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An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article.
Introduction
Corporate identity has attracted a lot of academic and managerial attention, although debate continues about how corporate identity can be modeled. This paper shows how a model of corporate identity, which has academic rigor and managerial relevance, was developed and assessed.
Corporate identity is an important concept because it demonstrates corporate ethos, aims and values, and presents a sense of individuality that can help differentiate an organization from its competitors ([27] Hatch and Schultz, 1997). According to [61] Zinkhan et al. (2001, p. 154), corporate identity represents "the ways a company chooses to identity itself to all the publics" as "what an organization is". Corporate identity can be viewed as a vehicle by which a company's character is conveyed to different audiences ([21] Erikson, 1960).
Literature review
A lack of consensus in defining a standardized corporate identity construct has led to confusion in determining the corporate identity context ([38] Melewar and Jenkins, 2002) and its management. The need for an indepth analysis to decode the essence of corporate identity construct and its derivates ([16] Cornelissen and Elving, 2003) urged academics and practitioners to deeply scrutinize the concept. Recent findings and studies regarding the dimensions of corporate identity transmitted the first signs of convergence among researchers ([45] Otubajo and Melewar, 2007).
The existing various models that have advanced knowledge about forming and managing corporate identity offered a number of diverse approaches and perspectives that have led to questions about each model's capabilities and limitations.
More specifically, [31] Kennedy (1977) introduced a conceptual model of the image formation process accompanied by empirical research. The main focus of this model is how the company image is formed. The model declares the importance of employees in the process of company image formation.
[11] Bernstein (1984) introduced the spider web method, which was designed to reveal the company's desired corporate identity. This method investigates the views of senior management to reveal the key attributes of the organization's identity. This is a qualitative technique based on a group discussion with top management, communication managers and one or more representatives of the organization's departments. The entire process involves all the participants completing a form...