1

Identification with an organisation as a dual construct

Abstract
Purpose To advance understanding of an individuals 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 organisations 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 leaders identification with a company directly influences the extent of

3
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,

5
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 organisations 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

6
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 groups 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 individuals beliefs about the organisation become selfreferent (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

7
of the organisation. Similarly, Siegel and Sisaye (1997) argue that organisational
identification is a coherence between a corporate image and an employees 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

8
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,

9
influenced by communication and explanation of the organisation as a brand (Dutton et al.,
1994; Simes 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 organisations 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 individuals 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

11
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
individuals perception that his or her personal characteristics are consistent with the
companys: 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
behaviouralcognitive 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

12
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).

13
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 countrys 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

14
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 Cronbachs 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 = 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 = 0.85,
whereas the scale reliability for the behavioural items is slightly lower, at = 0.76.
The control sample yielded similar results, the factors explaining 47% of the variance,
and Cronbachs 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

15
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 2= 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

17
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 lowerorder 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

19
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

Community

Organisation
Organisation

Brand

As a group of people

As a social entity

(e.g. Putnam, 1983; Whetten and

Mackey, 2001)

(e.g. Blumer, 1969; Benjamin and

Bronstein, 1987; Swidorski, 1994)

Group identification

Corporate identification

(Mael and Tetrick, 1992; Stoel, 2002;

Polzer, 2004)

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

1997)

An individual

27
Figure 2: The research model

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

I can say that the companys problems are also my own
problems
The companys image presents me in a good light
I like to tell everyone that this is my company
The companys values are very similar to my own values
I feel that the companys future is also my own

Corporate
Identification

I can easily identify with the company I work for

I proudly wear my companys logo on my T-shirt or cap
I feel angry when someone talks badly about my company

for

I am proud to be employed in this company

Organisational
Identification

My co-workers and I are a good team

I enjoy interacting with my co-workers
My co-workers and I are friends in our free time
I think of my co-workers as part of who I am
I see myself as quite similar to other co-workers

Group Identification

I see myself as quite different from other co-workers

Together with my co-workers we can accomplish more
In my company co-workers can rely on each other
In this company, members cooperate to complete group tasks

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

28
Table I: Multi-item scales for organisational identification, with correlation analysis
Items

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 companys problems are also my own
problems
CI3 The companys image presents me in a good light
CI4 I like to tell everyone that this is my company
CI5 The companys values are very similar to my own values
CI6 I feel that the companys future is also my own
CI7 I can easily identify with the company I work for
CI8 I proudly wear my companys 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
Group identification (mean value = 3.60)
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
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

Correlations
CI
GI

0.80
0.71

0.37
0.26

0.72
0.78
0.78
0.79
0.85
0.74

0.31
0.30
0.28
0.32
0.42
0.21*

0.65

0.26

0.85

0.30

CI

GI

0.29
0.45
0.26

0.77
0.79
0.68

0.40
0.12**
0.23

0.77
0.68
0.70

behavioral
GIB1 Together with my co-workers, we can accomplish more
0.26
0.56
GIB2 In my company, co-workers can rely on each other
0.27
0.68
GIB3 In this company, employees cooperate to complete group 0.29
0.72
tasks
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
Cognitiveaffective
identification
0.87
0.75
0.70
0.68
0.45
0.41

Factor 2
Behavioral
identification

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

-0.08

0.73

0.08
0.16

0.72
0.64

Eigenvalue

4.54

1.09

GIA1 My co-workers and I are a good team

GIC1 I think of my co-workers as part of who I am
GIA3 My co-workers and I are friends in our free time
GIA2 I enjoy interacting with my co-workers
GIC2 I see myself as quite similar to other co-workers
GIC3 I see myself as quite different from other co-workers

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

-0.08
0.04
-0.08
0.17
0.22
0.29

30
Table III: Factor and reliability analyses of organisational-identification items
Items

Factor 1
Corporate
identification
0.87
0.82
0.77
0.77
0.75
0.74
0.72

Factor 2
Group
identification
-0.05
0.10
0.01
-0.03
0.03
0.09
-0.09

0.66

-0.01

0.66
0.57

0.05
0.03

-0.01
0.17
-0.18
0.13
0.03

0.74
0.72
0.71
0.69
0.67

0.01

0.66

-0.04
0.02
0.08

0.66
0.59
0.48

Eigenvalue

7.5

3.1

Cronbachs Alpha

0.92

0.87

I am proud to be employed in this company

I can easily identify with the company I work for
I like to tell everyone that this is my company
Company values are very similar to my own values
I feel that companys future is also my own
I feel that the company I work for is a part of me
I proudly wear my companys logo on my T-shirt or
baseball cap
CI2 I can say that companys problems are also my own
problems
CI3 The companys image presents me in a good light
CI9 I feel angry when someone talks badly about the
company I work for
CI10
CI7
CI4
CI5
CI6
CI1
CI8

GIA1 My co-workers and I are a good team

GIA2 I enjoy interacting with my co-workers
GIC2 I see myself as quite similar to other co-workers
GIC1 I think of my co-workers as part of who I am
GIB3 In this company, members cooperate to complete group
tasks
GIB2 In my company co-workers members can rely on one
each other
GIC3 I see myself as quite different from other co-workers
GIA3 My co-workers and I are friends in our free time
GIB1 Together with my co-workers we can accomplish more

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