Spacing identity: Unfolding social and spatial-material entanglements of identity performance

In this paper, we analyze how architectural design, and the spatial and material changes this involves, contributes to the continuous shaping of identities in an organization. Based upon a case study of organizational and architectural change in a municipal administration at a time of major public sector reforms, we examine how design interventions were used to (re)form work and professional relationships. The paper examines how engagements with spatial arrangements and material artifacts affected people’s sense of both occupational and organizational identity. Taking a relational approach to sociomateriality, the paper contributes to the further theorizing of space in organization studies by proposing the concept of spacing identity to capture the fluidity of identity performance.     

Fluidity,Identity, and Organizationality: The Communicative Constitution of Anonymous

This paper examines how fluid social collectives, where membership is latent, contested, or unclear, achieve ‘organizationality’, that is, how they achieve organizational identity and actorhood. Drawing on the “communicative constitution of organizations” perspective, we argue that the organizationality of a social collective is accomplished through ‘identity claims’ – i.e., speech acts that concern what the social collective is or does – and negotiations on whether or not these claims have been made on the collective's behalf. We empirically examine the case of the hacker collective Anonymous and analyse relevant identity claims to investigate two critical episodes in which the organizationality of Anonymous was contested. Our study contributes to organization studies by showing that fluid social collectives are able to temporarily reinstate organizational actorhood through the performance of carefully prepared and staged identity claims.     

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.     

'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.     

CEO hometown identity and firm green innovation

Drawn on the upper echelons theory, this study investigates how chief executive officer (CEO) hometown identity drives firm green innovation. We propose that CEO hometown identity has a positive impact on a firm's green innovation performance. Furthermore, we explore the moderating role of managerial discretion determined by organizational and environmental factors (i.e., institutional ownership and market complexity). We propose that institutional ownership negatively moderates the positive relationship between CEO hometown identity and green innovation, but market complexity plays a positive moderating role. Using Chinese publicly listed firms from 2002 to 2016 in heavily polluting industries, our findings support these hypotheses. Our research contributes to the upper echelons theory and corporate social responsibility literature and has substantial practical implications.     

The re-regulation of working communities and relationships in the context of flexwork: A spacing identity approach

Existing studies on flexwork stress its individualizing inclination by showing how it gives autonomy to employees, boosts individual productivity, or supports personal well-being at the expense of group cohesiveness, social ties and other characteristics of the “collective” in organizations. Obviously, flexwork both continues and contributes to an individualization process of working activities and relationships. But, how exactly does flexwork re-regulate working relationships and communities? Is the “collective” irremediably damaged and doomed to disappear? Building on a case study conducted in an insurance company having implemented flexwork, we observe invisibilized employees working from diverse premises (e.g., home, office, etc.) initiating alternative ways of staying united and close. This article shows the re-regulation of these working relationships and communities' through a collective identity process involving de/re-spacing identity; i.e., the spatial and material aspects of flexible work in relation to identity.     

IT-driven identity work: Creating a group identity in a digital environment

While organizational scholars are increasingly interested in issues of identity, identity work, and identification, in-depth empirical studies analyzing the process of identity creation have lagged behind, particularly when such process is triggered by the digitization of a work environment. In this longitudinal case study, we take a social constructionist perspective to investigate the identity creation process of a group of librarians in charge of a new information commons library. We call attention to the dialectic forces underlying this process, emphasizing how the librarians' image, as reflected by the patrons, led the librarians to try multiple provisional identities, which were supported by liminal actions reminiscent of either “who they were” and/or “who they could be.” We also consider how technology was appropriated throughout this dynamic and suggest a technology identification process model that parallels the group identity creation process.     

STEM selves: Women’s identity projects and their assessment of future employers in technical fields

In this paper, we take an identity project perspective on careers to explore how job seekers assess potential employers. Identity projects are individuals’ self-definitions in the light of their career development and personal aspirations and have the potential to further our understanding of careers. Drawing on focus group discussions of women seeking employment in STEM, we find four identity positioning strategies through which the women assess future employers. Our analysis illustrates the role of organizational images for shaping and realizing individuals’ identity projects. We contribute to research on identity projects by extending the concept’s focus to include job seekers as external organizational stakeholders and provide insight into their identity positioning. Furthermore, our study enhances the understanding of organizational image in the context of employee recruitment by outlining how individuals position themselves in relation to the organizational images they construct when reflecting on their identity projects and on the institutional context. Overall, we develop a more nuanced approach to understanding women’s interpretations of organizational identity claims (e.g., gender diversity claims) and thus extend current theorizing on recruiting women to STEM.     

Organizational sustainability identity: Constructing oneself as sustainable

In the literature, organizational sustainability identity tends to be treated as something that is ‘engineered’ within business organizations through control, reporting, target setting, strategic communication, and other instruments. Through a case study of a company mainly active within the recycling industry, an alternative understanding is given. A distinct organizational sustainability identity is, rather, a social construct based on perceptions of the core operations as “sustainable in themselves” and collaborative work with customers that is perceived as entailing sustainable solutions. Understood in this way, organizational sustainability identity has relatively little to do with formal controls such as codes, policies, reports used by management to position the company as sustainable. Rather, for organizational members, the process of constructing oneself as sustainable builds on convictions about the core operations and the possession of specific capabilities manifested in customer relations. The article adds to current literature through its constructivistic approach and through identifying underlying beliefs that condition the process of forming an organizational sustainability identity.     

From sites to vibes: Technology and the spatial production of coworking spaces

Mobile and network technologies enable new ways of working (NWW) that disrupt spatial relations and move work to spaces outside formal organizational boundaries. This article addresses this shift by examining the spatial consequences of everyday practices of technology in the context of coworking spaces (CWS) as a pronounced example of where NWW take place. Conceptually, this article links research on technology as a sociomaterial practice with literature on organizational space. Empirically, it draws from a qualitative study of 25 CWS and offers a theorization of the co-constitutive processes with relevant insights for both technology and organization studies. First, this article adds to research on the relational and dialectic nature of technology by documenting its implications in the constitution of CWS as site, contestation, and atmosphere. Second, it contributes to existing knowledge on space by shifting the focus from physical sites to spatial atmospheres and vibes that are produced through technology use and the copresence of others. It problematizes engagement with NWW by highlighting how the flexibility to work anytime, anywhere is tied to new responsibilities, including spacing work and spatial self-management, as workers are required to coproduce and aptly navigate the sites and vibes of NWW to achieve personal productivity and affective sociality.     

Managing Government Property Assets: International Experiences

Abstract

Policies have been introduced in the public sector to increase efficiency. Following a privatization, there is a split between operational and strategic control. In this study, we explored how a public organization restores its identity after losing its operational structure. Based on a case study of a seaport, we found that when the self-defining properties were lost, the organizational identity dissolved into a managerial public identity. The organizational meaning that provided security and guided behavior was lost and the new identity was unable to serve as a provider of meaning. Implications for new public management policy and practice are discussed.     

Debugging the system: the impact of dispersion on the identity of software team members

This paper looks at the impact of dispersion of groups of software workers on team and organizational identification. The paper examines at two case studies of software organizations operating in Scotland. One case study is drawn from a software division of a large national telecommunications company, the other from a medium-sized indigenous software firm. Within each organization we examined groups of employees based within and outwith their employing organizations. Our results were broadly consistent with established work within other sectors in finding that the team largely replaced the organization as a focus for identification. However, we also found that there was no difference in the salience of organizational identification between dispersed employees and those based within their employing organization. For many employees the focus on the team as opposed to the organization was a way of reducing subjective uncertainty within a changing corporate environment. Finally, we established that it is team identification rather than organizational identification for software workers that is a greater determinant of affective outcomes such as job satisfaction. The results of this study impact upon contemporary theories of HRM, which promote the design of work systems in order to engender commitment to, and identification with, the organization.     

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.     

Mediating ambiguity: Narrative identity and knowledge workers

Drawing on Paul Ricoeur's approach to narrative identity and a longitudinal case study of a graphic design firm, this paper explores identity work provoked by organisational changes for one group of knowledge workers, graphic designers. The approach to identity work developed in this paper illuminates how these knowledge workers use narrative to mediate between social and personal identities during a period of significant organisational change. The narrative identity approach, derived from Ricoeur, embraces the multiplicity, complexity and potential contradictions encountered by knowledge workers facing threats to their personal identity. In addition to developing Ricoeur's thinking to understand identity work in an organisational context, the impact of organisational change for knowledge workers is highlighted for practitioners.     

How social enterprises manage their organizational identification: a theoretical framework of identity management approach through attraction,selection, and socialization

Abstract

Social enterprises, as a typical type of hybrid-identity organization, face identification tensions among members, arising from the divergent identities. Prior research has focused on how hybrid identities can be managed at the organizational level. However, the process through which identification emerges in hybrid-identity social enterprises remains relatively unexplored. This study addresses these gaps and aims to contribute to identity and identification theory. This research has taken a qualitative (case study) approach, with in-depth interviews and archival data from nine social enterprises in Taiwan. Our findings reveal three different types of responses to hybrid identities of social enterprises: synthesis, integration, and deletion. It is observed that different hybrid identities management and organizational identification management practices will lead to members’ identification and dis-identification. This research proposes an attraction-selection-socialization model, suggesting that, to foster identification, social enterprises need to manage their hybrid organizational identities and embed the new common identity into members’ daily work through attraction, selection, and socialization processes.     

Metaphor and the Dynamics of Knowledge in Organization Theory: A Case Study of the Organizational Identity Metaphor*

abstract Despite the increased salience of metaphor in organization theory, there is still very little conceptual machinery for capturing and explaining how metaphor creates and/or reorders knowledge within organization theory. Moreover, prior work on metaphor has insufficiently accounted for the context of interpreting a metaphor. Many metaphors in organization theory, including the ‘organizational identity’ metaphor, have often been treated in singular and monolithic terms; seen to offer a similar or largely synonymous interpretation to theorists and researchers working along the entire spectrum of disciplines (e.g. organizational behaviour, organizational psychology) in organization theory. We argue in this paper that contextual variation however exists in the interpretation of metaphors in organization theory. This argument is developed by proposing and elaborating on a so‐called image‐schematic model of metaphor, which suggests that the image‐schemata (abstract imaginative structures) that are triggered by the metaphorical comparison of concepts may vary among individuals. Accordingly, once different schemata are triggered the completion and interpretation of a metaphor may equally vary among different individuals or, indeed, research communities. These points associated with the image‐schematic model of metaphor are illustrated with a case study of the ‘organizational identity’ metaphor. The case study shows that this particular metaphor has spiralled out into different research communities and has been comprehended in very different ways as different communities work from very different conceptions, or image‐schemata, of ‘organization’ and ‘identity’, and use different theoretical frameworks and constructs as a result. The implications of the image‐schematic view of metaphor for knowledge development and theoretical progress in organization theory are discussed.     

Navigating Ambivalence: Perceived Organizational Prestige–Support Discrepancy and Its Relation to Employee Cynicism and Silence

Drawing on the social identity literature, this study offers theoretical arguments and empirical evidence to understand reactions to divergent perceptions of organizational external prestige (PEP) and organizational support (POS) – two crucial bases of employees’ social worth. Across three studies, using both experimental and field data, we find that PEP‐POS discrepancy contributes to employees’ perceptions of organizational cynicism and silence behaviour, especially when PEP is high and POS is low (rather than the reverse). Consistent with our social identity perspective, we find that ambivalent identification, that is, the simultaneous identification and disidentification of an individual with an organization, is a key mediating mechanism that transfers the interactive relationship of PEP and POS to cynicism and silence. These findings contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of individuals’ social worth at work.     

Getting the timing right: Kairos as the rhetorical framing of time

As organizational actors invoke and create the past, present and future of their organizational contexts in support of proposed decisions, the rhetorical framing of time is central to decision-making. To explain how such rhetorical framing occurs, this paper explores kairos as a conceptualization of the duality of encountering and enabling “the decisive moment.” Following a process of advocating a new IT strategy in a financial firm, we find that kairos appears when the rhetorical framing of time is consistent with dominant interpretations of the interrelations between the past, present and future of the organization. Thus, the paper conceptualizes kairos as constitutive for decision-making; only when the timing is right, will persuasive efforts prevail.     

Bridging the gap between corporate social responsibility and new green product success: The role of green organizational identity

In this study we explore the relationship between corporate social responsibility and new green product success based on organizational identity theory. The hypotheses are tested on a sample of 150 companies in China. The results indicate that corporate social responsibility positively affects both green organizational identity and green adaptive ability. We also find that green organizational identity and green adaptive ability are positively influences on new green product success. In addition, we find that green organizational identity partially mediates the relationship between corporate social responsibility and green adaptive ability. Moreover, green organizational identity fully mediates the link between corporate social responsibility and new green product success. This means that corporate social responsibility indirectly and positively affects new green product success through green organizational identity. These results suggest that managers should seek to enhance their organizational sense of green identity and improve their organizational green adaptive ability, which will facilitate their firm's sustainable development. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings for environmental policy are also discussed.     

Residual affective commitment to organizations: Concept,causes and consequences

Research on affective organizational commitment has largely been conceptually restricted by the temporal boundaries of organizational membership, while only few authors have addressed how individuals may commit to an organization before becoming members. Given that individual careers increasingly span across a greater number of organizations, this restriction limits our ability to capture how employees experience their workplaces throughout their careers. Addressing this gap, this article contributes to the literature on affective commitment by arguing that individuals may remain affectively committed to an organization after having left it. We extend the temporal structure of affective commitment beyond separation by introducing the concept of residual affective commitment, and present a model of how such commitment is formed. We elucidate the interplay between residual and current affective commitment, complementing research on organizational newcomers. Finally, we open up new avenues for research by discussing theoretical consequences of the introduction of residual commitment.