While most academic research has considered authenticity from the consumers perspective, this paper proposes and tests a new empirical operationalization of Beverlands (2005) widely cited proposition that firm-side authenticity is…partly true and partly rhetorical (p.1008). Our study presents a model based on the Competitive Advantage (CA) that results from congruence between the partly true aspects of the firms internal culture, resources, and capabilities measured as Innovation Capacity (IC), alongside Corporate Identity Management (CIM) as the organizations partly rhetorical outwardly-directed corporate branding and marketing promotions activities. Our findings are interpreted through a four-quadrant Rosetta Stone framework for evaluating firm-side authenticity across organizational contexts and environments describing how high-IC/high-CIM (i.e., Authentic) firms create differentiation from low-IC/low-CIM Inauthentic organizations and low-IC/high-CIM Faux Imitators competitors who attempt to compensate for their lack of IC through increased investments in CIM.
