Identity, Image, and Brand

This chapter highlights how organizational images and efforts to manage those images through branding influence the identities of individuals within organizations. The authors discuss the ways in which individuals’ identity projects are regulated, challenged, or supported by images and brands. They argue that identity is a particularly important concept for understanding organizing in today’s ‘brand society’, with individuals’ identities intertwined with corporate efforts of branding. Managing distinct and attractive images at both the collective and individual levels means that less prestigious, even stigmatized images may be important identity threats that impact individuals’ processes of identity work. The authors examine how previous literature has theorized the interplay between individual identity, image, and branding, arguing that the implications of branding for individuals’ construction of identity in organizations must be assessed critically.