Brand, Identity and Reputation: Exploring, Creating New Realities ...

The Role of Strong Organisational Identity to Cope Current Changes and Challenges of Regulations on Early
Childhood Industry in Australia
Sene Gide, University of Sydney, Australia
Introduction
An organisation is more than the sum of its assets. Any company/organisation is made up of individuals, infrastructures,
products and inventories. When all these physical components of the organisations combine, they form a pattern of
aspiration and achievement that stretches back to the past and reaches for the future (Fekete & Keith, 2003).
Organisations that develop a strong identity at the beginning and respect the core values they are established upon can
face new changes and challenges without losing their identities and therefore may live for decades or longer.
In the last couple of years, Australian Early Childhood (EC) Services have been experiencing pressure from a number
of sources including families and government that have led to EC services being more and more competitive resulting
in a stressful working environment.
In many services due to recent changes in regulation and licensing rules the expectations from teachers/educators also
changed. Employers, especially those with tied budgets or managers of the profit based services become more
conscious about the expenditures and start implementing various strategies to balance the budget. These include:
Cutting the professional development/staff training budget down: Most early childhood services have a very
limited professional development budget or none at all. In many services this causes issues as educators feel
they are all stuck; that there is no way to improve or change.
Reducing the number of staff or having the minimum ratios of what regulation says: One teacher to look after ten
preschool children or five babies is not as easy as it sounds. Yes, it is legal however, is it practical?
Increasing educators‘ responsibilities: such as adding daily cleaning to their roles and responsibilities. In this way
the services don‘t have to employ cleaners for five days. They may get a cleaner to come to the service once a
week on the weekend to do a deep cleaning while the staff clean the centre at the end of each day.
Increasing child care fees charged from families: This means that families who are already struggling with the
recent economical crisis, changes in the workplace agreements, the new baby in the family, balancing family,
work and children have another hit with the increase in child care fees.
The abovementioned strategies have negative effects on all educators in the service as well as families and most
importantly young children who use these services.
Early Childhood Services with strong organisational identities work harder to keep their employees‘ morale as high as
possible by not reflecting the issues directly to them. The research of this paper personally believes that the secret for
having happy children and families in your service is keeping your educators/employees happy and satisfied which
directly lead a strong organisational identity.
Research Aim and Methodology
The aim of this research is to clarify the effect of current changes and challenges of regulations on the Early Childhood
industry and how an Early Childhood Service with a strong identity can cope with these challenges.
The non-participant observational research has been used to collect necessary data and information for this study. The
observations of the educators, families, children and management of the case centre have been used for this research,
along with the interaction between all the stakeholders. For certain research questions, observational research is clearly
the most appropriate approach. Gay (1996) states that non-participant observation including both naturalistic
observation and simulation observation, involves observation of human subject. Since understanding and analysing
organisational identity requires understanding its employees, managers and leaders, this approach is the most suitable
for this study.
What is Organisational Identity?
Organisations are autopoietic social systems that keep themselves alive by communication and decisions, always
reproducing their boundaries and opportunities for connecting with other services. Organisational identity is the
summation of what makes an organisation uniquely itself. It is a feeling upon walking through the doors into that
service/centre and can last for decades passing from groups in its unwritten culture.
Like every other organisation, each individual early childhood service has its own identity (Bloom, 2005). Some
services/centres have that homelike, warm feeling; smiling teachers that enjoy being there and doing what they are
doing while the children are busy with many interesting activities in their environment. The way the teachers and
children interact with each other is professional but still warm and respectful. In the community, the centre has respect
from other professionals, and hence, has a good reputation.
In some other services/organisations tension can be felt from the moment you walk in. The communication is formal
and limited. Confusion and complaints about staff roles, working conditions such as low payment and not enough
recognition in society affects the mood of staff members. The interaction between teachers and children is limited as
teachers are more in the mood of: ‗cannot wait to finish the shift‘ (Bloom, 2005).
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