The impact of organizational symbolism on firm performance and organizational commitment at family companies: A scale development research

In this study the symbols, which have an important role in analyzing the complex and implicit structures of organizations, have been tried to be studied in details. The purpose of the study was to measure the effects of intra-organizational and non-organizational symbols on organizational commitment and firm performance. However, since there is no scale related to the concept of organizational symbolism in the literature, organizational symbolism scale development study was applied primarily. For all these analyzes, the family companies in the provincial borders of Istanbul were identified as target groups and a total of 727 people were searched. As a result of the analyzes related to scale development, the organizational symbolism scale is divided into three dimensions as, structural and administrative, narrative and discursive and outward symbols. As a result of analyzing the conceptual model, structural and administrative and outward symbols were found to affect both organizational commitment and firm performance. Neither narrative and discursive symbols have any effect on organizational commitment nor on firm performance. The results of the research on the emerging findings were discussed and suggestions were made for both managers and academicians.