Enduring or discrete? Organizational identity construction on social media

Abstract

Purpose

Digital transformation impacts not only what organizations do and how they do it but also how they are perceived. Differently from prior research on digital transformation, our study focuses on organizational identity to understand how professional service construes their digital organizational identity.

Design/methodology/approach

We purposefully select top 25 largest law firms operating in Poland, collect a dataset of 768 posts and examine this social media content first by coding, next by thematically structuring and finally through a frequency analysis. We identify the target stakeholders, the values, the social media awareness and topical coverage used by the firms in our sample.

Findings

We find that social media are used to engage both with external and internal stakeholders. Importantly, digital organizational identity construction on social media is a scattered and discrete process as compared to long-term, sustained and enduring processes observable for offline organizational identity.

Originality/value

Our findings have vast ramifications for organizational identity theorizing and substantial managerial implications. We provide guidance on adequately shaping digital transformation through the lens of a digital identity professional service firms need to purposefully create.