The Friend, the Influencer, the Lawyer: a Qualitative Case Study of IKEA’s Identity Expressions on Facebook

Abstract: With the increased loss of control over the organizational identity (OrI) in social media, research has started to encourage organizations to hand over control of the OrI to the creation and distribution of stakeholders. This has created challenges for the strategic communicator in managing the OrI internally, as the employees adapt to the OrI in the mind of the stakeholder rather than the OrI set by the dominant coalition. In order to provide new knowledge on how to remain in some control over the organizational identity in social media, and indirectly control the organizational identity in the mind of the employees, this case study has sought to understand how “external third-party stakeholders” make sense of IKEA’s expressed OrI. Through qualitative focus group interviews with IKEA stakeholders born between 1950–2000, the participants discussed their interpretations of conversations between IKEA and their stakeholders on Facebook. Through the lens of social constructivism, a thematic analysis was conducted on the empirical material retrieved from the focus groups, using impression management theory and sensemaking theory. One of the study's results suggests that when the organization express a response to their stakeholders that “the external third-party stakeholder” interpret as a diverting manoeuvre, they create a story to understand the identity expression. A process that risks creating an image far from the organization’s original intention, hence, their control. The study concluded that in order to remain in control over the OrI on Facebook, the medium should be managed by a communication practitioner in a strategic role.