting decisiveness in order to
please something external.
In addition to the discrepancy between the actions and
statements of the Head of the Malmö Police, observations of
everyday police work as well as interviews with members of
the organization conveyed how the incident was perceived
as complex. One example is the recorded dialog in a police
van with an officer (Sten) working outside in a managerial
position. We discussed how the incident was managed, and
Sten said that the management was too reactive, only
responding to media as a way to protect themselves, and
then added:
You know, in this case there are examples of top
managers who were shaking hands with the ones
who made the utterances. They explained that the
way they [the officers] had expressed themselves was
stupid, but still sort of said that ‘‘you have our full
confidence.’’
130
[Author] There are?
Yes, there are. I know that.
[Author] That’s quite different from the image shown to
the public.
Yes. Then outwards, they said that they are shocked at
what happened.
Also other staff, like this HR-person, indicated that the
action against the officers was mainly about communicating
to the outside that they had the situation under control, or as
it is put here, ‘‘to save the police brand.’’
You know, it’s damage control. I mean this is what it’s all
about, to show that we have the situation under control.
And that’s what we did, all of us, even if we didn’t have
control.
[. . .]
You know, we can’t appear to be fuzzy here, or discuss
anything at all with the media. We have to be clear that
we know this and know what we’re doing. I assume that
you know that, that image is everything. I mean when it
comes to saving the police brand.
The HR-person also says that, considering the situation, it
is understandable that the officers acted the way they did,
but that there are always some individuals that need to be
‘‘sacrificed’’ when things like this happen.
Then, it’s always like this, when it comes to crises like this
or whatever we want to call it, that there’s always some
individuals, that is, the ones in that van, that are sacri-
ficed in a way. Because, you know, it was their . . . [. . .]
what they said, I mean me too, I understand precisely that
they said this in that situation. You know I fully understand
that you may say things like that in such a situation. And I
think most people understand that, actually, when you’re
bombarded with things [referring to the cobblestones etc.
that were thrown at the police]. But when this thing has
been set in motion, then it’s in motion, and then there’s
nobody who cares about that.
In terms of the sacrificial practice, the above excerpt
illustrates how, at the same time as sacrifice involves the pro-
duction of peace, it also involves consumption, through destruc-
tion, of something that is perceived as useful in the community,
for the sake of pleasing something external (e.g., Hubert &
Mauss, 1964). Largely, the police officers were not perceived
by their own organization as bad officers, as the quotes above
indicate, but, despite their ‘‘stupid’’ utterances, as useful and
competent and well aware that they had done wrong. Never-
theless they needed to be ‘‘sacrificed,’’ to use the words of the
HR-person, for the sake of ‘‘saving the police brand.’’
This sacrificial practice was not received very well in the
organization. The perception that management was not
reacting on malpractice until it came out in the media
spread, and affected the meaning of membership and the
members’ identification with the organization. Naturally,
this was the case first of all for the offending officers, who
on the one hand said that they understood (as the Head of the
J. Rennstam
Malmö Police also indicated) that what they had uttered was
wrong, as Karl says, ‘‘I‘m the first one to admit that it sounds,
it sounds really bad.’’ But they also stressed that this was a
very extreme situation and that they did not say the words, or
mean to say them, to anyone, and that bad words tend to
come out in stressful and violent situations as a way of
‘‘letting off steam.’’ As Karl says: ‘‘Violence isn’t always
beautiful. And this is a way for you to ventilate when you
are exposed to this type of situations.’’ They also pointed out
that the utterances were partly taken out of their context9.
In light of this, Karl and Albin seemed to share the following
feelings and thoughts: the management was not listening to
them, but ‘‘panicked’’ when things came out in the media,
they were ‘‘defenseless’’ (Karl), the issue was ‘‘quickly
turned into politics’’ and ‘‘everybody was scared to death
of even talking about our case’’ (Albin), and they were very
suddenly on loose grounds portrayed as ‘‘violent racists,’’ an
identity that was foreign to them. As Karl put it:
we were depicted as the worst violent racists [. . .]. I‘ve
never felt so trampled on in my whole entire life, and I was
completely defenseless, there was nothing that I could do
in that process, there and then. (Karl)
However, it was not only Karl and Albin who felt affected
by the management of this incident. It influenced organiza-
tional members on a broader level and tended to reduce the
confidence in organizational leaders as well as producing a
fear of being reported on as soon as something came out in
the media. ‘‘People are afraid you know, after this thing that
happened, to discuss certain sensitive issues, that’s the way
it is,’’ as stated by one of the middle managers. Moreover, the
problem of arbitrary reporting was also brought up in the
union magazine Facknytt (2010/2). As a result of the reduced
confidence in management, some officers even said it
affected their career ambitions negatively. For example,
one officer (Dave) asserted, ‘‘It happens quite often that
the authorities realize that ‘oops, they will write about this
tomorrow; therefore, we make a decision today, because
then we can say tomorrow that we’ve already made a
decision about this.’’’ As a result of this, Dave stated that
he did not want to become a manager anymore because, ‘‘It’s
not as fun to be that [a part of management] anymore,
because I don’t think management is doing a very good job.’’
The case through the lens of sacrifice
The analysis indicates that the police management perceived
this situation as quite complex. Nevertheless, they chose to
understand the situation through a branding logic, from the
outside in (Kornberger, 2010), as imagined through the eyes
of an external audience. And they acted more to please this
audience and ‘‘save the police brand’’ and less because they
really thought that the officers were ‘‘bad apples’’ in need of
long-term punishment.
Largely, managements’ branding activity followed the
mode of a sacrificial ritual, as described in more detail
9
For example, they said that the use of ‘‘blattedjävlar’’ was a
quote from an old man who a few days earlier used that term when he
saw Albin arrest two immigrants for shoplifting.
Branding in the sacrificial mode
earlier. First, complexity was strongly reduced and value was
produced by essentializing the two offending officers and
substituting them for the whole organization and offering
them to the imagined audience in an attempt make peace
and purge the organization from the negative stain that the
utterances had caused. By doing this, the problems and
solutions associated with the incident were made tangible
and easier to perceive, and the organization and its manage-
ment were normalized as the attention was directed toward
the officers. In other terms, the focus on the officers filled the
function of ‘‘absorb[ing] all other causality’’ (Girard, 1982, p.
43) than the causal relationship between the officers’ essen-
tial character and the negative aspects of the police. An
aspect of this reduction is that innocence and guilt played a
subordinate role, as it does in sacrifice (Girard, 1972; Grint,
2010). In our case, the guilt of the officers is ambiguous, and
may of course be the topic of much discussion, but in the
sacrificial mode this is somewhat beside the point. The point
is not to find the truth, but for the officers to bear the sin or
guilt of the whole community to protect it, and to re-estab-
lish its value. As Girard (1972, p. 4) notes in slightly more
violent terms: sacrifice is about protecting one’s own society
from violence by redirecting the violence toward a ‘‘sacri-
ficeable victim,’’ by sometimes ‘‘conspir[ing] with the enemy
and at the right moment toss him a morsel that will serve to
satisfy his raging hunger.’’ Thus, value was produced in
accordance with the sacrificial logic that the sacrificer
(the police organization and its management) is positively
affected by the sacrifice (Hubert & Mauss, 1964).
Second, value in terms of organizational resources was
also consumed in the process. In sacrificial rituals, the com-
munity offers something to the outside that is regarded as
precious and useful (Hubert & Mauss, 1964). The sacrificed
officers were generally not perceived as bad police officers
(although the statements as such were perceived as bad).
Thus, valuable human resources were consumed in the pro-
cess of reducing the complexity of the situation in order to
restore the value of the organization. Also, the meaning of
being a member of the organization seemed to be affected.
The sacrificial mode produced a feeling among organizational
members that media rather than top-management were
controlling the organization and that members could be more
or less randomly punished depending on media’s attention,
which reduced confidence in management and made people
afraid of talking freely. In branding terms, there was an
attempt to re-establish the brand value as perceived by
the outside, but organizational resources were simulta-
neously consumed, whereby the value of the organization
was reduced as perceived by the inside, and members felt
that they were ‘‘being branded’’ in a way that clashed with
their sense of identity with the organization. Branding in the
sacrificial mode, thus, seemed to affect the members’ iden-
tification with the organization negatively.
However, it was not only organizational identification that
was consumed. The study indicates that it was also the
potential for organizational reflexivity, i.e., for the organi-
zation and its stakeholders to reflect on its ‘‘ways of under-
standing, being and acting in the world’’ (Cunliffe, 2002, p.
51). By following the sacrificial logic and swiftly and uncon-
ditionally reducing the complexity of the incident, organiza-
tional value was re-established, on the one hand. On the
other hand, however, accounts of the role of the organization
131
as a whole in this incident, of the way it is managed, and of
the nature of police work, were put aside and silenced as the
organization was normalized. Following Girard (1972), this is
part of the function of sacrifice, which aims to draw attention
away from the original sins of the community. Or in terms
more familiar to scholars of discourse, the process of brand-
ing contributed to a type of discursive closure (Deetz, 1992)
that prevented important conversations about this incident,
the police organization, and its management, to take place.
In other words, in the wake of the branding process, and as a
consequence of the sacrificial mode, the potential for orga-
nizational reflexivity was reduced because all attention was
directed toward the officers. Thus, pointing at the resem-
blance between rituals of sacrifice and branding brings cri-
tical attention not only to the direct consumption (the
officers), but also to the indirect consumption of branding
(potential for organizational identification and reflexivity).
Wider implications of the sacrificial mode of
branding
The study of the incident thus provides an insight into the
organizational process of branding as a complexity reducing
process that simultaneously produces and consumes value.
The sacrifice analogy enables this double-edged nature of
branding to come forth. It illustrates: (a) the reduction of
complexity by embodying the problem as well as the resolu-
tion in the officers, (b) the production of value through
tangibilization by offering the officers as scapegoats, and
(c) the simultaneous consumption of value by ‘‘sacrificing’’
the officers, and in its wake the attractiveness of identifying
with the organization as well as the potential for organiza-
tional reflexivity.
The paper thereby adds aspect to much of the recent work
on branding. First, it responds directly to the call for
accounts of ‘‘what really happens in the branding process’’
(Spicer, 2011, p. 1739) by describing in detail how a situation
was managed by understanding the organization ‘‘from the
outside in’’ (Kornberger, 2010). By introducing the sacrificial
mode, the study furthers the managerialist (e.g., Foster
et al., 2010) as well as the interpretivist scholarship directed
toward the internal effects of branding (e.g., Kärreman &
Rylander, 2008; Kornberger, 2010; Moor, 2007) by bringing out
the potentially problematic internal effects of branding
practice. For example, Kärreman and Rylander (2008)
insightfully argue that branding attempts to inform not only
external stakeholders, but also organizational members
about the values to be associated with the organization.
Conceptualizing branding in terms of simultaneous consump-
tion and production of value, and using the analogy with
sacrifice as a heuristic device, this study delves deeper into
how branding has internal effects, with specific focus on its
potential costs in terms of qualitative value. In particular, the
study suggests that the attractiveness of organizational iden-
tity, which Kärreman and Rylander found might increase
through branding, may also be affected negatively.
Second, the idea of brand as interface (e.g., Kornberger,
2010; Lury, 2004) is very helpful because it captures the
inside-outside dynamics, which this study supports. I,
therefore, agree with Lury (2004) and others that it is
worthwhile to think of brands as interfaces that invite
132
various stakeholders to apply their knowledge and instill
the brands with meaning. However, this study implies an
extension of the metaphor and suggests that the brand is
not only ‘‘the interface for [the] conversation between
consumers and producers’’ (Kornberger, 2010, p. xii), but
also a ‘‘site of struggle’’ at which consumption and produc-
tion of qualitative value meet. Theorizing branding in terms
of what is produced and consumed when consumers and
producers ‘‘converse,’’ encourages an account of the orga-
nizational costs at which this conversation takes place.
Moving beyond the branding literature, this study has
particular relevance for scholarship on public organizations,
which answer to societal rather than business interests. The
consumptive side of branding interrogates not only into
qualitative organizational costs, but also into societal costs
of branding as well. If the complexity of problems in public
organizations is reduced through branding attempts, this may
threaten democratic values such as transparency and the
accountability of public organizations to the citizens. For
example, if the complexity of problems of racism within the
police is not brought to the surface because of branding
practices that follow a sacrificial logic, then these problems
are unlikely to be solved in the long run and the legitimacy of
the police is likely to be undermined.
The value of ‘‘organizational reflexivity’’ is perhaps less
obvious in business organizations because their raison d’être
is more to make a profit and less to sustain democratic
values. Nevertheless, scholars of corporate social responsi-
bility (CSR) would find the argument that branding builds on
the reduction of complexity and the consumption of
resources to be useful. Being perceived as socially respon-
sible is doubtless a source of value for contemporary orga-
nizations, and branding is a central managerial practice for
producing this perception. Thus, CSR-scholars may use my
conceptual apparatus to ask: What may be consumed as
complexity is reduced to produce brand value in practices
that are framed as CSR? Is organizational identification and/
or common social values ‘‘sacrificed’’ to present or repair a
socially responsible brand? And what is the relationship
between the consumptive and productive side of CSR-stra-
tegies; how can it be described by concepts other than
sacrifice?
Concluding reflections
This study of the management of an incident in the Swedish
police supports those who are concerned that the focus on
branding generates a ‘‘promotional culture’’ (Aronczyk and
Powers, 2010), and adds that this culture calls for the
reduction of complexity in a world that has hardly ceased
to be complex. Thus, the complexity reduction inherent in
branding is arguably problematic. Of course, organizations
can choose to view incidents like the one in Rosengård as
simple, and hence come up with simple solutions. In our case,
the problem was presented as revolving around individual
officers. This is less complex than choosing to present the
problem as revolving around ‘‘the organization,’’ ‘‘the man-
agement’’ or ‘‘the relation between the police and certain
groups in society.’’ The solution was also presented as simple:
take out the officers, punish them, and teach them the right
way to behave. This is much easier than rethinking the role of
J. Rennstam
the organization, the way it is managed, and its relationship
with various groups in society.
In light of this, practitioners confronted with the necessity
of ‘‘branding’’ may wonder how the sacrificial mode might
help them to think about their practice. Despite the critical
tone in this paper, it would be too simple to say that the
police management did wrong. Indeed, the sacrificial mode
often produces value and this may very well exceed the value
consumed. Yet, the focus in this paper has been to bring out
the consumptive side, and with this in mind one may argue
that managers ought to be careful not to submit too blindly to
the logic of branding, especially when it comes to the
sacrificial mode. The case indicates that the branding logic
was perceived as very strong by the police management, so
strong that it can be said to have encouraged ‘‘hypocrisy’’
(Brunsson, 1993). That is, the branding logic, which includes
understanding the organization from the outside in and the
reduction of complexity to produce or restore brand value,
encouraged the police management to interact very differ-
ently with different groups. In the case study, it arguably
made them assume that ‘‘the public’’ wanted scapegoats
rather than insight into the complexity of police work,
including race issues. As a result, they communicated with
the public accordingly, and then ‘‘secretly’’ told the failing
officers, at the same time as they punished them to ‘‘save the
brand,’’ that they still trusted them as being good police
officers. One consequence of this was that they lost the
confidence of their own employees, and, I argue, contributed
to the closure in the discussion of race issues in police work.
Thus, this study does not provide a recipe for ‘‘good
branding,’’ but calls for a more sensitive, nuanced, and
thoughtful managerial practice. More specifically, it suggests
that: (1) the current ‘‘recipe’’ with its focus on complexity
reduction–—resounded in the typical PR-advise that advo-
cates simplicity and warns against ‘‘speculation’’ and ‘‘con-
tradictory messages’’–—is problematic both from an
organizational perspective (because it may run counter to
organizational members’ identification and thereby reduce
their faith in the organization) and a social perspective
(because it hampers the potential for reflection on the role
of the organization in society), and (2) a good start for
revising the current recipe would be to add the consumptive
side as a central ingredient when planning for branding
practice. The sacrificial mode of branding could, therefore,
function as a heuristic device not only for scholars to criti-
cally consider branding as a social phenomenon, but also for
managers who wish to develop a more reflexive branding
practice and find a balance between value production and
value consumption, as perceived by various stakeholders.
Finally, it should be remembered, as mentioned earlier,
that this study is based on a special kind of situation where an
organization experienced a sudden threat to the brand value.
Arguably, this type of situation is quite common. For exam-
ple, producers of goods that are manufactured in the Third
World are frequently revealed as accepting appalling labor
conditions, whereby they ‘‘sacrifice’’ their subcontractors
and thereby draw the attention away from systemic flaws in
their own organization. The arguments put forth here have
immediate relevance for branding in this type of context.
More continuous branding attempts, where organizations
engage in long-term efforts of associating themselves
with attractive values and distinguishing themselves from
Branding in the sacrificial mode
competitors, are also characterized by complexity reduction
and consumption of value, but not in the same way by the
logic of sacrifice. In particular, they have no reason to offer
‘‘scapegoats’’ to the external audience. However, the sacri-
ficial aspect may well be relevant in the sense that something
(typically slogans, elite athletes, celebrities etc.) is offered
as a representative of the whole organization, in order to
facilitate the audience’s way of seeing certain aspects of the
organization, while drawing attention away from other
aspects.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Karen Ashcraft for her insight-
ful comments on this paper. The suggestions of the anon-
ymous reviewers and the editors of this special issue also
helped to significantly improve the quality of this text.
References
Aaker, D. A. (1991). Managing brand equity–—Capitalizing on the
value of a brand name. New York: The Free Press.
Aftonbladet. (2009, February). Den lille apadjäveln (That little damn
monkey). Retrieved from http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/
article4330231.ab.
Alvesson, M. (1990). Organization: From substance to image? Orga-
nization Studies, 11(3), 373—394.
Aronczyk, M., & Powers, D. (2010). Blowing up the brand. In M.
Aronczyk & D. Powers (Eds.), Blowing Up the Brand: Critical
Perspectives on Promotional Culture. New York: Peter Lang.
Arvidsson, A. (2005). Brands: a critical perspective. Journal of
Consumer Culture, 5(2), 235—258.
Ashcraft, K., Muhr, S. L., Rennstam, J., & Sullivan, K. (2012).
Professionalization as a branding activity: Occupational identity
and the dialectic of inclusivity-exclusivity. Gender Work and
Organization, 19(5), 467—488.
Becker, H. S. (1998). Tricks of the trade–—How to think about your
research while you’re doing it. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
Bonazzi, G. (1983). Scapegoating in complex organizations: The
results of a comparative study of symbolic blame-giving in Italian
and French public administration. Organization Studies, 4(1), 1—
18.
Brunsson, N. (1993). Ideas and actions: Justification and hypocrisy as
alternatives to control. Accounting, Organizations and Society,
18(6), 489—506.
Charmaz, C. (2006). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide
through qualitative analysis. London: Sage.
Chell, E. (2004). Critical incident technique. In C. Cassel & G. Symon
(Eds.), Essential guide to qualitative methods in organizational
research (pp. 45—60). London: Sage.
Cunliffe, A. (2002). Reflexive dialogical practice in management
learning. Management Learning, 33(1), 35—61.
Dagens Nyheter. (2009, February). Rikspolischefen fördömer malmö-
polis (Head of Swedish Police condemns Malmö officer). Retrieved
from http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/rikspolischefen-
fordomer-malmopolis.
Debatt. (2009, February). Retrieved from http://svt.se/2.103991/
1.1433175/debatt_5_februari_2009.
Deetz, S. A. (1992). Democracy in an age of corporate colonization:
Developments in communication and the politics of everyday
life. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Dingwall, R. (1997). Accounts, interviews and observations. In G.
Miller & R. Dingwall (Eds.), Context and Method in Qualitative
Research. London: Sage.
133
Drabeck, T. E., & Quarantelli, E. L. (1967). Scapegoats, villains, and
disasters. Society, 4(4), 12—17.
Facknytt. (2010/2). Polisförbundet, Skåne.
Fitzgerald, L., & Dopson, S. (2009). Comparative case study designs:
Their utility and development in organizational research. In A.
Bryman & D. A. Buchanan (Eds.), The Sage handbook of organi-
zational research methods. London: Sage.
Foster, C., Punjraisi, K., & Cheng, R. (2010). Exploring the relation-
ship between corporate, internal and employer branding. Journal
of Product & Brand Management, 19(6), 401—409.
Gabriel, Y., & Lang, T. (2008). New faces and new masks of today’s
consumer. Journal of Consumer Culture, 8(3), 321—340.
Girard, R. (1972). Violence and the sacred. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Girard, R. (1982). The scapegoat. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press.
Grint, K. (2010). The sacred in leadership: Separation, sacrifice, and
silence. Organization Studies, 31(01), 89—107.
Hatch, M. J., & Schulz, M. (2003). Branding the corporation into
corporate branding. European Journal of Marketing, 37(7/8),
1041—1064.
Hubert, H., & Mauss, M. (1964). Sacrifice–—Its nature and functions.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Kapferer, J. N. (2008). The new strategic brand management: cre-
ating and sustaining brand equity long term (4th ed.). London:
Kogan Page.
Kärreman, D., & Rylander, A. (2008). Managing meaning through
branding: The case of a consulting firm. Organization Studies,
29(01), 103—125.
Keller, K. L., & Lehmann, D. R. (2006). Brands and branding: Research
directions and future priorities. Marketing Science, 25(6), 740—
759.
Kornberger, M. (2010). Brand society: How brands transform
management and lifestyle. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Land, C., & Taylor, S. (2010). Surf’s up: Work, life, balance
and brand in a New Age capitalist organization. Sociology,
44(3), 1—19.
Lury, C., & Moor, L. (2010). Brand valuation and topological culture.
In M. Aronczyk & D. Powers (Eds.), Blowing up the brand: Critical
perspectives on promotional culture. New York: Peter Lang.
Lury, C. (2004). Brands: The logos of the global economy. London:
Routledge.
Moor, L. (2007). The rise of brands. Berg: Oxford.
PAN. (2010). Beslut (Decision), number PAN-793-108/09.
Police Regulation, Chapter 4.7. Retrieved from https://lagen.nu/
1998:1558.
Prasad, P. (2005). Crafting qualitative research–—Working in the
postpositivist traditions. New York: M E Sharpe.
Punjaisri, K., Evanschitsky, H., & Wilson, A. (2009). Internal brand-
ing: an enabler of employees’ brand-supporting behaviors. Jour-
nal of Service Management, 20(2), 209—226.
Schrembi, S., Merilees, B., & Kristiansen, S. (2010). Brand consump-
tion and narratives of the self. Psychology & Marketing, 27(6),
623—638.
Schwartzman, H. B. (1993). Ethnography in organizations. Newbury
Park, CA: Sage.
Spicer, A. (2011). Branded life: A review of key works on brands.
Organization Studies, 31(12), 1735—1761.
Sydsvenskan. (2008, December). Brandmän och polis tvingades
på flykt (Fire fighters and police had to run). Retrieved from
http://www.sydsvenskan.se/malmo/article399913/Brandman-
och-polis-tvingades-pa-flykt-.html?descendingOrder=false&
pagerOffset=0.
Sydsvenskan. (2009a, February). Den lille djävla apedjäveln
(That little damn monkey). Retrieved from http://www.
sydsvenskan.se/malmo/article410789/Polis-Den-lille-javla-
apejaveln.html.
134
Sydsvenskan. (2009b, February). Poliser tas ur tjänst (Police officers
dismissed from service). Retrieved from http://sydsvenskan.se/
malmo/article411025/Poliser-tas-ur-tjanst.html.
Sydsvenskan Web-TV. (2009, September). Retrieved from http://
www.sydsvenskan.se/webbtv/webbtv_malmo/article411003/
WEBB-TV-Polischefen-ber-om-ursakt.html.
The Skåne Police. (2009, February). Anmälan (Report). Number 1200-
K16869-09.
J. Rennstam
The Skåne Police. (2009, December). Begäran om disciplinpåföljd
(Request for disciplinary action). Number AA-793-4613-09.
Willmott, H. (2010). Creating value beyond the point of production:
Branding, financialization, and market capitalization. Organiza-
tion, 17(5), 517—542.
Zwick, D., Bonsu, S. K., & Darmody, A. (2008). Putting consumers to
work: ‘Co-creation’ and new marketing govern-mentality. Jour-
nal of Consumer Culture, 8(2), 163—196.