Organizational Image

Definition

Organizational image refers to people’s global impressions of an organization and is defined as people’s loose structures of knowledge and beliefs about an organization. Organizational image represents the net cognitive reactions and associations of customers, investors, employees, and applicants to an organization’s name. Accordingly, it serves as a template to categorize, store, and recall organization-related information.

It should be noted that there is no such thing as “the” organization’s image, because an organization typically has multiple images. These multiple images result from various groups (also known as stakeholders or corporate audiences) holding different images of the same organization. At least, one might distinguish among the following organizational images. First, investors and executives hold an image of an organization as an economic performer (“company financial image”). These ...