Organizational dynamics and complexities of corporate brand building–—A practice perspective Rita Ja ¨rventie-Thesleff a , Johanna Moisander a, * , Pikka-Maaria Laine b,1 a Department of Communication, Aalto University School of Economics, P.O. Box 21210, FIN-00076 Aalto, Finland b University of Lapland, Faculty of Tourism and Business, P.O. Box 122, FIN-96101 Helsinki, Finland Introduction In the contemporary global competitive environment, cor- porate branding has become an important source of sustain- able competitive advantage and a central element of corporate strategy (Balmer & Gray, 2003; Hatch & Schultz, 2003, 2008; Knox & Bickerton, 2003). Despite the perceived strategic importance of corporate brands there appears to be a lack of empirical research that focuses on the praxis of corporate branding, i.e. on the ways in which brand strate- gies are managed in the day-to-day of the organization. Much of the current research on corporate branding is con- ceptual and typically takes the ‘‘content perspective’’ (Whittington, 2007: 1576) on brand strategy, discussing the nature and dimensions of different types of brand strategy (e.g. Aaker, 2004; Balmer & Gray, 2003; Knox & Bickerton, 2003). Relatively little empirical research has been focused on the specific activities, processes and rou- tinized practices through which corporate brand strategies are developed and implemented in the organization. Con- sequently, there appears to be a need for empirically well- grounded research on the praxis and practices of corporate brand building as well as on the managerial challenges that it involves. In this paper, our aim is to respond to these research needs. Drawing on the practice turn in contemporary social theory (Schatzki, Cetina, & Savigny, 2001) and the emerging strategy-as-practice tradition (Jarzabkowski, Balogun, & Seidl, 2007; Johnson, Langley, Melin, & Whittington, 2007; Laine & Vaara, 2007; Whittington, 2006, 2007), we build a practice-based approach to corporate brand management to shed light onto the day-to-day activities and organizational practices through which corporate brand strategies get managed in business organizations. More specifically, we extend the post-processual approach to theorizing Scandinavian Journal of Management (2011) 27, 196—204 KEYWORDS Corporate brands; Strategy-as-practice; Practice-theory; Brand management; Strategic; Change Summary The paper introduces a marketing-as-practice-approach to the domain of corporate brand management and presents findings from an empirical study that illustrates this approach in the context of a large transnational corporation. Conceptualizing corporate branding as some- thing that occurs within and as part of a field of socially instituted practices, the paper focuses on the patterns of routinized activity through which corporate brands are built in organizations. By means of a 5-year ethnographic study, the aim is to identify a set of trans-subjective organiza- tional practices that govern the praxis of brand building as well as to analyze the steering effects that these practices may have on the collaborative production and delivery of the brand promise in the day-to-day of organizational activity. # 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +358 503120904. E-mail addresses: rita.jarventie-thesleff@aalto.fi (R. Ja ¨rventie-Thesleff), Johanna.moisander@aalto.fi (J. Moisander), pikka-maaria.laine@saunalahti.fi (P.-M. Laine). 1 Tel. +358 407071961. available at www.sciencedirect.com journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/scaman 0956-5221/$ — see front matter # 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.scaman.2010.07.001