The impact of identifying with one's organization has been linked positively with commitment (Carmelli, Gillat, & Weisberg, 2006), social capital (Carmelli, 2007), and citizenship behaviors (Carmelli, 2005). Extant literature has also examined the extent to which factors, impact organizational identification. These impacts include perceived external prestige (e.g. Carmelli et al., 2006). Notably, in higher education, this perception of prestige has been impacted by athletics when football success was linked with perceived academic prestige of an institution by external stakeholders (Goidel & Hamilton, 2006). No research, however, has looked at the connection between organizational identification and perceived organizational prestige, and the role of athletics success, from an internal perspective.
The benefits of students identifying with their university are framed around the Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), where individuals possess the ability to construct self, and group, identities, constantly creating and maintaining their existence. Essential to this maintenance, is the creation of in-groups and out-groups that are the core of these identities. In line with identity research, organizational identity has been found to play a salient role in member behavior (Ashforth & Mael, 1989). That is, the greater an organization can get its members i.e. employees, workers, students, alumni, etc. to identify with the organization, the greater the extent of efficient, or effective, behavior.
Method
Specifically for this research, we sought to examine the relationship between organizational identity and perceived organizational prestige, and the extent to which athletics mediates the relationship. For this, two subscales were derived from Carmelli (2005) who suggested that perceived external prestige (PEP) is actually a summation of both academic prestige and athletic prestige. Further, organizational identity was assessed in the third block with fan identity (Wann & Branscombe, 1993) and university identity (Mael & Ashforth, 1992). Finally, athletics success of the current year was assessed across three using the Directors' Cup point totals for the year.
Data were collected from randomly-selected college students (N=1800) from university website directories across NCAA BCS institutions. A total sample of 934 students responded for an overall response rate of 51.89%.
Analysis/Results
Using regression steps outlined by Baron and Kenny (1986), results indicated that athletics success significantly mediated the impact of organizational identity and perceived organizational prestige.
Conclusions
This finding further advocates the potential of athletics success to impact numerous outcomes salient to a campus community. Results also suggest continuous review of the role of athletics upon the university as brand.