Organizational Identity Change and Temporality

Abstract

Discussions of what changes and what remains stable about organizational identity have been central to the field since organizational identity was defined as “enduring” by Albert and Whetten in 1985. This chapter provides an overview of these discussions by presenting three different views on organizational identity change: 1) Identity as enduring stability; 2) Identity as periodic change and 3) Identity as ongoing change. The chapter shows how each view includes different interpretations and elaborates the various mechanisms underpinning identity stability or change based in empirical studies. The chapter argues how the view on organizational identity change itself has changed in the 30-year history of the field, and suggests how the recent development towards temporal and process-based views returns to a focus on the continuity provided by organizational identity, albeit from a different theoretical and empirical foundation than that suggested by Albert and Whetten.