Internal branding as governance: coordinating institutional identity in public universities

Universities increasingly use branding to articulate institutional distinctiveness within competitive and globally interconnected higher education systems. However, existing research largely treats internal branding as a managerial communication practice, paying limited attention to how it operates within the governance environments of public universities. This study conceptualizes internal branding as a governance-mediated process of institutional identity coordination and examines how it is interpreted and enacted across national higher education contexts. Using a qualitative comparative design, the study analyzes four public universities in Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil, and Pakistan. Drawing on the Consolidated Internal Branding Framework (CIBF), it is based on 65 semi-structured interviews with faculty, administrators, and students, complemented by documentary analysis. The findings show that internal branding does not diffuse uniformly but operates through distinct governance modes shaped by leadership coordination, communication infrastructures, HRM integration, resource capacity, and institutional identity narratives. The study contributes by demonstrating how governance environments shape internal branding and by identifying governance modes through which institutional identity is coordinated in public universities.