The organization is a cultural reality that is built, transmitted and reflected through communication, however, there is another concept that is closely related to these terms: identity.
Carolina de la Torre explains that identity occurs at the level of representations, where the subject constantly participates in the interaction of his subjectivity and the phenomena of the environment. It involves attitudes and behaviors, giving them a criterion of existence based on differentiation.
The author uses the terms of selfhood and self-image when characterizing identity: selfhood as the essence of being (whose characteristics define and differentiate it from the rest) and self-image as self-awareness.
Other authors conceive it as an internal image (images or representations, instead of the social, of oneself).
The image -in this case institutional or corporate- is the introjection that different members of society have about an institution, how they see it, constituted by the set of ideas, beliefs and impressions that social subjects have about such an institution.
The prestigious Spanish author Justo Villafañe refers to three dimensions of this corporate image: self-image (the one that internal audiences have of themselves), intentional image (the one that the entity builds and wants to project on the basis of its corporate identity), and public image (built by external publics in relation to the company).
Each social, individual and collective subject has an identity as self-consciousness -built in its interaction with others- in a system of social relations of which it is an expression; Sharing, weaving stories, transforming and transforming and therefore in constant change and contradiction, says Professor Elba Leyva.
"Human groups - says de la Torre - tend to develop common elements and form social identities. Its members include in their self-concept relative representations, derived from their group membership, and the members recognize themselves as members of a certain entity ”.
Identity is to the organization what the personality is to the individual, since like people, organizations from birth play roles and are incorporated into physical and symbolic spaces that help them shape it in interrelation with the environment. It constitutes the set of features and attributes that define its essence, according to Justo Villafañe, or the set of attributes assumed as its own by the institution, in the opinion of Norberto Chávez.
These attributes erect a speech, which Pascale Weil classifies into four types:
- Of sovereignty: I say who I am. The identification of the company by its category and superiority of the activity: I say what I do and how I do it. The trade, the know-how of the vocation: I say for whom I do it. The spirit of service, the benefit that the recipient and the worker obtain From the relationship: I say both what I do and what this allows me to do. The company's commitment and its desire to establish a pact with the recipient (internal and external community)
Chávez proposes an analysis of institutional communication from the melting pot of all the meanings - denoted or connoted, verbal or nonverbal - that refer to the identity of the institution. And it is that the institutional identity is expressed in each and every one of the messages and communicative acts, even when its objective is not to directly transmit the identifying discourse.
The institution becomes, from this point of view, a significant territory that speaks of itself and self-symbolizes through its regions.
In his book Corporate Identity and company strategy: 25 practical cases Joan Costa searches for assets that in their basic relationship are later projected on the minds of external audiences as the image of the institution, stating that "technical or functional doing corresponds to technical culture; specialization and cultural doing, corporate culture, identity. And both ways of doing, plus ways of communicating what is done, constitute the corporate image, which is the imaginary extension in the public of identity ”.
Hence, the term cultural identity is coined as one of the seven vectors of business identity, along with the name (verbal identity), logo, graphic symbolism, color identity, identity scenarios (corporate architecture) and objective indicators.
Costa understands cultural identity as cultural signs or significant elements of a given business culture that define a style, its own and unequivocal way of global behavior, the way of being and doing of a company before society. In it the behavioral signs are significant: acts, actions, the behavior of the company… that indicate a global and stable behavior, a way of behavior or a way of doing, reacting, proceeding, revealing a character or style of its own.
Once a structured human group acquires an identity, it constitutes a reality. The organization has its own perception of this reality, so that each of its components, when perceiving itself and the other members, forms its own representation of the organization. This is the global corporate identity, which is supported by two important categories: culture and communication.
Let's see the interrelation of these factors:
Based on the institutional reality, the members of the organization gradually begin to build values, share meanings, beliefs and basic assumptions that are manifested through attitudes, specific ways of relating, languages, rites and legends that form a base that allows them organize and maintain coherence and cohesion in their relationships and with the mission and business projects.
Of course, the creation of an organizational culture is not a matter of a day, the values, assumptions, interpretations, meanings are strengthened and modified, in some cases they even change. Institutional identity begins to emerge among the complicated interweaves of culture, not only insofar as it determines the ways of doing and a style in the company, but rather in the result of the sum with the subsystem that makes up the identity visual of the institution, subsystem that greatly favors the coherence, strength and integration of the whole.
Now, none of this would be possible without business communication, the axis of the shaping of institutional culture, identity and image. It is communication at its different levels -and not only understood as a transmitter of information- that allows interaction between members of the organization, in order to shape the corporate culture. It is communication, in its broadest sense, that makes the company's assets visible; through it the development of culture produces the necessary attributes for the creation of identity.
As the corporate identity is communicated and the exchange of experiences and perceptions between the institution and its external publics come into play, they create the institutional image: simplified expression in the collective consciousness of the identity attributes of the organization.
An important psychological repercussion of work activity refers to identity. Through his work, man is linked to the world and, by transforming it, appropriates it; in turn, the world we work on gives us an image of ourselves. When work allows us to recognize ourselves in our work and the image we receive is positive, feelings of self-esteem develop, our sense of identity (personal and collective), of internal coherence and continuity is enriched.
Hence Villafañe affirms: “From my point of view, the culture of a group is its identity once the influences of the environment have been metabolized, especially those influences that have operated in the process of adaptation to said medium; This core of culture is the communicable area of the group's identity. But also, it has explicit, visible… conscious behaviors; These cultural manifestations are also part of the culture and together with personality (…) and corporate behavior, constitute the visible area of the company's identity. ”
In addition to being, identity works. His work is semiotic, a work of production of senses, constituting a felt need for roots and belonging, participation and self-realization, which is expressed in the forms of human action that give meaning and continuity, which does not imply immobility, but on the contrary, evolution, change and development as an expression of the contradictions that are overcome. Thus it forms a system of values, a memory reproduced and renewed every day.
For this reason, without the identity base that underlies the dynamics of the company, culture would simply be an organizational, functional matter, since, considering identity information as the constant reworking and enrichment of cultural elements, identity is consciousness of belonging to a culture.
Bibliography and notes:
1. De la Torre, Carolina. "Identity and Identities". Issues Magazine # 28 January-March, 2002, In the URL http: //temas.cubaresearch,info/
2. Mental constructions that the subject consciously performs around traditions, stories, ways of life, motivations, beliefs, values, customs, etc.
3. Villafañe, Justo. Positive image: Strategic management of the image of companies. Ediciones Pirámide SA, Madrid, 1993.
4. Leyva Barciela, Elba. Organizational identity and culture. DICT. Uh University of Havana Magazine. No.259, 2004. In the URL www.dict.uh.cu/rev_uh_2004_no259.asp
5. Carolina de la Torre.Op. Cit.
6. Justo Villafañe. Op. Cit
7. Chávez, Norberto. The corporate image. Editorial G. Gili. Barcelona, 1988.
8. Pascale Weil. Institutional Communication: A shift in legitimacy. At the URL
9. Chávez, Norberto. Op. Cit.
10. Justo Villafañe. Op. Cit.
