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The purpose of this paper is to conceptually develop and empirically test a model according to which a crisis leads to a greater reputational damage when it is highly relevant to the firm’s organizational identity or highly relevant to stakeholders’ identity.

A total of 299 participants based in the USA were recruited online using the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform. The study uses a 2 (relevance of crisis to organizational identity: low vs high) × 2 (relevance of crisis to stakeholders’ identity: low vs high) between-subjects experimental design.

The results confirm the hypotheses that an organizational crisis leads to greater reputational damage when it is highly relevant to the firm’s organizational identity or when it is highly relevant to stakeholders’ identity. No significant interaction between the two variables was found.

Future research could focus on further elaborating on how the two identity-related variables tested in this paper interact with other variables that have already been studied for moderating the effects of crises on reputation damage.

The paper reaffirms the deep interconnection between identity, stakeholders and reputation. Concretely, the results of the study suggest an informative way of mapping the degree to which risks or issues could potentially damage organizational reputation.

The paper contributes to the literature by providing a more situational understanding of how the same exact crisis can damage the reputation of organizations differently. By doing so, the paper opens several new avenues for future research.

This paper presents the results of exploratory research aimed at understanding how firms operating in regional clusters use the clusters' collective identity in their external communication and combine it with the communication of their individual identity. In particular, the paper aims to detect different behaviors among different types of firms.

A quantitative exploratory content analysis is performed on the websites of the wineries of the Franciacorta wine cluster (Italy). A two‐step cluster analysis is used to identify differences in identity communications.

The results suggest the existence of two groups manifesting different patterns of identity communication. Larger firms communicate their individual identity through symbols, but they consistently communicate collective values. The other group (on average smaller firms, but including some of the biggest) seems to exploit collective identity symbols, without giving prominence to collective values.

This study provides an understanding of how companies communicate collective symbols and values promoted by cooperative institutions; this understanding can be beneficial for future developments of collective branding projects.

This research contributes to broadening the debate on cluster identity as a strategic resource by adopting a communication perspective as well as providing empirical data on how different types of clusters' firms actually combine a collective cluster's identity and their firm's identity to shape their external image.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a method by which to audit winemakers' communication of regional wine brands and to illustrate the method's conceptual basis through its empirical application to the Swiss wine Merlot Ticino.

The audit is comprised of two parts: one captures producers' intentions regarding the communication of the regional wine brand while the other determines what wineries actually convey through their formal communications. Data about intentions were collected through qualitative interviews and a survey of producers, while data on what wineries convey was based on a content analysis of wineries' communication materials.

The application of the audit to the brand Merlot Ticino shows that the proposed method provides several insights into the brand's personality, possible gaps between producers' intentions and actual communications, the potential target of the communication, the level of consistency of communication content and style, and the expressiveness of wineries in communicating the regional wine brands.

The content analysis adopted in this research focuses on formal communications issued by wineries. Adding oral contents and consumer perceptions would considerably improve the audit tool.

This paper provides winemaking regions with a useful tool with which to determine the effectiveness of their brand projections in the collective promotion of their regional wine brands. The paper is of value for academic research because it illustrates that results may be obtained in the wine brand field using methods traditionally used in corporate communication research, like projective techniques and communications audits.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a picture of the practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication among the top 300 companies in Switzerland and to investigate how favorable the cultural context is for this kind of communication.

The investigation of the top 300 companies in Switzerland was conducted using a written survey that built on previous studies.

CSR communication in Switzerland appears to be well developed, but still has broad margins for development. Examples are provided on how to improve CSR communication. Such improvements should be relatively easy to implement since Switzerland, it is argued, appears to be open to CSR communication.

The investigation considered only the communication objectives toward a limited range of stakeholders, such as clients, shareholders, and employees. The survey was conducted among the top 300 companies in Switzerland; these companies are not necessarily representative of the whole Swiss business community.

The paper describes the elements that should be considered in order to develop an effective CSR communication. These elements are synergies between issues, objectives, and channels; criteria for a credible social report; the exploitation of the potentialities of CSR advertising and the web; and the understanding of the national context where the organization is operating.

This paper focuses on CSR communication, an area that has received limited attention in CSR research. Organizations may find interesting hints on how to develop effective CSR communication.