The Role of Identity Salience in the Effects of Corporate Social Responsibility on Consumer Behavior

Based on the assumption that consumers will reward firms for their support of social programs, many organizations have adopted corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. Drawing on social identity theory, a model of influence of CSR on loyalty is developed and tested using a sample of real consumers. Results demonstrate that CSR initiatives are linked to stronger loyalty both because the consumer develops a more positive company evaluation, and because one identifies more strongly with the company. Moreover, identity salience is shown to play a crucial role in the influence of CSR initiatives on consumer loyalty when this influence occurs through consumer-company identification. A strong identifier is not necessarily in a constant state of salience, but activating identity salience of a particular consumer social identity (a company) will affect consumer reactions to product stimuli, increasing consumer loyalty.     

The role of corporate identity management in the higher education sector: an exploratory case study

This paper examines the corporate identity concept and presents an empirical test of a corporate identity model in the context of the higher education sector. The various components of corporate identity are investigated and the results are presented in diagrammatic form in the proposed and updated corporate identity taxonomy. A qualitative exploratory approach was taken, comprising in-depth interviews with key informants involved in the implementation of corporate identity at a major UK university. The taxonomy illustrates communication, design, culture, behaviour, structure, industry and strategy as the main components of corporate identity. The study also demonstrates how and where issues of corporate identity are discussed within an organisation and how the results of these discussions are fed into management structure. As with any such exploratory case study, there are limits to the generalisability of the findings. Further research is required to ascertain whether the findings of this study also apply in other settings. The results will be helpful to communication professionals who deal with an organisation’s corporate identity, branding and communication and who aim to enhance the consistency of messages both written and visual within their organisation.     

Communicating With Employees: Building on an Ethical Foundation

The paradigm of work and the formal organizations within which people work are changing. Trends in organizations include less hierarchy, integrated structures, empowered employees, teams and teamwork, labor-management partnerships, and myriad other changes. Underlying all these changes is a new emphasis on values regarding how organizations function. Among the critical organizational functions to which the values framework applies is communication.Most models of internal organizational communication are adaptations of the existing model for communicating externally. These models fall short of what is needed to impact today's employees.The model presented in this paper is based on seventeen years of work in the transformation of large, complex organizations. Comparing classic models and theories of organizations with the characteristics and needs of high performance systems led to the development of a values-based, employee-driven communication model. The model includes a comparison of communication in both kinds of systems in terms of purposes, principles (The Seven Cs), content, and techniques.     

An investigation of the corporate identity construct in China: Managerial evidence from the high technology industry

The study develops and extends existing frameworks of corporate identity and investigates what organisations in China perceive as essential components of the corporate identity concept including their dimensions and contents. The study adopted a qualitative approach and the method of research was a case study. Using the soft-laddering approach, and a multidisciplinary categorisation of analyses of corporate literature and websites, a systematic analysis of the corporate identity was carried out. Different from previous studies, the study reveals new dimensions on the basis of the industry practitioners’ views. The context of China has shown to influence a different focus, more significantly around the ‘impression’ that corporate identity can contribute with commercially. It is suggested that new high-tech firms in China may not have enough experience and capacity to engage in a more holistic corporate identity concept provided. The lack of such experience is particularly likely for new firms, which are still in their early stage of development. Implications for management of corporate identity in China are presented along with directions for further research in the marketing communications literature.     

“I Need You Too!” Corporate Identity Attractiveness for Consumers and The Role of Social Responsibility

The extent to which people identify with an organization is dependent on the attractiveness of the organizational identity, which helps individuals satisfy one or more important self-definitional needs. However, little is known about the antecedents of company identity attractiveness (IA) in a consumer–company context. Drawing on theories of social identity and organizational identification, a model of the antecedents of IA is developed and tested. The findings provide empirical validation of the relationship between IA and corporate associations perceived by consumers. Our results demonstrate that the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) contribution to company IA is much stronger than that of Corporate Ability (CA). This may be linked to increasing competition and of decreasing CA-based variation in the marketplace.     

The end of silence? Qualitative findings on corporate auditory identity from the UK

Sensory dimensions of corporate identity such as auditory identity are nearly absent in academic literature so far. This paper addresses this shortage by presenting qualitative findings from interviews with brand consultants and managers on the nascent topic of auditory identity. Findings include, inter alia, strong support for the construct definition of auditory identity as proposed in this paper. Moreover, factors driving corporate auditory identity management at an organisation are examined. Furthermore, based on the conceptual similarity between visual and auditory identity consequences as perceived by managers are discussed. Moreover, findings addressing type of company, type of business and industry sector are presented. Finally, findings advocating corporate auditory identity as a valid ingredient of corporate identity management are presented and academic and managerial implications are given.     

Visualizing CSR: A visual framing analysis of US multinational companies

The aim of this research study is to investigate how different levels of corporate social responsibility are visually framed through corporate publications used in marketing communications. Photographs used as visual marketing communication tools in the annual and sustainability reports of top American multinational companies that practice and promote measures of corporate social responsibility were analyzed. Findings indicate the corporations overall emphasize environmental sustainability efforts and visually communicate their practices through depictions of employees while other social responsibility efforts are often communicated through depictions of consumers. A discussion on the patterns of visual frames that communicate corporate social responsibility and the impact of visuals on organizational identity, brand image, and reputation are offered.     

Corporate Reputation Through Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Insights From Service Industry Companies

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has gained global awareness in recent years. The proponents of CSR state that a good corporate reputation may be beneficial to an organization. This research paper reviews the theoretical basis of CSR, and by adopting a qualitative methodology examines the characteristics of CSR strategies and CSR communication tactics of eight companies in Cyprus market through personal in-depth interviews. Results reveal that CSR has a positive impact on the company's employees, the environment, stakeholders and the general public, and highlight that CSR is an important ingredient for the success of the organizations in the Cyprus market.     

The Social Identity Approach to Effective Leadership: An Overview and Some Ideas on Cross-Cultural Generalizability

When employees identify with the groups and organizations they work for, this typically has positive implications for work-related attitudes and behaviors. The present paper provides a focused overview of the social identity approach to leadership and some ideas on its cross-cultural generalizability. To this end, we will first outline the basic tenets of the social identity approach and summarize the relations of organizational identification with work-related variables. Then, we will discuss the role of social identity-related concepts for effective leadership. In particular, we will present empirical studies on the following three aspects: (1) the transfer of leader identification onto their followers, (2) the role of leader prototypicality, and (3) the ways for leaders to actively manage the identities of the groups they lead. Finally, we will provide some suggestions on how to implement the principles of identity management into practice and offer suggestions for future research, with a special focus on China.     

A processual theory of green identity formation: the case of young environmentalists in Australia

Using image‐elicited, depth interviews, this qualitative study explores green consumption practices among 20 young environmentalists, aged between 18 and 25 years, in an Australian city with a view to examine how various identity formations reside in their narratives. The study's findings strongly support the applicability of Cherrier and Murray's four‐stage processual theory of identity (sensitization, separation, socialization, striving) to understand young environmentalist's formation of a green identity. The study also develops an emergent processual theory of green identity formation, which encompasses four main stages of control, create, compromise and customize. Each stage corresponds to how the young environmentalists position and negotiate their formative green identities, including first enacting control about their identity; creating their new identity in relation to existing green identity projects; compromising their new identity as it is practiced and socialized in their lives; and finally, customizing their identity as they frame, situate and align personal, social and cultural influences about consumption and their identity. The findings inform green policy makers and institutions working towards building a green consumer society involving young consumers.     

Consumers' Perceptions of Corporate Social Responsibilities: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

Based on a consumer survey conducted in France, Germany, and the U.S., the study investigates consumers' readiness to support socially responsible organizations and examines their evaluations of the economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities of the firm. French and German consumers appear more willing to actively support responsible businesses than their U.S. counterparts. While U.S. consumers value highly corporate eco-nomic responsibilities, French and German consumers are most concerned about businesses conforming with legal and ethical standards. These findings provide useful guidance for the efficient management of social responsibility initiatives across borders and for further academic inquiries.     

Everyday talk and convincing conversations: Utilizing strategic internal communication

When managing organizational identity, great attention is often paid to external stakeholders while internal stakeholders receive far less consideration. However, organizational identity lives somewhat enigmatically at the intersection of the attitudes of all organizational stakeholders, not just those in the external environment. Moreover, employees are positioned to serve as either ambassadors of the organization or as liabilities depending on the way they speak about the organization to those both within and outside their workplace. Employees regularly discuss their work experiences with those outside the organization and frequently do so using social media, potentially reaching large audiences. This article describes the process through which everyday talk within the organization shapes its identity while wielding powerful effects on external perceptions. We highlight several common errors leaders make that promote negative everyday talk, along with suggestions on how to successfully manage identity through strategic communication and managerial processes. We also discuss the theoretical and pragmatic effects of everyday talk.     

Using Video to Build an Organization's Identity and Brand: A Content Analysis of Nonprofit Organizations' YouTube Videos

Organizational scholarship has increasingly focused its attention to how nonprofit, for-profit, and government agencies develop their unique organizational identity through their strategic communication efforts. As social media continues to become more prominent in communication campaigns due to the high levels of public usage and public involvement with organizations on social media sites, it is important to examine these social media messages as they relate to organizational identity. YouTube videos increasingly are being used by organizations to educate and inform just as much as they are to entertain. Through a content analysis of the most viewed videos on the top 100 official nonprofit YouTube channels, this study found that nonprofit organizations primarily use their YouTube videos to inform and educate viewers about their missions, programs, and services. While the videos also occasionally discuss the organizations' advocacy, volunteering, and fundraising efforts, nonprofit organizations were not living up to their potential in terms of engagement through direct appeals for involvement. Additionally, the organizations were more likely to use outsiders' words and stories to build the videos' narratives rather than using internal stakeholders. The benchmark numbers provided by this study reiterate key rules that are stressed in practitioner-oriented work on video production for branding and identity-building efforts.     

An Analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility at Credit Line: A Narrative Approach

This article presents the results of an inductive, interpretive case study. We have adopted a narrative approach to the analysis of organizational processes in order to explore how individuals in a financial institution dealt with relatively novel issues of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The narratives that we reconstruct, which we label ‚idealism and altruism’, ‚economics and expedience’ and ‚ignorance and cynicism’ illustrate how people in the specific organizational context of a bank (‚Credit Line’¹) sought to cope with an attempt at narrative imposition. In particular, our work exemplifies how people in organizations draw on shared discursive resources in order to make sense of themselves and their organizations. We illustrate how many people within the bank found it hard to integrate the normative case for CSR with their version of a narrative identity which had, and continued to be, centred on economic imperatives for new initiatives. Our article demonstrates both the value of the analysis of shared narratives, and represents an attempt to deal adequately with the polyphony of organizational voices, in case studies of CSR. Michael Humphreys graduated with a B.Sc from Leeds University and took MBA and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Nottingham. He is currently an Associate Professor and Reader in organization studies an Nottingham University Business school. His research interests include ethnographic and narrative approaches to organizational identity in both public and private sector organizations. He has published work in a range of journals including: The Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, Organization, British Journal of Management, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, The Journal of Organizational Change Management and Qualitative Inquiry. Andrew D. Brown took his MA at Christ Church, Oxford, and his M.Sc and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Sheffield. He held faculty positions at Manchester Business School, the University of Nottingham and the University of Cambridge, before taking up a Chair in Organization Studies at the University of Bath. His principal research interests are centred on issues of sensemaking, narrative and identity. He has published work in a range of scholarly journals, including Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, and Organization Studies.     

Host Country National Employees’ Prosocial Behavior toward Expatriates in Foreign Subsidiaries: A Common Ingroup Identity Model Perspective

Social categorization is predominately assumed to have negative effects on the prosocial behavior of host country national (HCN) employees toward expatriates in foreign subsidiaries. Challenging this assumption, I draw on the common ingroup identity model to propose that dual identity – simultaneous identification with membership in a subgroup and in a superordinate group – reduces HCNs’ intergroup biases and facilitates prosocial behavior. More specifically, I hypothesize that HCNs’ organizational identity has a moderating effect on the positive relationship between HCNs’ expatriate outgroup categorization and dual identity, such that this relationship is weaker when organizational identity is low. Furthermore, I hypothesize that dual identity mediates the relationship between expatriate outgroup categorization and two prosocial behaviors: information sharing and affiliative citizenship behavior. Results from the data collected from 1,290 HCN employees in Japan provide support for these hypotheses and the moderated mediation model.     

Ethics Codes and Sales Professionals' Perceptions of Their Organizations' Ethical Values

Most large companies and many smaller ones have adopted ethics codes, but the evidence is mixed as to whether they have a positive impact on the behavior of employees. We suggest that one way that ethics codes could contribute to ethical behavior is by influencing the perceptions that employees have about the ethical values of organizations. We examine whether a group of sales professionals in organizations with ethics codes perceive that their organizational context is more supportive of ethical behavior than sales professionals in companies without codes. After accounting for the effect of several covariates, our results indicated that sales professionals employed in organizations with codes of ethics perceived their work environments to have more positive ethical values than did other sales professionals.     

Organizational Sensemaking of Non-ethical Consumer Behavior: Case Study of a French Mutual Insurance Company

Researchers and managers alike are becoming increasingly interested in the topic of unethical consumer behavior. Where most studies view unethical behavior as something that is identifiable per se, the authors of the present article believe that it only exists because it has been constructed by people operating within a specific context. Hence the efforts made by this paper to explore, at the level of one specific organization, how interactions between employees and consumers might lead to the construct of unethical consumers. Based on a case study of France’s AMDM—a mutual insurance company set up to serve a client base comprising motorcyclists—the paper addresses how one group of consumers ends up being categorized as unethical by revealing the existence of a sensemaking process within the target organization. This process develops in three main phases: the nurturing of a shared ethos; the protection of employees’ recognized status; and the demonization of any group of consumers threatening this status. Managers incorporating this sensemaking process can avoid or mitigate the negative effects befalling organizations when these kinds of unethical consumer behavior are constructed.     

Broadening the concept of marketing

Marketing in business is the task of finding and stimulating buyers for a firms's output. Product development, pricing, distribution, and communication are the mainstays of marketing, while progressive firms also develop new products and chart the trends and changes in people's needs and desires. Marketing can either apply its knowledge to social problems and organizations or remain in a narrowly defined business activity. Every organization has basically the same functions: personnel management, production, income, and promotion, which are using modern marketing skills in commercial sectors. Suppliers and consumers are needed by all organizations. In Canada a group wished to promote an antismoking campaign but they had little money compared to the tobacco companies. This group used modern marketing techniques to combat their lack of funds and found many ways, e.g., books, articles. A business firm uses a multitude of marketing tools to sell its product. Nonbusiness organizations frequently do not integrate their programs the way the businesses place all activities under one marketing vice president and department. Astute marketing depends on continuous feedback from consumers and suppliers. They are dependent upon up-to-the-minute research that tells them about changes in the environment and moves of competitors. Nonbusiness organizations are often casual about the research upon which they base their vital decisions.     

How second-generation consumers choose where to shop: A cross-cultural semiotic analysis

Using ethnographic interviews and Greimasian semiotics, this study explores second-generation ethnic consumers’ perceptions of physical shopping environments from a cultural identity perspective. It reveals how second-generation ethnic consumers make decisions about where to shop for cosmetics. The key results reveal the identity dimensions of shopping behaviour that retail stores wanting to target second-generation ethnic consumers must take into consideration.     

The Nature and Management of Ethical Corporate Identity: A Commentary on Corporate Identity,Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethics

In this paper we open up the topic of ethical corporate identity: what we believe to be a new, as well as highly salient, field of inquiry for scholarship in ethics and corporate social responsibility. Taking as our starting point Balmer’s (in Balmer and Greyser, 2002) AC²ID test model of corporate identity – a pragmatic tool of identity management – we explore the specificities of an ethical form of corporate identity. We draw key insights from conceptualizations of corporate social responsibility and stakeholder theory. We argue ethical identity potentially takes us beyond the personification of the corporation. Instead, ethical identity is seen to be formed relationally, between parties, within a community of business and social exchange. Extending the AC²ID test model, we suggest the management of ethical identity requires a more socially, dialogically embedded kind of corporate practice and greater levels of critical reflexivity. John M. T. Balmer is Professor of Corporate Brand/Identity Management at Bradford University School of Management. His research focuses on a range of corporate-level marketing issues and has a particular interest in the management of corporate brands and identities. His work has been published in leading journals such as California Management Review and Long Range Planning. With Stephen Greyser he co-authored Revealing the Corporation (Routledge, 2003). Kyoko Fukukawa is a lecturer in marketing at Bradford University School of Management and holds a Ph.D. from University of Nottingham, UK. Her research interests include ethical decision-making in consumption and business practices; corporate social responsibility (CSR) of MNCs concerning their policies and strategic communication; and CSR and corporate branding. Her publications appear in Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Corporate Citizenship and others. Edmund R. Gray is Professor and Chair in the Department of Management at Loyola Marymount University. He is author or co-author of five textbooks and numerous scholarly articles. He holds a Ph.D. from UCLA. His research interests centre around issues of corporate identity, corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability. Currently, he is conducting research on entrepreneurial firms with environmental/social goals that are an integral part of their mission.