Examining the group-level effects of corporate identity cues on organisational identification and role behaviours

Abstract

Corporate identity cues – the information that amongst other things reflects the central, enduring and distinctive attributes of the organisation that comprise its corporate identity – help influence the psychological bond of identification that employees have with their organisations. Organisational identification in turn affects the job-specific in-role and additional voluntary extra-role behaviours that employees practice within and towards their organisations that can influence its success. Corporate identity research has mostly addressed corporate identity cues as manifestations of the communications, behaviour and symbolism of the organisation. Despite being part of the many pieces of information that employees store in memory about their organisations which provide insights into their interpretations of and responses to the corporate identity (i.e., their member organisational associations), considerably less attention has been directed towards examining these cues from this perspective. Consequently, it is unclear which of these manifestations, or types, of corporate identity cues affect organisational identification and its subsequent influence on role behaviours, or whether these effects are constant across the organisation and under different conditions. This study contributes to building understanding of the manifestations and effects of corporate identity cues on organisational identification and its influence on role behaviours, by examining empirically this relationship at the aggregate and subgroup level. Its underlying premise is that to evaluate sufficiently the effects of corporate identity cues, these cues must also be considered from the member organisational associations perspective. The findings of this mixed methods study show a significant relationship between corporate identity cues derived from member organisational associations, organisational identification and role behaviours, and that the cues that influence organisational identification vary according to organisational levels and conditions. This points to the strategic importance and value of examining periodically corporate identity cues drawn from member organisational associations.