INTERNAL BRANDING AND HRM AT VIRGIN

Internal branding and HRM at Virgin



Internal branding and HRM at Virgin

Introduction

Virgin Group is one of largest private companies in UK, with an annual turnover estimated at 3 billion pounds the year until 2000. Business highest profile of Virgin was Virgin Atlantic, which was developed to be the major force in international airline business. However, group is spread over 200 financial services firms through railways, shopping and entertainment mega soft drinks to cosmetics and condoms. (Figure 1 shows extent of group's activities.) His name was immediately recognizable. investigation showed that Virgin name was associated with words like "fun" and "innovative", "bold" and "success." image and personality of founder, Richard Branson, were high profile in British advertising for Apple computers, along with Einstein and Gandhi, who was introduced as the "Craftsman of Century 20." (Arnould, 2002, 336)

Case covers innovative human resources of Virgin (HR) practices and internal branding exercise. THE diverse group, Virgin has more than 200 privately owned companies. Promoter founder Richard Branson (Branson) has expanded Virgin brand to many different companies such as airlines, cola, mobile phone, wedding gowns, chain retail, financial services, cars, jeans, trains, and books, among others. As Branson's Virgin brand extends to new area and unrelated, Virgin human resource management, leadership and brand values play the key role in maintaining their core brand values. Case allows students to discuss Virgin's innovative practices of human resources and internal branding strategy, evaluate their model of human resource management with reference to work culture of recruitment, and role of leadership and dissemination core brand values (Baynard, 2002, 33).

Origins and ownership

Virgin was founded in 1970 as the company mail order record and developed as the private company in music publishing and retailing. In 1986 company began trading on stock exchange with the turnover of £ 250 million. However, Branson was tired of publicly traded obligations.

Compliance with rules governing corporations and information to shareholders were expensive and slow and bothered making presentations in city who, in his opinion, do not understand business. Pressure to create short-term benefits, especially because stock price began to fall, was final straw: Branson, decided to take business back into private property and shares were bought back in price of original offer, which valued company at £ 240,000,000. Virgin had grown rapidly, becoming profitable and enter and claim the significant share of new markets without traditional trappings of typical multinational. There was little sense of hierarchy of management and there seemed to be the minimum of corporate bureaucracy. There was no "group" as such, financial results were consolidated for either an external review or, as Virgin is required for internal use. Financial operations were managed from Geneva (Belk, 1988, 36).

Each company or group of companies ran their own affairs, but were tied together through the shared title to common values. Some argued that ownership structure of Virgin has afforded him views long term, setting free investors with short-term yields. In fact, Branson said, as he expanded, he prefers to ...