Who are the Others? A Stakeholder Approach to Organizational Image and its Congruence with Identity

Organizational image can be defined as the manner in which the members of an organization believe that other people view the organization. We propose a stakeholder approach to the study of organizational image and clarify who are the others that the definition makes reference. In addition, we examine the relationship among the organizational images (construed by managers around a set of key stakeholders), organizational identity, goal congruence, and company identification using a sample of 192 CEOs of Italian firms. We hypothesized that goal congruence mediates the relationship of identity and images with identification. Our results extend previous research by providing a fine-grained approach to the study of organizational images and clarifying how congruent identity and images foster organizational identification.