Journal of Business Research 60 (2007) 990 999

Branding higher education: Equivalence and difference

in developing identity
Anthony Lowrie
Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, CB2 1AG, United Kingdom
Received 1 June 2006; received in revised form 1 December 2006; accepted 1 January 2007

Abstract

This article examines the development of university identity within and between the language of higher education policy and the marketing
activities of universities. Empirical material gathered from a three and a half-year ethnographic study illustrates how the language of marketing
activity appeals to diverse audiences and how this activity connects to higher education policy. Drawing upon analytical concepts derived from
Laclau and Mouffe (Laclau E. Mouffe C. Hegemony and socialist strategy: towards a radical democratic politics. London: Verso, 1985.) and
Laclau (Laclau E. Emancipation(s). London: Verso, 1996., Laclau E. Constructing universality. In: Butler J. Laclau E. iek S., editors.
Contingency, hegemony, universality: contemporary dialogues on the left. London: Verso, 2000., Laclau E. On populist reason. London: Verso;
2005.), this article explores how brand identity arises in moments of articulation. With the increasing weight given to vocational relevance in
higher education, discourses of policy and university marketing activity give rise to the undecidable university identity.
2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Marketing language; University identity; Brand identity

1. Introduction the appeal of a brand identity to a target audience is also an

Typically, marketing activities of higher education communi-
cate particular brand identities of higher education. This article
questions the viability of promoting particular identities of higher
education through a critical discursive analysis of empirical
material gathered from a three and a half-year ethnographic study
of curriculum development for industry sponsors. The articulation
of particular identities communicates antagonistic identities.
More specifically, the article illustrates: 1) the function of
language in constructing brand identity in higher education; 2)
that a logic of difference in respect to a plurality of identities is a
necessary condition of branding higher education; 3) that the
construction of a higher education brand identity is also the
construction of other identities for higher education; and 4) that
antagonistic appeal to the diverse audiences made different in
respect to the particular brand.
The branding of higher education sits within the broader
context of government policy and commissioned reports
(Clarke, 2003; Lambert, 2003; Dearing, 1997). Higher education
identity occurs within and between such resonant debates as the
McDonaldization of higher education (Ritzer, 2000), universi-
ties lacking relevance (Starkey and Madan, 2001; Gibbons et al.,
1994) with counter claims that learning is circulating along the
same lines as money (Lyotard, 1984, p. 6) and that knowledge
has ceased to offer the prospect of emancipation (Delanty,
2002, p. 46). Such antagonisms provide credence for a context of
concern over higher education identity.
Moreover, a proliferation of literature dealing with higher
education identity gives emphasis to issues of marketing higher

The author gratefully acknowledges the constructive and helpful comments education signified in terms of academic capitalism (Slaughter
of Hugh Willmott, Arch G. Woodside, Paul Gibbs, and anonymous reviewers. and Leslie, 1997) and socio-economic issues related to the
The author presented an earlier version of this paper at the 2006 Academy of
Marketing SIG Conference on Marketing Higher Education, Nicosia, Cyprus.
industrialization of education (Rhoades, 1997; Etzkowitz and
Tel.: +44 608 663 3381; fax: +44 608 663 6778. Leydesdorff, 1997; Williams, 1992, 1995, 1996). The concern
E-mail address: a.lowrie.02@cantab.net. for higher education identity often refers to a crisis and
0148-2963/$ - see front matter 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2007.01.024
 A. Lowrie / Journal of Business Research 60 (2007) 990999
uncertainty of the postmodern university (Barnett, 1990, 1997,
2000; Sommer, 1995) and with higher education's position in
society (Coffield and Williamson, 1997). Authors view changes
in practice as suspicious, as commercialization is critiqued
(Willmott, 1995, 2003). Instrumental definitions of knowledge
(Barnett, 1997) reduce academic freedom (Russell, 1993) and
hasten an undecidable identity as higher education learning
articulates particular products not a process (Scott, 1984). The
emphasis is on consumerism and growth through customer
retention as continuous learning addresses market saturation
(Scott, 1997) in a public institution articulated as an industry
(Gumport, 2000).
2. Critical discourse analysis
2.1. Marketing language
This article on branding higher education connects with the
work of those who give prominence to the role of language as It
is difficult to imagine how any marketing activity could be
performed without language (Brownlie and Saren, 1997, p. 153).
However, in current marketing literature connected with brand
identity, two theoretically problematic issues are evident. The first
is that referents are knowable in a world of objects existing
independently of discourse. The second is that constructivist and
interpretative methods take insufficient account of how language
practice signifies antagonistic identities. One and two suggest a
poorly theorized account of brand identity.
With regard to one, in the marketing literature on branding,
whether on awareness (Aaker and Keller, 1990), the selection of
brand names as central to marketing activity (Keller, 1993),
memorability as crucial to the brand name (Robertson, 1989) and
a prerequisite for position of the brand name (Aaker, 1991), the
linking of brand names with benefit (Keller et al., 1998), or the
inscription of difference on brand personality (Venable et al.,
2005), authors do not consider how named identities occur in the
exchange of discourse nor how named identities may mean
differently according to the language used. The assumption is that
identity is something socially extant for naming. This sense of a
knowable referent extends to the work of those interested in the
impact of language on image, identity and branding: the term
[image] refers to three different domains of reality the external
work, the consumer's mind, and textual intermediary between the
two (Stern et al., 2001, p. 203).
Even those interpretative, constructivist and critical marketing
academics (Brownlie, 1997; Brownlie and Saren, 1997; Stern,
1992, 1993; Stern et al., 2001; Hackley, 2001, 2003) who are
aware of the role of language in constructing meaning, fail to
theorize sufficiently how articulations constitute identity. For
example, Hackley's (2003, p. 1331) use of Fairclough's (1995)
critical realism, social texts actively constitute social reality,
insinuates the social that exists independently from and
determines reality. This gives rise to critically problematic
identities such as the mainstream and the ideology of the
rhetorical and bogus reflexivity (Hackley, 2003, p. 1338)
which blind-sides interpretative and constructive critique to
critical articulations that construct this very brand identity of
991
marketing (Hackley, 2003, p. 1342) as part of its own critical
identity. Critical identity connects with mainstream identity
wherein certain forms of signification are silently excluded and
certain signifiers fixed in a commanding position (Brownlie,
1997, p. 276) that articulates antagonistic identities for the critical
enterprise. In other words, critically identifying the rhetorical,
bogus mainstream is a significant aspect of constituting the
mainstream and critical identity.
For example, Stern's language analysis does not sit well with
the consumer as a reader of text, for a text that a consumer reads as
a text of deception is not in actuality deceiving the reader. In this
case the text signifies something different and this floats the
possibility of meaning something different, which needs a fuller
theorization. The difficulty with academic papers that explicate
such notions of deceit is that they undermine their position. Stern
fails to account for how difference produces meaning and would
appear blind to the constitutive limits of her constructed text, as
the identity of feminine quality is also the identity construction
of a certain maleness, particularly evident in Stern (1993). As,
indeed, the assertion of the complete absence of women is a
failure to comprehend the presence of an absence that configures
differently. This in itself signifies a need for a more robust theory
and method of analysis to develop the marketing literature
engaged with brand identity.
While the works of Stern concentrate analysis on what is said,
Brownlie and Saren (1997, p. 159) put forward a compelling case
for a discourse analysis of marketing practice we do not notice
and what marketing managers are not saying. They propose a
robust theoretical account of discourse drawn from Wittgenstein
(1953), Derrida (1978), and Rorty (1979). While remonstrating
the value of raising the use and effects of language in the process
of social interaction (discourse) drawn from Potter and Wetherell
(1987), they do not connect to any significant operationalization
of their theoretical position. While agreeing with their call for
questioning the typically uncontested normative pattern of
communication with the example that where we write of
organization in marketing management we should construe it as a
verb and a process, not merely a noun describing the imputed
context of an occupational category, the analysis lacks
development. Such analysis does not provide insight into how
language constructs, for example the verb/process into a
grammatical metaphor which has the effect of removing agency
from the process. That is to say, marketing theory and practice
require a persuasive and plausible theory of discourse that
underpins a detailed linguistic analysis of identity formation.
To sum up, marketing literature fails to pull robust theory of
discourse together with detailed linguistic analysis. Marketing
literature needs to address theoretically driven and operationally
commensurate analysis that explains the not saying, the floating
and empty nature of language that can mean differently as an
important signification of brand identity.
In the marketing of higher education, where marketing activity
is evident in the language of senior academic managers, a case
exists for a detailed analysis of that language and its political
connection with broader discourses. This suggests a heavy
academic investment in understanding and applying discourse
and linguistic theory and its analytical concepts to the marketing
992 A. Lowrie / Journal of Business Research 60 (2007) 990999
of higher education. With this in mind, the following sections, 2.2,
2.3 and 2.4, outline the theoretical position and method of analysis
privileged in this paper.
2.2. Constructing with the logics of equivalence and difference:
empty signifiers, the universal and particular
Laclau designates the negative presence as an empty signifier
when people recognize the identity of something that is absent.
For example, a particular group recognizes the universal
identity of justice when denied a right all other social groups
hold. Equivalence and difference construct the denial of a right
others have. In this case, justice is an empty signifier as a) the
absence of justice gives rise to the identity of justice, an
emptiness which I can signify, because we are dealing with a
void within signification (Laclau, 2005, p. 105) and b) the
concept of justice may equally apply to all people universally.
Both groups are equivalent and simultaneously different to each
other because of the denial of the particular right at the same
time as the claim for its universality.
Laclau (1996) reformulates the conception of hegemony as
the relation between the universal and the particular identity.
Laclau asserts that the universal is no more than a particular that
has at some moment become dominant through the enactment
of a logic of equivalence and difference. However, a particular
(group) identity cannot assert itself without distinguishing its
identity from a context of other identities and in the process of
making the distinction the particular (group) identity also asserts
the context of other identities, just as Hackley and Stern's
critical identities also construct mainstream identity. Nor can
any subject or group destroy the context without destroying the
identity of the particular (subject/group) that carries out the
destruction. This means that the universal is part of particular
identity. The universal does not have a concrete content of its
own but finds expression in a chain of equivalent demands, the
logic of equivalence.
The implication here is that totalizing discourses do not exist
per se but identities are set free and can be rhetorically
recombined and rearticulated in a fresh way (Critchley and
Marchart, 2004, p. 7). Group movements in the plural
demonstrate the incoherence of establishing universal rights
restricted to particular sections of the population. In this way, the
identity of higher education retains the tension between
universalism and particularism. The significant implication here
is to recognize and give a language to a plurality of identities in
higher education rather than a universal branding of identity. The
identities of higher education retain tension between universalism
and particularism, between a language for equivalence and a
language for difference. This article takes the logic of equivalence
and logic of difference as analytical concepts to explore the
language of senior academic managers that promote a privileged
identity for higher education.
2.3. Naming and affect
The retroactive effect of naming the signifier, the articulating
and performative dimension of naming, gives identity to an
object. Moreover, the empty signification is the naming which
gives identity to a discursive unity. For example, the allusion to
America as a land of hard, honest people of the Marlboro brand is
not that Marlboro expresses American identity but that language
retroactively names American identity into Marlboro country.
Similarly, an Oxbridge or an Ivy League does not express the
identity for the best that higher education can offer but rather
language practice names the best into an Oxbridge or an Ivy
League. An affective investment in a particular name as an empty
signifier constitutes a whole way of identifying the best (higher
education) in such a way that brand identity does not pre-exist the
articulation of the relational complex but rather identity occurs
through the naming (Laclau, 2005; iek, 1989). Through the
logics of equivalence and difference, this article explores the
retroactivity of naming in constituting brand identity.
2.4. Language and method of analysis
The method of analysis in this article is a theoretically
informed micro examination of how subjects use language
decisions to retroactively articulate identity into higher education.
Difference between signs defines meaning rather than some
essential, internal meaning in the sign or external referent.
Language is absolutely and relatively arbitrary. In the practice of
language, associative (paradigmatic) and combinatory (syntag-
matic) interdependences limit arbitrariness. Associative refers to
associations between words whose effect is to evoke in the mind
whatever is capable of being associated with it (Saussure, 1983,
p. 124). Syntagmatic refers to linear combinations based on
sequentiality (Saussure, 1983, p. 121). What precedes and
follows gives rise to meaning. Accordingly, people understand
language in terms of relations of both combination (the
syntagmatic) and associative substitutions (the paradigmatic).
This article illustrates how identity arises from articulation
decisions. The analysis explores the inherent antagonism in all
language produced to have equivalent or different meaning. The
articulation of meaning requires difference and antagonism.
Consider the meanings of words. Rather than some internal
meaning that words possess, difference from other words (or
symbols) defines the meaning of each word (or symbol). The
colors white and black take on definition from one another and
from other colors. What a word means is absolutely and
relatively arbitrary. The word cat that means a four legged
fury animal that mews as opposed to a four legged fury animal
that barks has no absolute rationale. Of course, if applied
without restriction, words would be so redolent of diverse
meanings as to become meaningless. Associations and
combinations based on sequentiality limit arbitrariness and
thus chaos. Ford can mean either a make of car or an
unbridged route across a river. Ford does not provide meaning
but, rather, its association to and combination with other words
provides meaning. People understand language in terms of
relations of both combinations and associative substitutions.
The principle of analogy associations of the mind governs
substitution. For example, substituting the terms hound for
dog and dog for poor performance changes meaning
through association. Similarly, a speaker may substitute gas
 A. Lowrie / Journal of Business Research 60 (2007) 990999
guzzler for SUV which articulates identity within the
structure of language functioning. New associations constantly
revise identity. Taking the analytical concepts of the logic of
equivalence and difference and the retroactive act of naming,
this article now turns to the micro analysis of language activity
of senior academic managers that constructs brand identity in
moments of articulation.
3. Analysis and findings: articulating a brand identity for
higher education
This section illustrates how senior academic managers
articulate identity in relation to policy, staff, students, employers,
stakeholders and sponsors. Emphasis is on a detailed analysis of
the language academic managers use in branding identities for
higher education in a context-dependent language game in
which participants engage (Laclau, 2000, p. 283). Analysis of
empirical material illustrates the constitution of identity through a
logic of equivalence and difference as an articulatory practice.
This section presents analysis and findings drawn from inter-
views held with the Vice-Chancellor (VC), the Pro-Vice
Chancellor for Learning and Teaching (PVCLT) and the Director
of the Business School as part of a three and a half-year
ethnographic study following the development of curriculum for
a sponsored degree.
3.1. Articulating brand identity
No author of language is in control of an intentional meaning
(Wittgenstein, 1953; Wimsatt and Beardsley, 1958) of their
words. Taking into consideration the openness of meaning in
language, the analysis of the VC's language with regard to what
he says on the subject of sponsored degrees explores identity
formation. Using the concepts set out in Section 2, language
analysis relates to articulations of identity rather than the
meaning that the VC may wish to represent.
It is providing what employers want. I'm not saying we
don't, we teach people theoretical physics and so forth but it
was certainly down the middle as far as U was concerned
and the more I picked up from J and S and so forth the more
comfortable that I felt with what was proposed. So yes, I put
my weight behind it. There was the usual interesting flak
about used car salesmen but that's easily countered 'cause
these guys are running businesses some of them with
turnovers as big as the university's and they've absolutely
no training, many of them had no training behind them so it
seemed to me to be and it was a business which was going
through potentially massive change, the internet et cetera et
cetera and therefore it seemed a good fact that they largely
work at the week-end, we teach during the week. All of that
added up to something which was worth exploring. (Vice
Chancellor of U)
As a statement, the VC's first sentence seems straight forward:
employers got what they wanted from the sponsored degree, end
of story. Of course, this is not the end of the story. The VC's
993
statement addresses the interviewer with a tape recorder sitting on
a coffee table that is between us. The VC signifies the provision of
useful information for this research. A magnanimous and
pragmatic gesture on behalf of the VC because he thinks that
giving a research interview is the right thing to do and encourage.
He also signifies, inter alia, to the participant observer working as
a teaching fellow developing the auto degree in U that this is your
job; you are to provide what employers want.
Six other signs, each with signifier and signified, make up the
VC's sentence as a sign. Going back to the original statement, it
is providing what employers want, and the individual signs that
make up this statement, further analysis of the particular signifier/
signified contextualizes the statement to broader orders of
discourse which alter the statements meaning(s). The analyst/
reader/listener may realize further meanings from the subject's
use of language that connect to a logic of equivalence and
difference (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985).
It, referring to the BSc Retail Management (Automotive)
degree, is devoid of personal identity, agency and causality. In the
sentence, no one takes responsibility nor indeed gets credit for
providing. In addition, why providing rather than developing
and teaching a degree that employers want? While it removes
agency, the activity of the verb providing restores non-specific
agency, that is, the action of a verb necessitates an agent to carry
out the action, but not a specific agent such as a university
lecturer/teacher, and so credit transfers to the institution as an
abstract provider. Institutional identity replaces individual
identity. The VC refers to what employers want not what the
employers or sponsors want. In other words, he generalizes the
specific case so that what universities are doing through the
provision of sponsored degrees is what employers want
universities to do. The VC's statement also implies that he and
senior managers of U know what this general want is that
connects to a definitional purpose of higher education.
The statement thus signifies justification: because employers
want the degree, the university is ethically correct in providing the
curriculum. Such a signification depends upon a market discourse
context. The statement relies upon an equivalence of the signifier
with well publicized government comments and policy (Clarke,
2003; Lambert, 2003) within a longer standing market discourse.
The VC's statement connects to recent historical and current
perspectives for persuasive sense-making force wherein higher
education should serve the economy more efficiently (Depart-
ment of Education and Science, 1987), where the mission of the
Higher Education Funding Council for England is to promote
high quality, cost-effective teaching and research within a
financially healthy education sector, having regard to the national
needs (HEFCE, 1995, p. i) and the language of business is the
dominant discourse (Shore and Selwyn, 1998). The signifier and
the signified linguistically connect to a set of equivalences
articulated in higher education policy. Familiarity with policy
content moves the meaning of what employers want to mean that
this is what society needs in an appeal constructed upon an
antagonism to unemployment (synthetic fear). The identification
of higher education (synthetic solution) as a catalyst for economic
growth and jobs alleviates this fear. Higher education helps
employers improve their business and therefore increase
994 A. Lowrie / Journal of Business Research 60 (2007) 990999
employment prospects. In this way, the VC's discourse of higher
education equates with the discourse of government policy on
higher education and economic policy actualized at the particular
micro level, in this instance the Vice-Chancellor and other senior
academics' consideration of commercializing vocational
curriculum.
However, the synecdoche (Lodge, 1977, p. 75) is not
directional. The part of social life or category (employers) that
substitutes for the broader discursive category of society it points
towards would usually suppress the meaning of the signifier
(employers). For example, in the synecdoche all hands on deck,
hands is a part that represents the whole, that is, everyone on deck,
that suppresses the signifier (hands) as the reader/listener
concentrates on the meaning of everyone. With it is providing
what employers want, the synecdoche works only when the
reader/listener equates the signification with market discourse.
However, for this to happen, the reader/listener must be literate in
market discourse. S/he needs to make the connection between
helping employers, more jobs, expanding the economy, good for
society and good for me. While the synecdoche configures both
the signifier and the signified, usually suppressing the former, in
this case the signifier (employers) escapes suppression within the
trope but the signified (good for the whole of society) does not. Of
course, both signifier and signified have to be available to the
reader/listener in the synecdoche for the trope to work, but in this
case the weight of distributed meaning is toward the signifier. The
linguistic use of the signifier employers, retroactively names
and invests the good of society into the identity of employers.
This synecdoche depends upon the reader/listener identifying the
signifier with a broader order of equivalent (Laclau and Mouffe,
1985) discourse, particularly identified in relation to consumer
wants and choice (Hackley, 2001; Gabriel and Lang, 1995: 27).
Rather than suppressing, the signified (good for the whole
society) strengthens the signifier (employers). In this sense, the
language is an adding up or adding to identity, rather than a
supplanting of one identity by another, in a logic of equivalence.
The signs providing and want have equivalent identities
with marketing discourse. The VC's use of these words thus
signifies justification for commercialization when he and the
listeners/readers form the necessary equivalence with broader
discourses that articulate a particular market connective focus.
That the VC and other senior managers know what employers
want may or may not be a fiction but that is not the point of the
language. If the degree is not what employers want then that is a
fault with the product that the market process can reconfigure
and not the discourse of the exchange relationship that the VC
uses in a logic of equivalence to make the case for the degree.
The less specific pronoun surrounds the subject of the
sentence, the product the university is marketing, with
ambiguity whereas the object of the sentence, the employers,
is sufficiently specific to exclude students from the list of all
possible signs that could have been chosen, such as customers
or stakeholders, from the marketing discourse lexicon. Even
within the structure of the chosen discourse used to elaborate his
position, the Vice-Chancellor has sufficient space to make
choices favorable to his particular interest. The dropping of the
definite article configures employers with sufficient space to
admit all employers as signified in the exchange relationship.
The VC is making a statement of ethical purpose for universities
to market degrees without recourse to considering other
customers, students and or stakeholders. The construction of a
particular identity in the articulation markets the university in a
way that appeals to industry, government and university
managers. Both the logics of equivalence and difference operate
simultaneously to articulate identity. The logic of equivalence
includes while the logic of difference excludes what language
users name into the identity.
Nevertheless, non-explicit exclusions articulate other identi-
ties. For example, stakeholder is a concept that the VC uses later
in the interview. Here however, other stakeholders have identity
only through their absence. What employers want takes on a
particular marketing role. A logic of equivalence connects
employers to a market discourse which underpins the social
acceptability of marketing degrees. Language is not simply
covering up power behind the masks of naturalization and
common sense (Fairclough, 1989, 1995); language constructs a
particular identity for the university. Identity construction occurs
through subtle language changes such as the dropping of definite
articles and choice of signifiers. The subtle changes connect to
other discourses that then manifest new identities that bridge the
provision of higher education for the public good with private
benefit in an articulation of logics of equivalence and difference
(Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). The language of agents, with or
without their knowledge, speaks a partially unified discourse into
existence. Language casts and recasts disparate discourses
through the openness of social meaning (Laclau and Mouffe,
1985). The VC's linguistic emphasis on employers is also an
unavoidable negative emphasis. What university Vice-Chancel-
lors do not say is just as important as what they do say in
articulating university identity.
As with the VC, the issue is not whether the Director of the
Business School is accurately recounting her earlier thoughts on
the auto sponsorship. Nevertheless, her rationale adds to an
understanding of how language use (re)articulates the identity of
higher education. She makes use of sponsorship as a language
resource.
We satisfied the sponsors, but in my heart I never thought
that would grow but I don't think that any of the work that
was done on it was wasted because actually it all built a
profile which has allowed us to consolidate the Ford College
here so it's achieved its ends. (Business School Director)
The signifying verb satisfied and its object sponsors make
an equivalence with marketing discourse and this contributes to
some sense of success and justification for the university's policy
on sponsorship. The director, however, makes no attempt to
indicate in what way the sponsors are satisfied; the sign
satisfied as a resource is felt sufficient per se. But the sponsors
are satisfied only if you take the meaning of satisfaction to
exclude feelings of disappointment that the sponsors experienced
(source: ethnographic journal).
A strong sense of post hoc rationalization clarifies the past
a sense of (re)articulating history and naming backwards into
 A. Lowrie / Journal of Business Research 60 (2007) 990999
the identity as discussed in Section 2 in terms of strategic
language that names the auto curriculum development into
something never intended then, but intended now. The Business
School Director's use of language (re)articulates university
history, past identity, albeit in minor terms, in order to identity
success in newly articulated commercial objectives. The School
Director's valedictory shift buries the auto degree in a success
of Orwellian proportions. The language makes a vague
metaphorical appeal to synthetic emotion, in my heart, as a
deeper level of truth and knowledge retro-fitted as a form of
mitigation against failure. The Director names an identity of
commercial success into the decision to develop the degree. The
articulation names the Ford brand as a paradigmatic substitute
that suppresses the possibility of failure based on a product
development decision for a market with no growth. The School
Director avoids articulating who achieved success and to what
end. A set of substitution it pronouns relieves the School
Director from having to be explicit about agency and causality
in similar terms to the VC. It's achieved its ends has nothing
to do with students, learning or indeed the particular sponsor
who paid for the degree's development.
The VC, while avoiding explicit agency and causality with
regard to why the degree was developed, nevertheless specifies
employers as specific beneficiaries of sponsored higher
education. However, he uses a double negative as a corrective
mechanism, I'm not saying we don't. Does this double negative
cancel out to mean that all we teach at U is what employers want?
Alternatively, is the double negative an index pointing out that we
also teach curriculum which employers do not want, meaning that
we teach curriculum of no practical use to employers. Following a
slight pause, the VC introduces a further corrective to his own
statement to redress the issue of commercialization with a
reference to teaching theoretical physics. Because theoretical
physics is a counter example to offset the auto degree, at least two
linguistic possibilities occur.
First, theoretical physics takes on metaphorical qualities to
represent a supreme form of knowledge devoid of commercial-
ization which may reach mythological proportions as the
language shifts the sign, signifier and signified to an other
worldliness of knowledge activity. Secondly, the metaphor
operates as an opposite case to the auto degree that positions
theoretical physics and auto retailing as polar opposites within
the university identity. This opens up antagonistic identity in a
logic of difference (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). In addition to
differentiating types of knowledge with auto looking as a poor
relation, the differential polarization draws a boundary around
legitimate identity for university teaching activity.
However, the VC recognizes his articulation as problematic
and he swiftly goes on to say that the auto degree is down the
middle for U, a longstanding metaphor of Aristotelian
magnitude with the essence of portraying reasonableness. If
theoretical physics pitches toward one side of the knowledge
boundary with the auto degree polarized then (re)positioned
down the reasonable middle then what is on the other side?
The answer to that question is nothing: or a least nothing
other than the language of senior academics managers articu-
lating identity for all that is taught in universities as reasonable.
995
To articulate middle is to signify reasonableness with extreme
edges for boundaries not stated but obliquely referenced. The
idea of middle presents a geometric space or number with
equidistance on either side but here middle is not dealing with
geometric spaces and numbers. Numbers only have meaning to
describe social identity in regard to someone who wishes to
place the subject in a position convenient for their discursive
purposes. Like Paul de Man's (2001) zero, the naming of
non-existing boundaries and middles is the naming of an
absence which provides a something as a centre of reference
which distributes identity around a named point. Unlike de
Man's zero, the vocational degree is both a named reference
point, down the middle, and a boundary identification: an
undecidable identity.
The VC was unsure of the merits of the degree. That he
needed persuading is a likely interpretation of his increasing
level of comfort the more he heard about the degree. Consider,
however, the language the VC uses to convey how he reaches
this comfort zone. The verb picked up signifies learned or
informed and this substitution tends to make the decision
making process more casual as does put my weight behind it,
an anthropomorphic body of approval at an arm's length. The
metaphorical signification that he put his body/authority but not
much mind/thought into the decision, that could be left to
others, the auto degree was not that important, a la
controversial, indicates a decision that he does not want others
to think/know occupied his mind. This gives him the discursive
space to dismiss the criticisms as unwarranted (i.e. unreason-
able) or an over reaction. Besides, making loads of money
(turnover) without training is not quite ethically and socially
correct. To make money without a university education voices
an almost immoral practice and a very risky if not stupid
business practice. Justification through equivalence with the
marketing discourse further elaborates the complex world
(Hackley, 2001, p. 140) syndrome, a synthetic fear, to identity
the university as brand solution.
3.2. The oxymoronic identity
Reading the debates in higher education literature and
commentaries on higher education government policy, the reader
may well think with absolute certainty that institutions of higher
education are places of uncertainty that occupy equivocal spaces.
From Robbins (1963) through to Dearing (1997), Clarke (2003),
Lambert (2003), HEFCE (1995), and World Bank (1994) reports,
a discernable pressure may be observed for adapting to a rapidly
changing world and assimilating change (UNESCO, 1996, p. 71)
of a constructed super-complex world (Barnett, 2000) regardless
of whether the world is complex or not (Hackley, 2001, p. 140).
Yet when interviewing those who manage and work in these
institutions, this uncertainty is not so certain. The language of
sponsorship constitutes a reformation of higher education that
communicates a certainty of identity often explicated within
uncertainty.
Sponsored degrees only provide limited additional
income. Moreover, they are not a source of ongoing financial
security.
996 A. Lowrie / Journal of Business Research 60 (2007) 990999
Anyone who's running a sponsored degree has to be aware
that it's a limited life, you've got to make provision for that
either in the way in which you're going to future fund it
from the university or you're constantly seeking in addition
the next sponsor as you run through the course. (Pro-Vice
Chancellor for Learning and Teaching (PVCLT))
And there are those who think it's [sponsorship] a good idea
and those who think it's a waste of time. Moreover, while not
everybody in the company signs up to the sponsorship, a
further threat lurks in staff changes at the sponsoring
organization (PVCLT).
If this was not enough uncertainty for universities to cope
with when developing a sponsored degree, then consider market
uncertainty.
We're in a volatile market and companies are going through
very difficult times, we have to be aware that some of the
real competitive advantage that we get as a quality higher
education institution by having these sponsored pro-
grammes could be quite rapidly lost if the companies
decide that they, this is an area, they're changing direction,
they can't afford to, it's not in their shareholders interest to
continue with this line of investment for the future. So we're
exposed in that respect. I think that it is something that we
have to, we just have to recognize. (Vice-Chancellor)
The senior academic managers interviewed often express a
curious contradiction in talking about a long-term relationship
with companies in the context of a volatile market. The VC,
PVCLT and Director of the Business School do not seem to
have any difficulty in expressing both conditions in the space of
a short interview. Indeed, these senior academic managers go
out of their way to impress these apparently mutually exclusive
conditions upon the interviewer through their language. The
tautological volatile market is a case in point. The tautology is
not a case of a redundant adjective adding nothing to the sense
of the language but the rhetorical signification of laboring the
point in order to make sure that the addressee gets the point. As
Barnett (2000) argues, academics live and work in uncertain
times but these participants in higher education articulate the
uncertainty with certainty.
Synthetic personalization enfolds everyone at U, and many
other Us, into an inclusive hostile environment. Academic
managers project equivalence across identity differences. The
market is both the bogeyman of uncertainty and the savior from
uncertainty. The friendliness and camaraderie of we're all in
the market together contrast with the markedly expressive threat
of the volatile market that forms antagonistic identities. The
oxymoronic use of friendliness and fear signals the need for
compliance to a dislocated and undecidable identity. We're all
in the market together with competitive advantage that secures
us from uncertainty, thereby providing certainty, but that could
be lost to the fate of the market at anytime. Senior academic
managers articulate identities of uncertainty/certainty around a
chain of equivalence that is the university in antagonism that
differentiates and constitutes division between and of itself.
If you look at the governance of universities. Our university
council is meant to represent the interests of stakeholders.
Right. One of the biggest problems that you have is if you
have a dominant stakeholder in an organization. At the
moment the dominant stakeholder is the funding council. So
I think at this point anything that we do that makes the
funding council the less dominant stakeholder in the
university has a priori, is a priori, a good thing. Our
portfolio of sponsored programmes is still only, let's say, I
don't know, it maybe ten, it's not 15 per cent, it's ten per
cent of our undergraduate teaching let's say. I think of an
order of magnitude I suspect it's not more than that. That is
hugely significant and makes a big difference but it's not
critical to the university as a whole. It is absolutely critical
to some of the departments participating. What we would
face if we had a shock in any of the companies, you know
what I mean, I mean shock in technical terms, would be that
the university might have to be much more agile in working
with the department and have to deal with that than it
normally is in its other matters. (Vice-Chancellor)
Earlier the VC selects employers, a particular signifier
from the market discourse lexicon, as distinct from other near
synonyms. Here, in contrast, he names stakeholder as a
privileged signifier. Whether the university governing council
in actuality does represent the interests of stakeholders is not of
analytical interest nor indeed is whether stakeholders are or are
not a limited set. The interest is in the use of named signifiers
from the market lexicon to represent democratic pluralism and
the implications of this representation for plural university
identities contributing to the definition of an explicit university
identity. Stakeholder is an exclusive/inclusive term in that
speakers use the term to by-pass any content specificity for
whom the term includes or excludes. The term has a democratic
appeal but can be anti-democratic in practice. As language is
something people do, a practice, this means that the linguistic
choice can also be undemocratic as the purpose may well be to
appear open and pluralistic while in actuality the language is
deliberately restrictive.
The development of sponsored degrees has the objective of
breaking the dominant position of one of the stakeholders the
funding council. The VC puts forward this policy position in the
second person and organization substitutes for university.
Moving the problem to you and away from I, the Vice-
Chancellor constructs identity evasion for who has this
problem. The problem is a natural one that results from
objective phenomena occurring with a given set of circum-
stances and therefore you would have this problem too if
you were a senior academic manager. A public body
accountable to elected government is less acceptable than
private sponsorship despite the volatile market relationship. A
relationship that might require more agility to work with the
department in terms that are so uncomfortable to express that
the VC cannot bring himself to be explicit about having to deal
with that what we are is not explicit meaning closing
departments and making redundancies. Moreover, the insignif-
icant financial contribution, the small percentage still only is
 A. Lowrie / Journal of Business Research 60 (2007) 990999
at once of little magnitude and of huge significance. Such
incoherent coherence makes sense in the context of multiple
identities in a coercive logic of equivalence that markets the
university as a coherent and rational brand identity rather than
competing identities.
4. Discussion: the undecidable identity
This section explores the implications of the analysis and
findings that a) add up to and constitute the undecidable
university and b) explores the implications for branding and
marketing higher education.
Language relationships are at the same time diverse, floating
and connecting between and to multiple broader discourses
through the logic of equivalences while (dis)connecting from
others, through the logic of difference. When specific to
promoting privileged constructions, such as commercializing
curriculum, these language relationships construct undecidable
identities. Any logic of difference never entirely disconnects
from whatever the logic tries to be different from but rather
reconnects and reconstructs differently. This gives rise to new
identities that are not only in a necessary antagonism to each
other, but construct the antagonism as part of the process for the
provision of identity. In other words, no identity can exist
without its antagonistic other.
The difficulty for those marketing academics with an interest
in managing brand identity is that language escapes intention
and identity requires antagonism. The pertinent implication of
the inability to pin down identity is not to throw up marketing
hands in despair, but to grasp the notion of language working
through the logics of equivalence and difference. This suggests
not only an understanding of identity based on these logics but
a) a greater tolerance for the (re)construction of identities, b)
recognizing and working with antagonism as integral to identity
and c) a greater focus on linguistic analysis for understanding
the articulation of identity.
In the illustrations of how language articulates identity within
shifting and ultimately the undecidable meanings of the signifier/
signified, the articulation of particular identities for universities
constructs antagonism. The analysis suggests that the construc-
tion of antagonisms in the language of identity has much wider
implications for marketing higher education. The articulation of
identity i) depends upon an antagonistic relationship, and ii)
articulates into existence the identity of the other identity in the
antagonistic relationship. Antagonism is evident even in the most
carefully constructed arguments framed in policy documents and
pertains to critical marketing, such as the work of Stern (see
Section 2), and indeed to any other discipline. This analysis
further suggests that the conceptualization of identity escapes any
singular definition and is beyond limitation to or alignment with
any positive and particular notion of identity. Language leaves
identity open, contingent and antagonistic. Resistance to the
articulation of particular identities continues with the struggle of
the contingency of meaning within antagonisms. Critical
marketing can stand, resist and (re)construct on the shifting
ground of language. The implications of Laclau's theory of
discourse and its application through language analysis to
997
branding and higher education are such that the articulation of
identity will continue within the antagonistic relationship:
inherently unstable, undecidable and for ever positioned in
terms of other identities.
The notion of conflict may appear counter intuitive to those
favoring a greater sense of equality. Nevertheless, the ideal of a
harmonious consensus between, in and around university identity
is an untenable position to defend. The permanence of conflicts
and social antagonisms inherent in discourse(s) of higher
education are in the ascendant. To fight, argue for or abandon
one identity for the other or the other for the one is antagonistic
and ultimately conducive to promoting other identities. To
continue to do battle within the antagonistic relationship is to
further delineate the antagonism. To reach consensus over
antagonism is to deny difference and identity. Consensus does
not exist, for example, on and between the construction of
reality as discursively mediated and the construction of reality
as objective, just as consensus does not exist on and between
domination and emancipation from domination.
5. Conclusion: plural identities
While a micro analysis of language restricts the size of the
data set considered in a single article, this limitation is offset
against: a) the insight this micro analysis provides for the
functioning of language in constructing identity; b) the
provision of knowledge on how micro aspects of language
connect and disconnect with a plurality of broader discourses
through the logics of equivalence and difference; c) how a and b
construct antagonistic identities; and d) how brand identity
constructs a plurality of identities and appeals to diverse
audiences through antagonisms constructed into the brand.
Antagonisms in well rehearsed constructions like female/
male are conceptually more intuitive to grasp. However, as
shown in this article, the language constructions of university
antagonistic identities are endemic in the discourse of marketing
higher education and a critical (re)construction needs to
consider how to articulate resistance to the antagonism
outside the antagonism. Through the choice of signification
at the micro level of discourse, academic managers construct
equivalences with broader discourses such as government
policies and the role of the market in governing university
activity. In university marketing practice, the social and
economic world equates to a fearful place with the university
brand as the solution to that fear and as an economic and social
good. But whether intended or not, this makes the university
complicit in the construction and distribution of fear which
becomes part of its identity. Thus identity is simultaneously
multiple and antagonistic as the logics of equivalence and
difference connect to and from a plurality of broader sets of
discourses.
Language practices continually shift and revise brand
identity. The functional and structural dependence of identity
on the logics of equivalence and difference always poses a
challenge to brand identity. Brand identity always calls forth
other identities that are an antagonistic challenge to the brand.
These antagonistic identities appeal to different audiences and
998 A. Lowrie / Journal of Business Research 60 (2007) 990999
construct these audiences differently. The selecting of a brand
identity is a restriction on other potential with a diminution of
what others value outside that brand. Rather like land enclosure
acts in past centuries, higher education brand identities attempt
to restrict audiences and use to a particular identity that
replicates across the institutional landscape. Many may want to
engage with such an identity while many will take their
potential contribution elsewhere, leaving higher education with
a narrow social offering.
The construction of plural identities, the expansion of the
logic of difference and contraction of the logic of equivalence, is
a major consideration for critical marketing academics with an
interest in brand identity for higher education. In the language
of mixed equivalences, if all the users of higher education want
to have their difference and identities and consume them, then
within the constructed bonds of identity, others must have
theirs. Marketers need to talk up plural identities. To
paraphrase Hackley (2003) we are all brand managers now,
watch your language, it articulates identity. From a pragmatic
perspective, those engaged in developing brand identity for
their universities need to consider how brands construct
antagonistic identities.
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