Organizational Identity Formation: Processes of Identity Imprinting and Enactment in the Dutch Microbrewing Landscape1

On the basis of a qualitative study of fifty-nine recently founded Dutch microbreweries, we develop a conceptual model of organizational identity formation. We employ old institutionalism as a theoretical lens to integrate several prior findings concerning the potential sources of organizational identity, such as (a) the identities of authoritative organizational insiders, (b) the preferences and judgments of organizational audiences, and (c) the identities of organizational peers. Each of these sources is shown to critically influence the two most central identity formation processes: the initial imprinting of potential identity attributes upon organizations, and the subsequent enactment of a selection of these by organizational insiders.