Abstract
This study examines how a negative organizational image influences organizational identification among prestigious professionals working in a low-prestige organization. A communicative perspective on identification is used to illustrate previously unexplored processes of cynical distancing and shifts in identification targets as ways for business professionals to cope with discrepancies between the organizational identity and the organizational image. These concurrent processes allow professionals successfully to diminish the potentially harmful impact of the negative image on their well-being and their positive work identity. On this basis, the article questions the assumption that the organizational image plays a pivotal role in impelling collective identity change process, as the findings here suggest that the business professionals’ communicative acts may uphold the negative organizational image.
Introduction
The questions have been posed again and again—at Saturday evening dinner parties with friends, in taxis on the way home after meetings, and during phone calls with old classmates: “How can you stand it? Working for that company?”
Not long ago, I was employed by MGP, 1 the main telecommunications provider in the country. MGP was an employer with such an image—an employer everyone loved to hate. Like many formerly state-owned companies, MGP was considered old-fashioned, bureaucratic, and unapproachable. It was also an employer that often made headlines, most of which were negative. Changes in ownership and top management in 2006-2007, for example, attracted a great deal of media attention, as the former CEO received a significant bonus in conjunction with the sale of the company, and the new CEO started restructuring the organization, laying off thousands of people, and curtailing employee benefits. The press accused both the old and the new management teams of neglecting normal business ethics. At the time, my employer was prominent in the media. Often, the basic question of “where do you work?” asked at a dinner party would prompt a whole night’s discussion of issues such as terrible customer service, the golden handshake offered to the old CEO, the secret intentions of the new management, and so forth.
Given the situation, the company’s image became a part of my everyday life. I was an MGP member not only when I was at work but also, most certainly, when I was off work. Some of my colleagues left as a result of the turmoil. However, many stayed, and new colleagues joined the firm. I wondered why prospective and current employees would choose to work for such a disreputable employer and how the negative organizational image affected the employees’ identification with their employing organization. This study, which examines how prestigious professionals construct and maintain a positive work identity when affiliated with a negative organizational image, attempts to answer these questions.
This article reviews current perspectives on the interplay among organizational image, identity, and identification. These perspectives argue that a negative image either has a significant negative impact on employees’ organizational identification and, thus, their commitment and well-being or that a negative image may be compensated for through the affirmation of a positive collective identity, resulting in strong identification. These two arguments are challenged through the adoption of a communicative perspective on identification, which is used to analyze empirical evidence derived from interviews of 10 prestigious business professionals working in a low-prestige organization—MGP. The findings suggest that the prestigious professionals engage in two processes of communicative acts that limit the influence of the tainted organizational image on their positive work identity. The article concludes with an analysis of the implications of these findings for the theoretical discussion on organizational identification and the influence of a negative organizational image.
Organizational Image and Identification
The interplay among organizational identity, organizational image, and organizational identification has been the subject of intense discussion within the fields of corporate communication (Fombrun & Rindova, 2000; Fombrun & van Riel, 2007), corporate branding (Balmer & Greyser, 2003; Christensen & Askegaard, 2001; De Chernatony, 1999, 2002; Hatch & Schultz, 2008; Ind, 2001), and organizational studies (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Dutton, Dukerich, & Harquail, 1994; Gioia, Schultz, & Corley, 2000; Hatch & Schulz, 2000, 2002). The interdisciplinary approach has given rise to a diverse range of terminology and a variety of attempts to explain how the concepts are related at the organizational and corporate levels (for an overview, see Cornelissen, Haslam, & Balmer, 2007).
To bridge the corporate communication/corporate branding perspectives and the organizational studies perspectives on identity and image, this article adopts a framework suggested by Hatch and Schultz (2000, 2002). In this framework, organizational identity is defined as “how organizational members perceive and understand ‘who we are’ and/or ‘what we stand for’ as an organization” (Hatch & Schultz, 2000, p. 15). This organizational identity acts as a basis for employees’ organizational identification. In other words, “as the object of belonging and commitment, organizational identity provides a cognitive and emotional foundation on which organizational members build attachments and with which they create meaningful relationships with their organization” (Hatch & Schulz, 2000, p. 16). Hatch and Schultz (2002) further argue that employees’ organizational identification is influenced by the organizational image, which is defined as “how we are perceived by others” (Hatch & Schultz, 2000, p. 23). In their perspective, coherence between ‘who we are’ and ‘how we are perceived by others’ stabilizes meaning and increases a sense of differentiation and belonging among employees, whereas a discrepancy between the organizational identity and organizational image may be viewed as an identity threat. This threat will lead organizational members to revisit and reconstruct their shared sense of organizational identity (Gioia et al., 2000; Hatch & Schultz, 2002). Consequently, a negative organizational image may facilitate organizational change and give rise to organizational actions and identity work to adjust image-related beliefs among organizational members or outsiders (Elsback & Kramer, 1996; Gioia et al., 2000; Ravasi & Schultz, 2006).
Although these studies (Elsback & Kramer, 1996; Gioia et al., 2000; Hatch & Schulz, 2000, 2002; Ravasi & Schultz, 2006) focus on the organizational level, they originate from research on organizational identification at the individual level conducted within the social identity theory perspective. Social identity theory suggests that individuals derive their self-concepts through social identification based on their memberships in certain groups. Social identification is viewed as a cognitive process, “the perception of oneness with or belongingness to a group” (Ashforth & Mael, 1989, p. 34). A central tenet of social identity theory is that individuals identify for self-enhancement purposes because they have a fundamental need to preserve a positive self-concept. Accordingly, the degree of identification is significantly related to the status of the target group. Therefore, researchers focusing on organizational identification suggest that the process of organizational identification is enhanced by a positive organizational image since a positive organizational image leads employees to “bask in the reflected glory” (Cialdini et al., 1976, cited in Dutton et al., 1994, p. 240). Several social identity theory scholars argue that an organization’s identity and image serve as significant sources of identity for the individuals employed in that organization. Pratt (2000), for example, suggests that organizations may become self-defining or even self-referential to employees. Dutton et al. (1994) take a similar stance, arguing that “a person’s well-being and behaviour are affected both by the attributes they ascribe to themselves and by those they believe others infer about them from their organizational membership” (p. 240). In short, the social identity theory argues that a positive organizational image has a significant positive effect on employees’ organizational identification and commitment.
Studies indicate that the image of the organization may be of particular concern to knowledge workers (Alvesson, 2000; Elsbach & Kramer, 1996; Empson, 2004; Kärreman & Rylander, 2008; May, Korczynski, & Frenkel, 2002). Kärreman and Rylander’s (2008) study of a multinational IT/management consultancy firm shows that the company’s positive image enhances the professionals’ organizational identification since the organizational image provides confirmation of the individuals’ elite status. In the context of professional service firms, Empson (2004) argues that the image of an organization signifies the quality of the service provided by the professionals within that organization. Thus, a positive organizational image may strengthen the self-perceived integrity of the professionals. Another study found that professionals tend to employ a marketization strategy with regard to their career (May et al., 2002), which implies that professionals may choose or avoid an organization on the basis of the organization’s ability to enhance their individual personal brand on the labor market (Lair, Sullivan, & Cheney, 2005). In sum, these findings indicate that a positive organizational image may have a substantial influence on organizational identification, especially for professional knowledge workers.
These findings may raise some concern with regard to low-prestige organizations. Previous studies on identification among knowledge workers illustrate that significant positive organizational outcomes are associated with strong identification among knowledge workers (Alvesson, 2000; Russo, 1998). As identification reflects the individual’s orientation toward the organization, it may direct a knowledge worker’s attendance, performance, and attachment to organizational goals and values. Furthermore, identification is believed to increase employees’ job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational citizenship (Alvesson, 2000; Russo, 1998). In light of these findings, one question naturally arises: What happens when high-status professionals are affiliated with low-status organizations?
The Influence of a Negative Organizational Image on Identification
Although we have some indications of how employees are influenced by their employer’s image, we know little about how professionals handle a negative organizational image. Dutton and Dukerich’s (1991) case study of the New York Port Authority illustrates how a negative image challenges the collective organizational identity and creates distress among employees. Dutton and Dukerich (1991) demonstrate how outsiders’ negative assessments of the organization’s identity are internalized. In another article, Dutton et al. (1994) conclude that being a member of an organization with a damaged image may result in “shame, disgrace, or embarrassment” (p. 242) and, ultimately, “depression and stress” (p. 240). The consequences of affiliations with low-status organizations are generally described as “less identification, less commitment, and less job satisfaction” (Terry, 2003, p. 229). In sum, social identity theory posits that a negative organizational image can cause significant damage to the employees’ self-esteem and identification.
On this basis, social identity theory argues that because individuals needs to restore their self-esteem, they are likely to take actions to repair the stigmatized organizational identity to affirm a positive collective identity with which they can identify. These repair processes are researched in Elsback and Kramer’s (1996) study of how business school rankings affect organizational members. Elsback and Kramer find that organizational members engage in various communicative acts with the aim of reducing the dissonance between external and internal assessments of the organizational identity. Such acts include the highlighting of alternate identity traits and comparison groups. Research into mergers between high-status and low-status companies also illustrates that social creativity and social competition strategies are commonly used by members of the low-status group to change their group’s social belief systems with regard to the group identity (Haslam, 2004; Terry, 2003). These studies highlight that employees may challenge outsiders’ negative assessment and reframe their organizational identity in more favorable terms. Similar techniques can be found in the literature on dirty work.
As research on identification in low-prestige organizations is limited, it is useful to turn toward the growing body of literature on low-prestige occupations to gain more insight into the relationship between image and employees’ identification. This dirty work literature addresses how physically, socially, and morally tainted workers deal with the stigmatized image of their occupation. This research highlights numerous taint-management techniques (reframing, refocusing, recalibrating, and social weighting 2 ) that enable dirty workers to maintain their self-esteem and even express pride in their work by discursively framing their collective identity in more favorable terms (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999; Dick, 2005; Kreiner, Ashforth, & Sluss, 2006; Meisenbach, 2008; Tracy & Scott, 2006). These studies conclude that a negative image has a limited negative impact on the dirty workers’ well-being and identification because they transform their stigmatized occupational identity into an ennobling collective identity with which they can identify and through which they can gain an esteem-enhancing social identity. Ashforth and Kreiner (1999) even argue that dirty workers identify more with their stigmatized occupation than employees in occupations with a more prestigious image.
In sum, although these studies cover a variety of organizational and occupational contexts, they offer interesting insights into how a negative image may influence employees’ identification and identity processes. They highlight two alternatives available to employees facing identity threats arising from others’ negative assessments of the organizational identity. First, employees might accept and internalize the negative image, which will negatively affect their self-esteem and identification (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Dutton et al., 1994; Terry, 2003). Second, employees might challenge outsiders’ negative assessments and discursively frame their collective identity in positive terms using various communicative acts (social creativity, social competition, and taint management techniques, such as reframing, recalibrating, refocusing, and social weighting), which will, in turn, lead to high identification (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999; Haslam, 2004; Kreiner et al., 2006; Terry, 2003). However, Kreiner et al. (2006) suggest that there might also be a range of responses between these two poles, although empirical evidence of these more nuanced responses to a tainted organizational image is currently lacking.
A Communicative Perspective on Identification
This article aims to extend current knowledge of how a negative organizational image influences employees’ organizational identification by shifting the interpretative lens away from the social identity theory perspective of organizational identification as a cognitive process. In this respect, this article moves toward Scott, Corman, and Cheney’s (1998) and Kuhn and Nelson’s (2002) understanding of identification as a communicative process. Kuhn and Nelson (2002) define identification as “communicative acts illustrative of one’s attachment to one or more identity structures” (p. 7). Whereas social identity theory views identification as existing in an individual, the communicative perspective defines identification as communicative acts situated in contexts of social interactions with others (Cheney, 1983). Scott et al. (1998) argue that “the story we tell of ourselves in interaction (or posit with respect to interaction) is the essence of identification” (p. 305). Identification is thus not viewed as a stable product or state (such as a “the perception of oneness with or belongingness to a group”; Ashforth & Mael, 1989, p. 34) but instead as an ongoing process conducted primarily through communication.
The communicative perspective on identification adopts a dualistic understanding of identification as involving both institutional identity structures and individual actions by emphasizing that individuals may not freely choose their identification targets, as suggested by social identity theory. Instead, this perspective suggests that individuals respond to and negotiate discourses that set the frame of their identity construction. Scott et al. (1998) propose that identity structures are simultaneously a source of identification and a product of such identification. The collective group identity functions as an anchor of self that can be referred to, as it constitutes a specific set of resources and rules for interactions with others (Scott et al., 1998). The case studies conducted within the realms of social identity theory and dirty work, however, show that communicative identification processes are not just passive transmitters of the collective identity structure; instead, employees tweak their collective identity by engaging in various reframing activities, such as taint-management techniques. The dualistic aspect of identification thus means that individuals not only draw from a certain collective identity structure but also produce, reproduce, and alter the collective identity structure as they communicatively display their belongingness to the collective identity in interaction with others.
Scott et al. (1998) emphasize not only the dualistic nature of identification but also its multiplicity. Employees may shift their foci or targets of identification in the workplace among different identity structures, a possibility also highlighted in Kuhn and Nelson’s (2002) definition of identification. Scott et al. suggest that three social groups are of particular importance in the workplace: the organization, the profession, and the work team. According to social identity theory and dirty work literature, a tainted image leads organizational members to draw on positive identification to reframe the collective identity. However, the multiplicity of identification also creates the possibility that individuals may shift from identification to disidentification with a particular target or abandon that target in favor of another when they feel that outsiders’ negative assessments test or strain their identification.
In conclusion, the communicative perspective on identification provides the means to address a significant gap in the discussion of the relationships between organizational identity, organizational image, and organizational identification. It allows for a more detailed and complete understanding of how prestigious professionals’ identification is influenced by an organization’s negative image and how that identification, in turn, produces, reproduces, or alters the organizational identity structure. Although the existing research indicates that organizational image is of high importance to professional knowledge workers (Alvesson, 2000; Elsbach & Kramer, 1996; Empson, 2004; Kärreman & Rylander, 2008; May, Korczynski, & Frenkel, 2002), research into the effects of a negative organizational image on professionals’ organizational identification is limited. Research that is found in literature related to social identity theory and dirty work, however, suggests that employees in general may respond to a negative organizational image through either strong identification or disidentification.
This article advocates for a more nuanced understanding of the identification process that pays attention to the subtle, ambivalent, or cynical responses to a negative organizational image and to how the organizational image may influence employees’ shifts between multiple identification targets. This focus is achieved through an analysis of empirical material stemming from interviews with 10 highly prestigious professionals working in finance-related positions within an organization (MGP) stigmatized by a negative image.
Research Design
The Case
MGP is a national telecommunications provider. It had approximately 2.5 million customers and 13000 employees at the time of the study (early 2008). On the basis of theoretical sampling (Eisenhardt, 1989), the company was selected as an extreme example of a company with a negative image. At the time of the study, all external image analyses showed a drastic fall in the company’s rankings from somewhat negative to critical. In 2007, The Reputation Institute undertook an image survey. The results of that survey indicated that MGP’s RepTrak™ Pulse score (a reputation score) had fallen to 52.8 from 57.2 in 2006, placing MGP 30th on the list of the 32 largest companies in the country. This reputation score was based on measures of seven key drivers, namely, products/services, innovation, workplace, governance, citizenship, leadership, and performance. In MGP’s case, performance received the highest score, whereas governance and citizenship scored lowest, leading to an overall score that indicated a weak and vulnerable reputation. 3 Another example of MGP’s decline in reputation was the yearly ranking of 140 nationally based companies’ corporate reputations in a domestic magazine. In May 2006, MGP was ranked Number 46, but by May 2007 it was ranked Number 129. By May 2008, its rank had fallen to 136. Although such rankings may not provide a complete picture, they do indicate that MGP’s external image was far from positive.
Respondents
The empirical material used in this study is derived from 10 qualitative interviews conducted with business professionals working in finance in MGP. The average age of respondents was 32.4 years (range: 30-36 years) and their average length of employment in the company was 3.5 years (range: 1-8 years). Two respondents were female and 8 were male. As all respondents participated in the corporate talent program, the management and the human resource department viewed them as key company resources.
This group of respondents was selected for three reasons. First, at the time of the interviews, business professionals were in high demand in the domestic labor market. Employers and business professionals alike viewed the financial profession as highly prestigious, and finance employees were difficult to retain due to their high employability. Second, this group of business professionals handled back-end functions, and their responsibilities were not directly connected to the core service provided by the company. These positions meant that they could, in principle, take a similar job in any organization, which made it even more relevant to investigate why they chose to work for a low-prestige company. Third, as these employees were handling back-end functions, they were not confronted with the organization’s negative image in their daily work, although they did encounter it in their private lives. Consequently, they had no explicit training in the handling of upset customers or other outsiders whose view of the company could pose a threat to their work identity as MGP employees. In other words, these employees could not rely on a formal organizational “script” to respond to the negative image of the organization but had to produce one on their own.
MGP provided data from three types of surveys as background information: (a) MGP’s annual job-satisfaction survey for 2008, which covered 184 of the 190 finance employees; (b) MGP’s job-entry survey for 2008, which covered 13 of the 13 new employees within finance, and (c) MGP’s exit survey for 2008, which covered 12 of the 13 finance employees who had left MGP. The entry surveys were conducted within the first 6 weeks of employment. The exit surveys only included respondents who had voluntarily resigned. All of the data were collected within 6 months of the interviews through anonymous surveys carried out by the HR department. In the analysis, this background information is used to contextualize the qualitative findings. However, as the data proceedings are unknown, I do not refer to the various parameters’ exact values but only indicate whether the parameters were ranked as more or less important.
Generating and Analyzing Empirical Material
The interviews conducted for this study were held one-on-one in either the participant’s office or in a meeting room. The length of the interviews varied from 50 to 100 min, and I took notes during the interviews and taped them. A structured interview guide with open-ended questions was used to focus the conversation but still allow respondents to address topics of their own interest. The first half of the interview guide was inspired by the “means-end-chain” marketing research method (Reynolds & Olson, 2001), which allows for an understanding of consumer decision making and the influence of brand perceptions. This method connects product attributes with the outcome of product use and the broader goals or values that may be satisfied by its use. In an employment context, this connection means that three levels are linked in a simple, hierarchical chain of associations: employment attributes; the outcome or consequences of employment; and the value of employment to individuals.
Interviewees were asked to rank 11 attributes 4 that had been designed to cover four identification targets: organization; profession; work team; and personal values (Scott et al., 1989). The top three were then selected for further exploration. For example, a respondent might rank the attributes “career paths and opportunities,” “daily work tasks,” and “colleagues” highest. To move the conversation to a deeper level, interview questions such as “How do you understand ‘career’?” “What are the benefits of a successful career?” “Why is a career important to you?” and “What would happen if you didn’t have a successful career?” were used. Subsequently, similar sets of questions were posed in which “career” was substituted with “daily work tasks” and “colleagues.” This mean-end-chain method proved useful for encouraging the prioritizing, explaining, describing, and relating of different attributes of the interviewee’s employment. In this respect, it allowed the interviewee to display his or her identification with the various targets within the workplace, the profession, the work team, and the organization.
The second part of the interview focused on how the respondents believed their family and friends, professional peers, and the press viewed the company. These questions were designed to obtain an understanding of how the respondents construed the organization’s image. In this respect, my former employment at MGP proved useful because it provided me with an “insider’s” ability to capture the historical and contextual discourses that shaped the respondents’ answers (Kärreman & Alvesson, 2001).
As the influence of others is of particular interest in this context, an opportunity to observe situations in which the interactional character of identity negotiations came into play would have been informative (Down & Reveley, 2009). However, since this was not possible, the second part of the interview focused on situations, events, and encounters with outsiders in which the respondent’s employment had been discussed and how the respondent made sense of these exchanges.
The communicative perspective on identification emphasizes that individuals construct their identity through language (Kuhn & Nelson, 2002; Scott et al., 1998). In this respect, an interview provides a snapshot of the employee’s situational identification and self-presentation (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009), which can be analyzed by examining discursive resources as the interviewee’s communicative acts of attachment. A discursive resource is “a unique way of talking about a phenomenon, a socially constructed frame drawn from a culture or subculture that enables members to assign meaning to both their own and others activities” (Kuhn & Nelson, 2002, p. 12). To capture this aspect, the analysis of the interviews involved locating, comparing, and structuring the discursive resources in regard to sources of identity and the organizational image.
The analysis was conducted through a multistep discourse analysis. First, I transcribed all interviews verbatim. Second, based on the ranking of the different attributes and the notes taken during each interview, I identified the main themes, issues, and identification targets that, on a preliminary level, demonstrated the respondents’ identifications. Third, I reread and coded the transcripts according to the themes, issues, and identification targets selected in Step 2. Fourth, I compared this preliminary analysis with the background surveys provided by MGP. Finally, I compared the analysis to other empirical research on the interplay between image and identification to develop a novel, coherent framework. This process of exploring and evaluating the empirical material and the extant literature and developing different perspectives on the framework was iterative. In this regard, it followed Alvesson and Kärreman’s (2007) suggestion to use the empirical material as a critical dialogue partner in theory building.
Findings
This study’s findings illustrate the communicative acts of MGP’s prestigious professionals in relation to their efforts to construct and maintain a positive work identity despite their affiliation with a company that was characterized by a negative organizational image.
Responding to the Organizational Image
The respondents stated that they encountered MGP’s negative image in a variety of situations when they were with friends, family, or acquaintances outside work. Respondents also indicated that the media was a main contributor to the negative organizational image and significantly influenced the attitudes of their friends and family toward the company. One respondent stated,
I sense that they [my friends and family] are shaking their heads and wondering: what is happening with MGP? They are, of course, influenced by the press. The media writes about what is going on an MGP: Customer service is horrendous, the cables have been cut, and they have to lay off people again. I think they [my friends and family] are influenced by the way media portray us—the press and all the bad stories. Everybody has a story about the atrocious service provided by MGP. (February 13, 2008, MGP)
Dinner parties seemed to be a common setting in which respondents encountered negative assessments of their employing organization. One respondent, who spoke of the reactions she had come across, articulated the negative image in the following way:
We’ve all been at a birthday party where someone has come up and said that he or she had their cables cut and was without a phone connection for four days. . . . People call and cannot get through to the right person, and they are then redirected for an hour. This is the reputation we have, and it is really hard to get rid of. (February 8, 2008, MGP)
Although the professionals experienced the effects of the tainted organizational image in social interactions in their nonworking lives, they did not seem intimidated by that image or ashamed of their workplace. Instead, the interviews revealed that the employees cared little about outsiders’ negative assessments of the company. One participant explained,
I know I am supposed to say it is important to me that they [family and friends] have a positive perception of the company, but it really is not as long as I am happy here. I think [the image] is important to MGP but not to me. (February 8, 2008, MGP)
Another interviewee echoed this sentiment: “I shake my head. I don’t really get angry. Life is too short to worry about it. It is like, ‘oh well, here it comes again’” (February 19, 2008, MGP). Interestingly, most of the interviewees indicated that they agreed with the negative image, stating that the media and their relatives were correct when portraying their employer in a negative light. In the opinion of these participants, MGP did have serious problems, and the outsiders were entitled to their negative image of the organization because their experiences indeed matched the reality of the organization:
I believe some of the stories [in the media] are legitimate. Most of the customer stories are legitimate. When you send double bills to customers, they get angry. We are generating all of these stories ourselves—like when the technicians go on strike for several weeks when they already have problems delivering on time. (February 13, 2008, MGP)
As this quotation illustrates, the respondents accepted and were aware of the negative image. However, they did not initiate a reframing of the organizational identity to repair this negative image, as might have been expected. Some respondents recalled their own attempts to repair the image by defending MGP and arguing against the negative stories, but most felt they had lost their motivation to do so. One respondent explained, “It is like a one-woman army” (February 13, 2008, MGP), whereas another stated, “In my early years in marketing, when something occurred, I tried to argue and fight against it. Now I do not really bother anymore” (February 15, 2008, MGP). After these failed attempts to repair the image, respondents appeared to adopt a more cynical distanced attitude toward the stigmatized organizational image.
Interestingly, the professionals made no attempt to create or affirm a positive organizational identity. On the contrary, they denied having any responsibility for the negative image and held others responsible. In fact, the most common response statement on this issue was along the following lines: “In general, I say ‘Listen, I work in the finance department. I have nothing to do with our customers’” (January 31, 2008, MGP). Other respondents blamed the owners: “It is probably the reputation of capital funds that is causing the negative image in the media” (February 6, 2008, MGP). Others held the CEO responsible: “I don’t think it helps either, when [he] tells the press that our customer service is appalling” (February 13, 2008, MGP). Still others accused the communication department—”Someone in communication has a huge task ahead” (February 8, 2008, MGP)—or the “bloody technicians” (January 31, 2008, MGP). Some respondents also mentioned the organization’s more general circumstances, such as being in the telecom industry: “There are usually no positive surprises from a telecom company” (February 13, 2008, MGP). Finally, respondents mentioned the company’s history: “People joke about how hard it can be to run a business when you have a monopoly” (February 21, 2008, MGP). These discursive resources allowed the employees to distance themselves from the stigmatized image and establish a sense of autonomy as they portray themselves as free from responsibility for the negative organizational image.
The respondents’ sense of autonomy from the tainted image also seemed to enable them to joke about it, which ironically made it easy for them to reproduce or contribute to the negative image. One participant told the following story about what typically happened when he met someone new:
It is fun to talk about how bad and stupid MGP is. It is part of the game.
Does it affect you when you hear negative stories about MGP from people you do not know that well?
Maybe a little—it depends on my mood. Sometimes I agree, “Yes, it is correct. It is awful.” Then I tell a story that is even worse than the one they told me, and I say, “But we are working on it.” That is enough; I can close [the discussion]. If the person continues, then I really do not want to hear about it anymore, but it is not something that can ruin my night. I just take it easy. (February 15, 2008, MGP)
Another respondent ironically commented that, as a professional within finance, he might even benefit from the fact that MGP was perceived as greedy: “As a consumer, you might say that [MGP] is just a giant stripping customers of money, but from a professional point of view, it can be a great plus and a great challenge that the company is big and earns so much money” (February 13, 2008, MGP). The denial of responsibility, the joking, and the use of irony in response to the tainted image were significant throughout the interviews and enabled the employees cynically to distance themselves from the organizational identity and its negative image. At the same time, employees boosted their work identities by embracing their professional and work-team identities, and they stressed that the organization provided significant opportunities in this regard.
Constructing a Positive Work Identity
The interviewees may seem to be careless or cynical in their responses to outsiders’ attitudes toward the company, but their own attitudes toward MGP reflected energy, commitment, and enthusiasm. They presented themselves as committed and engaged in their work, and they expressed high levels of job satisfaction, a finding supported by the results of the annual job satisfaction survey. In contrast to outsiders’ negative impressions of the organization, these employees constructed a different image of MGP as an employer. They did so primarily by drawing on discursive resources connected with their identities as professionals and as work-team members. The ability to gain support for these identities within MGP seems to be the main reason for the participants’ positive attitudes toward their employer.
Interviewees most frequently used discursive resources related to “professional career development” when explaining why they chose to work for MGP. In the ranking exercise, respondents often placed “professional and personal development” among the top three most attractive attributes of their workplace. The opportunity to use their education and to further develop their professional expertise enhanced the company’s attractiveness, and, more importantly, supported their identities as dedicated business professionals:
I have an interest in always being in motion, both personally and professionally. . . . To think that I was at that [development] stage a year ago and I have come so far since. Right now, and over the next five years, I will focus on making progress in relation to my career and professional development. So, the opportunities offered by the company are important to me. (February 15, 2008, MGP)
The respondents emphasized their social status as dedicated professionals by stressing the freedom and the responsibility the workplace provided:
You get to participate in some very important projects and in decision making that really matters. At one point, I was the only representative from the finance department on a project involving a 5-7 million [euro] acquisition. I was solely responsible for direct contact with the investment banks, which I found very interesting. All of the cases I have worked on [in MGP] had multi-million budgets. (February 15, 2008, MGP)
Such references to freedom and responsibility were common throughout the interviews. Respondents argued that the freedom and responsibility in their jobs encouraged them to achieve and be rewarded for personal success. One interviewee stated,
I get plenty of recognition. I feel I exploit my potential well and get recognition for it. I choose to spend very little time on things I am not good at and a lot of time on things that I am good at—and one of the things I am good at is my job. (February 13, 2008, MGP)
In the interviews, MGP was described as a “professional playground” where employees could live out their professional dreams. Therefore, even though others might have stigmatized MGP, the participants thought highly of the organization due to the work conditions and opportunities it provided. The same pattern was evident in the entry reports, where “professional and personal development” was ranked as the primary reason for choosing MGP as an employer, indicating that the organization’s ability to support employees’ professional identities attracted finance employees to MGP. Furthermore, the exit reports indicated that when MGP failed to support those identities, employees left the company. In contrast, MGP’s “image and position” fell in the bottom half of both survey rankings, indicating that the stigmatized reputation played an insignificant role in professionals’ decisions to enter or exit the organization.
The above gives rise to yet another question. Employees appear to have evaluated MGP largely on the basis of its ability to serve as a professional playground. However, are such playgrounds not available in other companies? In fact, a number of participants indicated that they could easily work for another company. As one respondent replied, “I might just as well sit in an office at [a bank], [a tobacco company], or [a medical company]” (January 31, 2008, MGP). However, one element that made MGP unique for these employees was the local work team. As one respondent explained, “It is actually not so much MGP. It is more the division. The work here is within my field of interest” (February 15, 2008, MGP). When asked, “What do you like best about your current employer?” the majority of the interviewees emphasized the strong bond with their immediate colleagues and managers:
I think it is important to be comfortable with your colleagues, that you can talk to them—not just professionally—and that you can have fun with them. If we were totally left to ourselves, without having any contact with each other, I would not be able to work. (February 6, 2008, MGP)
The respondents noted that their work team represented a space in which they could express their opinions and that it acted as a forum where members showed each other respect and took time to listen. The participants described the work team as an environment characterized by fun and socializing. Therefore, the work team seemed to function as an anchor in the organization. The annual job satisfaction survey also highlighted the interviewees’ strong ties to the work team; the highest score was given to “I collaborate well with my nearest colleagues.” In contrast, “MGP has decent behaviour” and “I am proud to tell others who my employer is” scored lowest, which again indicated that the business professionals in finance felt that MGP’s negative image was justified by the company’s flawed record. However, this element was of little importance or relevance for these employees, particularly when compared with the advantages of the work team.
The positive evaluation of colleagues in the job satisfaction survey, along with the intense, positive use of discursive resources related to the work team, indicate that the work team supported a positive self-image. In return, employees protected the image of their team by stressing the important function it served within the organization and by emphasizing that the work team provided them with a purpose within the organization. Respondents often highlighted their own contribution to the team and the team’s overall contribution to the organization. When asked, “When do you consider a job task to be interesting and exciting?” one participant replied,
The task has to be analytically complex. They [the tasks] are innovative, so we [the work team] develop our analytical skills and thereby develop the business. To undertake a great analysis is what really drives me, because it is not only me who do the analysis, but us. We, as a work team, take on the task and innovate within our field. (February 13, 2008, MGP)
This quotation also illustrates the constantly shifting, dynamic relationship between the two sets of discursive resources related to the profession and work-team identification targets. Shifts between these dual targets in the interviewees’ identity negotiations enabled the interviewees to construct a positive work identity despite the stigmatization of the organization. The interviewees viewed their workplace as attractive and highlighted those attributes within it that supported their preferred identities.
Discussion
This article has examined how a negative image influences employee identification. More specifically, I have analyzed how prestigious professionals construct and maintain a positive work identity when they are affiliated with a stigmatized organizational image. Previous research on knowledge workers indicates that a positive organizational image may be of particular importance to these professionals (Elsbach & Kramer, 1996; Empson, 2004; Kärreman & Rylander, 2008; May et al., 2002). Therefore, this study used interviews of 10 high-profile business professionals working within finance in a major telecommunications company with a tainted image. The analysis was conducted using a communicative perspective on identification (Kuhn & Nelson, 2002; Scott et al., 1989), and the findings showed that the negative organizational image had little impact on the business professionals’ well-being and sense of self. In this respect, two distinct communication processes enabled employees to sustain a positive work identity: (a) cynical distancing from the tainted image and (b) the embracing of professional and work-team identities. These findings make several theoretical contributions to the organizational identification literature.
Implications for Organizational Identification Theory and Practice
First, research on organizational identification conducted from the perspective of social identity theory leads us to believe that the organizational image is important to employees: “An organization’s image matters greatly to its members because it represents members’ best guesses of what characteristics others are likely to ascribe to them because of their organizational affiliations” (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991, p. 548). Accordingly, an organization’s positive image is expected to contribute to a stronger organizational identification and commitment among employees, whereas a negative image is expected to result in shame, disgrace or embarrassment, depression, and stress (Ashforth & Mael, 1989; Dutton et al., 1994; Terry, 2003). However, the findings presented here contribute by showing that a negative organizational image has little negative impact on business professionals’ well-being and sense of self. Rather, business professionals adopt a cynical distance from the organizational identity and image. Whereas the social identity theory and dirty work theories (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999; Elsbach & Kramer, 1996; Kreiner et al., 2006; Terry, 2003) indicate that employees experiencing a negative image will engage in various tactics to question the legitimacy of the stigmatizing image, the employees in this case found the negative image and outsiders’ critical assessments of the organizational identity to be fair and legitimate—even deserved. The employees abstained from “condemning the condemners” (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999, p. 424) or challenging or completely redefining the outsider’s beliefs (Haslam, 2004; Terry, 2003). Therefore, they did not affirm a positive collective, organizational identity, as suggested by social identity theory. Instead, the employees disidentified with the organization.
Although Kreiner et al. (2006) claim that disidentification has many negative consequences, including depression, stress, and possible exit, recent research within critical management studies argues that disidentification may have productive outcomes for employees because disidentification enables employees to protect their self-concepts by gaining a sense of autonomy (Fleming & Spicer, 2003). In such research, disidentification is viewed as subtle, informal resistance among employees to managerial identity regulation, a resistance that can take the form of humor, jokes, irony, or cynicism. This resistance serves both as a driver of and fuel for employee disidentification, and employees actively position themselves in opposition to the organization through cynical distance. Similar forms of resistance can be found in the case study presented here in which employees joke about the company’s negative image and even preempt their audience in storytelling. These subtle practices of resistance are useful to the employees as they create an illusion of autonomy and distance from the stigmatized organizational image. Fleming and Spicer (2003) suggest that the illusion of autonomy works as a safety valve and prevents employees from either quitting or engaging in more organized resistance. In the case of business professionals at MGP, a similar sense of autonomy can be detected—the employees view themselves as free from responsibility for the organization’s negative image. Indeed, this sense of autonomy enables the employees instead to shift identification targets and embrace their professional and work-team identities.
Second, theories of how employees respond to organizational images (regardless of whether those images are positive or negative) rarely take the multiplistic nature of identification—the shifting between identification targets—into account (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Dutton et al., 1994; Hatch & Schulz, 2000, 2002). These theories argue that the employees will try to repair and reframe the organizational identity if under pressure and that they will take actions to change outsiders’ negative assessments of the organizational identity. In contrast, this study contributes by illuminating how respondents may refrain from reframing the organizational identity—in this study, they simply shift to another, more attractive work identity that is available to them through their professional and work-team memberships. Their occupations provide them with a highly prestigious identity, while the work team seems to anchor them in the organization and create a sense of belonging. In other words, the lack of organizational identification among these employees has a limited negative impact because it is offset by identification with their professional and work-team identities.
While social identity theory acknowledges that individuals tend to shift between various social identities at work, research to date does not recognize that these shifts may be influenced by the organizational image. Thus, this study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the influence of organizational image on the interplay among the multiple identities available to employees in the workplace. The findings indicate that if an employer is able to support other social identities from which the employees can gain a positive work identity, then employees may not be threatened by a tainted organizational image. This, in turn, questions whether alignment between organizational image and identity is crucial for employees’ well-being, as suggested by Dutton and Dukerich (1991), Dutton et al. (1994), and Hatch and Schultz (2000, 2002). This study proposes that cynical distance may induce employees to accept a discrepancy between the organizational identity and image and even preserve a negative organizational image in efforts to maintain their own positive work identity.
Finally, the findings have implications for research addressing the pivotal role of organizational image in organizational identity-change processes (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Dutton et al., 1994; Gioia et al., 2000; Hatch & Schulz, 2000, 2002, 2008; Ravasi & Schulz, 2006). Although such research argues that threats to organizational identity arising from a tainted image lead organizational members at all levels of the organization to work to change internal or external assessments of the organizational identity, this study shows that the professionals do not initiate such change. Instead, the adoption of a cynical distance and the enhancement of professional and work-team identities enable these employees to secure their own positive work identities when the collective organizational identity is under siege. The cynical distance provides a sense of autonomy from the organization, whereas the professional identity serves as a safe, comfortable nest. Accordingly, the disidentification with the organizational image indicates some element of acquiescence to the identity ascribed to the organization by outsiders (Holmer-Nadesan, 1996). This acquiescence is one of the key ideas behind cynical distancing, as discussed by Fleming and Spicer (2003)—ideological consent is obtained not only though identification but also through disidentification. Thus, by resisting the tainted organizational image through cynical distancing, employees also reproduce and contribute to the negative organizational image by accepting and even reinforcing outsiders’ negative perceptions of the organization.
These findings, which explain the limited influence of organizational image on identification at the individual level, highlight the need for further research into how cynical distancing, in tandem with professional and work-team identification, influences change processes at the collective, organizational level. Although the tainted image may not have a negative impact on the business professionals, we might question whether the communicative acts employed by these individuals have any problematic implications for the organization’s ability to respond to identity threats. Kjærsgaard, Morsing, and Ravasi (2010) show that a positive image may lead to organizational inertia and limited efforts to engage in organizational identity work, despite the presence of a discrepancy between the organizational identity and image. This study’s findings indicate that individual responses to a negative image could lead to similar inertia at the organizational level. Indeed, 2 years after the interviews, 7 of the 10 professionals interviewed were still employed by MGP even though MGP had not managed to alter its tainted organizational image significantly.
Limitations
Some caution must be exercised when generalizing from a highly context-dependent case study, as qualitative studies of this kind offer specific, detailed, context-based information. Such studies do not aim to provide generalizable findings but to offer new insights that might be useful in other organizational contexts. MGP represents an extreme case of a company with extensive, enduring image issues. Similar challenges may be faced in other formerly state-owned companies or industries, such as the postal service, rail transportation, natural resources, and air travel.
Furthermore, the participants selected for this study were prestigious professionals working in back-end, administrative positions. As such, they could have been working in any other organization. Although the findings provide novel insights into how they handled the tainted image of the organization, different responses might be anticipated from employees working in front-end positions or in positions more directly connected to the tainted image. Unfortunately, such inquiries were outside the scope of this study.
Conclusion
This article advances our understanding of how organizational image influences organizational identification in cases where highly prestigious professionals are employed by low-prestige organizations. First, by showing that the tainted organizational image has a limited negative impact on the employees because they adopt a cynical distance to the organizational identity and image, this study highlights a previously unexplored process through which employees handle the discrepancy between organizational identity and organizational image. The adoption of cynical distance falls between the extremes of either strongly identifying with the organization as a way of compensating for the negative image or strongly disidentifying with the organization and experiencing shame, distress, and depression as a result. Second, this study suggests that the multiplicity of identification—the shifting between different identification targets—is influenced by organizational image. The findings suggest that employees may not be threatened by a tainted organizational image when the employer is able to support other social identities from which the employees can gain a positive work identity. Finally, the study questions whether the prestigious professionals’ communicative acts have problematic consequences at the organizational level. The interviews indicate that the business professionals may refrain from involvement in collective identity efforts to improve the organizational image but rather maintain a positive individual identity. In sum, this article adopts a communicative perspective on identification to highlight the complex, nuanced, and ambivalent responses to a stigmatized organizational image. By focusing on prestigious professionals in a low-prestige organization, this article challenges the current assumptions about the negative impact of a discrepancy between the organizational image and the organizational identity.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank editor James Barker, three anonymous reviewers, Mette Morsing, Dan Kärreman, and Thomas Basbøll for their inspirational suggestions and constructive comments on earlier drafts. A previous version of this article was presented at the June 2010 International Communication Association Conference in Singapore.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research on which this article is based was supported by the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation.