Identity resilience in times of mediatization: Comparing employees’ with citizens’ perceptions of a public organization

Abstract

Some organizations are highly visible in the media. This media coverage informs employees about others’ perceptions of their organization. Consequently, perceived visibility may be related to how employees think about their organization and how they construe organizational identity. This study empirically tests this proposition. It therefore combines aspects of Hatch & Schultz’ model of organizational identity dynamics with mediatization to understand to what extent employees are sensitive toward their environment when forming an organizational identity. In two online surveys comparing employees’ (N = 109) and a representative sample of citizens’ (N = 1417) views on a highly visible Dutch public organization from the crime sector, we disentangle the identity-reputation process considering the role of perceived media impact. We further compare identity perceptions of two intraorganizational sub-groups. We find that citizens view the organization more positively than employees, which points to a misalignment between employees’ and citizens’ perceptions of the organization. In one of the two organizational sub-groups, the findings show that the larger the misalignment between construed reputation (how do employees think that citizens perceive their organization?) and actual reputation (how do citizens in fact perceive the organization?), the weaker employees’ perception of identity. Furthermore, employees appear to be sensitive toward the media coverage of their organization and citizens’ reputation perceptions. Yet, this environmental sensitivity does not impact on their organizational identity. We interpret this as a resilient identity, which represents the maneuvering of employees between their organizational identity perception (what they perceive as central, distinct, and enduring) and external stakeholders’ (i.e., the media, citizens) perceptions of the organization that over time positively distinguishes what the organization is and will remain.