Organizational Identity in the Digital Era

Abstract

The perception of an organization is largely based on its identity, which determines how it is expected to act. Yet, digital technology often creates situations where organizations experience conflicting demands from different stakeholders. Over time, organizations are therefore forced to take actions that may not be consistent with their identity and mission, and must find ways to pursue multiple -sometimes conflicting -goals simultaneously. Our study examines how organizations frame their identity and discusses how different framings may help addressing different needs while remaining consistent with the initial identity. Our findings allow us to contribute to extant literature by: (1) Identifying differences in the framing of organizational identities with regard to focus on Purpose, Strategic Boundaries, Value Propositions, and Value Statements. (2) Discussing the implications of our findings for the current literature dealing with the "identity-challenging" nature of digital technology. (3) Outlining promising research questions for future research.

Examining the digital organizational identity through content analysis of missions and vision statements of Malaysian and Singaporean SME company websites

“…The involvement of digital platforms has gradually become imperative for firms to comprehend how they can communicate their organizational identity. Past theoretical notions indicate that brand characteristics can be used as living communicative tools to develop organizational identity through the utilization of digital platforms, such as websites (Hund, 2022), social media pages (Robertson et al , 2019) and information platforms (Stone et al , 2017). Recent literature also affirms that a brand's personality substantially affects customer behavior and assists in developing brand associations (Hasrin, 2020).…”

“…Due to the involvement of digital technologies in the development of digital identities, companies must exert greater effort to respond to transformed digital environments (Hund, 2022; Robertson et al , 2019). For example, companies such as Facebook recently presented their vision statements (meta) regarding how they will adjust their identity to cope with changing digital environments.…”

“…Furthermore, the critical inquiry is how the practices of digital communication networks have evolved the means of SMEs to communicate with their main stakeholders. Until now, there has been inadequate understanding of how SMEs manage their identity in the context of divergent needs related to digital technology usage (Hund, 2022; Klein et al , 2021; Vial, 2019). Therefore, more research is needed to clarify successful SME management of mission and vision statements to align their organizational identities in the “identity-challenging landscape of digital technologies” (Grimes et al , 2020).…”