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A perceived misalignment between socially responsible fans and football club management has recently led to a major crisis during the annual meeting in 2021 of Bayern Munich, one of the largest professional football teams in Europe. In an unprecedented scenario, Bayern Munich fans demanded that management drop one of its largest sponsors due to alleged violation of human rights. The goal of this paper is to examine this particular phenomenon, as it not only demonstrates a discrepancy between the social organizational identity and its image, but more importantly, how it impacts legitimation strategies and the fans' loyalty attitudes towards the club.

Using the underlying concepts of legitimacy and loyalty, this conceptual model paper proposes two frameworks for social responsibility in professional football clubs: (1) analyzing how the (mis-)alignment between organizational identity and image impacts fan loyalty and (2) depicting four different types of social responsibility strategies to align organizational identity and image.

The authors identify various theoretical concepts that influence organizational identity and image in and for social responsibility and combine the two critical concepts of legitimacy and loyalty to categorize the social responsibility strategies for professional football clubs.

Both frameworks advance the understanding of the decision-making behind social responsibility strategies and also synthesize the current literature to offer conceptual clarity regarding the varied implications and outcomes linked to the misalignment between organizational identity and image.

This study aims to explore whether expected image outcomes (risk and gain) represent a mechanism through which perceived organizational climates, in the dimensions of tradition and reflexivity, affect key components of the innovation process (idea generation and idea realization).

Structural equation models have been conducted to empirically analyse 3 waves of longitudinal survey data from an Italian military organization (N = 410).

Results confirmed that image outcome expectations mediated the effects of perceived climate on idea generation, and that a serial mediation of image expectations and idea generation those on idea realization. Additionally, reflexivity was directly associated with idea generation.

The findings offer guidance for organizations that aim to strengthen employee-driven innovation, highlighting the importance of organizational climate and image outcomes expectations.

Advancing from existing organizational behaviour and individual innovation literature, this article contributes to extend knowledge about the role of organizational climate and image outcome expectations in enhancing innovative work behaviours.

The implications of multiple organizational identities for branding research have been scarcely considered. This paper aims to explore what sources of identity internal stakeholders use to construct organizational identities and corporate identities, and identify how diversity emerges in the perceived identities across various stakeholders.

The empirical study includes 59 in-depth interviews with internal stakeholders in a business-to-business service company.

Employees may perceive identity diversity as a strategic benefit for the company, and employees may not identify with a uniform corporate identity. The corporate identity could become more identifiable for employees through managerial recognition of different dimensions of identity diversity, such as multiple professional and locational identities.

The study bridges insights between organizational identity and corporate identity and problematizes identity coherence and consistency as strategic principles for corporate branding by proposing an alternative approach guided by identity diversity. Additionally, the study discusses identity diversity-based approaches to internal branding and co-creation in branding.

Among all forms of commitment, affective commitment has been shown to be the most desirable for enterprises. However, research on commitment among employees in family-run businesses in the hospitality industry is scant. To address this gap, this study aims to analyze the impact of employer image components on hospitality employees’ affective occupational commitment within family-run businesses. As one can assume specific employer image aspects when studying family-run businesses, this paper expects to achieve a better understanding of the relationship between employer image and employee commitment in this context.

This study adopts the employer image framework of Baum and Kabst (2013), emphasizing that in addition to considering potential employees, the commitment of current employees needs to be assessed. Convenience sampling is used to obtain a sample from the target population (Tyrolean hospitality and gastronomy employees) from June to September 2018. Multiple linear regression analysis is applied to test the influence of individual employer image constituents on employees’ affective occupational commitment.

Among the five components of the employer image framework applied here, working atmosphere, task attractiveness and payment attractiveness show a significant influence on employees’ affective occupational commitment.

This study connects an existing employer image model to employee commitment within the hospitality industry. The findings suggest that the model is applicable to current employees as a key stakeholder group and shows the utility of employer image theory in connection with employee commitment.

Drawing on the contemporary literature and the theory of employer attractiveness, the authors aimed to examine key antecedents and consequences of employer attractiveness by proposing functional hypotheses and relationships between some endogenous variables.

Using the quota-cum-purposive sampling method, the unit of analysis selected for this study was millennials aged 18–35 years and working in the hospitality, travel, tourism and leisure (HTTL) sectors for the last two years. A total of 218 responses were collected in three months (June–August 2022). The data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

For young employees, company recruitment behaviour, company image and source credibility are significantly and directly related to company attractiveness. The relationship between company image and employee word of mouth (WOM) was significantly positive. Company recruitment behaviour was found to significantly influence employee commitment. Company attractiveness was found to be directly related to young employees' WOM about the company and commitment to it.

The study establishes the significance of company attractiveness because a company's success largely depends on the company's ability to attract and retain a talented and skilled workforce. Moreover, the present study provides much-needed insights to policymakers and regulators that can help the policymakers define and implement favourable policies to promote and protect the country's job market and offer directions to youth employment.

This study aims to take a step toward integrating research regarding the image, role and identity of management accountants by understanding how employers’ perceptions of the ideal management accountant image differ from operational managers’ perceived role expectations, how management accountants perceive their identity and how those factors shape management accountants’ understanding of who they are and want to be.

A qualitative design draws upon the case company’s 100 job advertisements and 31 semi-structured interviews with management accountants and operational managers. Those data are entwined with role theory and its core concepts of expectations and identities and also early recruitment-related theoretical aspects such as image and employer branding.

The findings reveal how employers’ perceptions of the ideal image and operational managers’ role expectations shape and influence the identity of management accountants. However, management accountants distance themselves from a brand image and role expectations. They experience identity conflict between their current and desired identity, the perception of not being able to perform the currently desired role. Although this study presents some possible reasons and explanations, such as employer branding for the misalignment and discrepancy between perceptions of employer (image), expectations of operational managers (role) and management accountants’ self-conception of the role (identity), this study argues that the identity of a management accountant results from organizational aspects of image and role and individual aspects of identity.

Image and external role expectations can challenge identity construction and also serve as a source of conflict and frustration; thus, a more comprehensive approach to studying the identity of management accountants is necessary to understand what contributes to the fragility of their identity.

The results provide an understanding of the dynamics of the image, role and identity to support management accountants and employers and to further address the suggested dissonance and ambiguities.

This study contributes by showing how the dynamics and connections between the image, role and identity influence the identity construction of management accountants. Moreover, this study shows how overpromising as a part of employer branding might not reflect the reality experienced by management accountants but may cause frustration and threaten the management accountants’ identity.

This study adopts the popular culture lens to investigate the collective understanding behind the human resources (HR) occupations.

The empirical study analyzes 129 characters from 87 movies, television (TV) series, books and comics. The measurement model was tested using structural equation modeling and cluster analysis identified five HR representations in the popular culture.

Popular culture reflects five HR representations: The Executor, the Hero, the Buddy, the Bore, and the Good-time person. Results suggest that public opinion pays scarce attention to the so-called HR “strategic position” while underlining the need for a more socially responsible HR approach.

The authors' study serves as a means for integrating past research on HR role and reputation, occupational image, self-identity and popular media. While most scholars have addressed popular culture as a single case and paid almost no attention to the HR domain, this article complements the literature by offering a fruitful way to distil HR summative popular culture representations, thus advocating for both a theoretical and a methodological contribution.

The study aims to investigate the usage of diversity and inclusion (D&I) signals in communications for employer branding through digital channels made by European companies.

A quali-quantitative content analysis approach was employed to detect the usage of D&I signals of the top 43 European companies ranked in the 2021 Refinitiv Diversity and Inclusion index. These signals were organized according to Plummer's Big 8 diversity's dimensions. A correlation analysis was conducted to verify a relationship between D&I initiatives and digital communication for employer branding on corporate websites and LinkedIn. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the D&I dimensions' pervasiveness in digital communications and relevance on LinkedIn.

The results show that the correlation exists only between D&I initiatives and communication on the corporate website, while LinkedIn is still underused in this field. The most pervasive and relevant D&I dimensions for European companies are “Gender” and “Sexual Orientation”.

This paper enriches employer branding research by providing original insights into the use of D&I dimensions in digital communications.

Considering the significance of the human resource management (HRM) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) relationship, the aim of this research is twofold: first is to measure the cultural differences between HRM, CSR and sustainable performance relationship (study 1) and second is to identify the how HRM instigates CSR and sustainable performance (study 2) in the hospitality industry of UK and Pakistan.

A mixed-method approach was used to collect the qualitative and quantitative data from upscale hotels. In Study 1, a multi-respondent and time-lagged strategy was employed to collect the data from 162 Pakistani and 290 UK upscale hotels. In Study 2, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted to understand the HRM–CSR–performance nexus.

The results of Study 1 highlight the significant cultural differences in the relationships of HRM–CSR–performance, while Study 2 explains that ethical culture, shared objectives, transparency, training and development, and economic incentives are the factors that push the employees to take part in CSR-related activities and attaining higher sustainable performance.

This study addresses the debate on the difference between cross-cultural studies related to implementing Western theories in shaping, developing and implementing business strategies, including CSR, HRM and sustainable performance in an Asian context.

This study introduces three variables related to brands that have the potential to enhance university students' advocacy intentions. The research explores how university brand identification, the perceived prestige of the university brand and the social benefits associated with the university brand impact students' advocacy intentions. Additionally, the study examines the moderating role of gender in these relationships.

Cross-sectional surveys of 326 undergraduate students enrolled in a Spanish university, and structural equation modeling was used to test and validate the conceptual model.

The findings from the structural equation modeling indicate that university brand identification, perceived university brand prestige and university brand social benefits significantly influence students' advocacy intentions. Furthermore, the multigroup analysis reveals a gender difference in the factors influencing advocacy intentions. Female students demonstrate significance in all three antecedents, whereas male students only show significance in university brand identification and perceived university brand prestige.

The current study's findings provide several insights for higher education institutions in developing enduring and committed relationships with their students.

This study offers relevant insights into the body of research on university branding, explaining the students' advocacy intentions through the variables of university brand identification, perceived university brand prestige and university brand social benefits. Also, this study is a novelty in introducing empirical evidence for the importance of the moderating role of students' gender.