A total of 154 foreign workers in Saudi Arabia responded to a web survey that inquired about role characteristics, work attitudes and behaviors. Surveys were matched with 138 supervisor surveys ...asking about the focal worker's job performance. Results indicated a significant relationship between role ambiguity and job performance, a relationship mediated by organizational identification, which was moderated by both information-seeking and perceived organizational support. This research is one of only a few studies of professional workers in Saudi Arabia (both male and female). Furthermore, this study is one of a handful of studies to explore the attitudes and performance of foreign workers, a worker population often confounded in studies that focus on domestic, expatriate or inpatriate workers.
This essay explains how intangible asset management oriented toward enhancing corporate performance increasingly embeds ethical concerns, primarily to address stakeholder expectations. We discuss how ...ethical dimensions in intangible asset management may be co-constructed and intertwined in organization-stakeholder interactions to generate collaborative meaning making according to a stakeholder-centric view of the firm. In so doing, we adopt an ethical view that acknowledges that stakeholders beyond the firm have equal status and agency to engage in a social construction process of intangible assets nurtured by ongoing dialogue and reciprocal understanding between organization and stakeholders. The essay concludes by envisioning how the dialogic process of social construction of intangible assets involving both organization and stakeholders is best conceived as a social contract between the two that enacts a cultural bond between intangible assets together with ethical and societal resources that are collectively generated, owned, and maintained.
This article examines rhetorical aspects of corporate identity management practiced by corporations in many parts of the world as a consequence of the ongoing institutionalization of climate change. ...Through a case study, we analyze the rhetoric produced by car producers in Denmark (the three best selling brands in 2009: Peugeot, Ford, and Toyota) to identify themselves vis-à-vis external key stakeholders. The article is based on theories stemming from neoinstitutional organizational studies, especially the Scandinavian research tradition, where organizations are active “translators” that adopt new rules, norms, and ideas in accordance with their local organizational contexts. We ask what kind of impact the new external organizational rhetoric may have on the organizations concerned and on society at large: Do organizations, in the course of time, become what they claim to be?
Purpose
Organizations face various situations that require to give decisions. There are many factors that influence their decisions. Organizational identity is one of the factors that can be used as ...an interpretive schema for decisions. Not only for decisions but also for recognition, legitimacy, allocating the organization among the others organizational identity is viewed as a construct that organizations want to protect. This study aims to contribute to measurement of organizational identity.
Design/methodology/approach
National, daily newspapers were chosen as sample for the study. Influence of organizational identity on decisions is highly reflective for newspapers. When they face conflicting demands, they tend not to make any concession from their identities. They want to behave in compliance with their identities. To reveal organizational identity orientation of newspapers, data were collected based on the 18 interviews with executive editors of newspapers.
Findings
Content analysis was concluded with ten categories that help in understanding organizational identity orientation. These ten categories were grouped within two broad orientations as business oriented and journalism oriented organizational identity. These categories reveal not only average organizational identity orientation of newspapers industry but also the variations in organizational identity orientation between newspapers.
Research limitations/implications
Limitation of the study is the way to reveal organizational identity orientations studied on only newspapers. Undoubtedly, using this method for other organizations that operate in different industries, contributes to the generalizability of findings.
Originality/value
Significance of the study is to reveal a method to measure organizational identity orientation based on content analysis approach.
Corporate branding necessitates a different management approach. It requires greater emphasis on factors internal to the organisation, paying greater attention to the role of employees in the brand ...building process. This paper explores the implications of corporate branding for the management of internal brand resources. We describe a model for managing brands through narrowing the gap between a brand’s identity and its reputation and, building on this, identify three key factors that affect brand perceptions and brand performance. Finally, we review some of the mechanisms that may be used to facilitate greater congruence of brand perceptions within the brand team and communication of a brand’s identity to employees.
► Organizational identification (OI) research largely ignores the role of peers. ► A framework of OI diffusion via supervisors, expert peers is proposed and tested. ► Tenured employees’ OI is more ...(less) influenced by experts’ (supervisors’) OI. ► Work-group OI diversity weakens OI diffusion. ► Additional analyses validate the temporal order and stability of OI diffusion.
Drawing from the social information processing approach, the authors develop a contingency framework that captures organizational identification (OI) diffusion through two key interpersonal influencers, supervisors and expert peers. In two multi-level studies in two countries, results consistently show that supervisors’ and expert peers are important influencers of OI diffusion because their OI is positively related to frontline employees’ OI. As the focal employee’s organizational tenure increases, the lateral OI transmission from expert peers grows stronger while the downward OI transmission from supervisors grows weaker. Work-group OI diversity weakens both the downward and the lateral transmission. A time-lagged analysis further validates the temporal order of these processes. OI in turn predicts frontline employees’ objective performance. The authors discuss theoretical and managerial implications.
The idea of an ecosystem suggests a holistic framing of how heterogeneous actors relate to one another and of the dynamics of their relationships. Because of the dynamics some relationships will ...become uncertain, posing significant challenge to the identity of participating organizations. Unfortunately, the Information Systems (IS) literature has not examined how organizations develop and negotiate their identities during ecosystem evolution. We fill this void by exploring identity challenges that Swedish Road Administration (SRA) faced while implementing the Radio Data System – Traffic Message Channel (RDS – TMC) traffic information service. Through a longitudinal case study we follow how SRA's inherited expectations, guiding norms, and standards of sense-giving about its identity prevented it from becoming a flexible service provider within an emerging mobile ecosystem. We record a constant clash – the identity tension – between the old inherited identity of a public road administrator and the aspiring new identity of a digital service provider. To enact a successful identity change, SRA had to engage in a series of change episodes whereby it deliberately implemented new routines that forged novel relationships with actors within the ecosystem. This permitted SRA to gradually align its identity to the evolving needs of the RDS-TMC service ecosystem. Our findings suggest that deliberate attempts to implement innovative mobile services – especially those involving public-private partnerships – trigger intriguing identity ambiguities and role dilemmas, and future research should therefore focus on effective strategies to identify, manage, and resolve inherent identity tensions.
This study examines one paradox of the spinning-off process—on one hand, a spin-off's affiliation with the parent firm provides legitimacy that it can leverage for success; on the other hand, a ...stronger affiliation with the parent firm makes it difficult for a spin-off to resolve identity ambiguity and develop its novel identity in a new sector. The context of this study is a spin-off created by a reputable manufacturing firm but venturing in the software sector. I highlight challenges faced by the executives in leveraging spin-off's legitimacy at the same time it seeks to move away from the parent for developing a new identity. I find that a combination of the processes of sensegiving by a proactive leadership and applied sensemaking by the members is critical in resolving identity ambiguity. The study further develops propositions that synthesize the findings and contribute to the literatures of identity, legitimacy, and entrepreneurship.
Today's Public Relations: An Introduction is a comprehensive text that features all aspects of public relations with specific sensitivity to the message strategies that challenge practitioners to be ...successful, yet ethical. In this book, authors Robert L. Heath and W. Timothy Coombs redefine the teaching of public relations by discussing its connection to mass communication while linking it to its rhetorical heritage. The text features coverage of ethics, research, strategy, planning, evaluation, media selection, promotion and publicity, crisis communication, risk communication, and collaborative decision making as ways to create, maintain, and repair relationships between organizations and the persons who can affect their success.
This paper presents the author’s hope for changes in New Testament (NT) theology particularly as currently experienced in American Christian culture. Those changes are based on exegetical work that ...seeks to place the NT texts into their Jewish first-century thought world. The first part of the paper presents examples of theological concepts that have crept into NT exegesis, translations, and Christian thinking, concepts that appear to be foreign to or contrary to that original-audience thought world. The second part of the article seeks to present a reading of Rom 3:21–26 that better represents Paul’s thinking than what is found in some English translations that read the text through the lenses of some of the foreign concepts mentioned in Part 1. The resulting vision for the future of NT theology is twofold: for NT theologies to self-critically rid themselves of the infiltration of foreign concepts, and for the field to better ground its work in exegesis and translations that better respect the Jewish thought world of the texts.
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