Organizational Mechanisms Underlying Positive Community Identity and Reputation

Do Local Communities Still Matter? .......................................................... 463 Community Identity and Reputation ......................................................... 466 How Local Corporations Contribute to Positive Community Identity and Reputation ................................................................................ 468

Local Corporations and Social Infrastructure: Th e Hardware of Positive Community Identity and Reputation ...................................... 469 Local Corporations and Citizen Involvement: Th e Soft ware of Positive Community Identity and Reputation .......................................472

Conclusions and Implications for Th eory and Practice ............................474 Acknowledgments ..........................................................................................475 References ........................................................................................................475

Why does civic and public commitment thrive in some communities and wither in others? Why has Minneapolis-St. Paul come to be known for the civic spirit of its populace, whereas Silicon Valley has cultivated an identity as the home of the “cyber stingy?” In this chapter we propose that local corporations and nonprofi ts play an essential role in the development and maintenance of such community identities and reputations and that once developed, these intertwined processes have a self-reinforcing function. Communities become known for being more or less desirable places, which serves as an internal signal to shape the behaviors of existing corporations, and further, an external signal to attract new fi rms and residents (Marquis, Glynn, & Davis, 2007). Having a positive identity and

reputation yields many benefi ts, yet because these processes are complex and durable, community identity and reputation may be resistant to purposeful change. In this chapter we discuss how geographical communities and their identities and reputation still matter in a globalized corporate world, focusing on some of the organizational mechanisms underlying positive community processes.