Organizational Symbolism: A Multi-dimensional Conceptualization

Organizational symbolism was a new and exciting topic of management research 15 to 20 years ago. After experiencing a period of much attention from both researchers and practitioners, the topic seemed to fall out of favor. Over the past ten years, there have been few studies devoted to symbolism. I believe this may be due in part to the lack of a cohesive conceptualization. Approaches to the topic were so diverse that they appeared to be studying totally different concepts. In an effort to re-invigorate attention to organizational symbolism, I present a comprehensive framework to guide future studies. It is my hope that providing this integrative framework will encourage richer, more complex, and more relevant conceptual and empirical work on organizational symbolism.