Gender,social salience,and social performance: how women pursue and perform in social ventures

Abstract

We investigate how women that start organizations contribute to the creation of social value in communities and society. We draw on theory from gender self-schemas and social identity theory to explain how women with a female gender-self schema have a natural inclination to create organizations with social goals and intentions in mind. We label these social goals and intentions as social salience and draw on goal theory and existing understandings on intentions to explain how the presence of a social salience in an organization is related to the social performance of their organization. Utilizing structural equation modeling, we show that gender positively influences social salience that subsequently has a positive relationship with the social performance of the organization. We also show that social salience fully mediates the relationship between gender and social performance implying that gender alone is not enough to explain the social performance of an organization. We conclude by highlighting the implications, contributions, and future research that result from our findings.     

'Citibankers' at Citigroup: A Study of the Loss of Institutional Trust after a Merger

abstract    In this paper, we present the results of a study of the loss of institutional trust following a merger. Specifically, we focus on how issues of organizational identity and identification processes contributed to the loss of institutional trust among a group of employees of Citigroup after its creation through the merger of Citicorp and Travelers. Our study makes two important contributions. First, we propose and demonstrate empirically that institutional trust, like interpersonal trust, can be identity-based. Second, adopting a narrative approach to organizational identity, we explore institutional trust in a post-merger context, highlighting how institutional trust is initially undermined after a merger by the ambiguity of the new organization's identity; and how later, once the identity of the new organization becomes less ambiguous, institutional trust can continue to be undermined by the absence of employees' identification with the new organization, especially among those who were highly-identified with their legacy organizations.     

A Narrative Approach to Collective Identities*

abstract From a narrative perspective, organizations' identities are discursive (linguistic) constructs constituted by the multiple identity‐relevant narratives that their participants author about them, and which feature, for example, in documents, conversations and electronic media. By defining collective identities as the totality
of such narratives I draw attention to their complex, and often fragmented and heterogeneous nature. My approach contrasts with much of the theorizing in this field which has tended to homogenize collective identities by emphasizing what is common
or shared, failed to capture the interplay between different communities within organizations, and produced bland, undifferentiated empirical research. In particular, the theoretical framework that I outline focuses attention on the importance of reflexivity, voice, plurivocity, temporality, and fictionality to an understanding of collective identities as locales for competing hegemonic claims. In combination, these notions form a unique conceptual model for theorizing and researching collective identities. This said, a narrative approach also has its limitations, and is proposed as an additional, not exclusive, interpretive lens.     

Interactions between work and identities: Thriving,withering, or redefining the self?

Interactions between work and identities are an important topic as a result of their influence on both employees' well-being and organizational performance. However, there is a lack of theorizing that comprehensively charts the processes and outcomes of work and identity interactions. In this paper, we formulate an integrated conceptual model of interactions between work and identities, employee reactions to them, and subsequent outcomes. In our model, we bring together well-known and under-examined aspects of work and identity interactions. The model explains how such varied outcomes as employee thriving and withering, and both subjugated and empowered identities derive from encounters between work and identities. The model makes it possible to assess the possible benefits and side-effects of human resource management practices that seek to align work with the worker, and supports human resource managers in distinguishing the positive potential in situations where employees find their work misaligning with their identities.     

Provoking identities: entrepreneurship and emerging identity positions in rural development

This article discusses entrepreneurship in a depleted community in transition. The purpose is to develop knowledge about how discourses are used in the positioning of identity in regional development. The concept positioning illustrates how identities are provoked, challenged, negotiated and moved into identity positions that break away from the idea of imitating successful and wealthy regions; instead, locality, place and history emerge as important resources from where local actors obtain agency and recognize new opportunities. Ethnographic data of a single case were collected over a six-year period between 2005 and 2010. The longitudinal nature of the study made it possible to incorporate how local stakeholders took on new identity positions, while handling their inspiration as well as their frustration. Results show how rural change was conditioned by discourses and how entrepreneurship challenged and reframed dominating structures through interaction between entrepreneurship and community. Four discourses, expressed as dichotomies available to people in this depleted community, illustrate the interactive process of positioning: change vs. traditions, rational vs. irrational, spectacular vs. mundane and individual vs. collective. The results support research emphasizing perspectives that acknowledge interaction between entrepreneurship and context as well as discursive aspects of regional development.     

Gravity's pull: The identity-related motives and outcomes of hiring stars

Strategic human capital scholarship, alongside a wealth of evidence from the popular press, suggests that star employees can influence an organization's socially constructed identity. However, an overarching conceptual framework that explains these shifts has yet to emerge. In this paper, we draw upon Hatch and Schultz's (2002) theory of identity change to discuss how organizational identity-change related motives – defined as decision makers' interest in spurring changes to socially constructed, internal perceptions of their organization's central and distinctive features – act in concert with considerations of value creation and capture to influence the hiring of different identity-aspirant stars (i.e., stars that embody a desired future organizational identity). Given that stars represent catalysts for identity change that have agency and become part of the social fabric of an organization, we then explain how the mechanisms by which stars' attempts to gain or retain status – coupled with organization members' willingness to emulate their behaviors – can affect internal-oriented organizational identity change. This paper advances consideration of social-psychological factors alongside economic views of stars and offers implications for the literatures on strategic human capital and organizational identity.     

A Modern Resource Based Approach to Unrelated Diversification

abstract    For over three decades, the questions of how and why an organization diversifies into related and unrelated businesses have drawn the attention of strategy scholars. However, explanations of unrelated diversification have been less than clear. A conceptual model of unrelated diversification is thus proposed. In drawing on Penrose's (1959 ) resource based approach, unrelated diversification is explained by an organization's 'three pillars', which consist of its strength of dynamic capabilities, absorptive capacity, and weak ties. The role of the three pillars is to discover new resource applications or uses in conditions of market failure that are characterized by 'incomplete' markets. A novel feature of this model is that an organization can diversify more broadly than predicted by Penrose (1959 ) and other modern resource-based approaches ( Teece et al., 1997 ). Furthermore, unrelated diversification can be beneficial. This study also offers suggestions to measure the three pillars; its contributions and implications are discussed as well.     

公民身份号码与组织机构代码之比较分析和研究

在我国,公民身份号码是公民的身份标识,组织机构代码是组织机构的统一身份标识。文章对两者的异同之处进行了比较分析和研究。两者分属不同领域,既存在差异,也有许多相似之处,作为国家信息化工作中的最基本数据,在现代管理体系中同处于重要的基础性地位。     

Inclusion climate: A multilevel investigation of its antecedents and consequences

This study investigates the antecedents and consequences of organization‐level inclusion climate. A national sample of human resource decision‐makers from 100 organizations described their firms' formal diversity management programs; 3,229 employees reported their perceptions of, and reactions to, their employers' diversity management. Multilevel analyses demonstrate that identity‐conscious programs (programs that target specific identity groups) generate an inclusion climate. Moreover, the analyses provide evidence of multilevel mediation: In organizations with an inclusion climate, individual employees perceive the organization as fulfilling its diversity management obligations and respond with higher levels of affective commitment. This study represents an important step toward understanding how a shared perception of organizational inclusiveness develops and how inclusion climate facilitates the achievement of diversity management objectives. The findings also shed light on the important role of identity‐conscious programs in promoting organizational commitment within a diverse workforce.     

Mediating Identity: A Study of Media Influence on Organizational Identity Construction in a Celebrity Firm

This paper reports a longitudinal field study on the effects of positive media coverage on the reconstruction of organizational identity. The study highlights how intense positive coverage – to the point of turning an organization into a ‘celebrity’– influences both the way members understand their organization (sensemaking effect) and the gratification they derive from its positive representation (self‐enhancement effect). Our findings suggest that positive media representations foster members' alignment around an emergent new understanding of what their organization is. Over time, however, celebrity may ‘captivate’ members' organizational identity beliefs and understandings, and impede further identity work as media persist in the replication of representations that differ from members' experienced reality, but are too appealing to them to be publicly contradicted.     

Dreaming of Flying When Grounded: Occupational Identity and Occupational Fantasies of Furloughed Airline Pilots

This article analyses the effects of job loss on the occupational identities of a group of United States pilots, laid off (or ‘furloughed’) twice by their employer in the decade following 9/11. Using a narrative methodology, the paper examines how the childhood dream of flying, referred to as the Phaëthon dream, serves as an identity anchor that sustained their occupational identities. When the circumstances of the aviation industry (restructuring, outsourcing, and downsizing) led to extensive lay‐offs, this identity anchor functioned in two contrasting ways. Some pilots moved on to retrain and start new careers, without abandoning their occupational identities or relinquishing the dream of flying. Another group of pilots, however, were stuck in occupational limbo waiting to be recalled by their employer, unwilling to forsake this dream and refusing to contemplate a move that would decisively take them out of their pilot seats. The paper's contribution lies in theorizing how a dream originating in childhood, linked to a long‐standing archetype of flying and subsequently hardened into a shared occupational fantasy, acts as an identity anchor and how this shapes responses to the trauma of job loss. The paper concludes by linking the Phaëthon dream to its mythological counterpart in order to highlight its enduring, shared, and unconscious character.     

Place in Entrepreneurial Storytelling: A Study of Cultural Entrepreneurship in a Deprived Context

We extend the cultural entrepreneurship perspective by investigating how entrepreneurs in deprived contexts gain legitimacy by leveraging proprietary and public places in their entrepreneurial storytelling. Inspired by the sociology of place, we present a longitudinal study of ten new venture journeys over four years in Kasoa, Ghana. We identify three distinct ways places are used in entrepreneurial narratives: projective significance of place, connective significance of place, and authoritative significance of place. We show how impoverished entrepreneurs construct and communicate places in diverse ways, not only as locations, but also as material and symbolic resources that provide legitimacy for their venturing activities. Drawing from our findings, we generate a model of place-based cultural entrepreneurship and elaborate place as a central resource in cultural entrepreneurship and new venture creation in deprived contexts.     

Identity work of science-based entrepreneurs in Finland and in Russia

Abstract

This paper investigates the identity work of science-based entrepreneurs in two very different country contexts: Finland and Russia. Building on the literature investigating role identities, we first analyse the identification of individuals with the roles of a scientist and an entrepreneur; and second, how individuals manage the boundary between these two roles. Methodologically, we take a narrative approach, which regards life stories as identity constructions. Our empirical data consist of 23 biographical interviews with science-based entrepreneurs that are inductively analysed. Our findings show that the Russian informants considered being a scientist a salient part of their self-identification, distanced themselves from the role of an entrepreneur, and set discursive boundaries to segment the two roles. For the Finnish informants, identification with the professional roles as a scientist or as an entrepreneur was less salient for the personal identity as they make a clear distinction between ‘what one does’ and ‘who one is’. They also view the two roles as integrated rather than segmented, and have no significant need to justify the border-crossing between them. Our contribution is in demonstrating how science-based entrepreneurs’ identity work is influenced by importance and meanings attached to different work roles, and how these are contextualised.     

The Development of Corporate Identity: A Political Perspective

abstract    A corporate identity denotes a set of attributes that senior managers ascribe to their organization. It is therefore an organizational identity articulated by a powerful interest group. It can constitute a claim which serves inter alia to justify the authority vested in top managers and to further their interests. The academic literature on organizational identity, and on corporate identity in particular, pays little attention to these political considerations. It focuses in an apolitical manner on shared meanings when corporate identity works, or on cognitive dissonance when it breaks down. In response to this analytical void, we develop a political analysis of corporate identity and its development, using as illustration a longitudinal study of successive changes in the corporate identity of a Brazilian telecommunications company. This suggests a cyclical model in which corporate identity definition and redefinition involve power relations, resource mobilization and struggles for legitimacy.     

Management “flavours of the month”: their role in managers' lives

Existing analyses and critiques of the succession of management fads and fashions entering managerial discourse and activities are complemented and developed by drawing on participant observation research carried out in an organization utilizing a variety of “packaged innovations”. It is shown that what are sometimes mocked as “flavours of the month” (FOMs) play a role in the double-controlproblem faced by all managers: the problem of managing their personal identities, careers and understandings at the same time as contributing to the overall control of the organization in which they are managers. Managers in the organization studied are shown generally to be critical of the “flavour of the month effect” but there is nevertheless an equivocality about how such ideas and practices can function.