Organizational Image

Conceptual Overview

The concept of organizational image has been used within several disciplines holding slightly different definitions of the concept. As demonstrated by Majken Schultz, Mary Jo Hatch, and M. H. Larsen in The Expressive Organization, organizational image is used differently in marketing and organization studies, although image in general concerns perceptions held by multiple external “others” about the organization.

Within marketing, image has been used to analyze how consumers perceive the organization and its products and services. The conceptualization of image focuses on how different segments of consumers form perceptions of the organization and how those perceptions influence consumers' relationship with the organization. Thus, an organizational image often differs across national cultures, social groupings, or people with different attitudes toward life. Marketing scholars have developed elaborate methods and measurements to study image perceptions, such as the various types of associations that follow from different images or the relevance and emotional bonding that follow from a positive or negative image. When studying images at the organizational level, marketers such as Philip Kotler and Stephen Greyser talk about corporate image and use the term image marketing for the ways organizations seek to influence the perceptions of the organization. The basic assumption is that an image adds value to the organization by creating positive perceptions of how the organization is different from and better than others.

Within organization studies, organizational image has been subject to various conceptualizations and debates. Most important, many organizational scholars take organizational image to be organization members' perceptions of how outsiders perceive the organization. The focus of organizational image shifts from how others perceive the organization to how organization members perceive that others perceive the organization. In their article “Organizational Identity, Image and Adaptive Instability,” Dennis Gioia, Majken Schultz, and Kevin Corley provided an overview of the different definitions of organizational image used within organization studies. In general, the definition of construed external image has been taken to be organizational image within organizational studies, whereas organizational image within marketing has been defined as corporate image.

Within both marketing and organizational studies, organizational image has been linked to organizational identity. Within marketing, there has been an increasing awareness that a strong and credible organizational image resides in the organizational identity defined as members' perceptions of who they are as an organization. John M. T. Balmer and Stephen Greyser argued that constitutents want to know more about the organization behind the image, thus creating increasing pressure for transparency and exposure of the organization. In the process of revealing more about themselves, organization members become more aware of who they are as an organization, which enables them to pursue more credible communication with their various constituencies. By exposing their organizational identity to outsiders, organizations are adding intangibles to products and services. This happens, for example, when the organization uses stories, symbols, and other features of the organization itself in its communication with external constituents. Kevin Keller has shown the organizational associations that are considered to be particularly important in the perception of organizational

...