We Do What We Are: How Companies Use Organizational Identity Agentically for Strategy Making

Abstract

Most of organizational identity research has emphasized the constraining mechanisms on strategy making, such as path dependence and the sclerotization of cognitive frames. Considerably less research has studied the generative aspects that bind organizational identity and strategy making. Our paper aims at studying the socially constructed mechanisms that enable companies to leverage organizational identity for the development of novel strategies and the agentic reconfiguration of conventional market boundaries. In order to do so, we develop a single case study of Moleskine, the Italian brand company, which, during its history, successfully spanned across different and distant product categories because of its organizational identity. Our findings unearth the generative potential of organizational identity through two mechanisms: symbolic distancing and symbolic resemblance. Furthermore, we also show the double role that “spiritual founders” have in enabling these mechanisms: on the one hand, by infusing value and translating their personal identity into the company and its products, and, on the other hand, by imagining potential, multiple expressions of the same strategic self.