Power at Work: Relevance and Image

Abstract

Few organisations if any escape the need to think about their public image: increasing competition between international organisations and growing requirements on performance make image important in a new way. But how would that be done, and whose image counts? Organisations may try to impact on the way they are perceived. Do they do so strategically? Can such action be counterproductive? Here, the reader is invited to note and ponder on how much the organisations talk not about themselves but about each other. They can jointly produce a shared image of how they are and how they cooperate, but they can also give a certain image of another organisation, consciously or not. They influence the others’ images, spread views on which organisation is good at what kinds of tasks and deal with potential vulnerabilities. A way of exercising power over another organisation, simply put, is to impact its image. The chapter lays out examples of how organisations convey an image of themselves, in documents. It goes on to looking at how they convey an image of another organisation: how they talk on each other and depict each other in the documents and strategies they produce. But it also looks at joint imagery, such as in the joint EU-NATO declarations of 2002 and 2016. What emerges from the analysis is that the organisations are aware of the extent to which they depend on each other and seem to move towards shared relevance and inter-legitimation.