Symbolic Management: Developing and Deploying Symbolic Capital For Strategic Advantage

Across research traditions, considerable attention has been paid to the management of symbols as an important activity enabling firms to influence stakeholders’ attitudes, beliefs, and expectations. Despite this attention, a clear understanding of the characteristics of symbols that provide firms with resources to navigate stakeholder relationships has yet to emerge. Moreover, the organizational activities necessary to manage symbols for the purposes of strategic advantage are rarely discussed. In this manuscript, we provide a rational for considering symbols as influential resources firms use to manage stakeholder relationships. We assert the concept of symbolic capital to distinguish three separate types of influence commonly found in symbols: ideological, instrumental, and institutional. We elaborate tactics firms use to develop and deploy symbolic capital resources for the purposes of strategic advantage.