Institutional image: a case study

Abstract

Examines the concept of institutional (university) image from a cultural studies approach and from a quantitative perspective. Building on these and other research findings, posits that multiple changing images exist within each individual and that these images are affected by certain factors. Examines university image from an external stakeholder perspective, based on a telephone survey study of respondents from across the university’s home state. The results confirm multi‐image conceptualization of the university setting and, importantly, examine the factors – personal, environmental, and organizational – that give rise to the multiple image concept. Complementing much corporate image research that views image(s) as primarily controlled by the organization, these findings suggest that corporate image, considered also as a receiver‐oriented and audience‐specific construct, can vary as a function of other, external, determining factors but that organizational factors are, nevertheless, very influential factors for one’s decision making about image.