Branding.

26
The continued growth in the number of interest groups and single-issue
movements - and their increasing influence in civil society - has created subpolitics:
an alternative political sphere where politicking is done in non-formal
connections. Social movements and consumer boycotts play important roles
here, often across national borders. Just as the organised labour movement
was a decisive political factor during industrialisation, these far less formalised
movements are seen as an important factor today. At the same time we have
far more referendums about matters that interest the population.
While the national parliaments thus receive less and less interest, the
support of EU as a supranational institution has increased. Standards can
with advantage be decided in common - as long as the individual nations
still are allowed stricter rules than the common ones. But the support has
never become love. EU is a marriage of convenience where the advantages
outweigh the disadvantages, nothing more.
Integration of research and business communities
Working life and private life are integrated markedly at the moment, since
personal satisfaction is gained through the ability of the individual to move
freely between the traditional categorisations of the societal spheres (working
life, leisure life, religious life, political life, cultural life).
The specialised single-person company is the ideal of the time.
Beginning your working life in a steady job is less popular than before. The
focus of previous governments on entrepreneurship and innovation and on
building bridges between research and business has started to bear fruit.
With self-management as the most important parameter, more and more
now organise and perform their job functions on their own, and directed
goals have thus increasingly become the co-ordinating element. Most UFO
workers have thus become free agents (UFO work, see page 16).
The connection between business and research communities has furthermore
had the effect that the newest organisation theory has become
integrated in the business world. More now listen to the theoreticians while
the stream of 'I did it my way' publications has lessened. The management
books that are most read are based on practical research. They are synthesises
of substantiated theory and best practise.
The flowering of single-person companies has forced most of the larger
trade organisations to redefine their roles and structures. The best heads
have become increasingly hard to recruit, particularly because most of them
aren't born in Scandinavia, but in India, China and other non-western countries.
For this reason the number of companies can't be thought of as static
units with fixed employees that go to work at fixed times in fixed places.
Time, in the sense of timing, is still crucial. The crucial change in the business
community in the last decade has been the move towards a virtual mode
of organisation, which still is rooted in time, but far less in space and in physical
presence. The work is thus increasingly handled in global networks, and for
this especially virtual reality has been an important prerequisite.
Branding in 'The Rational Individuals'
After decades where branding has profited from the emotional wave, a wave of
new objectivity sets in towards 2013. At the same time, the focus is removed
from the occupation with the unambiguous commercial community that characterised
the time around the term of the millennium in the shape of corporate
branding and rigid company values.
For most people on the labour market the philosophy is that communities
are good, but dynamic networks are better. The personal network consists not
just of colleagues, but also of friends, family and other personal connections in a
personal holistic universe where the traditional boundary between work and lei-
LUNDBECK IN 'THE RATIONAL
INDIVIDUALS' 2013
Lundbeck is still a quoted company,
but the management is no longer
able to use a short-term business
strategy. Today Lund-beck
sells therapeutic solutions where
the potential of re-authenticity has
been rediscovered through a diverse
selection of therapeutic solutions.
We still have close connections
to doctors and specialists,
but now in a form that goes across
the traditional division of disciplines.
Psychologists, alternative
therapists, etc., have thus gained a
crucial voice in Lundbecks branding
strategies, which anyway are
inspired by life's tough and naked
realities.
The branding activities have
turned into a debate forum where
the most serious and well-functioning
solution is backed. Lundbeck
has through this strategy managed
to cross generation gaps, and
through its diverse selection of
solutions, the company has retained
a sympathetic rational status
among doctors and specialists.
Lundbeck has become the
favoured workplace for academics