Organizational Identity Formation and Change Gioia, Dennis A; Patvardhan, Shubha D; Hamilton, Aimee L ...
The Academy of Management annals,
06/2013, Letnik:
7, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Theory and research concerning organizational identity is a burgeoning domain within organization study. A great deal of conceptual and empirical work has been accomplished within the last three ...decades --especially concerning the phenomenon of organizational identity change. Because organizational identity change has received the preponderance of attention, this paper first reviews that extensive literature. It considers the conceptual and empirical work concerning the three putative "pillars" of identity. It devotes particular attention to the most controversial of these pillars -- the debate pitting a view that sees identity as stable over time and a contrasting stance that sees identity as more changeable. Following the review of the identity change literature, this paper next takes up a review of the notably smaller compendium of work on identity formation. It considers the conceptual and empirical work devoted to studying the external influences on, as well as the internal resources used, to fashion a nascent identity.
Research Summary
This paper examines how strategy‐makers attempt to reconcile change initiatives with organizational values and principles laid out long before, still encased in strategic identity ...statements such as corporate mottos and philosophies. It reveals three discursive strategies that strategy‐makers use to establish a sense of continuity in time of change: elaborating (transferring part of the content of the historical statement into a new one), recovering (forging a new statement based on the retrieval and re‐use of historical references), and decoupling (allowing the co‐existence of the historical statement and a contemporary one). By so doing, our study advances research on uses of the past, establishes important linkages between identity and strategy research, and enhances our understanding of the intergenerational transfer of values in family firms.
Managerial Summary
Crafting a new corporate philosophy or mission statement can help implement strategic change, but can also be experienced as a disruption in people's sense of “who we are” as an organization. This paper reveals a variety of strategies that managers can use to deal with the tension between promoting change and maintaining a sense of continuity with a distant, revered past. By doing so, it helps managers confronting these issues deal with the enabling and constraining effects of the past. While this is a more general challenge for organizations with historical legacies, it is a particularly delicate issue for family firms grappling with the need to transfer values from one generation to the next, while retaining flexibility to change and adapt over time.
This paper investigates the relationship between corporate identity (CI) and CSR and describes how CI can underpin the development and implementation of CSR initiatives; thus helping to clarify how ...best to implement CSR in business practice. Empirical findings derived from interviews with senior executives in leading UK-based companies reveal the steps that firms take to develop and implement CSR initiatives. The study provides a framework which directs management attention to key CI elements and practices, both strategic and operational, required to sustain different stages of CSR implementation. Using CI as a unifying platform, the framework clarifies how CSR originates strategically from CI values and founder's vision as explicated in mission statements, which legitimize CSR and develop a shared culture. CI plays a role in implementing CSR via communication and senior management behavior which impact employee identification with organizational values and goals and behavior, which relate to voluntary participation in CSR.
In this article, we try to understand how the clubs managers worked these aspects to form the organization's identity and brought advantage in the horse racing market. No entanto, entendemos a ...identidade organizacional como algo nao tangível, mas socialmente construída (GIOIA; SCHULTZ; CORLEY, 2000, p. 76), sendo que a existencia dessa identidade organizacional precisa ser compartilhada como uma crença entre os membros da empresa de que sao diferentes, distintos (ALBERT; WHETTEN, 1985) e, portanto, únicos. A profusao de investimentos em clubes de corridas pode ser vista como um dos vários aspectos da modernizaçâo do Threats: Exploring the Role of Organizational Culture. Using the rays from history's shining lantern as we face an uncertain future. Journal of Sport Management, v. 6, n. 3, p. 206-214, 1992. Sao declaradas de utilidade publica a associaçao denominada Jockey Club do Rio de Janeiro, com sede nesta capital, e a Faculdade de Medicina Veterinaria de Pouso Alegre, no Estado de Minas Gerais. 27 de setembro de 1922.
La llegada de la democracia a España supuso la descentralización del Estado y una oportunidad para repensar una compleja identidad cuyas diferentes sensibilidades nacionales habían sido cercenadas y ...perseguidas durante la dictadura. El diseño emergió como una herramienta de vanguardia, y la identidad visual de los nuevos estamentos políticos; ministerios, autonomías, diputaciones, ayuntamientos y demás entidades territoriales abordaron una urgente renovación de su imagen con resultados dispares. En Galicia, la primera generación de diseñadores y diseñadoras con conciencia de serlo, protagonizaron una búsqueda de novedosos símbolos identitarios.
Siguiendo las nuevas ideas posmodernas, reinterpretaron la tradición desde la esquina atlántica en contraposición al concepto de «mediterraneidad» dominante. Recurrieron a los símbolos ancestrales como la vieira del peregrino, la Cruz de Santiago, los símbolos de la cultura castrexa o las reinterpretaciones de heráldica con la complicidad política de instituciones que buscaban una identidad singular y un encaje propio. Los estudios de diseño construyen sobre las ideas de sus predecesores, aquellos diseñadores-artistas que habían intentado el proyecto casi utópico de los años sesenta y setenta del Laboratorio de Formas de Galicia. El diseño gráfico en la Galicia de los ochenta y noventa se movió entre la contradicción de descubrir, al mismo tiempo, el rigor del proyecto moderno y los nuevos postulados posmodernos. Este artículo pretende analizar las singularidades del diseño corporativo institucional y territorial en Galicia en la época posmoderna, mediante la reinterpretación de una serie de símbolos propios como mitos-de-lugar que han definido hasta la actualidad una identidad gráfica diferenciada.
Going beyond a narrow focus on social enterprise, Grimes, Williams, and Zhao (2019) advance a model of mission drift that they argue is relevant to understanding why--and with what consequences--all ...types of organizations might act in ways that are inconsistent with their identity and image. Here, Varendh-Mansson applaud their effort and agree that it is important to develop a theoretically rigorous approach to mission drift but suggest that it is vital to go upstream and theorize mission as a nuance and variegated construct if we are going to generate meaningful insight about the nature, causes, and consequences of drift.
Why don't we blink when our organizations are described as friendly or aggressive? Why do we expect our organizations to care about our well-being? We argue that anthropomorphism-an attribution of ...human qualities or behavior to nonhuman entities, objects, and events-is both pervasive and surprisingly important in organizational life. Anthropomorphism helps satisfy the motives for sensemaking and social connection, even if the veracity of the results is in the eye of the beholder. Although anthropomorphism has broad relevance to various domains, we primarily focus on organizational identity. We contend that anthropomorphism enables organizational members to conceive of their organization in terms of "who it is/who we are as an organization" (e.g., personality, attitudes, affect), rather than "what it is/what we are" (e.g., industry, structure, age). This shift facilitates a more visceral, memorable, and energizing organizational identity, with major implications. We discuss how anthropomorphism results from both top-down (i.e., "This is who we are") and bottom-up (i.e., "You appear human to me") dynamics. We also discuss how treating an organization as if it were a person primes "interpersonal" emotions, behaviors, and accountability and facilitates social, relational, and personal identification-as well as a psychological contract-with the organization.
We theorize about how the entrepreneurial identity, which we define as the constellation of claims around the founder, new venture, and market opportunity as to "who we are" and "what we do," serves ...as a touchstone for investor judgments about new venture plausibility. We propose that entrepreneurial identities are judged favorably when they are legitimately distinctive, and that such judgments are influenced by market context and are mediated by identity narratives that provide institutional primes and equivocal cues in investor sensemaking.
In this inductive study, we shift the focus of stigma research inside organizational boundaries by examining its relationship with organizational identity. To do so, we draw on the case of Keystone, ...a social enterprise in the East of England that became stigmatized after it initiated a program of support for a group of migrants in its community. Keystone's stigmatization precipitated a crisis of organizational identity. We examine how the identity crisis unfolded, focusing on the forms of identity work that Keystone's leaders enacted in response in order to reframe the meaning that organizational members attached to the stigma. Interestingly, we show not only that the internal effects of stigmatization on identity can be managed, but also that they may facilitate unexpected positive outcomes for organizations.
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