UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM
The AC
4
ID Test-Test
The multiple corporate identities of the Dutch Tax and
Customs Administration
S.H.J.M. Spoelstra - 5883784 30-11-2015
1
Abstract
The purpose of this thesis study was to provide empirical proof in favor or against the AC4ID Test framework (Balmer, 2005). To do this, three studies were conducted in which the
communicated, cultural and conceived identities of the Dutch Tax and Customs
Administration (the ‘Belastingdienst’) were deduced. In the first study, the communicated identity was retrieved by performing an quantitative content analysis of all external
communication efforts of the organization in a six month timeframe. The second study then retrieved the communicated identity through the use of a qualitative content analysis of transcribed in-depth interviews with three employees of the Belastingdienst. The final study then discerned the conceived identity by interviewing five tax paying citizens of the
Netherlands. In the final part of the thesis study, the three uncovered identities were then related to one another and described in terms of (mis)alignment.
Introduction
Throughout history, roughly four paradigms can be discerned in which the communication of organizations has been studied. From a communication perspective, organizations were first seen as senders of information. This shifted when public relation theories grew in popularity, and then shifted once more when the realization hit that organizations do not just
communicate as a whole, but that there is communication within organizations also. In the fourth (current) paradigm, scholars have taken on a more integrated approach to the
communication activities between organizations and their stakeholders, focusing on aspects of the organization such as the corporate identity, image, and reputation of organizations. One of the most prominent models in this current corporate communication paradigm is the ACID Test of Corporate Identity (Balmer & Soenen, 1999) and its current, refined version, the AC4ID Test (Balmer, 2005). 1
Corporate identity can be defined as an organization’s strategic choices and its expression thereof (Abratt & Kleyn, 2012). The AC(4)ID Test builds on this definition in the sense that it explains how the expressed strategic choices may differ depending on who you ask.
1
Note that an even more elaborate AC6ID Test was proposed in a PhD dissertation (Csórdas, 2008). However, this test has not been acknowledged by the original author (dr. J. M.T. Balmer) and has not been used for theory or practical advancement since its publication.
2 Specifically, the AC4ID Test is an acronym for seven types of corporate brand identities: Actual, C1ommunicated, C2onceived, C3onvenanted, C4ultural, Ideal, and Desired. The first five forms of identity (AC4) coexist and may be different from each other, while the last two identity types (ID) refer to future goals rather than perceivable identities. Corporate identity can be used to differentiate from other organizations and as such be used as a way to gain and maintain competitive advantage (Porter & Kramer, 2006). However, in order to use corporate identity as a resource for competitive advantage, there needs to be a certain amount of
congruency between each of these identities (Balmer & Soenen, 1999; Balmer, 2012; He & Balmer, 2013). If there is too much incongruence between the different (expressed) identities, an organization may ‘feel’ fractured to external stakeholders, and would lose competitive advantage.
Although the AC4ID Test is often cited in literature, there has been extensive criticism on the model. For example, the test framework is said to contain inconsistencies and appears to be a ‘proliferation of different terms and labels for similar phenomena’ (Suddaby, 2010).
Moreover, others have argued that the framework lacks theoretical depth, expanding on common sense rather than theoretical foundations (Kitchen, Tourky, Dean & Shaalan, 2013; Cornelissen, Christensen & Kinuthia, 2012). In addition, Balmer’s claims of empirical relevance for the test can be disputed. Although a grounded theory approach was used in order to construct the ACID through AC4ID Test, any subsequent testing of the framework have been purely theoretical. For example, the AC3ID Test was put to the test in a grounded theory approach in 2009, even though the AC4ID test was already developed in 2005, rendering the AC3ID Test outdated and obsolete. Beside this seemingly odd decision to measure an older version of a framework, in the paper, two old executives from British Airways were interviewed about executive decisions ranging from 1974 until the early 2000’s (Balmer, Stuart & Greyser, 2009). In the interviews, strategic decision making processes were explained from a marketing perspective, but there was no explicit mention of corporate identity, let alone a multitude of corporate identities. Moreover, since the two executives were interviewed about their marketing decisions, any conclusions about different identity types would be confined to the viewpoint of the former managers. That is, the only identity types that could have been possibly measured in the interviews were the communicated (what we say we are), covenanted (what we promise to be), ideal (what we need to be) and desired (what we long to be) identities. To make statements about the other three identities, one would require additional data. For example, to measure the actual identity (what we emphatically
3 are), one would need to describe the traits of the organization (Balmer, 2012). Likewise, to measure the conceived (what we’re thought to be) and cultural (what employees say we are) identities, one would have to turn to the external stakeholders (e.g. customers) and employees respectively and ask them about their view on the organization (Balmer, 2012). Since no data was gathered about the traits of the organization, nor were the employees or external
stakeholders interviewed about their view on the corporate identity of British Airways, no evidence was provided for the existence of either of these three identity types. In addition, to the best knowledge of the researcher, the AC4ID test has not been tested at all, theoretically or empirically.
The lack of empirical evidence is what drives this research. In this thesis, it is attempted to answer the questions if 1) multiple corporate identities exist simultaneously within an organization, and 2) if so, how do these identities relate to each other? Specifically, this research is interested in the communicated, cultural and conceived identities of the test
framework. To explain these three identities further: the communicated identity refers to what an organization communicates to customers, stakeholders and other third parties; the cultural identity refers to the employees’ collective feeling in relation to their organization; and finally, the conceived identity refers to the public’s cognitions of what the corporate identity is thought to be (Balmer, 2012). The communicated identity can be anything: it is what the organization communicates realistic and aligned with other identities or otherwise. The cultural and conceived identity however are more fluid and are comprised of an aggregate of information which includes the communicated identity, but also other identity types.
In three studies, this thesis project will delve into the question how the conceived and cultural identities relate to each other and how much the communicated identity relates to either. To achieve this, data was gathered about the three identity types within the ‘Belastingdienst’, or
‘Dutch Tax and Customs Administration’ in English, which is the governmental tax authority
in the Netherlands. In the first study, the communicated identity was deduced from a content analysis of all public communication efforts by that organization in a time frame of six
months (01-01-2015 until 30-06-2015). In the second study, the cultural identity was gathered from in depth interviews with three employees of the organization. Finally, in the third study, five citizens paying taxes in the Netherlands were interviewed to retrieve the conceived identity. In the discussion and conclusion, the three identities are compared to each other to determine the relationship and alignment of the identity types.
4 Figure 1. Conceptual model
Study 1: The Communicated Identity
The purpose of the first study was to uncover the communicated identity of the
Belastingdienst. The communicated identity refers to what an organization communicates to stakeholders both internally and externally to the organization. In contrast to the other identities of an organization, the communicated identity is autonomously created, potentially uninfluenced by stakeholder sentiment, organizational culture or even other identity-types. As such, the communicated identity is unique in the AC4ID model, and misalignment with the other identities are potential threats to corporations (Balmer, 2012). In order to deduce the communicated identity of the Belastingdienst, a content analysis was conducted over 227 texts and 8 videos.
Method
The Belastingdienst (translated: the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration) is a
governmental organization in the Netherlands charged with tax collection, surcharges (e.g. care allowance), tax returns, fraud, and customs. The Belastingdienst was chosen as organization for three reasons. The first is that Dutch law (the ‘Wet Openbaarheid van
Bestuur’ which may be compared to the ‘Freedom of Information Act’ from the UK and the
US) ensures that all governmental information and data is publically available. As a result of this law, it is possible to get a full record of all communications from the Belastingdienst. The second reason is that every resident of the Netherlands will have regular contact with the
Communicated Identity Conceived Identity Cultural Identity
5 Belastingdienst, making the organization well known and essential to the lives of every Dutch citizen. The third and final reason for choosing the Belastingdienst is that people in general will have strong emotions and attitudes regarding the tax authority. Strong feelings are easier to express and therefore it is easier to stipulate an identity.
The period in which data was gathered about the Belastingdienst was between 1 January 2015 and 30 June 2015. This specific time period was chosen because anyone who pays income tax in the Netherlands can file for tax returns before April 1st of each year. In 2015, tax returns filed before April would be handled before July. Because of that, the Belastingdienst is most active in its communication and perhaps most prevalent in everyday life in the months prior and directly after April 1st.
Specifically, within the time frame, a total of 3 Facebook messages, 224 Tweets, 8 YouTube videos, 10 news items from the organizational website, and 2 blog entries from the
organizational website were gathered, coded and analyzed (Figure 2, Table 1). To ascertain what the communicated identity of the Belastingdienst is, a codebook was created. A
codebook provides the means for one or more coders to systematically categorize messages. In this study, the codebook consisted of three parts. The first part has five general
categorizations: the name of the coder, the message number, source of the message (e.g. Twitter, YouTube, etc.), the part of the Belastingdienst that sent the message (e.g. Individuals, Customs, etc.), and finally what the general topic of the message was. After the first part, the coder could continue to the second part in which the key concepts from the organizational
Figure 2: Study 1 Data Overview Table 1: Study 1 Data Overview
Source Messages YouTube 8 Facebook 3 Twitter 224 Website: News items 10 Blog entries 2 Total 247
6 mission had to be rated on a five point scale for each message. The organizational mission was found on the ‘About Us’ page on the organizational website
(https://www.belastingdienst-in-beeld.nl/over-de-belastingdienst/). Since this webpage
explicitly states what the norms, values and future goals of the Belastingdienst are (the desired identity), it is interesting to see whether these standards are also conveyed in their day to day communications. Moreover, it provides a reference frame from which the other identity types can be uncovered. In addition to the organizational standards as the Belastingdienst itself explicated them, the third and final part of the codebook consisted of several predefined dimensions of the brand personality scale (Aaker, 1997; Siguaw, Mattila & Austin, 1999). Although brand personality is not the same as corporate identity, it is closely related as
becomes evident from the definitions of both concepts. Brand personality is “the set of human
characteristics or traits that consumers attribute to a brand” (Aaker, 1997, p.347), while
corporate identity is “what the organization ‘is’, e.g. its innate character” (Balmer, 1995, p.25) and “the soul, mind and voice of an organization” (Balmer & Soenen, 1999, p.82). Since both the brand personality and corporate identity definitions incorporate the
humanization of the organization or brand (in addition to the fact that there is no tested measurement construct for corporate identity) it is as good a candidate as any to measure the communicated identity of the Belastingdienst. The brand personality scale is a framework in which five distinct dimensions are measured through a list of traits for each dimension. As such, a brand (or organization) is measured as the extent to which they are regarded as sincere, exciting, competent, sophisticated and/or rugged (Aaker, 1997). Each of these
dimensions was measured on a five point scale. The full codebook that was used can be found in appendix A.
In order to raise the reliability and validity of quantitative content analyses, it is important that there are at least two independent coders separately categorize all messages. After the
messages have been coded, the intercoder reliability can be tested through several means. However, due to the limited resources available for this study, not all messages could be coded by two coders. As such, the author of this article coded all messages and a second coder categorized 30 random messages (the minimum amount of messages needed to calculate the intercoder reliability indexes) after a coder training of approximately 60 minutes. Three types of tests for intercoder reliability were calculated. First, the percent agreement which simply calculates the percentage of agreement between two independent coders. Thus, this index can range from 0% (absolutely no agreement) up to 100% (perfect agreement). The second index
7 that was calculated was the Cohen’s Kappa. This index ranges from 0,00 to 1,00 and also accounts for chance agreement, but is rather conservative and as such it may punish minor disagreements disproportionally. The third and final index that was calculated is the
Krippendorff’s Alpha. Although there is no general agreement about the minimum level of reliability required to draw meaningful conclusions from the data, a Krippendorff’s Alpha between 0.70 to 1.00 is considered appropriate (Krippendorff & Hayes, 2007). As becomes clear from the results (Table 2), all variables meet the appropriate level of reliability.
Table 2: Intercoder reliability coefficients
Variable % Agreement Cohen’s
Kappa Krippendorff’s Alpha 1. Origin of message 100% 1.00 1.00 2. Department: Private 100% 1.00 1.00 Enterprise 100% 1.00 1.00 Customs 100% 1.00 1.00 Unclear 100% 1.00 1.00
3. Subject of the message:
Declarations 100% 1.00 1.00
Surcharges 100% 1.00 1.00
Tax returns 100% 1.00 1.00
Technical 100% 1.00 1.00
Additional services 100% 1.00 1.00
Regulation and legislation 100% 1.00 1.00
Politics 100% 1.00 1.00
Organization 100% 1.00 1.00
News 100% 1.00 1.00
4. Norms and Values (Desired Identity):
Modernity 97% .951 .952 Just 100% 1.00 1.00 Fast 97% .911 .912 Protective 100% 1.00 1.00 Clear 100% 1.00 1.00 Correct 100% 1.00 1.00 Credible 97% .948 .949 Responsible 97% .955 .956 Careful 93% .837 .839
5. Communicated Identity (Brand Personality):
Sincerity 87% .800 .803
Excitement 87% .822 .824
Competence 90% .863 .865
Sophistication 100% 1.00 1.00
8
Results
In this section, the results of the first study will be discussed. First, it will be discussed how many messages per department of the Belastingdienst were sent and what the subject of these messages were. After that, the extent to which the desired identity as well as the dimensions from the brand personality scale are present in the communicated identity will be discussed.
Message description
The bulk of the messages (84.2%) that were analyzed came from the individuals division of the Belastingdienst. The business and customs divisions were respectively responsible for 4% and 0.4% of the messages that were sent through the channels that were analyzed in the set timeframe. For 11.4% of the messages, it was not clear which department sent the message. In most messages (73.7%), there was at least some information or mention of declarations, while surcharges (11.7%) and tax returns (3.6%) were substantially less named in the analyzed messages. In addition, about half of the messages (49.4%) were informative in nature or contained a news element. Messages about technical innovations or malfunctioning
applications (23.1%) were named second most often, while law and legislation (13%), politics (7.3%), and the organization itself (5.7%) received less attention. Finally, 38.5% of the
messages contained information about services that could not be gathered under any of the other codes.
Desired Identity Communicated
The Belastingdienst has explicitly stated norms, values and standards to which they try to adhere. These standards can be summarized in nine different values, each of which shall be briefly named and described. 1. Modernity (their desire to reform into a modern, more
digitalized organization), 2. Just (to treat citizens and businesses equally, unbiased, respectful, and supportive), 3. Fast (to handle all requests, tax filings etc. as fast as possible), 4.
Protective (their duty to protect the society from fraud and other illegal monetary activities), 5. Clear (to communicate without confusion or contradiction), 6. Correct (to operate without mistakes), 7. Credible (to act in a way that inspires confidence in the organization),
8. Responsible (to fulfill their job in society in a responsible manner), and 9. Careful (to act with integrity). The extent to which these values were expressed in each message were coded using a five point scale ranging from 1 (‘Not present at all’) to 5 (‘Strongly present’).
The descriptive analysis of the desired identity values can be found in Figure 3. The blue line in shows in how many of the messages each value was present at least in some form, that is,
9 with a score of 2 or more. The black line then, shows the average score (expressed as a
percentage, a higher percentage means the value was more strongly present) of those values. As becomes clear from the figure, the value ‘Clear’ was expressed most often in the messages (82.6%), followed by ‘Credible’ (79.8%), ‘Modernity’ (77.3%), and ‘Responsible’(65.6%). The remaining values were expressed substantially less overall with the ‘Protective’ value only being present in as few as 4.9% of the messages. In terms of strength however, the ‘Protective’ value was strongest with an average score of 4.75 (SD = 0.62; ranging from 2 ‘Barely present’ to 5 ‘Strongly present’). The ‘Fast’ value comes second with a strength of 3.72 (SD = 1.09, while being present in 25.9% of the messages), followed by ‘Just’ (M = 3.69,
SD = 1.01; 19.4%), ‘Correct’ (M = 3.50, SD = 0.86; 8.9%), ‘Responsible’ (M = 3.06, SD =
0.90; 65.6%), ‘Modernity’ (M = 3.03, SD = 1.25; 77.3%), ‘Clear’ (M = 3.00, SD = 0.92; 82.6%), ‘Credible’ (M = 2.60, SD = 0.80; 79.8%), and ‘Careful’ (M = 2.35, SD = 0.72; 31.2%). It is important to keep in mind that the lowest value (1, ‘Not present at all’) was omitted in these scores and therefore, the effective range of the relative strength becomes 2 (‘Barely present’) to 5 (‘Strongly present’) with the 3.5 as the absolute middle.
10 Interestingly, the relative strength of each message becomes stronger when it is
communicated less. For example, whereas the value Protective is only present in 4.9% of the cases, it is the strongest communicated value with a relative strength of 93.8% while having the smallest variation in strength (SD = 0.62). The reversed holds true for the more
communicated values. For example, the Clear value was communicated most (82.6%) while it was only communicated with a relative strength of 50% and a much higher standard deviation (SD = 0.92). The only exception to this trend is the value Careful which is both present in almost a third of the messages (31.2%) while having an pretty much equal relative strength of 33.8%.
Brand Personality as Communicated Identity
The explicit stated norms, values, and standards can be regarded as the desired identity, but it is unrealistic to assume that only those values are conveyed in day to day communications. Therefore, the third part of study 1 coded each message in terms of the five dimensions of Aaker’s (1997) brand personality scale. The five dimensions (1. Competence, 2. Sincerity, 3. Excitement, 4. Sophistication, and 5. Ruggedness) were rated on a five point scale ranging from 1 (‘Not present at all’) to 5 (‘Strongly present’).
Just as with the desired identity values, first it was checked to what extent each of the dimensions from the brand personality scale were present in the data. If they were present (that is, they received a code of 2, ‘Barely present’, or higher), a relative average strength score was created in which a value 2 represented the lowest score and 5 the highest. In Figure 4, the results are visualized. Again, the black line represents the average strength score of each dimension (expressed as a percentage, a higher percentage means the value was more strongly present). The blue line shows the percentage of messages each dimension was present in.
As becomes immediately clear from Figure 4, neither the dimension Ruggedness (2.4% presence, M = 2.67, SD = 1.21) nor the dimension Sophistication (6.5% presence, M = 3.00,
SD = 1.03) were very prevalent in the analyzed messages. Competence (81.0% presence, M
= 2.86, SD = 0.86), Sincerity (77.7% presence, M = 2.65, SD = 0.82), and Excitement (72.9% presence, M = 2.92, SD = 1.03) however, were well represented in the analyzed messages. The trend that was found for the desired identity values where strength with which the value was communicated and the presence of that value in the messages seemed to be reversed, does not seem to hold true for the dimensions of the brand personality scale. In fact,
11 Figure 4: Brand Personality Communicated Identity
the relative strength for all messages is roughly equal. The lowest relative strength belongs to the Sincerity dimension (41.3%), while the highest relative strength belongs to the
Sophistication dimension (50.0%), which means that there is only a variation in strength of 8.7% whereas the variation in relative strength for the desired identity values is 60.0%.
The word-cloud analysis
Increasingly popular for content analyses, is the word-cloud visualization technique where words from the analyzed texts are displayed relative to their frequency. Therefore, the more often a word or character is used, the bigger it is displayed. Since most of the messages analyzed were sent through Twitter, only the tweets were incorporated into the word-cloud.
As is abundantly clear in Figure 5, the most used word in their tweets in the time period the messages were analyzed is the Dutch word ‘Aangifte’ which directly translates to
‘declaration’ and is used as abbreviation for ‘declaration income tax’ (Dutch: ‘Aangifte
inkomstenbelasting’). This is not surprising seen as the period in which these declarations
12 none of the nine desired identity values are explicitly present in this word-cloud, which means that in most, if not all cases, the values were expressed implicitly rather than explicitly. To test if the word ‘Aangifte’ masked the values or any other frequently used words, a second word-cloud was created where the word ‘Aangifte’ was omitted. First off all, even without
‘Aangifte’, there seems to be no explicit use of the desired identity values. Moreover, the
second word-cloud showed that overall, no one word was used more often than others. Most important however, is that it becomes clear that the one word to describe their communicated identity would be ‘factual’. Indeed, most words in the word cloud are informative and
descriptive in nature. For example, words like ‘gegevens’ (data), ‘lees’ (read), and month names refer to forms and declarations that need to be filed before a certain time period.
13 Conclusion
The goal of the first study was to find the communicated identity of the Belastingdienst. A quantitative content analysis showed that four of the values (Credible, Responsible, Clear, and Modernity) from the desired identity were communicated quite often but rather weak, while four other values (Just, Fast, Correct, and Protective) were communicated only sporadically but quite strongly. Moreover, the quantitative content analysis also showed that only three of the five dimensions of brand personality were actively communicated (Competence,
Sincerity, and Excitement), while the other two (Ruggedness and Sophistication) were barely conveyed at all. Even so, all five dimensions of the brand personality scale were
communicated in equal strength (with an average relative strength of ~ 45%). In a final analysis, through the use of word frequencies, it was uncovered that the best way to describe the communicated identity of the Belastingdienst would be ‘Factual’ since most messages were informative in nature with factual information, rather than an empathetic or emotional message.
Study 2: Cultural Identity
The communicated identity could be made out by analyzing all documented communication efforts. However, to unveil the cultural identity, a more qualitative approach has to be employed. The cultural identity refers to the employees’ collective feeling in relation to their organization (Balmer, 2012). This identity type is much more fluent than the communicated identity because it is not created in the sense that the communicated identity is created. Indeed, the cultural identity is often constructed by top management, just as much as the communicated identity is, but it is interpreted and enacted by organizational members based on the cultural patterns of the organization, work experiences and social influence from external relations with the environment (Hatch & Schultz, 1997). Because of these
characteristics, the cultural identity is much less tangible and therefore requires a method of measurement that can uncover implicit ideas and beliefs, and can understand the context in which the answers are given. Qualitative (content) analysis is the ideal method to gain such deep and contextual understanding, and can provide the necessary flexibility that quantitative methods lack (Bryman, 2008). As such, in-depth interviews were conducted with three
employees of the Belastingdienst, after which the transcribed versions of the interviews were analyzed following the procedures for qualitative content analysis.
14
Method
Design
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three participants from the Belastingdienst office in the city of Maastricht. Semi-structured means that per interview, the participants were asked to talk about three topics (1. the cultural identity, 2. the communicated identity, and 3. the conceived identity) without guiding their answers through the use of closed
questions or priory constructed categories. In other words, by having an open conversation in the form of an interview about the three identity types (which were not explicitly or otherwise mentioned), a framework can be induced from the data analysis.
Sample
As said, three employees of the Belastingdienst were interviewed. First, one employee was contacted through the personal network of the researcher. In the initial contact, the participant was asked to partake in a thesis study regarding the corporate communication efforts of the Belastingdienst. In addition, the participant was asked if she could recommend two of her colleagues to interview as well. Furthermore, the first participant was told that the gained insights would be untraceable to their personal answers due to the content analytic nature of the research method. No information was given with regards to the exact nature of the research. Finally, it was said that the interview would last for about 45 minutes and permission was asked to record the interview for transcription purposes. The other two
participants were then ‘assigned’ by the direct supervisor of the first participant, though it was made sure that both participants were not aware about the exact nature of the study. Both the second and third participant received information and instructions similar to what the first participant received.
The sample consisted of one female and two male participants. Two of the participants worked in different departments of the organization, while the third held an overarching managerial position. Table 3 provides an overview of the sample descriptives.
Table 3: Sample descriptives study 2
Age Gender Job Description
26 Female Tax Specialist Special Car Belastingdienst 55 Male Manager Services and Customer Care
15 Procedure
Before the interview, the participants were instructed about the nature of the interview,
providing them with a set of topics that would be discussed. Each subject was assured that the information given was confidential and that the nature of their job would not be discussed, nor would any sensitive information about their work, boss, organization or anything related be asked. The purpose of the study was not revealed until after the interview had taken place. Also, each subject was again asked permission to record the interview and to sign a consent form as provided by the Ethics Commission of the University of Amsterdam. As the last part of the introduction, the subjects were instructed to give as much information as possible, including relevant examples and any information they could think of regarding the topic.
The first topic that was introduced was that of the cultural identity. The first question asked to describe the Belastingdienst according to them. If the question was answered factual, a follow up question asked to describe it more emotionally ( the ‘feel’ of the organization). A second question asked about what the Belastingdienst stands for in terms of norms, values, and standards. When the participant could only name or explain the explicit values, a follow up question asked about implicit, less visible values and if those could be described with an example. The third question for the cultural identity topic was two-fold. First, it was asked if the participant felt connected and committed to the organization, and when this question was answered fully and the participant stopped talking, it was then asked if they thought that their colleagues felt the same, including why they thought that they did (not). Finally, the first topic concluded with a question about the contribution of the Belastingdienst itself to the earlier described (lack of) commitment to the organization. Only when no more information was brought up by the participant, was the second topic introduced.
The second topic regarded the communicated identity. Although in study 1, the external documentation was considered as the communicated identity, during the interviews with the employees, it was also possible to ask about the communicated identity in the internal communications. Therefore, the first question of the second topic was about the internal communication of the Belastingdienst. What types of communication were used, if there were internal campaigns just for employees and if so, what they enfold. After a general idea about the internal communication was created, the second question asked whether the internal communicated communication aligned with their own ideas and feelings about the
16 Belastingdienst. In other words, the second question asked directly if the internal
communicated identity aligned with the cultural identity. The third and fourth questions were the same as the first and second, but instead of the internal communication, a focus was put on the external communication efforts. After both the internal and external communicated
identity were covered, the fifth question asked whether the participants felt that they could influence what was being communicated both internally and externally (not necessarily as an individual employee, but as a collective of employees). The final question in the second topic was about if and how the communication efforts influenced their own opinion or perception of the organization.
The third and last topic (the conceived identity) was introduced once nothing else was said about the communicated identity. The first question was rather unspecified and asked whether they could explain how they thought the general public feels about the Belastingdienst. Since the question was rather hypothetical, if the participants found it difficult to answer, the question was complemented by asking if they could think how their friends and family think about the Belastingdienst. A second question asked the participants if they thought that there is an alignment between the cultural and (internal and external) communicated identities and the conceived identity. In the final two questions the participants were asked respectively if they thought that the public influences their own perception of the organization and vice versa and if the public opinion influences the Belastingdienst’s communication efforts.
After the three topics were completed, a few demographic questions were asked including age, position at the Belastingdienst and their tenure with the organization, and their level of education. Once all information was recorded, the participants were told that they could add, refine or alter any answers they had given during the interview, and that they could ask the interviewer about the nature of the study if they wished. As a final remark, the participants were thanked for their participation.
Data Analysis
After the interviews were transcribed, the documents were imported in the computer program ATLAS.ti, which is a piece of software designed specifically for textual analyses. At the first phase, all transcriptions were coded In Vivo, meaning that words or phrases were marked as possible codes. Note that the interviews and thus the transcripts are in Dutch. Therefore, the examples and results are all translated. Examples of these In Vivo codes include ‘Integrity’, ‘Flexibility’, ‘Policy’, ´Authorization´, ´ConnectPeople´, and ‘Trust’. Also, memos were
17 added to provide contextual information like certain movements that were made during the interview, facial expressions, and contextual meanings like sarcasm that might not be clear from the transcription text itself. The second phase of the coding procedure, the general codes were selected into broader categories that connected the individual codes to the sensitizing concepts that were used in the interview. In the last phase, the categories were divided into multiple, hierarchical groups. Each of these groups were then further categorized in specific norms, values, and standards.
Results
The content analysis revealed that there is not a single cultural identity among the employees. Indeed, parts of the cultural identity could be described as fragmented at best. Each of the three employees’ views of the organization were different, although there were some
overlapping ideas and concepts. In this part of the paper, we will first discuss the parts of the cultural identity in which all employees seem to unite. After that, the disagreement about the future of the organization will be examined. Figure 6 shows the agreed upon part of the cultural identity, while Figure 7 shows the disagreed part of the cultural identity.
Agreement: Laws and Regulations
Even though the interviewees all had a different view of their organization, there was one thing they all could agree on: the Belastingdienst has to operate in accordance to the (tax) law, following regulations and conforming to policy changes. Although they all three had their own vision about the future of the organization, they all placed that vision within the boundaries of the (tax) laws and regulations. One of the interviewees explained: “[The
Figure 6: Agreed Cultural Identity Topology
18
Belastingdienst] always has to comply to laws and regulations, and if something changes, we simply change accordingly. So you could say in that sense, [the Belastingdienst] is a pretty flat organization because what needs to be done will be done. It’s a ‘don’t think, just do’ kind of mentality!”. Another interviewee said something similar, but emphasized how this relates
to the customers (that is, the tax paying citizens and businesses). “[…] in my team, everyone
works according to laws and regulations, we’re bound to that. A customer might not agree, perhaps even with very good reasons that we might even empathize with, but I still have to comply to the law”. Later in the interview, the same interviewee also said that complying is
not always easy because the law is often unclear: “It is not clear at all […] If I look at [the
process I’m working in], it’s a tiny, tiny law. But I have two cabinets full of judicial cases. That’s how clear that tiny law is.”. In addition, he also said that compliance is hard because
the law changes on a yearly basis: “Every year something changes in the , for example,
income-tax. You just taught someone how to work with tax deductible mortgages … and next year you have to teach them something else because it changed again. And again the year after. It makes compliance very complex, because it is simply unclear.” This notion of limited
flexibility as an organization was confirmed time and again during the interviews. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that further described results are all within the boundaries of the ever changing laws, regulations, and policies the Belastingdienst has to adhere to.
Agreement: Integrity and Bureaucracy
Each of the three employees said early on in the interview that they try to work with integrity. To the question what integrity exactly entailed according to them, one of the interviewees explained: “It is expected of you to work meticulously with the data you have. We have a lot
of information about the citizens, about businesses, entrepreneurs, which needs to be handled subtly. Of course all data is confidential, and you have to make sure that the right person receives the right information.”. Two of the interviewees explicitly named integrity as one of
the key values of the organization, while one of them directly linked integrity to the segregation of work duties: “[The Belastingdienst] is highly committed to integrity and
segregation of duties”, which he explained through an example: “[In my team] for example, the one that registers the tax payment cannot give the fiscal agreement, otherwise it is possible to enrich yourself”. Although in principle it is meant as an insurance to work
meticulous with sensitive data and to counteract fraud, the third employee (that did not name integrity explicitly) explained how the segregation of duties affects his job: “I see that
19
I’m getting a call from someone telling me that I can’t fix it because it is not my job, it’s not what my department should be doing.”. He also linked the segregation of duties to a system of
authorizations: “We at customer service can’t [fix things] anymore. We don’t have the right
authorizations” . So in order to maintain integrity, duties are segregated between departments
and people, while authorizations are put into place in order to ensure that duties stay segregated. But this has led to the loss of certain values within the organization: “With
customers, we try to follow a path from distrust to trust, while exactly the opposite is happening with our own employees.”. In addition, another employee explained that his
commitment to the organization is faltering because of the strict integrity policies and the high levels of bureaucracy that are linked with it: “At a certain point you notice that there is a lot
of work to be done … but you simply can’t do that work. Somewhere high up in the political chain, it is decided what you can and cannot do”. Moreover, one of the interviewees said that
they might have taken the integrity standard a bit too far: “Of course, we’re a reflection of
society, so we also sometimes have someone who doesn’t work with integrity, someone who will try to enrich himself. But out of the 30.000 employees, there might be 5. And because of that, the other 29.995 people get blocked in their day to day work because they can’t get certain authorizations. […] Who makes these decisions? High up at [the seat of parliament], because they want to control for segregation of duties, control for integrity and whatever. But they never talk to a customer.”. As a result of the barriers that the employees encounter in
their daily jobs, certain procedures are circumvented, which ultimately leads to a loss of integrity: “If I can give [the employee] the authorizations that he needs to do his job, every
customer would walk out the door with a solution. Instantly.”.
In conclusion for the first part of the analysis, the organization wants to work with integrity and to ensure that, has created a system of segregations of duties and authorizations. The employees agree that integrity is an important standard with which they all should work. However, they disagree with the far reaching consequences and over the top policies that have been put into place to enforce the intended integrity. Because of that, values like commitment, trust and their wish to be (customer) service oriented seem to falter.
Disagreement: Decentralization, Uniformity, and Digitalization
The disagreement amongst the employees is mainly with regards to the future. As becomes evident from the elaborate and complex topology of Figure 7, a lot of different ideas and concepts were mentioned. Uniformity, for example, was mentioned by all three employees, but each of them seemed to think about uniformity in a different way. One of the employees
20 mentioned that they key to uniformity was digitalization of communications: “You need
communication to work homogeneous, and that is a bit of a problem sometimes. […] Our department has five offices and we should work in unison with regards to mail and such, but that doesn’t always work out that way. So I think if you make use of ConnectPeople
especially, then you can share your documents and make use of a forum. That way you really have contact with the other offices, so then you can reach that level of uniformity.”. Note that
ConnectPeople is an internal communication channel in which was described as: “It’s a sort
of Facebook within the Belastingdienst, but with a focus on work of course. You can share documents and it has a forum […] and it has separate communities for each department.”.
Another employee thought that the key to uniformity was to move away from
decentralization: “We try to help customers and then run into problems of shearing. It makes
me think, we are one organization, but we’ve drifted apart so much.” He later explained that: “Work processes go to different regions, they have their job on paper, we have ours. But the week after they made that arrangement, we need to help them out because they cannot handle the workload. That makes me wonder, why isn’t anyone listening to us?”. To the third
employee, uniformity is something that is realized if the team-managers fulfill their job as the link between the abstract ideas and policies of top-management and the down-to-earth
consequences for the average employee: “[Top management] often communicates too often
on an abstract level. The role of team-managers then, is to tell their employees what it means for them.” He explained this further through an example: “[The government] has cleared a
21
budget of 1,3 billion to automate certain processes […] which leads to the loss of a lot of manual labor. […] On a regular basis, newsletters are sent out with information about the progress of that automation process, but those are written in such an abstract level that the employees don’t know whether it will affect their job or not. And that is the job of a team-manager, to translate those messages.”. So each of the interviewees named uniformity
separately but all three have different opinion in how to reach said uniformity.
A similar thing happened when they started talking about digitalization and automation. As becomes clear from the following quotes, digitalization has wrought a gap between those who think that it is something necessary for the organization to survive, and those who think that it will lead to the alienation of the citizens. “We still have a group of people of a certain age
that are not used to gadgets and computers, who just want to be helped by a person.”. That
thought was complemented by another employee who said: “We help people with their tax
forms. A lot of people that come there, don’t own a computer. […] Those people need help. They have no use for digitalizing all processes.”. He then continued by stating that: “E-mail can be handy in some cases because you can ask people to send you information so they don’t have to come back. […] But in principle, I don’t think that [digitalization] is a good thing.”.
In a different perspective, the third employee said: “We need to modernize. [In my team] we
still have a paper-process. We do a lot of copying and filing things in physical dossiers. That should not be the case in 2015.” She also said that: “We work towards an easier future […] because sometimes everything is a bit incoherent. When I myself get letters or, e-mails or whatever, I always have to decipher what it actually means. If you would have your own account […] that makes every much easier to consult, you don’t need to keep all those letters and such.”.
Finally, there seemed to be an incoherent view of the relation between decentralization of certain processes, and the need to concentrate workflow. “We used to have everything in one
office and if I ran into a problem with a customer regarding his [different types of taxes], I would simply walk into another office and things would be solved instantly. Now [the
Belastingdienst] has chosen a different path, processes were combined. So if I have to help a customer now, I can listen to him, file a request somewhere and wait what will happen.”. In
addition, he corroborated that: “The links [between processes] become so long due to
concentration of work-processes on certain locations, that if I’m talking to a customer I know what the problem is, but I can’t help him!”. So while the decentralization is meant to
22 is no room for customized solutions. Indeed, the paradox between decentralization and
concentration of the workflow is because of a transition: “The upcoming reorganization
should be in favor of the customer. At this point, the employees do not yet see that […]. But we’re in transition, we’re going to electronic messages. So where ever someone is, we can always access the right information. That makes it easier for the customer because we’re much more approachable. Everything will be digital, but we’re still in transition, which makes it really hard right now.”.
In terms of values, the division between the old and young employees also causes some frustration and even a negative atmosphere: “When I started to work here, I was the youngest
in the team. Most of my team members are between the 50 and 60 years old. I’m 26, so that’s a big difference. […] You need to get used to the organizational culture, because most people have worked here for 20, 30, 40 years. They been through a lot with the organization. And you notice that they are frustrated, because of all the things that have happened, and all the changes in the organization. To me, the atmosphere was pretty negative. That was difficult for me at first, but now I accepted it as part of the organizational culture. I think I no longer see it as negative, but rather as people that never have done something else, so this is everything they know. You will hear them talking constantly about the past and how things changed.”.
So it seems that the differences in opinion, whether it be the view on uniformity, the decentralization or the digitalization, everything can be brought back to flexibility and age:
“We often change directions with the way we handle things. […] For the older generation it is often difficult, they think ‘Slow down, what is happening here”, while the younger
generation just changes accordingly. They are more flexible.”
To conclude the disagreed part of the cultural identity: automation and digitalization as a way to create uniformity has divided the workforce of the organization. A technology-age gap makes it hard for the older employees to see the benefits of digitalizing while the younger employees fail to see the difficulties older people might have with the automation and digitalization of all processes. Because of this discrepancy between the older and younger generations, there seems to be a fragmented view on the necessity of a process-driven approach to the organization with concentrated work-processes and a decentralized workforce.
23 Conclusion
In the second study, the cultural identity was to be uncovered. Through three in-depth
interviews with employees from different age and departments it may be concluded that there seems to be no single cultural identity. Although each of the employees mentioned that
compliance to laws and regulations were important and that integrity and bureaucracy are endangering their daily job, there seems to be a clear gap between the old and the young employees. As such, values such as trust, commitment seem to be faltering amongst employees while the age aspect causes a division in terms of flexibility and change. These same values can be used to describe the differences among the employees, but overall, they stipulate that there might be two or even more cultural identities within the organization.
Study 3: Conceived identity
The third and final study was conducted to find out what the conceived identity of the Belastingdienst is. The conceived identity is explained by Balmer (2012) as the public’s cognitions of what the corporate identity is thought to be. Just as the cultural identity, the conceived identity is intangible in nature, because it is not unanimous across all individuals and stakeholders. Indeed, the conceived identity can be very different according to whom you ask. As such, there can be brand advocates and detractors and both are part of a more general conceived identity (Balmer, 2005). Because of the intangible nature of the conceived identity, once more in-depth interviews were conducted, this time with five tax paying citizens of the Netherlands.
Method
Design
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five participants from different levels of society. Just as in the second study, each interviewee was introduced to three topics (1. conceived identity, 2.the cultural identity, and 3. the communicated identity) without guiding their answers through the use of closed questions or priory constructed categories.
Sample
To cover a variety of different perspectives in order to increase the validity and reliability of the study, five participants were contacted directly from the personal network of the
24 each with a different educational level, professional career, age, and from different regions in the Netherlands. In the initial contact, the participant was asked to partake in a thesis study regarding a communication theory. In addition, the participants were told that the questions would regard Belastingdienst. Moreover, the procedure of the interview was explained including the warranty for anonymity in the final research paper. No information was given about the exact nature of the study, and permission was asked to record the interview for transcription purposes. Table 4 provides an overview of the descriptive characteristics of the five participants.
Procedure
Before the interview, the participants were instructed about the nature of the interview,
providing them with a set of topics that would be discussed. Each subject was assured that the information given was confidential and that the researcher was mainly interested in personal opinions. The purpose of the study was not revealed until after the interview had taken place. Also, each subject was again asked permission to record the interview and to sign a consent form as provided by the Ethics Commission of the University of Amsterdam. As the last part of the introduction, the subjects were instructed to give as much information as possible, including relevant examples and any information they could think of regarding the topic.
The first topic that was introduced was that of the conceived identity. Just as in the interview with the employees of the Belastingdienst, the first question asked the participants about their view of the Belastingdienst. Both a factual as well as an emotional description of the
organization was asked. In addition, each of the respondents was asked about the norms, values, and standards they thought that the Belastingdienst was trying to convey. Although several follow up questions were introduced depending on the reaction of the participants. For example, if the participants could not think of any particular value that the Belastingdienst
Table 4: Sample descriptives study 3
Age Gender Job Description and Organization
27 Male Tax Advisor at Loyens & Loeff
37 Male Account Manager at Lead Support B.V. 32 Female Unknown at Munckhof Taxi Services 26 Female Apothecary at Sumatra Apotheek 26 Female Student Nurse Practitioner
25 adheres to, it was asked if they thought what the organization does on a day to day basis and if they follow some sort of code. As a final question in the first topic, each participant was asked to describe of their view of the Belastingdienst was equal to other people in society.
The second topic regarded the cultural identity. First each respondent answered the question whether or not they knew someone that works within the Belastingdienst. If they did, a series of questions were asked regarding their relationship with that person, if they talked with him/her about the organization and their job and if they thought that their opinion influenced their own (and the other way around). In addition, questions were asked about the
commitment of that person to the Belastingdienst. If the participant however did not know someone within the organization, the cultural identity was asked through the use of contact moments with the Belastingdienst. Did they ever try to contact the Belastingdienst? Did they even spoke to an employee through the telephone for example? Again, if they did, then a series of follow up questions were asked regarding the level of service they received, was the person engaged with the problem, and if the employee they had contact with was
knowledgeable. If the participant also never had contact with the Belastingdienst other than through the yearly tax return filings, the final topic was introduced.
The third and last topic involved the communicated identity. The first question asked the participants if they had any knowledge about, and could describe the external communication efforts of the Belastingdienst. If they could not think of any, examples of what could be seen as external communication was given (e.g. commercials and news items about the
organization). Next, the question was raised if the external communication aligned with what the organization actually is, and with the view the participants themselves have of the
organization (alignment of communicated and actual identity). In addition, the participants were asked to explain if they thought that the communication efforts of the Belastingdienst had any effect on their own opinions and beliefs about the organization. Moreover, he participants were also asked if they could explain if they thought that other citizens were influenced by the communication efforts. Again, there was also a question about the alignment of the communicated and the conceived identity. Are there any discrepancies between the identity types? As a final question in the third topic, the participants were asked to hypothesize about the influence citizens can exert in the policy of the Belastingdienst.
After the three topics were completed, a few demographic questions were asked including age, their level of education, and the job they currently had including the organization they
26 worked for and their tenure at that organization. Once all information was recorded, the
participants were told that they could add, refine or alter any answers they had given during the interview, and that they could ask the interviewer about the nature of the study if they wished. As a final remark, the participants were thanked for their participation.
Data Analysis
Also for the third study, the computer program ATLAS.ti was used for the analysis of the transcriptions. The same three phases of coding were applied as in the second study. As such, examples of codes from the first phase included ‘Unclear’, ‘Negative’, ‘Complex’, ´Slogan´, ´Righteous´, ‘Knowledgeable’, and ‘Big organization’. The connecting of the sensitizing concepts and the individual codes was a difficult task since most of the participants were surprisingly factual about the organization. The majority of the participants thought of the organization as a necessary means to an end and as such mainly thought in terms of
improvement and reasons why the organization does what it does. This has led to three basic categories: ‘Positive’, ‘Neutral’, and ‘Negative’. In the last phase, more specific categories were used to create a model. This was done by linking codes in ATLAS.ti (see Figure 8).
Results
The analysis of the transcribed interviews revealed, at first glance, a view of the
Belastingdienst that was very fragmented. All five participants either had no clear vision about the organization at all, or had a very strong feeling about the organization. This resulted in a seemingly fragmented conceived identity in which some had a strong negative attitude towards the Belastingdienst while others were neutral or even moderately positive. However, during the interviews, it became very clear that there was a single topic that could combine the five separate views and emotional ideas of the organization: knowledge. Indeed, the more knowledgeable one is about the organization, the more positive they seem to view the
organization. In this section, the general image of the organization is discussed first, followed by an elaboration on the topology of the conceived identity as shown in Figure 8.
The General Image
In the first question of the interview, each of the participants gave a factual and emotional description of the organization. Words that were used to describe the Belastingdienst included strict, big, inaccessible, official, and rigid. One of the interviewees described the
Belastingdienst as: “It is a very big, and very official organization”. Another participant explained that in her opinion, the organization really tries to be inaccessible: “They have a
27 Figure 8: Conceived Identity Topology
very elaborate website on which they try to answer all possible questions so that you should never have to call or e-mail them.”. In her experience, the Belastingdienst does everything in
its power to not have to deal with its customers. This view however, is directly opposed by one of the other respondents, who said: “[…] what I noticed from experience is that they
really try to be a team player. They see the citizen as a client with which they work together, but often times that is alongside instead of opposite to each other”. But even though most of
the participants used their own descriptive terms for the organization, one value kept recurring. Each of the five participants described the Belastingdienst as righteous. Three of the interviewees explicitly used righteousness as a value to describe the organization, while the other two interviewees implicitly described righteousness. For example, one of the interviewees said: “If I would think about it, I would say that it is a very strict organization,
that they really adhere to righteousness, so what I mean by that is that they think like, this is what you earned so this is what you get back.”. Another interviewee even said that they might
be overzealous in their righteousness: “On the one hand, I think it is very righteous that
people who earn more also need to pay a bit more taxes. But on the other hand I think they might be a bit too righteous, rather than not righteous, which makes the differences very large. […] But I feel like that the line [between tax brackets] is a bit askew.”. As a last
28 remark in one of the interviews, one of the respondents summed up what he thought of the organization: “I never wondered about what the Belastingdienst is doing until you asked me
about it. […] but that has to do with communication I guess, and well, their image. […] The Belastingdienst are not my friends even though I don’t know them, that’s my summary.”.
Knowledge Dependent Image
As was said in the first section of the results of the third study, the image of the
Belastingdienst changes accordingly to the person’s knowledge of the organization. Two of the participants who said they were not really knowledgeable about the Belastingdienst also said to think pretty negative about the organization. For example, one of the interviewees said that: “Well, if I think about the Belastingdienst, I think ‘shiiiit’.”, which was the sole
explanation she could think of when trying to describe her emotional image of the
Belastingdienst. Another participant said that the negative connotation he and many people have about the organization, stems directly to the lack of knowledge about the organization and the possibilities the organization has to offer: “Well, my cousin for example, he has an
accountancy firm, […] I never heard him speak negatively about the Belastingdienst because he knows what to do, how to get things done. He always tells me that if you know how to file certain things, you can really profit from tax returns.”. He then continued to confirm this
view of the knowledge-image relationship: “It is easy to file your tax returns [with the
automated computer program], you’re done within minutes. But if you would have a
specialist do that same filing, he would not be nearly as fast. […] A lot of people don’t know what things are tax deductible, so they don’t get back what they could have gotten.”.
Two other participants said that they had quite a neutral image of the organization, but that they really did not have an explicit opinion at all. One of the interviewees told me that paying taxes is just part of life:: “I really only deal with the organization once a year and when I take
a look at my paycheck of what is being withheld for taxes. And that is not always a fun or good emotion, but it’s just a part of life.”. A while further into the interview she then told me
that she never really felt that she could profit from the tax returns. She stipulated this in terms of her lack of knowledge: “Sometimes it’s a bit askew to see how much other people get back
from the Belastingdienst. [...] But then again, I actually never really put the time or energy into figuring out what the possibilities are for the tax returns.”. A similar view was given by
another respondent: “I pay my taxes and get my surcharges and at the end of the year I get a
letter which tells me that I either get something back or if I have to pay some supplements. And that’s that. I don’t really feel positive or negative about it. It’s really just neutral.”. The
29 same participant also said in answer to the question if she thought that other people had a similar view, that the image is directly related to knowledge and education: “I’ve had higher
education, so I understand most things, but I can really imagine that if you did not receive at least HBO education, things can become very unclear.”.
Finally, the fifth participant (who is a tax advisor at a corporate law firm), said he was quite knowledgeable and that his knowledge influenced his opinion of the Belastingdienst greatly:
“Because of my job, I have a different relationship with the Belastingdienst because I have a lot of contact with them, so to me they feel really accessible. But if I look at my family, they think of the Belastingdienst as this organization that is above the people, which creates a sort of obstacle to go to the organization [for help], even though it shouldn’t have to be that way.”. He also said that: “I think it is really difficult to see what the Belastingdienst really is, because you simply don’t have any insights in the organization as a normal citizen.”.
The Possibilities for Improvement
The four participants who saw the Belastingdienst negatively or neutral, all had their own ideas on how to improve the organizational structure (Figure 8). First of all, as became clear in the previous section, the lack of knowledge leads to a situation in which it is unclear for the average citizen what they can expect from the organization both in terms of tax returns as well as what the organization really is. What also became clear but was not yet discussed fully, is that several of the participants noticed that the lack of knowledge also largely stems from both disinterest in the organization and ignorance of themselves and the people: “One of the
employees I work with. She is not knowledgeable at all about the Belastingdienst. […] She feels that she has nothing to file. She rents a house, has no property to declare. So the average citizen is simply less positive because it is all very unclear, they don’t know what is going on.”.
But in their own way, four participants all described a situation in which the Belastingdienst would be regarded in a positive light by the average citizen. One of the interviewees said that the Belastingdienst should be more proactive in what they’re doing: “They could already talk
to students, as an example, before they start working. Especially with the huge student loans, they could inform them about the possibilities of tax returns.”. Another participant said that
when she called the Belastingdienst once, she got sheared of to another party where instead she would have been helped better if the employees of the Belastingdienst would have given her some basic information: “They could have told me, […] what went wrong with the
30
accountant and the numbers. If they would have looked that up for me in their system, like ‘this is what you earned, this is what you got, so this is the discrepancy’, then I would have been helped. But now they just put the problem with someone else, they sheared the
situation.”. The way to bring information for most participants were simple: commercials.
Each of the participants named off their own accord the slogan of the organization which roughly translates to ‘Taxes. We can’t make them it fun, but we can make it easier’. In addition, one of the participants mentioned that a Facebook commercial was really effective in her opinion: “They had this campaign on Facebook. Something like ‘Earn 500 euros
quickly’, and then if you would click that button you would be redirected to the automated tax returns computer program.”. So commercials could be effective in informing the public
according to the participants.
However, although one of the interviewees agreed to the fact that things need to be more clear about certain processes, she also mentioned that bringing information through external
communication could cause problems: “What should they do? Sent leaflets? I never look at
leaflets and throw them in the trash instantly. TV commercials? I barely watch TV anymore with all the streaming services. Internet perhaps […] but even then that would be difficult because personally I have an add-blocker. So how do you reach people these days… Perhaps with some billboards alongside the roads, but if that’s an appropriate place to advertise the Belastingdienst, I don’t know.”. She also questioned whether it was feasible to bring
information through external communication efforts: “What should they communicate? What
happens to our money? […] Now people don’t worry about it too much, but once you start explaining them what happens to their money they might revolt. They might disagree with certain causes like the refugee crisis which costs the state tax money. So they might decide, I don’t want to pay taxes anymore. So the less they know, the better it might be.”. Her solution
would be through employees (organizational citizenship): “If I would know someone in the
organization and that person would sometimes lift the veil that surrounds the Belastingdienst a bit, and that person would say, ‘you’re seeing it all wrong’, then that would impact my image of the organization hugely. Of course!”. This was also confirmed by one of the other
participants who in fact does know someone that works within the Belastingdienst: “Of
course I adapted my view a bit [according to the employees image]. She tells me to call her so she can explain things a bit which works well for me, it opens up the organization, lowers the bar to interact with them.”. So in order for the organization to be regarded in a more positive
