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Identification with an organisation as a dual construct

Abstract

Purpose – To advance understanding of an individual’s identification with an organisation

(‘organisational identification’) and propose a scale for its measurement, by means of a study

drawing upon the literature of corporate marketing, and group and corporate identification.

Design/methodology/approach – Factor analysis was applied to data collected by

questionnaire from two independent samples of 200 and 525 respondents, in Slovenia, to test

the causal-path relationship of group and corporate identification to ‘organisational

identification’.

Findings – Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, ‘organisational identification’ is not a

unidimensional construct, but comprises identification with the organisation both as a

collective of individuals and as a social entity. Results confirm the proposed structure of

organisational identification, and the sound quality of the scale for its measurement.

Practical implications – The findings suggest a means for marketing strategists and managers

to predict the forms of organisational identification in their organisations, undertake

appropriate initiatives for its general enhancement, and thereby strengthen corporate

performance.

Originality/value – This study offers two statistically verified scales for measuring group and

corporate identification, and thus has important implications for the existing literature of

corporate marketing and organisational identification.

Keywords: group identification, corporate identification, organisational identification,

corporate marketing

Paper type: research paper

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1. Introduction

A key concern of corporate-level marketing is the maintenance of exchange

relationships with multiple stakeholder groups and networks (Balmer, 1998; Balmer and

Greyser, 2006), both externally and internally (Powell, 2007). Researchers in corporate

marketing, for example Punjaisri and Wilson (2007), argue that corporate marketing should

recognise the importance not only of consumers but also of other stakeholders such as

employees. Indeed, employees are a valuable corporate resource and should therefore be

managed in a way that is most positive from the company standpoint. Corporate marketing is

an important way to achieve this, because it can enhance employees’ perceptions of the

attractiveness of the organisation, by emphasising the aspects of corporate values with which

they are likely to feel an affinity, and thereby increase their predisposition to identify with the

organisation and its culture (Balmer, 2001; Balmer, 2008). Employees that do so strongly are

especially valuable (Smidts et al., 2001), and provide an important competitive advantage for

the company (Stuart, 2002), because identification directly affects their work-related

decisions and behaviour (Dutton et al., 1994; Pratt, 2001; Edwards and Peccei, 2007).

Positive behaviour patterns associated with a high level of organisational identification

include: improved co-operation; performing above and beyond the call of duty (Miller et al.,

2000); and remaining with the company (Reade, 2001). From a managerial perspective,

identification is advantageous in ensuring that employees’ decisions are congruent with

organisational goals and the corporate brand, and are in the organisation’s best interests, even

in the absence of supervision (Miller et al., 2000).

The marketing literature examines identification with a company mainly in relation to

customer behaviour, neglecting its important internal role in stimulating a sense of oneness

with the organisation, stimulated by internal marketing. Wieseke et al. (2009) found, for

example, that a “leader’s” identification with a company directly influences the extent of

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“followers’”, which has important implications for corporate marketing performance.

Similarly, Wieseke et al. (2007) suggest that it is a determinant of customer orientation in

service organisations. In the marketing context, Berger et al. (2006) found influential ‘social

alliances’ and strong internal ‘brand communities’, based on employees’ identification with

their organisations, while Balmer (2008) has very recently argued that a strong corporate

identity or corporate brand must be promulgated if employee identification with a company is

to occur.

‘Organisational identification’, defined by Reade (2001) as the process of

psychological bonding between an individual and his or her work organisation, is an

important goal in corporate marketing (Balmer, 2009). Despite consensus about its

importance and consequences, we still lack a full understanding of this construct. Authors,

approaching the topic from different theoretical perspectives, too often use the description

without explaining how they construe ‘organisation’: as a group of people or as an entity in

itself. This confusion results in turn to different understandings of the term ‘organisational

identification’. Those who do give due consideration to the terminology agree that there can

be more than one focus for identification, as a member of a group (Ashforth and Mael, 1989;

Van Knippenberg and Van Schie, 2000; Ashforth and Johnson, 2001) or with the organisation

itself, as a social entity or a brand (Balmer, 2008). Thus, a creative director in an advertising

agency might identify with the colleagues in his or her creative team and also with the image

the agency projects to the world outside.

The failure of previous studies to make a clear conceptual and empirical distinction

between one focus and another is a notable gap in the research, because concentrating on a

single aspect of the organisation may result in serious omissions. For example, the managerial

implications of weak identification with the people who make up the organisation would

logically be different from those flowing from a low level of identification with the

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organisation as an entity. In the first case, the strategic response might be to encourage the

sense of a ‘work community’; in the second, it could be to strengthen the corporate brand

internally. It is thus important to disentangle these dual foci of organisational identification,

with a view to enhancing understanding of their roles, antecedents and consequences.

Accordingly, the aim of the research study reported in this paper was to integrate two

complementary views on organisational identification and on the organisation itself. To

achieve this, we tested a research proposition empirically by gathering and analysing data

collected from a primary sample and a control sample.

2. Theoretical framework

2.1 Organisational identification and the notion of ‘organisation’

We begin the development of our theoretical framework with a discussion of the

different understandings of the term ‘organisation’ that are encountered in the literature,

because we believe that those conceptions have significantly influenced authors’ approaches

to the subject of organisational identification. To strengthen understanding of this focal

concept in our research by linking it with the notion of organisation as the basis for

identification. Though previous researchers have agreed that the process of organisational

identification is based on individual sense of oneness with a particular social category and/or

object, they have tended to use the single term “organisation” to describe two opposite views

of the phenomenon under consideration – as a collective of employees or members, and as an

autonomous entity – without explaining which one they are referring to.

Researchers in the field of corporate and organisational identity have their roots in a

variety of subject backgrounds, which can be broadly categorised into two intellectual

orientations: functionalist and interpretative. The first group treat an organisation as an entity

or brand with an identity separate from that of its it owners, members or employees (Balmer,

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2008; Benjamin and Bronstein, 1987; Swidorski, 1994), as a unit acting on behalf of a

constituency (Blumer, 1969). A fixed and static organisational structure determines the goals

and activities of its members, or employees, who are perceived merely as means of achieving

organisational goals (Putnam, 1983). In short, an organisation is a system that pursues its own

particular interests. The interpretative view, on the other hand, is that an organisation is a

group of individuals with a common goal. It is not a monolithic entity, but a coalition of

cooperative individuals and groups with different interests: a social aggregate (Putnam, 1983;

Whetten and Mackey, 2002).

When discussing the manifest identity of an organisation, the functionalist school of

thought normally thinks in terms of “corporate identity” (for instance: Balmer, 2003; Van

Riel, 1995) rather than the descriptions “group identity” or “organisational identity” used

throughout a recent textbook (Hatch and Schultz, 2004). Corporate identity has been defined

by Balmer and Greyser (2003) as an organisation’s uniqueness expressed in a set of

distinctive attributes, whereas Albert and Whetten (1985) described organisational identity as

a composite of central, distinctive and enduring characteristics shared throughout the

members of the organisation. Balmer and Soenen (1997) found it impossible to differentiate

the two concepts completely, despite their manifest differences, because both group (or

organisational) and corporate identity include intertwined measurable and non-measurable

dimensions. This observation is consistent with the recognition that both concepts form a

coherent unit. It also shows the duality of organisation – as a group of people on the one hand,

and as an autonomous social entity on the other (Brown and Isaacs, 1995). Similarly,

Cornelissen et al. (2007) suggest that it is possible and valuable to integrate different concepts

of social, organisational and corporate identity.

On the basis of this evidence from the literature, we believe that the functionalist and

interpretative conceptualisations of an organisation and its identity represent two modes or

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foci of identification. These seem not to have been explicitly recognised among researchers

and writers in the field of organisational theory, who tend to use the term ‘organisational

identification’ for both. By contrast, the corporate marketing literature has already made

distinction. For example, Balmer (2008) distinguishes identification with a corporate culture,

by members of an organisation who affirm their identification by emphasising what they have

in common with other members, from identification with a corporation, which is focused on

corporate identity or the corporate brand. In so doing, he observes that researchers who adopt

the functionalist paradigm mostly come from a marketing background, whereas the parent

discipline of adherents of the interpretative alternative is typically organisational behaviour.

The interpretative framework of organisational identification has most often linked the

process to social identity theory (Tajfel, 1978; Turner, 1984; Hogg and Abrams, 1998),

defining it as the “perception of sharing experiences of a focal group and sharing

characteristics of the group’s members” (Mael and Tetrick, 1992): in the context of

commercial organisations, their fellow employees. Both Elsbach and Bhattacharya (2001) and

Smidts et al. (2001) describe organisational identification as a sense of oneness with the

organisation. It is a cognitive connection between an individual and the organisation (Bamber

and Iyer, 2002), a process in which an individual’s beliefs about the organisation become self-

referent (Pratt, 1998). Specifically, the interpretive researchers Stoel (2002) and Polzer (2004)

treat organisational identification as a subset of the more general process of personal

identification with a group, defined by Ashforth and Mael (1989) as the perception of oneness

with, or belongingness to, a particular human aggregate, specifically within an interacting

group of employees.

The second conception of identification coincides with the functionalist paradigm.

Dutton et al. (1994) construe organisational identification as the degree to which a member

defines himself or herself by the same attributes that he or she believes to define the identity

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of the organisation. Similarly, Siegel and Sisaye (1997) argue that organisational

identification is a coherence between a corporate image and an employee’s self-image. The

organisation as an object of identification is thus something more than just a group of people.

Rather, it is a broader social category, a distinctive and unique entity with its own string of

characteristics, identification with which can occur independently from interpersonal

interactions, and is more abstract (Alvesson, 2000; Ashforth and Mael, 1989).

2.2 The dual foci of identification: corporate and group identification

The fact that organisational identification can have more than one focus, and that

employees can adopt them simultaneously, has been recognised by such authors as Van Dick

and Wagner (2002) and Ullrich et al. (2007). Among them, Van Knippenberg and van Schie

(2000) argue that organisations provide their employees with multiple membership

opportunities, each of which offers a potential focus of identification, be it with the

organisation as a whole or within it.

It has been suggested by the same authors and also by Ashforth and Johnson (2001)

that it is necessary to distinguish between the ‘lower-order’ and ‘higher-order’ identities –

respectively, the workgroup and the organisation as a whole – that offer foci for identification.

This distinction parallels that in social exchange theory (Brandes et al., 2004), between the

‘global’ and ‘local’ foci of social exchange. In the former, there is usually no direct

interpersonal interaction between an individual and the social entity, but those who belong to

an organisation nevertheless develop beliefs and understandings about the organisation. Local

exchanges, on the other hand, are based on interpersonal interactions between individuals

within an organisation.

As noted by Ullrich et al. (2007), it has also been suggested that modes of

identification should gravitate towards such lower-order categories as employees’ own

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workgroups, which are perceived as stronger identity groups because they are relatively

concrete and their impact on the individual is more direct. However, the higher-order identity

of the organisation as a whole can be more important for both employees and managers, the

latter being able to encourage the former to pursue organisational goals ahead of group goals

(Ashforth and Johnson, 2001). It is for this reason that marketing and organisational

researchers tend to concentrate their attention on attachment to the organisation as a whole

(Edwards and Peccei, 2007; Van Knippenberg and Van Schie, 2000; Wieseke et al., 2009). A

further motivation may be the fact that employee identification with the organisation can have

a greater impact on organisational performance (Ullrich et al., 2007) and better match the

perspectives and objectives of corporate-level marketing.

Most investigations of identification in the organisational context tend either to study

the effect of a focus on lower-order identities only (e.g. Van Dick and Wagner, 2002) or on

both lower-order and higher-order identities (e.g. Van Knippenberg and Van Schie, 2000;

Ullrich et al., 2007). We believe that it is also important to study a range of higher-order foci

of organisational identification, because it is especially those that corporate marketing

strategy aims to influence in pursuit of internal marketing goals. Ullrich et al. (2007) reinforce

this priority, in arguing that understanding of higher-order foci can be an important resource

for managers seeking to attain the distinctive higher-order goals, such as the minimising of

between-team conflict or enhancing employees’ internalisation of corporate brand values.

This is one key motive for the investigation of higher-order identification in more detail than

previously, to the benefit of marketing management.

The literature suggests that individuals will perceive and construct the organisations of

which they are members in two coexisting ways. First, they form a psychological contract

with the organisation as an entity (Turnley and Feldman, 1999; Bligh and Carsten, 2005), and

‘corporate identification’ results when they absorb favourable and enduring images of it,

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influenced by communication and explanation of the organisation as a brand (Dutton et al.,

1994; Simões et al., 2005). Although studies typically assume that such projections lead to

positive identification, it is a fact that they could alternatively produce a negative result. For

example, Pratt (2001) has argued that an individual may maintain an independent sense of

self, and wants to draw a distinction between his or her personal identity and that of the

organisation, in which circumstances, the organisation’s identity projections are likely to lead

to non-identification instead of identification. That possibility is supported by the work of

Powell and Ennis (2007). Though we readily acknowledge these opposed alternative

outcomes, our study focused primarily on positive identification.

The second way in which individuals perceive and construct the organisations to

which they belong is through interactions with other workers (Alvesson, 2000), which means

that an individual identifies with a corporate culture (Balmer, 2008). This is ‘group

identification’, but is distinct from the process of work-group identification described by Van

Knippenberg and Van Schie (2000), in which employees identify themselves with immediate

work colleagues. In our sense of the term, group identification refers to employees’

membership in a broader group of people: the organisation as a whole.

Figure 1 illustrates the distinction between group identification and corporate

identification, schematically. Both of these higher-order foci of identification are important in

terms of comprehension of the identification process and awareness of its management

implications.

Take in Figure 1 about here

3. Methodology

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The dual understanding of organisational identification and organisational identity

summarised in the previous section leads us to the following research proposition.

The process of organisational identification has two distinct foci: ‘group

identification’, with an organisation as a group of people, and ‘corporate

identification’, with an organisation as an entity in its own right.

We argue that both group identification and corporate identification should be taken into

account in any measure of ‘organisational identification’. The empirical study reported next

accordingly set out to verify that proposition, and to develop and test a measuring instrument,

based on the theoretical framework established in the previous section.

3.1 Defining the twin foci of organisational identification

We define group identification, in the context of a firm, as an individual’s perception

that he or she shares characteristics with fellow employees, or has a sense of oneness with the

company as a group of people (Mael and Lois, 1992). This phenomenon is sometimes

described as identification with the ‘psychological group’, or with the company as a social

unit or a brand (Dutton et al., 1994).

Henry et al. (1999) distinguished three sub-dimensions of group identification –

affective, behavioural and cognitive – and applied them to measurement of the construct.

Their affective dimension refers to emotional attachment to the group, the behavioural

dimension is linked to behavioural interdependence and shared group objectives, and the

cognitive dimension represents the understanding that one is a member of a group. This

conceptual framework is particularly relevant to our own study because it also distinguishes

identification with a sub-group of immediate colleagues from that with a whole corporate

entity. To differentiate the concept of higher-order group identification in our research from

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the one used by Van Knippenberg and Van Schie (2000), our survey respondents were

instructed to think of their fellow employees in general, not of any group within the firm.

The second focus of organisational identification, corporate identification, is an

individual’s perception that his or her personal characteristics are consistent with the

company’s: a sense of oneness with the company as a social unit or a brand (Dutton et al.,

1994).

3.2 The measuring instruments

We developed purpose-designed instruments to measure individual identification,

particularly with the corporate entity as a whole, taking into account measures and items

proposed by other authors, such as Smidts et al. (2001). To construct our organisational

identification and corporate identification scales, we generated a comprehensive item pool

from the group identification and corporate identification measures in the affective–

behavioural–cognitive model of Henry et al. (1999), and from existing social and

organisational identification scales. We reviewed the constituent items with two independent

academics, to identify any that were misleading, ambiguous, unclear, biased, repetitive or

otherwise unsuitable, duly rejected roughly a third of them, and used the remainder as the

basis for a questionnaire. Five-point Likert-type scales were used to measure every item,

expressed as a statement with which to express an opinion between “strongly agree” and

“strongly disagree”. The questionnaire was pre-tested on employees of a large firm in the

business sector from which the eventual research sample would be drawn: public relations and

marketing communications.

Figure 2 shows the ten scale items contained in corporate identification and the three

each contributing to the affective, cognitive and behavioural components of group

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identification, presented as a causal-path model relating from 19 items via two latent variables

to the composite organisational identification construct.

Take in Figure 2 about here

3.3 Data collection

Data were collected from a primary sample and a control sample, allowing us to

perform a comparison test to double-check the results.

The sampling frame for the primary sample was a list of the members of the Slovenian

Advertising Chamber, which includes approximately 400 employees of 40 marketing

communications agencies: an especially knowledge-based expert sector, in which the

employees of typically small firms are often more loyal to the industry as a whole than to a

single employer. In selecting our sampling frame of specialist firms in the creative industries,

whose organisational and corporate marketing currently face many challenges, we were

influenced by a recent study conducted by Powell and Ennis (2007). Their small size carried

with it the expectation that they would tend to be more interconnected than larger

organisations, in which there is a wider psychological gap between employee and

organisation. Reade (2001) has argued that, as a result, the distinction between identification

with the organisation as an entity and identification with the organisation as a group of people

is less marked. Powell (2007) reports that, in the creative industries, agencies rely heavily on

their staff and their modus operandi to strengthen their corporate brand, and in turn to

reinforce internal identification and commitment. Thus, if both types of identification can be

distinguished in a small organisation, it is even more likely that they will be found in a larger

one (Diamond and Seth, 2003).

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We selected the respondents within the individual agencies by systematic random

sampling, with a sampling interval of 3 for the agencies and 2 for the respondents, to

minimise selection bias and assure as representative a sample as possible. The questionnaires

were administrated personally, and data were collected from 200 employees of 12 agencies;

145 (72%) of returned questionnaires were usable in the data analysis. The sample

composition was 38% male and 62% female, and almost half under 30 years of age.

Selection of the control sample was purposive. Respondents were drawn from the staff

list of a medium-sized wholesaler, one of the country’s largest companies by income, which

also offers brand management support services to brand owners. The chief selection criterion

was that its employees mainly worked on permanent contracts, in contrast to the flexible

employment arrangements that characterise marketing communication agencies. In this

survey, 525 questionnaire were distributed among employees at their place of work, and

returned by 133 (28%), 30% of whom were male and 65% female. The age distribution was

slightly different from that in the primary sample, the majority being aged between 30 and 40.

4. Analysis and results

Table I displays the corporate and group identification items, with mean scores and the results

of same-scale/other-scale correlation analysis conducted on our primary sample. The purpose

of the correlation analysis was to check the convergent and discriminant validity of the scales.

Take in Table I about here

4.1 Corporate identification

Principal-component factor analysis of data from both samples demonstrated that

corporate identification was a one-dimensional construct in the first dataset, with the first

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component having an eigenvalue of 5.9 and other components’ eigenvalues being all below

1.0. Thus, the principal component explains almost 60% of variance. The Cronbach’s Alpha

coefficient was 0.92.

In analysis of data obtained from the control sample, corporate identification items

were again grouped on a single dimension. The percentage of variance explained reached

64% and internal consistency was higher, at α = 0.94.

4.2 Group identification

The results for group identification from both datasets were also very similar. Factor

analysis showed group identification to be a two-dimensional construct. In the primary

sample, the percentage of cumulative variance explained was more than 54%. The results

further demonstrated that indicators for the cognitive and affective dimensions are not

separate dimensions, but rather combined in a single dimension. Those for the behavioural

indicators, on the other hand, form a second dimension, as shown in Table II. The internal

consistency of cognitive-affective identification items is relatively good, with α = 0.85,

whereas the scale reliability for the behavioural items is slightly lower, at α = 0.76.

The control sample yielded similar results, the factors explaining 47% of the variance,

and Cronbach’s Alpha ranging from 0.63 for the behavioural dimension to 0.84 for the

cognitive-affective dimension.

Take in Table II about here

The empirical results for group and corporate identification are not consistent with the

suggested theoretical three-dimensional model. Similar results had already been obtained by

Henry et al. (1999), the authors of the proposed theoretical model. In their study, the cognitive

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and affective sub-dimensions were combined, leaving “behavioural” as a sole second

dimension. They concluded that, in the case of very diverse groups, two-dimensional

solutions of group identification should be expected. A high correlation between the two

dimensions was also both typical and expected.

4.3 Organisational identification

We next carried out simultaneous factor analysis on all items of corporate and group

identification, to test item reliability. The results suggested a two-factor solution, confirming

our theoretical construction of twin-focus, dual-mode organisational identification. Table III

shows two distinct factors with between-factor correlation coefficients of 0.39 and 0.4

respectively, at p< 0.01. The cumulative variance explained with the two factors in the case of

the primary sample is 52%, compared with 51% in the control sample. Scale reliability,

measured by internal consistency coefficients, proved to be high in both samples, at 0.81 and

0.94 respectively.

Take in Table III about here

Lastly, we subjected the data from our primary sample to confirmatory factor analysis,

using LISREL 8.54, in order to verify the quality of the organisational identification scale.

There were no paths representing secondary loadings, each item reflecting only its relevant

factor, and the factors also free to correlate. The overall fit of the model was very good

(RMSEA=0.025; model statistics χ2= 54.54, p =0.30603; CFI=1; GFI=0.94). The results

indicate that corporate and group identifications are indeed separate, though correlated,

constructs. The two foci of organisational identification and the good quality of the

measurement scale for this construct can be confirmed.

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5. Discussion and implications

This paper has argued that organisational identification is a dual-focus construct comprising

two higher-order identities: identification with a company as a collective group of individuals

and identification with the company as a social entity, expressed in its corporate identity

(Balmer, 2008). Both of these foci need to be given due consideration if the construct is to be

accurately identified and measured.

Our study offers three significant contributions to the existing literature and current

practice relating to organisational identification and corporate marketing. First, our empirical

findings show that individual members of an organisation do distinguish between the twin

foci. We therefore conclude that organisational identification is a dual-focus construct

comprising both corporate identification and group identification. Our study thus offers

empirical support for previous suggestions by Van Knippenberg and Van Schie (2000), Van

Dick et al. (2004) and Ulrich et al. (2007) who argued for a separation into different foci.

Additionally, the study offers support for the recent argument made by Balmer (2008) that at

least two foci of higher-order identification coexist. The ‘group’ focus relates to corporate

cultural identification, and the ‘corporate’ focus represents identification with the corporate

identity (Balmer, 2008).

Second, by clarifying the two modes of identification and establishing a valid measure

for each focus, we offer a sound conceptual framework and improved assessment possibilities

to both interpretative and functionalist researchers. The former, who are generally more

interested in individuals’ identification with groups, will benefit from a clear concept and

measurement tools that are detached from the notion of corporate identification. The latter,

who concentrate on identification with the corporate entity, will enjoy the utility of concepts

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and measurements for the assessment of corporate identification that are independent of the

notion of group identification.

Third, we strongly believe that the distinction between the two higher-order modes of

identification, group and corporate, should alert researchers and practitioners concerned with

the role of corporate marketing in the management of organisational identification to the

strategic value of identifying the different modes of organisational identification in a given

company, and the different initiatives that will be needed to influence them to best advantage.

For the support and reinforcement of corporate identification, those could be selected

techniques for building a strong corporate brand internally, such as targeted internal

communication, training support to strengthen employee engagement, and rewards and

recognition aimed at reinforcing behaviour positively connected to brand values. With respect

to higher-level group identification, managers might implement initiatives that create a sense

of work community, such as team building seminars, informal social events, and the design of

supportive working environments.

Our findings moreover suggest that marketing academics and practising managers can

exploit the distinction between group and corporate identification to predict and categorise the

related behaviour of employees in their own organisations. In general, we can predict four

such categories, containing individuals who combine: high corporate and high group

identification; low corporate and low group identification; low group and high corporate

identification; and low corporate and high group identification. The findings of our study also

suggest the possibility of predicting possible consequences of identification. For example:

when both foci are low, the eventual outcome may be organisational disintegration; when

corporate identification prevails over group identification, the result may be internal rivalry

and competitiveness. The consideration of such different consequences is an important input

to internal branding programmes and decisions about human resource management.

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6. Limitations and future research

Certain limitations of our study provide an opportunity for future research and the further

development of scales to measure organisational identification.

First, the discriminant validity of the organisational identification construct could be

more rigorously tested, either by verification of the distinction between our ‘dual-foci’

construct and similar constructs developed by others such as Van Knippenberg and Van Schie

(2000) and Smidts et al. (2001), across every measuring scale in a single survey, or by the

procedure advocated by Campbell and Fiske (1959), which combines a number of methods to

assess several items.

Second, since the primary research sample was drawn from small firms and the control

sample from a medium-sized business, where group identification could have been

confounded with work-group or work-team solidarity, we would recommend either testing of

the measurement scale in a larger organisations, or simultaneous exploration of those lower-

order varieties of identification.

Future studies could usefully examine the matrix of possible consequences of

corporate and group identification for organisations and individuals, as described in the

previous section, when there is conflict between the two foci, or one is clearly predominant.

They could also explore situational and contextual influences on group and corporate

identification, such as organisational commitment and culture, social networks, job

satisfaction, delivery of the ‘corporate promise’ to employees, and disseminating corporate

values across the company.

Our study has raised an important strategic question: which focus of organisational

identification has the more important effect on corporate performance? For instance,

solidarity with a work-group could prove to be a serious obstacle to management action if

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downsizing and redundancies became necessary, yet it will obviously be an important asset

when the priority is to project a positive image to clients and other external stakeholders.

Future research could therefore focus more specifically on the role of each type of

identification in the achievement of different strategic marketing goals, and on the marketing

management initiatives needed to influence the identification process. Case studies might

usefully deliver a deeper understanding of the link between organisational identification and

corporate effectiveness.

Finally, an interesting topic of future research would be to compare organisational

identification internally with that to be found among external stakeholders, such as actual and

potential customers or business partners, to the benefit of both internal and external marketing

strategy.

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Acknowledgement

The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers and the guest editors for valuable

comments which have greatly helped to improve this paper.

26

Figure 1: The dual nature of an organisation and the foci of individual identification

Corporate identificationCorporate identificationCorporate identificationCorporate identification

(Dutton et al., 1994; Siegel and Sisaye, 1997)

OrganisOrganisOrganisOrganisationationationation

As a group of peopleAs a group of peopleAs a group of peopleAs a group of people

(e.g. Putnam, 1983; Whetten and Mackey, 2001)

As a social entityAs a social entityAs a social entityAs a social entity

(e.g. Blumer, 1969; Benjamin and Bronstein, 1987; Swidorski, 1994)

Group identificationGroup identificationGroup identificationGroup identification

(Mael and Tetrick, 1992; Stoel, 2002; Polzer, 2004)

An individual An individual An individual An individual

Brand Community

27

Figure 2: The research model

NOTE.

Ovals represent latent variables, and boxes their indicators (items).

Corporate Identification

Group Identification

Organisational Identification

The company’s values are very similar to my own values

I like to tell everyone that this is my company

I feel that the company’s future is also my own

The company’s image presents me in a good light

I can say that the company’s problems are also my own problems

I feel that the company I work for is a part of me

I proudly wear my company’s logo on my T-shirt or cap

I feel angry when someone talks badly about my company for

I can easily identify with the company I work for

I am proud to be employed in this company

My co-workers and I are a good team

I enjoy interacting with my co-workers

I think of my co-workers as part of who I am

Together with my co-workers we can accomplish more

My co-workers and I are friends in our free time

I see myself as quite different from other co-workers

I see myself as quite similar to other co-workers

In my company co-workers can rely on each other

In this company, members cooperate to complete group tasks

28

Table I: Multi-item scales for organisational identification, with correlation analysis

Items Correlations

CI GI

Corporate identification (mean value = 3.57)

CI1 I feel that the company I work for is a part of me

CI2 I can say that the company’s problems are also my own

problems

CI3 The company’s image presents me in a good light

CI4 I like to tell everyone that this is my company

CI5 The company’s values are very similar to my own values

CI6 I feel that the company’s future is also my own

CI7 I can easily identify with the company I work for

CI8 I proudly wear my company’s logo on my T-shirt or

baseball cap

CI9 I feel angry when someone talks badly about the company

I work for

CI10 I am proud to be employed in this company

0.80

0.71

0.72

0.78

0.78

0.79

0.85

0.74

0.65

0.85

0.37

0.26

0.31

0.30

0.28

0.32

0.42

0.21*

0.26

0.30

Group identification (mean value = 3.60) CI GI

– affective

GIA1 My co-workers and I are a good team

GIA2 I enjoy interacting with my co-workers

GIA3 My co-workers and I are friends in our free time

0.29

0.45

0.26

0.77

0.79

0.68

– cognitive

GIC1 I think of my co-workers as part of who I am

GIC2 I see myself as quite similar to other co-workers

GIC3 I see myself as quite different from other co-workers

0.40

0.12**

0.23

0.77

0.68

0.70

– behavioral

GIB1 Together with my co-workers, we can accomplish more

GIB2 In my company, co-workers can rely on each other

GIB3 In this company, employees cooperate to complete group

tasks

0.26

0.27

0.29

0.56

0.68

0.72

NOTES:

Data relate to primary sample; n = 145.

Mean values on scale from 1 to 5.

Correlations statistically significant at p< 0.01, except when marked * (p< 0.05) or ** (not

statistically significant).

Item correlations measured within the corporate identification scale and between scales.

29

Table II: Factor analysis of group-identification items

Items Factor 1

Cognitive-

affective

identification

Factor 2

Behavioral

identification

GIA1 My co-workers and I are a good team 0.87 -0.08

GIC1 I think of my co-workers as part of who I am 0.75 0.04

GIA3 My co-workers and I are friends in our free time 0.70 -0.08

GIA2 I enjoy interacting with my co-workers 0.68 0.17

GIC2 I see myself as quite similar to other co-workers 0.45 0.22

GIC3 I see myself as quite different from other co-workers 0.41 0.29

GIB1 Together with my co-workers we can accomplish

more.

-0.08 0.73

GIB2 In my company co-workers can rely on each other 0.08 0.72

GIB3 In this company, employees cooperate to complete

group tasks

0.16 0.64

Eigenvalue 4.54 1.09

NOTE. Data relate to primary sample; n = 145.

30

Table III: Factor and reliability analyses of organisational-identification items

Items Factor 1

Corporate

identification

Factor 2

Group

identification

CI10 I am proud to be employed in this company 0.87 -0.05

CI7 I can easily identify with the company I work for 0.82 0.10

CI4 I like to tell everyone that this is my company 0.77 0.01

CI5 Company values are very similar to my own values 0.77 -0.03

CI6 I feel that company’s future is also my own 0.75 0.03

CI1 I feel that the company I work for is a part of me 0.74 0.09

CI8 I proudly wear my company’s logo on my T-shirt or

baseball cap

0.72 -0.09

CI2 I can say that company’s problems are also my own

problems

0.66 -0.01

CI3 The company’s image presents me in a good light 0.66 0.05

CI9 I feel angry when someone talks badly about the

company I work for

0.57 0.03

GIA1 My co-workers and I are a good team -0.01 0.74

GIA2 I enjoy interacting with my co-workers 0.17 0.72

GIC2 I see myself as quite similar to other co-workers -0.18 0.71

GIC1 I think of my co-workers as part of who I am 0.13 0.69

GIB3 In this company, members cooperate to complete group

tasks

0.03 0.67

GIB2 In my company co-workers members can rely on one

each other

0.01 0.66

GIC3 I see myself as quite different from other co-workers -0.04 0.66

GIA3 My co-workers and I are friends in our free time 0.02 0.59

GIB1 Together with my co-workers we can accomplish more 0.08 0.48

Eigenvalue 7.5 3.1

Cronbach’s Alpha 0.92 0.87

NOTE. Data relate to primary sample; n = 145.