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How organisational image affects

employee attitudes
Olivier Herrbach and Karim Mignonac
Université des Sciences Sociales, Toulouse, France
Human Resource Management Journal, Vol 14, no 4, 2004, pages 76-88

Organisational image has mostly been studied using an external perspective focused
on strategy and marketing issues. Given its salience in employees’ symbolic
environment, however, image may also have internal as well as external
consequences. Yet, the potential impact of image on internal HR aspects has received
only pminimal interest from researchers. This article presents the results of a study
that explored the impact of perceived external prestige (PEP) on three individual
outcomes: job satisfaction, affective organisational commitment and affective well-
being at work. It is based on a survey of 527 French managers. The findings show that
all individual outcomes are related to PEP. Moreover, it was found that the impact of
corporate image on some of the outcomes was stronger for individuals working in
sales/marketing than for other employees.
Contact: Olivier Herrbach, LIRHE, Université des Sciences Sociales, 31042
Toulouse Cedex, France. Email: herrbach@univ-tlse1.fr

atch and Schultz (1997) argue that in the current business environment the

H boundary between the internal and external aspects of contemporary

corporations is breaking down because of the increased interactions between
organisational members and external actors. In this context, organisational identity
should be viewed as a bridge between the external position of the organisation in
the marketplace and its internal environment. It serves as a symbolic framework
interpreted both by outsiders to form meanings about the company and by
organisational members to infer their own individual identity.
The perception of an organisation’s identity from the outside is captured by
the notion of organisational image – ie the externally produced symbols and
interpretations made by outsiders about the company (Whetten and Mackey, 2002).
An organisation’s image exerts a direct influence over its external stakeholders such
as clients, suppliers, shareholders etc. However, it also indirectly influences internal
stakeholders, particularly the employees, through their perception of how outsiders
view the organisation (Bird et al, 1989). As stated by Hatch and Schultz (1997: 361),
‘Who we are is reflected in what we are doing and how others interpret who we are
and what we are doing’.
As a result, corporate image should be of growing interest not only to marketing
and strategy professionals but also for HRM purposes. Three major reasons account
for this relevance of corporate image to HR professionals. First, research has shown
that companies are more likely to attract quality applicants if they convey to them a
positive image (eg Cable and Graham, 2000; Greening and Turban, 2000). Next,
organisational image could be helpful not only in attracting, but also in retaining,
employees. Although this possibility has received less attention, image may have an
impact on both organisational and personal factors in the classical models of

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Olivier Herrbach and Karim Mignonac

turnover (Carmeli and Freund, 2002). Last, organisational image is likely to

influence employee attitudes and behaviour in the workplace through its salience in
individuals’ symbolic environment.
The development of internal communications practices (for instance, those that are
embodied in the notion of ‘internal marketing’) are evidence that companies are trying
to build on image effects internally. However, such attempts may prove more difficult
to manage than is commonly believed (Meijs, 2002). Moreover, the alleged beneficial
impact of image on employee attitudes and behaviour is still to be empirically
demonstrated. While research has shown that organisational image influences
organisational identification (Smidts et al, 2001), there has been only slight evidence
for the influence of image on other individual outcomes. To our knowledge, only two
studies (Carmeli and Freund, 2002; Riordan et al, 1997) have attempted to link
organisational image to a wider array of variables including job satisfaction, turnover
intentions, organisational commitment and organisational citizenship behaviour.
Therefore, this topic is clearly worthy of further inquiry as the positive impact of a
corporation’s image seems to be more taken for granted than demonstrated.
This article presents the result of a study that has attempted to link corporate
image, operationalised through the notion of perceived external prestige, to three
individual outcomes: job satisfaction, affective organisational commitment and
affective states at work. These variables were selected because research has shown
their influence on several important HR outcomes such as motivation, performance
and turnover. The research was based on a questionnaire survey of a sample of 527
French managers. This sample was further divided into two sub-samples to test a
potential differentiated impact of corporate image: a sales/marketing sub-sample
and a non-sales/marketing sub-sample. The rationale for this distinction is
elaborated on below.

CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATION AND HYPOTHESES

Perceived external prestige

This research uses the notion of perceived external prestige (PEP) to account for
organisational members’ perception of their company’s image. PEP, also called
‘construed external image’ (Dutton et al, 1994), is a concept describing the way
members interpret and assess their organisation’s reputation based on their exposure to
information about the organisation. Therefore, whereas organisational image refers to
outsiders’ beliefs about an organisation, PEP refers to members’ own views of
outsiders’ beliefs (Mael and Ashforth, 1992). In this research PEP is assumed to be
related to several beneficial outcomes: job satisfaction, affective organisational
commitment and pleasant affective states at work. The theoretical argument for
including each of these variables is now outlined.

Job satisfaction
Following the most recent approach of the satisfaction construct, job satisfaction is
conceptualised here as ‘a positive (or negative) evaluative judgment one makes with
regard to one’s job or job situation’ (Weiss, 2002) – and therefore as an evaluation and
not as affect. Extrinsic satisfaction is derived from the evaluation of the rewards
bestowed on the individual by peers, superiors or the organisation, which can take the
form of recognition, status, compensation, advancement and so forth. Intrinsic
satisfaction is derived from evaluating the perceived rewards of actually performing

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the work and experiencing feelings of accomplishment, self-actualisation or identity

with the tasks. PEP is assumed to have an influence on extrinsic satisfaction, because a
good reputation provides the individual with the symbolic rewards of organisational
membership. On the other hand, as intrinsic satisfaction is related to the work
performed in itself and not to the organisation, it is assumed that PEP does not
influence it. We therefore stated the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1: PEP is positively related to extrinsic job satisfaction.

Affective organisational commitment

Organisational commitment is traditionally defined as ‘a strong belief in, and
acceptance of, an organisation’s goals, willingness to exert considerable effort on
behalf of the organisation, and a strong desire to maintain membership in the
organisation’ (Mowday et al, 1979). It has been associated with various beneficial
individual and organisational outcomes (Mathieu and Zajac, 1990; Meyer et al, 2002).
The current view of organisational commitment is that it is a multi-dimensional
construct with three components: affective, continuance and normative. Since affective
commitment is based on the individual’s identification with the organisation – ie on
deriving at least part of one’s identity from belonging to the organisation (Meyer and
Herscovitch, 2001) – it is hypothesised that PEP has an impact on the level of affective
commitment of an employee: a positive image favours commitment through
identification, while a negative image may prevent commitment because the
employee cannot boost his or her self-image through membership in a valued
organisation. The following hypothesis was therefore tested:

Hypothesis 2: PEP is positively related to affective organisational commitment.

Affective well-being at work

Work is more and more considered as an affective experience that both generates
emotional states and is influenced by them (Brief and Weiss, 2002). Organisational
image is likely to generate pleasant affective states for three major reasons. First, in
coherence with Affective Events Theory (Weiss and Cropanzano, 1996), a positive
image can lead to events that generate pleasant affective states. For instance, meeting
an external party who appreciates the reputation of the company, seeing an
advertisement, or reading favourably about the company in the newspaper are events
leading to pleasant affect for organisational members. In that sense, as two outcomes
of ‘actual’ corporate image, PEP and affective states should be related. Secondly,
perceived external prestige has been shown to be positively related to the strength of
individuals’ organisational identification (Smidts et al, 2001), which is likely to
generate pleasant affect through its role in self-esteem (Ellemers et al, 2002). Thirdly,
there is evidence that stronger organisational identification favours more cooperative
behaviour among colleagues (Bergami and Bagozzi, 2000; Dukerich et al, 2002), which
further leads to pleasant affect. We therefore stated the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3: PEP is positively related to experiencing pleasant affective states at work.

Sales/marketing versus non-sales/marketing managers

A further aim of this study was to find evidence of a differentiated effect of corporate
image on sales/marketing managers versus other managers. The rationale for this
differentiated impact is twofold. First, sales and marketing people’s boundary-

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spanning jobs make them particularly aware of, and dependent on, their company’s
image. For marketing managers, the impact of image has been shown to influence not
only marketing outcomes but also the marketing process itself (eg Weiss et al, 1999). As
for sales professionals, they have evolved from short-term ‘transaction-oriented
sellers’ to long-term ‘relationship managers’ (Sharma, 2001). As such, their company’s
image becomes all the more relevant. Secondly, the personal characteristics of
managers working in sales/marketing may be different from those of other managers.
For instance, Soyer et al (1999) showed that individuals working in sales, as well as
those previously employed in sales, were on average more narcissistic and had
stronger needs for achievement than individuals who never held a sales job. We feel
that this could make them more sensitive to their company’s image. The following
hypothesis was therefore tested:

Hypothesis 4: The influence of PEP is stronger for sales/marketing than for non-sales/
marketing individuals.

METHOD

Sample and data collection procedure

A questionnaire was mailed to 1,500 French managers. These individuals were recent
(<10 years) business graduates of two educational institutions: one Parisian university
and one provincial university. The collection process was anonymous. Eventually, 527
usable questionnaires were returned. Subtracting 59 questionnaires that were returned
undelivered due to change of address, a response rate of 36.6 per cent was achieved.
Mean age of the respondents was 32 years, and 50 per cent of the sample was female.
About two-thirds of the respondents were employed in service companies (retailing,
banking, consulting etc) and the remainder in industrial companies. The
sales/marketing sub-sample size was 229, and the other sub-sample contained 298.
The major functional areas of the latter sub-sample were accounting, finance and
general management.

Measures
Existing, established scales were used in measuring the research constructs. Because
the study was conducted in French, measures developed in English were taken from
previous published studies that translated them into French using a standard
translation/back translation procedure: we relied on the work of LIRHE researchers
(Neveu, 1996; Roussel, 1996) and on the Geneva Emotion Research Group for the
emotional variables (Scherer, 1988). The measure of PEP used in this study was based
on Mael and Ashforth’s (1992) organisational prestige scale that has six items with
five-point disagree/agree scales (sample item: ‘People in my community think highly
of my company’). This instrument generated a unitary factor structure and had a good
degree of internal reliability (alpha = .86).
Job satisfaction was measured by the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ,
Weiss et al, 1977). We used the short form of this instrument, which is recognised for
its validity and widely used in international research. Moreover, in terms of
coherence with our evaluative approach of satisfaction, the MSQ has been shown to
be the most ‘cognitive’ (ie affect-free) measure of job satisfaction (Brief and
Roberson, 1989). The instrument evaluates satisfaction with 20 job aspects using
five-point scales. Weiss et al (1977) suggest that the MSQ may be viewed as two

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separate sub-scales measuring extrinsic satisfaction and intrinsic satisfaction.

Extrinsic job satisfaction was therefore measured as a sub-scale of the MSQ
consisting of six items (alpha = .72), while intrinsic satisfaction was evaluated as a
sub-scale consisting of 12 items (alpha = .83).
Organisational commitment was assessed with the instrument developed by Meyer
et al (1993). This has been widely used in academic research, and consists of three
components. In this study only the affective component of organisational commitment
was used; it was measured by six items with five-point scales. A sample item is: ‘I do
not feel emotionally attached to this organisation’ (reversed). The internal reliability
coefficient of the instrument was .80.
Affective states at work were measured using the Job-related Affective Well-
being Scale (JAWS) developed by Van Katwyck et al (2000). The JAWS is a 30-item
instrument designed to assess people’s emotional reactions to their job. Each item is
an emotion, and respondents were asked how often they had experienced each of
them at work over the previous 30 days (1 = ‘Never ’; 2 = ‘Occasionally’; 3 =
‘Sometimes’; 4 = ‘Often’; 5 = ‘Very often’). The one-month period was selected
because of the potential retrospection difficulties when using longer time frames.
The French words were taken from the list validated by the Geneva Emotion
Research Group (Scherer, 1988), which was specifically developed for intercultural
research on emotions to ensure correct denotational and connotational meanings in
different languages. As the JAWS has items that reflect both pleasant and
unpleasant emotions, the unpleasant emotion items were reverse scored before
combining them with the oppositely worded items to generate a total pleasantness
score for each individual.
Next, respondents were asked to indicate their gender, age, organisational tenure
and the size of their organisation. Positive and negative affectivity were also used as
control variables in the multiple regression analyses. Positive affectivity refers to the
disposition of individuals towards feeling good in life, while negative affectivity
refers to the dispositional tendency to experience negative emotions across
situations and time (Watson et al, 1988). They were included in the study because of
their potential bias and substantive influences in self-report studies (Munz et al,
1996), and were measured using two three-item scales taken from the
Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire, an instrument that has been shown to
demonstrate good convergent and discriminate validity in relation to other variables
(Watson, 1988). The internal reliability coefficients for positive and negative
affectivity were both .62.

RESULTS

The descriptive statistics and correlations among the study variables are presented in
Table 1. Preliminary findings confirm the expected correlations between PEP and
extrinsic job satisfaction (r = .38), affective organisational commitment (r = .22) and
affective well-being (r = .30). Although it was not expected, intrinsic job satisfaction
was also significantly correlated with PEP (r = .21). The size of the correlation
coefficients suggested no problem of multicollinearity. Among the control variables,
only company size was correlated with PEP.
Table 2 next presents the hierarchical regression analyses predicting the outcome
variables using PEP. The initial equation regressed the outcome variables on the
control variables. Affectivity variables were found to be significant in predicting all
dependent variables, thus providing support to the influence of dispositional

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 TABLE 1 Descriptive statistics, intercorrelations and reliability coefficients (N = 527)

Variable Range Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

76-88 herrbach/mignonac

1. Occupation a 1-2 1.57 .50 –

4/10/04

2. Age 23-61 32.01 5.73 -.01 –

3. Gender b 1-2 1.50 .50 .04 -.26** –

4. Organisational tenure 1-27 4.36 3.99 .01 .57** -.06 –

11:20 pm

5. Size c 1-3 2.76 .55 -.11* -.05 -.04 .12** –

6. Positive affectivity 1-5 3.63 .68 -.11** -.12** .23** -.10* -.01 (.62)

7. Negative affectivity 1-5 2.73 .88 -.00 -.04 .16* .02 -.05 -.09* (.62)
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8. Extrinsic satisfaction 1-5 3.29 .64 .19** -.15** -.02 -.04 .09* .13** -.18** (.72)

9. Intrinsic satisfaction 1-5 3.76 .59 .08 .05 .02 .03 -.06 .14** -.19** .40** (.83)

10. Affective commitment 1-5 2.93 .88 -.05 .12** -.07 .28** -.08 .13** -.01 .29** .29** (.80)

11. Affective well-being 1-5 3.45 .55 .05 .12** -.07 .10* .01 .26** -.44** .47** .52** .39** (.92)

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 14 NO 4, 2004

12. Perceived external prestige 1-5 3.76 .75 .08 -.03 -.02 .04 .14** .07 -.08 .38** .21** .22** .30** (.86)

* p < .05
** p < .01
a 1 = sales/marketing, 2 = other
b 1 = male, 2 = female
c 1 = small, 2 = medium, 3= large

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TABLE 2 Multiple regression analyses predicting outcome variables

Extrinsic Intrinsic Affective Affective

satisfaction satisfaction commitment well-being

Step 1: control variables

Occupation (A) .21*** .10* -.04 .08*
Age -.19*** .03 -.09 .07
Gender -.08 .02 -.12** -.04
Tenure .07 .04 .35*** .09
Size .08 -.07 -.13** -.01
Positive affectivity .13* .13** .18*** .25***
Negative affectivity -.17*** -.19*** .00 -.42***
R2 change .12*** .07*** .13*** .27***

Step 2: main effect

Perceived external prestige (B) .33*** .20*** .23*** .25**
R2 change .11*** .04** .05*** .06***

Step 3: interaction effect

Ax B -.50* -.16 .08 -.50*
R2 change .01* .00 .00 .01*
Adjusted R2 .22 .09 .16 .33
F-value 17.47*** 6.66*** 12.29*** 29.36***

* p < .05
** p < .01
*** p < .001
Coefficients are standardised betas

characteristics on individual outcomes (eg Judge and Hulin, 1993). In the second step,
PEP was added, and in the third step the interaction term (PEP x occupation). The
results show evidence of a main effect of PEP on extrinsic satisfaction (beta = .33),
affective commitment (beta = .23) and affective well-being (beta = .25). Hypotheses 1,
2 and 3 were therefore validated. PEP also had a main effect on intrinsic satisfaction
(beta = .20).
The fourth hypothesis required an examination of the PEP x occupation interaction.
As shown in the regression results, the interaction term had a significant contribution
to extrinsic satisfaction (beta = -.50) and affective well-being at work (beta = -.50). This
shows that sales/marketing respondents were different with respect to two of the
three outcomes, therefore supporting hypothesis 4. In order better to grasp the impact
of this interaction, both dependent variables were regressed on PEP for the two
occupational groups. Table 3 provides the results of the analyses.
The standardised regression coefficients appeared to be larger for the
sales/marketing sample, both for extrinsic satisfaction (beta = .43 vs beta = .26) and for
affective well-being (beta = .31 vs beta = .18). This confirms the results of the
moderated regression analysis in that an increment in PEP seems to be followed by a
larger increase in extrinsic satisfaction and affective well-being for sales/marketing
people compared with other respondents.

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Table 3 Sub-sample-based multiple regression analyses

Extrinsic Extrinsic Affective Affective

satisfaction satisfaction well-being well-being
Sales/marketing Other Sales/marketing Other

Step 1: control variables

Age -.09 -.26*** .02 .14*
Gender -.07 -.09 -.02 -.06
Tenure -.01 .12 .05 .09
Size .20** .00 .10 -.09
Positive affectivity .11 .16** .19** .31***
Negative affectivity -.19** -.17** -.47*** -.39***
R2 change .10*** .10*** .28*** .30***

Step 2: main effect

Perceived external prestige .43*** .26*** .31*** .18***
R2 change .17*** .06*** .09*** .03***
Adjusted R2 .25 .15 .34 .32
F-value 11.69*** 8.22*** 17.68*** 20.63***

* p < .05
** p < .01
*** p < .001
Coefficients are standardised betas

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

These results provide evidence of the relationship between organisational image and
employee outcomes. PEP was found to be related to job satisfaction, affective
organisational commitment and affective well-being at work. Our work therefore
confirms the two previous articles that have studied this topic, while extending the
findings to both a larger and more diverse population. Indeed, whereas Riordan et al
(1997) based their study on 174 employees from one small US electric utility company,
and Carmeli and Freund (2002) on a sample of 195 lawyers in Israel, this study used a
larger sample of 527 management-level employees working in different private-sector
organisations. We also tested a differentiated impact of PEP for sales/marketing
people versus other managers and found that it was partially supported. This
supports the contention that, although relevant for all management-level employees,
image issues seem to be stronger for this category.
The impact of PEP on individual outcomes can be interpreted in two ways. First, to
the extent that individuals identify with a group out of a need for self-categorisation
and a need for self-enhancement (Smidts et al, 2001), members can feel pride in
belonging to a community that enjoys social prestige; they can, at least in part,
base their identity on organisational membership. This brings about individuals’
commitment to the organisation, since they want to pursue their association with it in
order to maintain the benefits for their own identities. It also leads to a higher
frequency of pleasant affective states at work.

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From a more evaluative point of view, the appraisal employees make of the
extrinsic value of their job takes into account the image of the corporation. A strong
PEP is therefore likely to lead to extrinsic job satisfaction. In addition, this study has
shown the significance of the relationship between PEP and intrinsic job satisfaction. A
strong PEP therefore not only leads to more extrinsic satisfaction, but also promotes a
more positive perception of one’s own job. In other words, it could be that when
outsiders perceive a company positively, this has a positive influence on how its
employees perceive working within the company. In that sense, PEP could act as a
cognitive bias in the evaluative process on which satisfaction is based. Another
explanation could be that a strong PEP brings about pleasant affect, which in turn
generates a perceptual bias with a constructive influence on how individuals evaluate
their work: an employee high in pleasant affect may selectively perceive the most
favourable aspects of a job, thereby increasing his or her job satisfaction (Weiss, 2002).
Next, our study found evidence of a differentiated impact of PEP according to the
occupation of the respondents. There are at least two possible explanations for this.
First, as the most ‘status-conscious’ sub-sample, sales and marketing people could be
more sensitive to the effect of their company’s image. In that case, the stronger impact
of PEP for this category is further evidence of how people can use their company’s
prestige to generate job satisfaction. The second explanation could be that a more
prestigious company makes sales and marketing people’s jobs easier in dealing with
external stakeholders, thereby having a ‘direct’ impact on their experiences through
the beneficial impact of their company’s image on their actual work, work conditions
and perceived rewards. In particular, it is easier to sell their products if the firm has a
positive image. Therefore, the added impact and explanatory power of PEP on job
satisfaction and pleasant affective states for the sales/marketing sub-sample versus
the other sub-sample could be due to what is added above and beyond the ‘indirect’
identity effect of a positive image. The boundary-spanning dimension inherent in
sales/marketing roles may also have made PEP more salient and thus more influential
than for other occupational groups.
This interpretation is coherent with the findings for organisational commitment. It
has to be recalled, indeed, that a differentiated impact of PEP was not found for
organisational commitment. This result is interesting in that it could be evidence of the
‘deep’ nature of organisational commitment compared with the more ‘situated’ nature
of job satisfaction (Rousseau, 1998). As stated by this author, ‘deep’ processes alter
individuals’ mental models of self in enduring ways through continuous identification
in an organisation, which brings about commitment. This process is probably more
independent from occupational status than a ‘situated’ process such as job satisfaction
which arises from immediate environmental stimuli.
While we found evidence for the relevance of organisational image for HR
purposes, some caution in interpreting the results is warranted since there are
limitations to the present study’s findings. First, we cannot completely rule out the
presence of bias due to common method – ie having used a self-evaluation instrument
that might have influenced the strength of the relationships between our constructs.
Indeed, when measures are single source, and data is collected at the same time, there
may be a risk of over-estimating the correlations between constructs (Podsakoff et al,
2003). However, the focus of our study was on individuals’ perceptions (ie how they
respond to the reality they see, or socially construct), so that the influence of using a
percept-percept research methodology is not necessarily problematic (Crampton and
Wagner, 1994). As argued by Spector (1994), this design is useful in providing a picture
of how people feel about and view their jobs.

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Another limitation of this study is that the direction of the PEP-outcome

relationship could be questioned. We postulated that perceived external image
influences individual outcomes, but the reverse could also be argued – ie commitment
or other outcomes could lead to perceiving that one’s organisation has a positive
image. Also, it could be possible that the observed relationships are a result of their
relationship with another variable, especially with ‘actual’ reputation. Indeed, if a firm
has a good reputation, this is likely to make people’s job more comfortable, especially
for sales/marketing people. This in turn influences both the respondents’ experiences
and their perceptions of the external image of the company. More elaborate research
designs should be used in future studies to tackle these shortcomings and to expand
our knowledge about this understudied topic.
Despite its limitations, however, we feel that this research has several managerial
implications. First, it has provided evidence of the interrelations between external and
internal stakeholders. Not only are external groups’ images of the organisation
influenced by the images that employees project, but external groups also influence
employees’ experiences through the feedback they provide. As already suggested by
Hatch and Schultz (1997), this breakdown of the internal-external boundary means
that management should increasingly communicate internally about organisational
strategy in reference to external constituencies. In other words, managing
organisational identity to derive HR benefits must take into account the external
image, as well as the specific ways employees perceive it.
Corporate identity can, however, never be wholly managed (Meijs, 2002). It, too, is
a result of complex processes involving how organisational members interpret, enact
and respond to the deliberate creation of a corporate identity by management, and
how they construct their sense of identity in ways that lie outside management’s
influence (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002). In that respect, an important issue that
deserves to be highlighted is the fact that organisations need to project consistent
images to their internal and external stakeholders. Given the interrelations between
insiders and outsiders, incongruence between what is projected outwards and what is
fed back into the organisation is likely to generate problems. For instance, concerning
communication tools such as value, vision or mission statements, some authors have
stressed their possible irrelevance when they are disconnected from the daily
experiences of employees (Murphy and Davey, 2002). Openly espoused values that
are considered by employees as merely ‘cosmetic’ may even backfire and breed
cynicism, because they do not match the deeply rooted norms of the company.
Likewise, concerning the internal consequences of advertising, Gilly and Wolfinbarger
(1998) suggest three qualities that employees use in their evaluations of organisational
advertisements: accuracy, value congruence and effectiveness.
Last, this study about the effect of corporate image should also be a reminder that,
despite radical changes in today’s business environment and the challenges they pose
to the possibility of worker identification, identification mechanisms continue to be
present in the workplace. Given the pervasive human need to identify with the social
system of which one is a part, individuals may still have a strong desire to believe that
they are a part of the settings in which they work – as argued by Rousseau (1998), this
is ‘why workers still identify with organisations’. Companies should be aware that
tying employees’ identity to their employer, and reaping the benefits of this, is easier if
the employer is perceived to be worthy of it.

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