Some organizations are highly visible in the media. This media coverage informs employees about others’ perceptions of their organization. Consequently, perceived visibility may be related to how employees think about their organization and how they construe organizational identity. This study empirically tests this proposition. It therefore combines aspects of Hatch & Schultz’ model of organizational identity dynamics with mediatization to understand to what extent employees are sensitive toward their environment when forming an organizational identity. In two online surveys comparing employees’ (N = 109) and a representative sample of citizens’ (N = 1417) views on a highly visible Dutch public organization from the crime sector, we disentangle the identity-reputation process considering the role of perceived media impact. We further compare identity perceptions of two intraorganizational sub-groups. We find that citizens view the organization more positively than employees, which points to a misalignment between employees’ and citizens’ perceptions of the organization. In one of the two organizational sub-groups, the findings show that the larger the misalignment between construed reputation (how do employees think that citizens perceive their organization?) and actual reputation (how do citizens in fact perceive the organization?), the weaker employees’ perception of identity. Furthermore, employees appear to be sensitive toward the media coverage of their organization and citizens’ reputation perceptions. Yet, this environmental sensitivity does not impact on their organizational identity. We interpret this as a resilient identity, which represents the maneuvering of employees between their organizational identity perception (what they perceive as central, distinct, and enduring) and external stakeholders’ (i.e., the media, citizens) perceptions of the organization that over time positively distinguishes what the organization is and will remain.

有些组织在媒体上非常引人注目。这种媒体报道让员工了解其他人对其组织的看法。因此，感知可见性可能与员工如何看待他们的组织以及他们如何解释组织身份有关。本研究通过实证检验了这一命题。因此，它将 Hatch & Schultz 组织身份动态模型的各个方面与媒体化相结合，以了解员工在形成组织身份时对其环境的敏感程度。在两项在线调查中，比较了员工（N = 109）和代表性公民样本（N  = 1417）对犯罪部门中一个高度可见的荷兰公共组织的看法，我们考虑到感知媒体的作用，理清了身份声誉过程影响。我们进一步比较两个组织内子群体的身份认知。我们发现，公民对组织的看法比员工更积极，这表明员工和公民对组织的看法存在偏差。在两个组织子群体之一中，研究结果表明，解释声誉（员工如何看待公民如何看待他们的组织？）和实际声誉（公民实际上如何看待组织？）之间的偏差越大，就越弱。员工对身份的认知。此外，员工似乎对其组织的媒体报道和公民的声誉认知很敏感。然而，这种环境敏感性并不影响他们的组织身份。我们将其解释为弹性身份，它代表员工在组织身份认知（他们认为是核心的、独特的和持久的）和外部利益相关者（即媒体、公民）对组织的认知之间的操纵，随着时间的推移，积极区分组织是什么以及将继续存在。