Personal Branding—A New Competency in the Era of the Network Economy. Corporate Brand Performance Implications

Primary assets of the network economy are information, network, relationships, knowledge, and a virtual environment. The competency of personal branding exercised by knowledge workers, also thought of as knowledge producers, is becoming a natural consequence of the business environment where the significance of hierarchies is constantly decreasing. Knowledge workers are powerful as never before and can exist as separate actors within a business network. In consequence, personal brands’ reputation of professionals and the reputation of companies they work for become closely related. Bearing in mind the CSR context, the objective of this study is to examine the influence of corporate brand’s and personal brand’s reputation on corporate brand performance to discover the power of common influence. To achieve this goal, using the equal structural modelling method, the author analysed 209 cases of Polish employees working for knowledge-intensive services (KIS). The findings suggest that in order to achieve better business results a company brand and a professional brand should support one another with the mutual respect of company and employee values which are embedded in corporate social responsibility approach.