ABSTRACT
A statement of organizational identity provides an answer to the question: “Who are we?”; an answer that will indicate what is of distinctiveness, centrality, and temporal continuity for an organization (Albert and Whetten, 1985). Statements of identity are strongly influenced by the preferences of powerholders, who have the responsibility to answer the identity question. Typically, these powerholders are the top managers of the organization (Ashforth and Mael, 1996; Barney et al., 1998; Gioia and Thomas, 1996; Scott and Lane, 2000) who have the authority to speak on its behalf. In general, top managers are in the best position to elaborate on the attributes that define an organization since they are the agents charged with the responsibility to define its course. Management’s definition of the organization is communicated to different audiences; in Soenen and Moingeon’s (2002) five-facet framework, this is the facet of identity described as projected.
