Incongruent Patterns of Organizational Identity Crafting by Different Organizational Actors

Abstract

Organizational identity research emphasizes that multiple identities can coexist in an organization. With a qualitative study of four firms in the German watchmaking industry, we analyze how and why multiple identities emerge. Our findings show that the orchestration of organizational identity claims differs regarding the organization as a social actor and the organizational members. Moreover, we find that differences in the conceptualization of identity claims by both levels of actors are less competing but rather have a symbiotic relationship in the sense of reinforcing the firm’s uniqueness. Exploring this finding in more detail, we observe that rhetorical history is not only applied by incorporating different episodes but also that episodes are emphasized differently with respect to the rhetorician.