This study examines how a negative organizational image influences organizational identification among prestigious professionals working in a low-prestige organization. A communicative perspective on identification is used to illustrate previously unexplored processes of cynical distancing and shifts in identification targets as ways for business professionals to cope with discrepancies between the organizational identity and the organizational image. These concurrent processes allow professionals successfully to diminish the potentially harmful impact of the negative image on their well-being and their positive work identity. On this basis, the article questions the assumption that the organizational image plays a pivotal role in impelling collective identity change process, as the findings here suggest that the business professionals’ communicative acts may uphold the negative organizational image.
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