Organizational Identity, Culture, and Image

Abstract

The concept of organizational identity is often confused with similar concepts such as organizational culture or organizational image. This confusion depends in part on the inconsistent use that scholars have made of these terms in the past. This chapter reviews the literature that has discussed how these concepts differ and how they are interrelated, and proposes an integrative framework that summarizes the most widely accepted definitions. It focuses in particular on research on dynamic interrelations between organizational identity and culture. It argues that apparently contradictory perspectives—conceiving of culture as a referent for identity vs. identity as facilitating contextual understanding for cultural norms—can be reconciled by acknowledging the dual nature of organizational identity as being constituted by social categories and organization-specific features, and the temporal dynamism that characterizes the relationship between culture and identity.