Corporate Identity Congruence: A meanings-based analysis

This paper introduces the five-dimensional concept of Corporate Identity Congruence. Companies sometimes create complex identities involving multiple meanings, that may not work well together, and unknowingly send mixed messages to stakeholders. Failure to evaluate corporate identity congruency creates the risk of internal and external misalignment. The authors draw upon interpretations from 153 interviews with company senior managers, onsite observations and hundreds of documents from 124 companies in seven countries within a grounded theory study. The new conceptualization of Corporate Identity Congruence includes congruence of corporate identity meanings within one top manager's mind, alignment between several top managers' perceptions, cohesion among a set of elements/signals, correspondence between meanings and signals, and consistency of meanings and signals over time. This paper suggests that one corporate identity can contain multiple meanings so the overall corporate identity congruity must be holistically analyzed. Moreover, this study suggests incongruity does not always need to be avoided.