McDonald's operates the biggest restaurant chain in France, which is run by French managers. The company's franchisees are French, as are their employees, and they also source their supplies from France. And yet, most people in France regard McDonald's as an American firm that is selling junk food and undermining the French way of life. That is a good example of how the question of corporate identity has become complex and confused today because of globalization, according to Hamid Bouchikhi, professor of management and entrepreneurship at ESSEC, and Wharton management professor John Kimberly. The two are authors of a new book titled, The Soul of the Corporation: How to Manage the Identity of Your Company (Wharton School Publishing). How can a company cut through this confusion and use the notion of identity as a source of competitive advantage? Kimberly answers that question and others in an interview with Knowledge@Wharton.
Knowledge@Wharton: You write in your book that in the past, most people in groups were clear about their identity, but now the question has become much more confused. Why is that so, and how does it affect companies such as McDonald's, for example?
Kimberly: We have to start with confusion of identity at the individual level and then work up to the company level. McDonald's, by the way, is a great example of a company-level issue. But it seems to us -- to my co-author Hamid Bouchikhi and me -- that whereas in the past identities have tended to be relatively clear, relatively consistent and relatively continuous at the individual level, today, things that used to be sort of settled and certain are up for grabs. Gender, for example.
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