Stakeholder Perspectives on Organizational Identity: Searching for a Relationship Approach

This paper discusses the substantial difference for practice in the current models of organizational identity, which consider directly and indirectly the looking-glass process of organizational identity. The paper pinpoints that some models represent a first useful step for an analysis of external interpretations of organizations and that others represent an in-depth view of external images with consequences for the organization. Examples of the usefulness of the models are developed as they are re-read in the light of three different approaches to stakeholder theory which provide an understanding of the different levels of analysis of stakeholders' external interpretations of the organization: the broad, the narrow a priori and the narrow situational. An exploration of the interrelations between identity and stakeholder fields is therefore provided.