Research note: The winds of change—Multiple identifications in the case of organizational mergers

Abstract

Within the organizational domain, different foci of social identification can be differentiated. In the context of an organizational merger, identification with the former premerger organization, which often continues as a subunit of the larger whole after the merger, and identification with the larger organization post merger are important aspects of an employee's belief system and thus are relevant for work-related attitudes and behaviours. We conducted a cross-sectional questionnaire study among 450 employees of two recently merged hospitals. We hypothesized that both identification with the premerger subunit that still exists as a separate entity after the fusion and identification with the postmerger larger organization will be positively associated with job satisfaction and self-reported citizenship behaviour and negatively correlated with turnover intentions and negative emotions. Furthermore, particularly those employees who are highly identified with both entities should hold more positive attitudes compared to those only weakly identified with both entities. Our hypotheses were largely confirmed. Practical implications for the management of organizational mergers are discussed.