In dynamic and global business environments, understanding firms’ communication strategies towards key stakeholders is crucial. This study analyzes the corporate identity of hidden champion firms using a combined approach that identifies communication strategies and reveals how textual and visual elements are used for legitimation to engage with critical stakeholders. Overall, firms communicate their technological superiority and high-quality offerings to their customers. Firms vary in how they communicate to talents: Listed firms use professionalized employer branding management, family firms emphasize their competency, continuity, and regional roots, and non-family firms promote their visionary mindset and unconventional corporate culture. Surprisingly, business executives are barely portrayed visually. Instead, corporate identity is personalized through textual elements promoting the firms’ uniqueness through slogans, sentiments and metaphors, and visual elements of products and buildings, underpinned by references, certifications, and awards as sources of legitimacy. These findings provide insight into stakeholder, (family) firm status, and (visual) identity research.

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Schmid, Simone (2023, i. E.): “To be hidden or not? How Hidden Champions communicate Identity to key Stakeholders”, available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4749724.