Autocommunication Theory

Autocommunication takes place whenever senders act as receivers of the messages that they are conveying. This is often the case in the context of organizations because members are senders as well as receivers of messages from their own workplace. Autocommunication is therefore highly relevant in the context of corporate reputation. An organization’s reputation depends not only on the evaluations of external stakeholders but also—and perhaps increasingly so—on the perceptions and opinions of its own members. Members usually know their workplace better than other audiences and are, therefore, able to develop more sophisticated viewpoints and judgments of organizational reality than the typical external constituent. As such, members have the potential to influence how outsiders view the organization. Conversely, organizational reputations matter most to the people who actually work for or otherwise feel associated with the organization in question. People take pride in working for companies that are positively evaluated by the general public and use such reputations to boost the images they hold of themselves. Thus, for internal audiences the reputation of their organization is a mirror in which they communicate with and evaluate themselves as social beings. This latter point was clearly illustrated in Jane Dutton and Janet Dukerich’s (1991) now classic study of the New York Port Authority, in which employees used external perceptions of their workplace to judge their individual characters. This entry covers the theory of autocommunication and its implications for corporate reputation and managerial applications.

The Concept and Its Implications

The notion of autocommunication suggests that individuals, institutions, and cultures communicate with themselves even when they address other audiences. Such communication is neither an aberration nor an epiphenomenon that occurs alongside with or in parallel to traditional forms of communication where receivers are different from senders. Rather, autocommunication is a fundamental dimension of all human interaction. Senders, thus, are always receivers of their own messages, perhaps the most involved. This is true not only because senders are self-absorbed but also, and more fundamentally, because self-perceptions—individual or organizational—are established and cultivated through ongoing communication with a significant “other.” Autocommunication, in other words, is integral to processes of developing and maintaining an identity and, as such, is vital for the existence of any social entity.

Autocommunication may be unintentional or deliberately planned for. Either way, it serves to express, confirm, and reinforce idealized self-perceptions or instigate new attractive images of the organization. Yet, autocommunication is not a feature of messages per se or the process of sending them. No message or conveyance is inherently autocommunicative. Autocommunication occurs in the reception of a message and is contingent upon the way the message is read, received, and related to by the communicator itself. By knowing the content of the message in advance, the communicator does not receive any new information but is boosted and potentially transformed in the process of projecting itself in its surroundings. Rather than information transfer, thus, autocommunication is a ritualistic activity characterized by circularity and self-recognition.

Although autocommunication may be a rather self-contained activity, it does not rule out the possibility that the message in question simultaneously speaks to receivers different from the sender. In fact, the existence of such external audiences and their potential interest in what is being said increases the autocommunicational clout of the message. Besides acting as a potential receiver of the message, the external audience represents an ideal reference point in terms of how the sender appraises itself. In this “looking glass,” as it was described by sociologist Charles Cooley, the communicator (person, group, or organization) recognizes itself chiefly in terms of how it wants to be seen by others. Thus, while autocommunication is basically a form of self-talk, its significance for the sender is potentially augmented when the relevant messages are extended beyond the self and are accessible to others in publicly recognizable formats.

Managerial Applications

Autocommunication theory has been applied in marketing, management, and organizational studies to suggest that organizations frequently talk to themselves through messages ostensibly directed at other audiences (e.g., advertisements, branding, annual reports, corporate social responsibility [CSR] programs, and YouTube videos).

Strategic plans and annual reports often function as autocommunicative devices through which organizations tell themselves what they would like to be in the future. Although many plans and strategies are never implemented as intended, this kind of communication is essential for the self-perception of the organization. Marketing activities are often used by organizations to confirm and celebrate deep-seated notions of organizational identity and organizational potential. Advertising, identity and image projects, design and architecture, annual reports, corporate art collections, corporate autobiographies, and market analyses are all examples of how organizations talk to themselves in external media because the prominence of such media lends status and authority to organizational messages and allows organizations to tell themselves and their employees that they have a certain position in the social world and that their messages are important and need to be respected. Thus, when messages appear in external media, they obligate the senders, if only temporarily, to take their own words seriously. Employees are highly involved in messages from their own workplace and tend to evaluate dimensions such as accuracy, value congruence, and effectiveness in advertising campaigns with far more interest and attention to detail than external audiences usually do. Positive evaluations along these dimensions are crucial to maintain employee pride and loyalty. For example, the employees of United Parcel Service, when featured in advertisements, experienced an increase in their sense of identification with the company. As another example, consider that organizational members are dedicated readers of CSR messages from their own workplace and that such messages strongly influence their level of identification.

As a device for self-maintenance and self-celebration, autocommunication involves the obvious risk of ignoring essential feedback from the surrounding world. Organizational identity programs, thus, may become inward-looking projects, characterized by self-absorption and self-seduction. By overestimating external interest and involvement in corporate identity markers (e.g., logos, slogans, design, and architecture) while downplaying information that contradicts such interest, organizations have a propensity to get caught in their own messages, assuming that they are true representations of organizational reality. Some organizational identities are pathological and narcissistic. In the case of Royal Dutch Shell, for example, and its decision to dump the oil platform Brent Spar in the North Sea, the organization was so engaged in confirming its preferred identity that it was unable to respond adequately to external stakeholder interests and demands. Thus, in the shape of narcissism, autocommunication may pose a threat to the survival of the organization.

A similar logic may apply to corporate reputation. Since a reputation is a complex construct that may be interpreted in various ways, it is possible to read it selectively, focusing on the dimensions that confirm preferred self-understandings while ignoring other, less flattering aspects of organizational reality. Although corporate reputation is constructed on the basis of input from many different constituents, it is not exempt from the dysfunctional potential of organizational autocommunication, through which organizations confirm themselves.

In spite of potential pathologies, the articulation of idealized self-images, plans, and ambitions in public forums may be essential in developing organizational identity and exploring new options and possibilities. Organizations talk to themselves to clarify their surroundings and figure out who they are and what they might become. Autocommunication, therefore, is a vital dimension of organizational development and renewal, even when the messages and their implied ideals differ from organizational practices.

With “aspirational talk,” understood as communication that current organizational practices cannot yet live up to, organizations may stimulate themselves to set changes in motion that would not occur otherwise. The articulation of organizational ambitions in the area of CSR, for example, may be considered a type of autocommunication that stimulates new insight and propels the organization toward higher CSR goals. To appreciate this potential, it is essential to emphasize that in autocommunication, accuracy is not the primary driver. Organizational messages, values, advertising, mission statements, CSR programs, and so on are therefore not perfect mirrors of reality. Rather, they are idealized stories of hopes, dreams, and visions through which corporate actors hope to instill collective confidence and stimulate change.

The significance of aspirational self-talk is especially evident today where notions of corporate branding and employer branding depict organizational members as walking-around embodiments of the corporate brand. In contrast to classical product brands, the corporate brand makes a promise, which employees are expected to support. Employees, thus, must translate the promises, visions, and aesthetics into day-to-day actions that ultimately provide flesh and blood to the corporate brand.

While autocommunication does not unfold automatically or predictably into appropriate organizational action, such aspirations, especially when announced in public media of high status and authority, help define or illuminate a collective “horizon” of excellence to which employees and other stakeholders can hold the organization accountable. In other words, aspirational self-talk, especially well-publicized statements that capture the attention of employees and other critical stakeholders, can delineate parameters for future corporate behavior.