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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.

The purpose of this study is to employ the collage technique, an unstructured qualitative association instrument, with respect to place branding initiatives and to uncover internal stakeholders' perceptions of the region or destination.

The first part presents a general framework of brand and destination branding in the field of tourism research. The empirical study was carried out in selected Alpine tourism destinations. In the first stage the authors identified the main representatives of stakeholders in two Austrian tourism destinations. In the second, the collage technique was used to obtain stakeholders' perceptions of the tourism destination brand.

The findings reveal that different internal stakeholders trace different perceptions of tourism places and illustrate the importance of using the collage as a technique to explore the various identities of a place.

It is argued that internal destination stakeholders do not share the same brand perception of the destination brand and they do not share a common identity, which is communicated through the destination management organisations (DMOs). However, more research is needed to support these findings as the study is limited by its sample size and focus on the Alpine region of Tyrol, Austria.

The results suggest that DMOs should establish better identities within their destination. In particular, they must consider that the collage is a very important technique in communicating the desired brand identity to internal destination stakeholders.

This paper seeks to clarify the effectiveness of the collage method as a tool to measure stakeholders' identities of selected tourism destinations. The paper demonstrates the importance of employing different association methods (word or picture) in recognizing stakeholders' knowledge and opinions of destinations as a primary step in analyzing stakeholders' brand identity perception.

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 aims to explore the key elements and dynamic formation mechanisms involved in the company identity construction during multicompany identification.

This study adopted a longitudinal single case study method, selected a representative company as the study case and analyzed the interactive practice of identity construction between the company and its external stakeholders based on the theory of organizational identity and sensemaking.

This study finds that the process of company identity construction for external stakeholders involves six elements. Companies mainly use a highly controlled, equality and interaction model to develop identity for a single stakeholder. Company identity is based on the company’s core identity claims and is formed by gradually integrating and cooperating with the identity claims of different stakeholders. Meeting the self-defining needs of stakeholders is a key driving force behind the evolution of company identity.

This study offers practical implications for companies to pursue and construct multicompany identity. For different types of external stakeholders, companies can adopt different identity sensemaking models. To build a new company identity, a company needs to do more on the basis of identity insights to break cognitive constraints and build new identity claim. Companies need to integrate new identity claims with the original identity claims. If different identity claims conflict or are difficult to reconcile, it may damage their original identity claims and companies need to evaluate the trade-offs.

This study expands the concept of company identity construction from the individual perspective to organizational identity and contributes to research in relationship marketing. This study identifies the key elements of company identity construction with multistakeholder participation and contributes to theory building in company identity research. The results of this study reveal the company identity construction mechanism for different external stakeholders and the dynamic formation process of multicompany identity.

This paper aims to introduce a new integrated strategic framework entitled, “The corporate identity, total corporate communications, stakeholders’ attributed identities, identifications and behaviours continuum” and elucidates the central and strategic importance of corporate identity apropos corporate communications, corporate image, attributed stakeholder identifications and resultant behaviours. The strategic importance of corporate identity is noted. The continuum incorporates a variety of disciplinary/theoretical perspectives.

The paper/framework is informed by corporate marketing and strategic perspectives; legal theory of the firm; social identity branch theories; and stakeholder theory. The effects and management of corporate identity are seen as a continuum. The framework accommodates Tagiuri’s (1982) scholarship on corporate identity.

This paper formally introduces and explicates “The corporate identity, total corporate communications, stakeholders’ attributed identities, identifications and behaviours continuum”. Corporate identity management is an on-going strategic senior management/strategic requisite. Notably, the legal theory of company law – routinely overlooked – and its impact on corporate identity management is accepted, acknowledged and accommodated. The importance of stakeholders and stakeholder identification (a derivative of social identity theory) is underscored.

Via the explication of the continuum, managers can comprehend the nature and importance of corporate identity; appreciate that corporate identity adaptation/change is on-going; comprehend its interface/s with corporate communications, stakeholder attributed identities, identifications and the business environment; understand the need for on-going fidelity to an institution’s legally based core purposes and corporate identity traits (juridical identity); cognise the efficacy of constant stakeholder and environmental analysis. Corporate identity sustainability requires corporate identity to be advantageous, beneficial, critical, differentiating and effectual. Stakeholder prioritisation is not solely dependent on power, legitimacy and urgency but on legality, efficacy, ethicality and temporality.

The resultant framework/approach, therefore, aims to make a meaningful advance on the territory and, moreover, seeks to be of utility to scholars and practitioners of corporate marketing, strategy and company law. Arguably, therefore, the framework is more ambitious than extant framework on the domain. The resultant framework/approach, therefore, aims to make a meaningful advance on the territory and seeks to be of utility to scholars and practitioners of corporate identity, communications, images, identification, stakeholder theory, company law and, importantly, corporate strategy.

Drawing on theories of organisational identity, social exchange and stakeholder engagement, this study aims to investigate the processes and practices involved in the formation and shaping of identities of social enterprises (SEs) that operate in the Malawian hospitality and tourism industry.

Drawing on an interpretive research paradigm, data collected from 22 semi-structured interviews with four founders of case SEs and stakeholders, and SEs’ reports and other publicly available documents were generated and analysed following a grounded theory approach.

The authors show that the trajectory SEs followed and the exchanges that occurred with the external stakeholders allowed three out of four case SEs to swiftly re-evaluate their pre-existing identities and work towards the formation of their new identities.

This study provides an opportunity for policymakers and other actors in developing countries to frame and place SEs in line with the wider societal realities in such contexts. This may in turn call for policymakers to increase actors’ engagement with SEs and provide the necessary support that can allow SEs to be an effective force for the public good.

This paper highlights the role of exchanges with external stakeholders in identity formation and shaping within SEs in the hospitality and tourism sector in the context of institutional voids. By adopting the social exchange theory, this paper introduces a dynamic lens to identity formation and shaping and helps to explain how, across different tourism ventures, stakeholder engagement and different modes of exchange unfold in the inter-organisational and community domains. It further shows how the ventures’ value orientations on the one hand, and stakeholder engagement practices and the ensuing exchanges, on the other hand, are closely interwoven.

This conceptual article’s primary aim is to identify the significant stakeholders of the digital identity system (DIS) and then highlight the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on each of the identified stakeholders. It also recommends vital points that could be considered by policymakers while developing technology-related policies for effective DIS.

This article uses stakeholder methodology and design theory (DT) as a primary theoretical lens along with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) as a sub-theory. This article is based on the analysis of existing literature that mainly comprises academic literature, official reports, white papers and publicly available domain experts’ interviews.

The study identified six significant stakeholders, i.e. government, citizens, infrastructure providers, identity providers (IdP), judiciary and relying parties (RPs) of the DIS from the secondary data. Also, the role of IdP becomes insignificant in the context of AI-enabled digital identity systems (AIeDIS). The findings depict that AIeDIS can positively impact the DIS stakeholders by solving a range of problems such as identity theft, unauthorised access and credential misuse, and will also open a possibility of new ways to empower all the stakeholders.

The study is based on secondary data and has considered DIS stakeholders from a generic perspective. Incorporating expert opinion and empirical validation of the hypothesis could derive more specific and context-aware insights.

The study could facilitate stakeholders to enrich further their understanding and significance of developing sustainable and future-ready DIS by highlighting the impact of AI on the digital identity ecosystem.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this article is the first of its kind that has used stakeholder theory, DT and IDT to explain the design and developmental phenomenon of AIeDIS. A list of six significant stakeholders of DIS, i.e. government, citizens, infrastructure providers, IdP, judiciary and RP, is identified through comprehensive literature analysis.

The main issue of stakeholders’ inclusion nowadays is the establishment of relationships between policy actors and creation of a supportive environment for stakeholder participation to allow a straightforward stakeholder inclusion with a meaningful contribution to policy making. The concept of a collective identity describing how shared values, shared activities and a shared identity lead to social cohesion between a large number of people, could suggest a hint for stakeholder empowerment. We argue that a proper inclusion leads towards empowerment of stakeholders only where efforts to build collective identity are allocated. Otherwise, stakeholder inclusion is only about static participatory governance where knowledge collection predominates over knowledge sharing and co-production. The goal of the present chapter is to trace formal governance networks as a participatory governance mechanism and analyse stakeholder perspectives to be empowered to act in a formal governance network presuming that the network structure creates an environment where a collective identity is being built.

The formal governance networks of 2013 led by the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Economy and Ministry of Education and Science were reconstructed on the bases of documents available in the organisations. The structure of the governance networks of 2013 is analysed as a precondition for an organisational collective identity to form.

The structure of the governance networks leads us to the conclusion that stakeholders are expected to be knowledge providers instead of being knowledge co-producers.

The networks demonstrate that the process of sharing knowledge and values is not recognised as an important element of participatory groups and efforts made to build a collective identity are too scarce.

This study aims to review family business branding research, elaborate a new framework integrating family business branding and corporate brand management literature and finally identify future research directions.

A bibliometric analysis was conducted to present the main research topics within family business branding.

The contributions of this study are threefold. First, this study maps the main themes of family business branding research and highlights its fragmented nature. Second, this study proposes an overarching framework based on signaling theory, attempts to bridge the family business branding and corporate brand management literature and provides a lead for future research. Third, this study stresses the role of brand construct in family business branding.

This study represents an important step in the identification of a new theoretical framework that best fits the investigation of family business branding.