The rhetoric of Internal Marketing has as such failed to materialise into
coherent and holistic organisation practices, which are enacted and re-enacted by
each and every employee according to some grand plan. Perhaps this should not
surprise us too much: Internal Marketing shares the fate of many other managerial
initiatives (e.g., Total Quality Management and Business Process Reengineering) in
that it promises cultural harmony but in reality it leads to conflicting, ambiguous
relationships between the employees and the organisation (see Kelemen’s study on
the ambiguous language and practices of TQM in the service sector 2000). Managers
need to realise that cultural change is a continuous cycle of commitment to change in
an ever-changing environment. In the process, the Internal Marketing practice needs
more attention, and careful management to bring about a fundamental rather than
cosmetic organisational change.