Brewing a Craft Impression: A Multilevel Study About the Orchestration of Organizational Impression Management Through Authenticity

Abstract

Organizations face the tricky challenge of portraying a coherent appearance of identity to make an authentic impression on their audiences. This study argues that authenticity is a cross-level mechanism through which organizations and their individual members orchestrate a coherent impression. A qualitative investigation revealed how five Canadian craft breweries claimed authenticity in their formal images by referencing a collective organizational identity in the environment. These claims were authenticated by external audiences and by individual organizational members. Two distinctly organizational forms of authentication expressed by individuals were (1) consensus about facets of organizational identity that mirrored the institutional authenticity claim as a party line and (2) role claims about leaders and employees, each comprising behavior scripts that corroborated the organization’s authenticity claim. The two forms of authentication also supported authentic leadership in the organization and contributed to an orchestrated appearance by linking institutional and individual impression management.