Book excerpt: The book helps HR practitioners understand corporate-level concepts and their relevance to the key strategic agendas of organizations by drawing on a wide range of ideas from branding, marketing, communications, public relations and reputation management. It then examines how effective people management strategies and the role of HR specialist can contribute to this corporate agenda. This contribution lies in four key areas: organizational communications strategies, developing compelling employee value propositions and employer branding; HR strategies, employer of choice policies and talent management; creating new forms of psychological contracts and building stronger individual-organizational linkages through employee identification, employee commitment and psychological ownership; and in developing supportive employee behaviors. The book is based on a new model of the links between HR, corporate reputation and branding, developed from an extensive review and synthesis of different bodies of management literature. This model has been refined from extensive case research and practical experience in building corporate reputations and brands. Specially researched cases include Orange, Aegon, Scottish Enterprise, Hudson International, BSkyB, Standard Life Investments and the Royal Bank of Scotland.