Organizational Identity Formation Research Articles

Exploring the Organizational Identity Structure of National Sports Federations: What Makes a Federative Identity Structure Unique?

The study investigates the Organizational Identity Structure and Formation of Sports Federations with a Meta-Structure that has not been previously studied. The aim of this research is to address the questions of how sports federations possess an organizational identity structure and what roles external stakeholders play in the formation of these identities. While the existing literature emphasizes that federations may have organizational identity structures, the contents and formation processes of these identities have not yet been thoroughly examined. In this study, data was collected through semi-structured interviews with the managers of six different sports federations in Turkey. The qualitative data obtained were analyzed using content analysis. The findings indicate that sports federations typically have a tripartite corporate identity structure, namely “pragmatic,” “normative,” and “idealist.” Relationships with external stakeholders, especially with International Federations, the Ministry of Youth and Sports, and sponsor companies play a crucial role in shaping the identities of federations. The study contributes to the understanding of the corporate identity structures of sports federations and provides new insights to the literature in this field. Additionally, practical recommendations are offered for resolving identity conflicts encountered in the management of sports federations.

The dynamics of new sharing economy ventures strategies and ecosystem legitimacy: the case of Airbnb

While new ventures strive to align with prevailing demand and expectations to gain and maintain legitimacy and successfully overcome the liability of newness, sharing economy ventures face additional legitimacy pressure before and after they achieve scale. Based on an inductive single case study approach, using the example of Airbnb Inc., this study investigates how digital platform‐based ventures navigate the tension between remaining legitimate yet distinctive throughout the organizational lifecycle. Adopting a processual perspective, our findings reveal the strategies used by Airbnb to navigate the temporal dynamics of entering established industries. With a particular focus on the digital platform's efforts to achieve and maintain cognitive and sociopolitical legitimacy, this study aims to enhance knowledge regarding the formation and adjustment of organizational strategy and identity over time. Our proposed model of digital platform development reveals three distinct stages of strategy shifts, including demonstrating a sense of novelty, establishing dominant positioning in a broader market, and competitive differentiation to create value for customers. Furthermore, we show the primary triggers for change and the organizational identity change process in different stages of the organizational lifecycle.

Part-Time and Cofunded Pharmacy Faculty and Their Perceptions of Professional and Organizational Identity Formation

ObjectiveTo gain a better understanding of professional and organizational identity formation and workplace climate issues among part-time and cofunded pharmacy faculty. MethodsThis study had a cross-sectional, prospective design using a semistructured interview guide developed by the researchers of this study. The interview guide drew themes from motivating language theory, social provisions, and previous research on professional identity. Pharmacy faculty with varying part-time and cofunded appointments, representing a cross section of demographic characteristics, and working in different types of practice sites and institutions, were invited to participate. ResultsData saturation was reached at 14 participants. Participants had a variety of professional roles, namely teaching and precepting, as well as clinical, research, service, and administrative responsibilities. Three general themes emerged: (1) the struggle with having multiple aspects of professional identity, (2) facing the perception that academia is a “lifestyle” that not all faculty can fully participate, and (3) the need for properly constructed and tailored communication from peers and supervisors. ConclusionA key component to mitigating the struggle with multiple aspects of professional identity and the feeling that part-time and cofunded faculty cannot fully participate in the academic lifestyle seemed to be informed, empathetic, inclusive, and tailored communication from supervisors.

Steering the Direction of Research through Organizational Identity Formation

Public research organizations respond to external pressures from national research evaluation systems, performance-based funding systems and university rankings by translating them into internal goals, rules and regulations and by developing organizational identities, profiles and missions. Organizational responses have primarily been studied at the central organizational level, and research on the steering of research has primarily focused on the impacts of performance-based funding systems. However, research evaluation exercises may also have a formative impact, especially below the central organizational level. This paper uses a case study of a research unit of a biomedical research school in the Netherlands to explore the organizational response to a relatively critical external assessment report. It shows that the participation in the Dutch research evaluation cycle legitimated the formation of a new organizational identity for the research unit, which functions as a frame that suggests to staff members a new interpretation of the type of research that is at the core of what the research unit does. We identify three additional steering mechanisms that support the enactment of the organizational identity: steering by resource allocation, by suggesting and by re-organizing. We, furthermore, explore the epistemic effects – the direction and conduct of research – of the organizational response, through interview data in combination with a bibliometric analysis.

Organizational Identity Formation Under Hybridity Unawareness and Inelasticity

The formation of organizational identity for new types of government agencies are especially challenging due to their institutional context. Drawing on in-depth longitudinal data from the first 2.5 years of an agency for digital government, we induce an empirically grounded model of how organizational identity is formed when hybridity is pre-defined and inelastic due to strict institutional boundaries. In this process study, our findings run counter to prevailing models of organizational identity formation who proposes a convergent process of dual logics, that through the enactment of practice experimentation end up with a blended identity. Instead, we found an organization that was assigned hybridity from the start by mission duality, with no way to escape the tension it brought with it due to the inelasticity provided by the institutional context. Our findings showed a divergent process emerging from an initial unawareness of hybridity and ending with structural separation. Our theoretical model of organizational identity formation in unaware hybrids has a number of direct implications for ongoing research on elasticity in hybrid organizations and organizational identity formation.

Understanding virtual organizational identity through the intersection of information technology and narratives

PurposeVirtual organizations present numerous challenges for managers, especially in regards to organizational identity formation. This paper aims to address this gap in the extant literature by exploring how organizational narratives can foster identification with the virtual organization. Moreover, information technology can further catalyze the positive effects of narratives on identity formation.Design/methodology/approachQualitative data from in-depth interviews with 18 members of a nonprofit, virtual organization – DiverseCS – were collected. Participants were asked about their roles in the organization, challenges and collaborative efforts. Grounded theory methodology was used to analyze the data.FindingsEfforts to instill a sense of identity and community through the adoption of information technology was met with resistance. Rather, senior leaders encouraged and institutionalized the creation of organizational narratives. Novel use of information technology – social media and hyperlinks – became a means to amplify the positive effects of narrative creation and sharing by organizational members.Originality/valueThis study investigates how some members of a virtual organization use information technology in novel ways to further spread organizational narratives to other organizational members and also to external collaboration partners. This research contributes to the extant literature on virtual organizational identity and also proposes a research agenda.

The Formation of Organizational Identity in the Process of Launching a New Business

The Formation of Organizational Identity in the Process of Launching a New Business

Material Influences on the Formation of Organizational Identity

Material Influences on the Formation of Organizational Identity

Consideration of Organizational Identity Formation Through a Longitudinal Approach to Strategy

Consideration of Organizational Identity Formation Through a Longitudinal Approach to Strategy

The Influence of PT Bobotoh Indonesia Gemilang's Internal Communication on Employee Attitudes in Supporting Persib Bandung

PT Bobotoh Indonesia Gemilang is one of the companies that has a clear collective identity, namely Bobotoh. The key to the formation of organizational identity is the effectiveness of internal communication within the organization. In the KBBI, bobotoh means football supporter. However, because in Sundaland itself, Persib is one of the big teams, so the meaning of bobotoh itself is more focused on Persib supporters. Engaged in trade and media, PT. BIG has a media called Bobotoh.ID. Then in the trade sector, to be precise in the distribution of goods, a subsidiary of PT BIG named Bobotoh Kopi Gadjah. The two subsidiaries use the identity of bobotoh. The purpose of this research is to find out how much influence the internal communication of PT BIG has on the attitude of employees in supporting Persib Bandung. The method used in this study is an explanatory survey method. With a population of employees of PT BIG amounting to 21 people and the same number of samples because it uses the saturated sample method. The results obtained, the value of R (correlation) between variable X and variable Y is 0.601 which means that the relationship between the Internal Communication variable (X) and Attitude (Y) is quite strong. Then, the result of T count is 3.274>T Table 2.07961 and a significance value of 0.004 <0.05, so Ho is rejected and Hi is accepted. This means that the internal communication of PT. BIG has an effect on the attitude of employees in supporting Persib.

Publishing in the Academy of Management Journals

Publishing in the Academy of Management Journals

Building Character: The Formation of a Hybrid Organizational Identity in a Social Enterprise

AbstractThe formation of a hybrid organizational identity is a significant challenge for many social enterprises. Drawing on in‐depth longitudinal data from the first three years of a successful social enterprise – Fairphone, founded in Amsterdam – we induce an empirically grounded theoretical model of how a hybrid organizational identity is formed. We identify a general process of organizational identity formation, with founders, leaders and members experimenting with different organizational characters describing ‘who they are’ as well as with alternative social impact strategies defining ‘what they do’. As part of this experimental process, we elaborate the role of a key leadership process – ‘rekeying’, which involves leaders re‐figuring prior understandings into more dual readings – which we found facilitates ongoing adaptation and helps members of the organization to become progressively better able at combining multiple objectives and values as part of a shared hybrid identity. Our theoretical model of hybrid organizational identity formation has a number of direct implications for ongoing research on organizational identity formation and hybrid organizations.

Labels as Moral Markers: Organizational Identity Formation in Contested Fields

How to build a coherent narrative of organizational identity in a socially contested field? Through an inductive study of the sharing economy, we analyzed how managers deal with conflicting collective identities and develop coherent organizational identity narratives through label work. Our findings reveal that managers responded to the social contestation of the field by using the label as a malleable moral marker. The process of embracing, fixing, un-fixing, and re-fixing the label´s principles helped managers to, on the one hand, provide coherence to their identity narrative while, on the other hand, working on the consolidation of their preferred principles of the field label. By exploring the identity formation through label work in socially contested fields, we offer a new perspective on the importance of label work for identity formation and its malleability potential.

History and Tradition in Organizations: Cross-Level Perspectives and Puzzles

Research organizational scholarship has examined the various ways history and tradition shape organizational experience (Dacin et al., 2018, Wadhwani et al. 2018). Issues of temporality and the influence of the past have been perennial concepts in management theorizing (e.g. Nelson & Winter, 1982; Hannan & Freeman, 1977); however, more recent scholarship has begun to examine how the past can be a “source of social symbolic resources” (Wadhwani, Suddaby, Mordhorst, & Popp, 2018: 1664). Rather than being an immutable source of path dependencies, the past is a source of interpretations that shape action in the present and future. In spite of this theoretical flourishing, many questions still remain for the uses of history and tradition in organizations. While most research has focused on top- down processes (e.g. how leaders use history for sensegiving; Suddaby, Foster, & Quinn Trank, 2010) or a single level of analysis (e.g. the organizational level), we know less about how history or tradition are used across levels of analysis. It remains unclear the ways that history and tradition shape the experience of individuals within organizations, as well how micro-practices of using history influence the more macro-level outcomes examined in existing theory (e.g. organizational identity formation). To explore some of these questions, this session brings together a diverse group of scholars who are studying history and tradition across levels of analysis. History, Tradition, and the Temporal Structuring of Innovation Presenter: Innan Sasaki; Warwick Business School Presenter: Davide Ravasi; UCL School of Management Recipes from the Past: The Role of Field Heritage in Identity Formation, and New Venture Survival Presenter: Jochem Kroezen; U. of Cambridge Presenter: Michel William Lander; HEC Paris In search of lost time: Tradition as a source of meaningful work among craftspeople Presenter: Greg Fetzer; Boston College History work: The past as prosocial motivation Presenter: Jeff Thompson; Brigham Young U.

Çalışanların Örgüte Güvenlerine ve Örgütsel Kimliklerine Güçlendirici Liderlik ve Duygusal Zekanın Etkilerinin İncelenmesi: Üretim Sektöründe Bir Araştırma

In an intensely competitive environment, the companies in the production sector fall behind as a result of not showing performance at desired levels, which and leads to companies leaving the sector. Particularly in terms of leadership, the trust of employees in the subordinate hierarchy of organizations, as well as their identification with the organization, should be managed with an accurate understanding. The aim of this study is to analyze the concepts of empowerment leadership and emotional intelligence, the trust of employees in the organization, and the relationships between them within an organization. When the data obtained through the study was analyzed, it was found that leadership and emotional intelligence had a positive effect in the formation of trust and organizational identity among employees. Within the scope of the study, surveys were conducted with 381 white-collar workers (administrative personnel) who work in the production sector. Analyzes were made using SPSS 25 and AMOS programs. In addition, sobel test and hayes process were performed in mediation variable analysis. After both confirmatory and explanatory factor analysis, as well as reliability analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis were used.

Discursive Strategies of Organizational Identity Formation in Benefit Corporations: Coping with a Meanings Void and Assimilating External Feedback

The benefit corporation (BC) is a for-profit corporation that is legally required to generate profit for its shareholders and pursue public benefit. Based on a multi-method approach, this study traces the process of organizational identity formation (IF) in benefit corporations. This study provides rich empirical data on organizational identities (OI) formed in and by BCs. The analysis reveals discursive mechanisms that are used by members to construct OI and present it to outside audiences. Importantly, this study offers further opportunities to theorize the process of identity formation in alternative organizations.

Practicing identity in emergent firms: How practices shape founders’ organizational identity claims

Establishing a new firm presents a variety of challenges to organizational founders. An important concern is the development of a set of clear and coherent organizational identity claims that can inform future strategic decision-making. While practices have been identified as important resources that individuals draw on during organizational identity change and formation, their role in initiating shifts in organizational identity claims has not been examined. In this longitudinal study of seven de novo organizations, we develop a process model showing how practices engaged in by founders when establishing their firms cue sensemaking about the organization’s identity by identifying identity voids, generating identity insights through interactions with outsiders, and identifying identity discrepancies through interactions with insiders. Founders interpret these sensemaking triggers as either opportunities or threats to their identity aspirations for their firms, leading to organizational identity work that generates new identity claims. We discuss implications of our model for scholars of organizational identity emergence and practice, as well as for founders of new organizations.

Organizational Identity Formation in Alternative Organizations: A Study of Three Benefit Corporations

The benefit corporation (BC) in the United States is a new type of corporation legally required to generate profit for its shareholders and to pursue public benefit. BCs explicitly work to balance profit maximization and social mission, which is an ongoing challenge for businesses with an expansive view of the bottom line. This multiple case study extends scholarship on identity formation (IF) in nontraditional organizations, such as BCs, by providing empirical evidence of how identities develop in relation to prevailing cultural sentiments. In particular, we demonstrate how BC struggles over organizational identity (OI) reference broader socioeconomic discourses, identify mechanisms through which perceived pressures suppress alternative interpretations of OI at a micro-level of member interaction, and expose tensions between dominant and alternative frames for business enterprise.

Organizational Identity Struggles and Reconstruction During Organizational Change: Narratives as symbolic, emotional and practical glue

The article offers a novel perspective on the formation of organizational identity (OI) during major organizational change. The empirical context of our studies is the establishment of a new acute care department and the reorganization of care, where nurses and managers struggle to construct and reclaim a legitimate identity within the hospital and simultaneously strive to gain a leading position among acute care departments in the country. We use Bourdieu’s theoretical ideas combined with a focus on narratives as an original and fertile perspective for studying OI. We propose that OI is inherently temporal, embodied and socially configured and cannot be separated from the institutionalized context of its setting because it is interlaced with (in this case) health professional logics. We show how OI is constructed through the strategizing moves of managers and nurses. This includes their narrative constructions of their quest for care progression and a legitimate OI that function as symbolic, emotional and practical glue.

تشكيل الهوية التنظيمية في شركات قطاع الاتصالات المصرية: دراسة ميدانية

This study attempts to identify and explore the process of organizational identity formation inside the Egyptian telecommunication sector using a field survey and a questionnaire answered by 200 employees at varying administrative levels. By identifying and exploring the process, phases, and characteristics of organizational identity formation, this study identifies the most important contributing factors, such as the visual production and dissemination of branding and stationery. In turn, this study’s findings are used to determine the role of communication culture in forming organizational identity in its primary phases. The study finds that respondents perceptions of the components of identity differed within Egyptian communication companies. Integrated in the job application process is an identity screening and compatibility analysis, where a potential employee or candidate’s social upbringing, social normalization, and culture are huge determining factors in their application’s success and alignment with the company cultural identity and evolution. There are several spotlighted indexes that measure and explain the organizational identity in Egyptian communication companies including company slogan and logo that are periodically reviewed; the company trademark, using technology to get tasks done within the company; the company’s corporate social responsibility activities, and providing a top-quality service.