Alignment dynamics of organizational identity and public perception in the context of major crisis and digitalization

The key purpose of this study is to evaluate how major crisis impacts the social construction of organizational identify and what strategies are applied in order to re-establish a balance between organizational identity and public perception. Special emphasis is put on the role of digital media in this process.



Organizational identity is a well-established concept in organizational and management science. It is understood to be dynamic and socially constructed in interactions within the organization and its environment. In addition, any organization is embedded in a certain context of stakeholders such as governmental organizations, media, suppliers and competitors. Taking into consideration an organization’s identity those stakeholder create their own image of the organization. A natural balance between organizational identity and public perception can be seriously disrupted in the wake of major crisis putting the very existence of the organization at risk. As a consequence, realignment of organizational identity and public perception has to be achieved by appropriate intervention strategies. Digital media play an increasing important role in this alignment dynamics in the era of the internet. This research project has the following three objectives:

• First, the dynamics of organizational identify and public perception will be unveiled.
• Second, intervention strategies and their effectiveness will be assessed.
• Third, the role of digital media in this process will be scrutinized.