If I belong, do I believe? An integrative framework for culture and identification

Abstract

AbstractOrganizational culture has become firmly entrenched in the fields of organizational behavior and theory, yet remains a conceptual and methodological challenge for researchers. Because culture involves the processes of sense making, interpretation, and social construction, while identification is more clearly linked theoretically and empirically to attitudes and behavior, bringing these two concepts together helps to address the limits of both. In this article, we develop a multidimensional framework to introduce identification into the discussion of culture, illustrating how tensions of generality–contextuality and unity–multiplicity highlight identification as an important mediator between macrolevel cultural meanings and individual‐level behavioral outcomes. We subsequently explore the framework's potential for integrating disparate approaches and encouraging meso‐level organizational research, arguing that the dual consideration of these concepts may help to elucidate some of the complexities inherent in organizations, as well as focusing attention on the complex influences of both culture and identification in determining organizational outcomes.