Image is everything

We develop the notion of image as a “covering concept,” one that subsumes several major ideas in organization study. We draw on a number of literatures, including social psychology, marketing/branding, political science and organization studies, to make the case that “image is everything.” We consider not only the pervasiveness of image, but also the power of image including its transformational potential for altering the character of even our most fundamental concepts in personal and organizational study, including identity. We articulate two major theses: (1) image harbors the power to transform substance into image, and more radically that (2) image can itself become substantive. We therefore articulate not only a substance → image transformation, but also an image → substance transformation.