Organizational Identification Research Articles

Predicting model for the employees’ organizational commitment: Integrative approach of organizational identity and career identity

Purpose This study aims to identify the main determinants predicting employees’ organizational commitment types and to evaluate the significance of the predictive model from the perspectives of career identity and organizational identity. Design/methodology/approach This study used a quantitative methodology to develop a predictive model for employees’ organizational commitment. The authors refined the sample of employees who are in the career establishment stage and have a tenure of less than 10 years. This study finally used the sample of 1,257 employees from Human Capital Corporate Panel data (HCCP) and applied random forest as the representative ensemble model. Findings This study developed the predictive model with strong performance. This study identified key determinants, including task satisfaction, top management leadership, top management HRD support, salary satisfaction and relationship-oriented culture. Originality/value This study connected employee career identity and organizational identity. This study found that the connection is strengthened by top management leadership, organizational culture, talent management and HR department effectiveness. This study contributes to enhancing the understanding of employee commitment and informs effective human resource management strategies.

Exploring the nature of unethical pro-organisational behaviour in the hotel industry

ABSTRACT Nowadays, unethical behavior has increasingly attracted attention as one of the main challenges faced in the hospitality industry. However, it is still unclear why and when hospitality employees exhibit unethical pro-organizational behavior. Based on this gap, this study aims to hypothesize and test a research model revealing that organizational identification affects unethical pro-organizational behaviour through organizational collective narcissism and that moral disengagement moderates the effect of organizational collective narcissism on unethical pro-organizational behaviour. The data were gathered from five-star hotel employees and their managers. The results have uncovered that the direct impact of organizational identification on unethical pro-organizational behaviour is insignificant; however, the indirect impact of organizational identification on unethical pro-organizational behaviour via organizational collective narcissism is significant. In addition, the results have found that moral disengagement moderates the effect of organizational collective narcissism on unethical pro-organizational behaviour. This study makes several unique contributions to the literature. First, this study introduces organizational collective narcissism as a special form of collective narcissism to organizational studies to shed light on the relationship mechanism in question. Second, this study sheds light on the relationship between organizational collective narcissism and unethical pro-organizational behavior by revealing that moral disengagement is a critical boundary condition.

‘The need to be seen to be taking action’: how legitimacy drives the European Commission’s behaviour

ABSTRACT Crises governance and increased politicisation underpin a renewed focus on legitimacy as a driver of the European Commission’s actions. Studies assume the Commission acts instrumentally, to adjust outputs and/or to manage its reputation. However, there has not been an examination of how legitimacy driven action derives from concerns to mirror expectations about appropriate behaviour. This paper adopts a sociologically-informed organization theory that emphasises the role of organizational identity, rule-following and symbolic action in legitimacy driven behaviour; it presents a framework for analysing different logics of action that allows for empirically disentangling instrumental behaviour and behaviour driven by rules of appropriateness; and it applies the framework to a case-study – the decision to create a High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) on financial market supervision in October 2008. It finds that symbolic action and organizational culture played a significant role and evidences that task specialisation caters for addressing different basis of legitimation.

Darker Logos Are Seen as For‐Profits and Lighter Logos as Nonprofits

ABSTRACTConsumers infer an organization's identity from visual cues to form judgments about its purpose. This study shows that logo color lightness serves as a signal of organizational orientation: consumers perceive lighter‐colored logos as representing nonprofits, and darker‐colored logos as representing for‐profits. Further, consumers are less willing to donate when lighter‐colored logos are paired with luxury positioning, due to visual‐conceptual incongruence. This study highlights the importance of subtle design elements such as logo color lightness in shaping consumer inferences about organizational identity and willingness to donate.

Museum or mausoleum? The impacts of narrative identity in a historical collector’s museum

ABSTRACT How do contingencies between a museum’s historical legacies and its present-day organisational identity impact the museum’s conduct, values, and core narratives? What may be the tensions between historical legacies and present-day conditions in the twenty-first century? And why are some historical trajectories maintained by the institution, even when they collide with present-day paradigms within or beyond the museum? The paper explores these questions through its case study, the New Carlsberg Glyptotek, a collector’s museum founded in 1897. Tracing the museum’s core narratives and present-day organisational identity back to the founder’s trajectories, the paper documents how past sets of values may come to be regarded as given premises of the museum and its modalities of practice. The paper integrates critical museology with conceptual tools from organisational theory, psychology, and sociology. This eclectic analytical lens exposes not only the problems but also the benefits connected to the museum’s historical core narratives.

How exploitative leadership undermines subordinates’ taking charge behavior? A moderated mediation model

BackgroundThe study of the dark side of leadership is gaining growing interest, with negative leadership exerting a stronger influence on employees than positive leadership. Considering the importance of employees’ proactive behaviors for organizational innovation and long-term growth, investigating whether exploitative leadership—a representative form of negative leadership—impacts such behaviors is a meaningful research question.PurposeThis study aims to explore the impact of exploitative leadership on subordinates’ taking charge behavior, as well as the mediating role of subordinates’ organizational identification and the moderating role of traditionality.MethodsWe conducted a two-phase survey using convenience sampling across various industries in China, collecting cross-sectional data from 348 employees. A structural equation model with latent variables was used to test all hypotheses.ResultsThis study found that exploitative leadership negatively affects taking charge behavior, and organizational identification mediates the relationship between exploitative leadership and taking charge behavior. Furthermore, traditionality weakens the negative impact of exploitative leadership on organizational identification, as well as the indirect relationship between exploitative leadership and taking charge behavior through organizational identification. In other words, subordinates with high traditionality are more likely to adhere to authority, mitigating the adverse effects of exploitative leadership.Conclusions and valueThis study applies social identity theory to explore the negative impact of exploitative leadership on taking charge behavior, revealing the internal mechanisms and boundary conditions of this relationship, thus filling a gap in the literature on exploitative leadership. We also provide practical recommendations for organizations to mitigate the harmful effects of exploitative leadership and enhance the governance of leaders’ exploitative behaviors.

Boundary work against identity stress: atrocity stories among the Bretton Woods twins

Abstract How do transnational actors handle institutional configurations in which they need or are expected to work together, even though cooperation is likely to diminish their distinctiveness? For officials of international organizations (IOs) whose mandates and memberships overlap, this tension can induce lasting identity stress. In this article, I argue that one way for IO officials to cope with this stress is by mobilizing ‘atrocity stories’ as boundary work devices. To exemplify the dynamics surrounding this widely overlooked inter-organizational practice, I examine a prominent case of ‘twin’ organizations: the relationship between the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. I draw on more than 40 semi-structured interviews to demonstrate that both IMF and World Bank officials field seemingly trivial atrocity stories to shore up their organizational identities while acknowledging obvious ideational and operational similarities between the IOs. Thus, they not only determine what are shared tasks and what are not, but also delineate who they are as representatives of two routinely and closely interacting IOs. The analysis clarifies how a reliance on atrocity stories can help actors to tame the identity stress that stems from their interactions.

BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH TO M&A: SHAPING EMPLOYEE RESILIENCE FOR COMPANY’S SUCCESS

Purpose. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) trigger complex and profound organisational changes. Despite their potential, many M&A still fail to achieve the expected economic outcomes. Building on prior research emphasising the critical role of employee resilience for the success of M&A, this study investigates the factors influencing employee resilience during the post-merger integration phase (PMI). Methodology. In our computer-assisted web interview, we asked office workers representing 295 M&A in Poland to evaluate their experiences in the PMI phase regarding employee resilience, job satisfaction, communication effectiveness, visionary leadership, and organisational identification. Then, we applied a general linear model with Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimation to find behavioural factors predicting employee resilience. Additionally, we introduced interaction terms in the model to test the moderating effects of company size and gender on these relationships. Findings. The findings reveal that employee resilience is significantly influenced by job satisfaction, visionary leadership, and organisational identification. Notably, the positive impact of visionary leadership is more pronounced in larger organisations. These results offer valuable insights for managers and M&A advisors, highlighting key areas to ensure smoother M&A integration processes.

Employee experience: conceptualization, scale development, and validation

As a novel thinking approach to human resource management, employee experience (EX) has become a critical strategic focus in fundamentally reframing the employment relationship. However, the construct definition and measures of EX have not been adequately addressed in the existing literature. Based on self-determination theory, this study provides a conceptual foundation for EX and emphasizes its conceptual uniqueness. Furthermore, through two phases (six studies) of the scale development procedure, we developed and validated a 20-item EX scale (EXS). Specifically, we first identified five dimensions of EX through three qualitative studies (Phase 1): work-related, interpersonal harmony, organizational management, professional development, and remuneration package. Subsequently, we validated the reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, predictive and incremental validity, and measurement invariance of the EXS through three quantitative studies (Phase 2). Our findings suggest that EX is related to similar constructs (job satisfaction, employee engagement, and workplace well-being) yet possesses unique characteristics and can significantly influence employees’ work-related consequences (turnover intention and organizational identification). Finally, the theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and future directions of this study are discussed.

Organising integrated urban mobility: actions, roles and identities in an evolving landscape

Multimodal integration is currently being discussed as a way to challenge the dominance of automobility by providing attractive alternatives to private car ownership. Combining critical organisation studies with a mobilities perspective, this article maps actions taken towards integrated urban mobility in two Swedish cities over the course of a year and explores how these actions shape the roles and identities of the actors involved. The results demonstrate that integration is a relational process enacted through diverse practices, from the development of new concepts such as ‘collective mobility’ and the piloting of new infrastructure such as mobility hubs, to the everyday processes of operating public transport and facilitating active travel. These relations develop with varying degrees of formalisation, ranging from regulations and contracts to participation in reference groups. We show that through these actions, public sector actors are continuously making sense of themselves and others within an evolving urban mobility landscape, reflecting not only on potential new roles and organisational identities, but also on the distribution of responsibilities and tasks. Despite concerns about institutional silos and organisational inertia, public sector actors are gradually (albeit hesitantly) emerging as co-producers of integrated urban mobility, even though these efforts often lack systematic coordination.

Influence of student self-efficacy and lecturer leadership on student ocb

This study aims to analyze the influence of student self-efficacy and lecturer leadership on the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) of students in higher education. Using the library research method with a qualitative approach, this study explores the complex interactions between internal and external factors that shape students' organizational citizenship behavior. The results of the study revealed that student self-efficacy, which is manifested in academic beliefs, social efficacy, emotional regulation, and resilience to adversity has a significant effect on the dimension of student OCB through organizational identification mechanisms and intrinsic motivation. Lecture leadership, especially transformational leadership styles, creates a learning climate that encourages the internalization of prosocial values. The innovative finding of this study is the identification of compensatory interaction patterns, where the influence of lecturer leadership on student OCB is stronger in students with low to moderate self-efficacy. The implication is that universities need to develop an integrative approach that simultaneously strengthens student self-efficacy and lecturer leadership capacity to cultivate student OCB in a sustainable manner

How transformational leadership of managers affects employee innovative behavior in IT corporations

Organizations are constantly challenged by new technologies that have the potential to transform their business models and organizational identity, and they are working to create an environment that supports innovation. Advances in digital tools for work have transformed the way we work, which used to be geographically constrained. Transformational leadership is becoming more important, facilitating access to information and knowledge sharing among internal constituents like never before. In addition, in innovation-oriented workplaces, frequent experiences of psychological capital and thriving at work, where employees enjoy an optimal state of challenge, are factors that promote innovative behavior. Based on the conservation of resources theory and social cognitive theory, this study explores the mechanisms through which transformational leadership influences the innovative behavior of IT workers. Specifically, it examines the dual mediating roles of psychological capital and thriving at work. Drawing on data from 394 valid responses out of 458 Korean IT workers surveyed, the results indicate that transformational leadership positively affects innovative behavior, with this relationship being partially mediated by employees’ psychological capital and thriving at work. These findings offer practical insights into how psychological capital and thriving at work function as critical psychological processes through which transformational leadership, within internal collaboration platforms, fosters innovative behavior among team members.

Cultural collisions: the struggle for recognition in a cross-cultural workplace

Learning outcomes Analyze: Examine the role of cultural fit in job satisfaction and organizational effectiveness, using theoretical frameworks such as Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions and Person–Organization Fit Theory. Analyze how ShowVista’s opaque decision-making and performance metrics, leadership communication and recognition practices influenced Brown’s engagement and performance. Evaluate: Assess the impact of recognition, or the lack thereof, on employee motivation and retention using Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory and Self-Determination Theory. Create: Design actionable strategies for Brown to navigate cultural and organizational challenges, incorporating tools such as cultural intelligence and transformational leadership principles. Synthesize: Integrate insights from organizational behavior and HR theories to develop a comprehensive plan for ShowVista, addressing both individual and systemic challenges. Reflect: Encourage students to introspect on their personal values and cultural adaptability, drawing parallels between Brown’s dilemma and their own potential career challenges. Case overview/synopsis In “Cultural Collisions: The Struggle for Recognition in a Cross-Cultural Workplace,” Alex Brown, the National Marketing Head at ShowVista, faces mounting frustration as his contributions to the company’s success go unrecognized. Despite spearheading innovative marketing strategies that boosted revenue, Brown finds himself sidelined in an organization where hierarchy, consensus-driven decision-making and relationship-based leadership take precedence over individual achievement. ShowVista’s Indian-influenced corporate culture clashes with Brown’s results-oriented, recognition-driven mindset, leaving him isolated and undervalued. His attempts to implement data-driven approaches are met with resistance, while credit for his successes is often attributed to senior executives. The strain of navigating an unfamiliar work culture, compounded by personal sacrifices, forces Brown to question his future at the company. As he stands at a crossroads, he must decide whether to adapt to ShowVista’s norms or seek an organization that aligns with his values. The case examines the complexities of cultural fit, leadership role in a multicultural organization and career identity in a global workplace. Complexity academic level Case is suited for teaching in MBA and Executive Courses. Supplementary material Teaching notes are available for educators only. Subject code CSS 6: Human Resource Management.

SMEs’ strategic responses to crisis: the role of organizational identity

SMEs’ strategic responses to crisis: the role of organizational identity

BRIDGING THE GAP: ORGANISATIONAL IDENTIFICATION AS A CATALYST FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACT FULFILMENT AND KNOWLEDGE SHARING

This study sets out to investigate the influence of psychological contract fulfilment and organisational identification on knowledge sharing behaviour among knowledge workers. A survey-based study on 233 knowledge workers was conducted to investigate the direct and indirect effect of psychological contract fulfilment. Results show that organisational identification mediates the effect of psychological contract fulfilment on knowledge sharing behaviour. This study highlights the pertinence of fulfilling the underlying expectations of knowledge workers to encourage them to share their valuable knowledge. While numerous studies which employed the social exchange theory (SET) had attempted to identify specific factors that could encourage employee to initiate knowledge sharing, this study focused on the underlying process that could explain why these factors worked in encouraging knowledge sharing. Fundamentally, this study posited that when psychological contracts were not violated, employees tend to identify with their organisations better. Consequently, they share their valuable knowledge with others within the organisation.

Correction to “Sustainable Human Resource Management and Job Satisfaction—Unlocking the Power of Organizational Identification: A Cross‐Cultural Perspective From 54 Countries”

Correction to “Sustainable Human Resource Management and Job Satisfaction—Unlocking the Power of Organizational Identification: A Cross‐Cultural Perspective From 54 Countries”

Operational claims, normative trade-offs, and the legitimation of international organizations

To contend with rising contestation, international organizations (IOs) increasingly engage in the politics of legitimation. IO legitimation aims to accentuate IOs’ legitimacy warrants all the while accounting for their legitimacy deficits. Focusing on how IOs justify legitimacy deficits, this study identifies a distinct type of IO legitimacy claims: operational claims, which differ from normative claims commonly discussed in IO legitimation research. Specifically, it zooms on to one type of operational claim centering around the idea of trade-off. That is, IOs highlight trade-offs between institutional standards of legitimacy in response to public criticism. Failure to meet one norm is justified by the imperative to meet another that is, from IOs’ perspective, more befitting of their organizational identity. The empirical analysis comprises five cases where IOs strategically invoked different trade-off types for legitimation purposes. This research contributes to IO legitimation research by exposing the blind spot about operational claims, and more substantively, by fleshing out a common type of operational claim that features large in IO legitimation accounts.

Latent Profile Patterns of Teachers' Organisational Identity Perception in Educational Settings

ABSTRACTOrganisational identity is crucial in fostering a reliable working environment within educational settings. Therefore, this study focused on examining latent profiles of teachers' organisational identity perceptions. Latent profile analysis was utilised to uncover distinct profiles and their characteristics as assessed by the Teacher Organizational Identity Perception Scale's three dimensions (support, belonging, and communication). The data was collected from 578 in‐service teachers working in different grades from preschool to high school. The results identified four distinct teacher profiles: lack of support (n = 59), belonging deficiency (n = 101), engagement (n = 276) and commitment (n = 142). Nearly half of the teachers were in the engagement profile, indicating medium‐level organisational identity perception. Covariance analysis revealed that male teachers were significantly more likely to be in the engagement profile rather than the lack of support (OR = 0.59), suggesting that male teachers exhibit higher organisational identity perceptions. This study provides valuable insights into comprehending the nature of teachers' organisational identity perceptions and advocates for future studies to consider these latent profile characteristics in efforts to cultivate a robust school climate.

The Bright and Dark Sides of Distributed Leadership in Schools: A Joint Structural and Functional Perspective on Distributed Leadership, Work Performance and Job Satisfaction

This study combines a structural and functional perspective on distributed leadership to disentangle its beneficial and detrimental effects on job satisfaction and work performance. Specifically, we explore the interaction between structural (SDL) and functional distributed leadership (FDL) on leadership support, organizational identification, and empowerment. This study also tests the mediating role of leadership support, organizational identification and empowerment as mechanisms that explain the association between distributed leadership and work-related outcomes in teachers. We used a multilevel mediation analysis to test the overall model in a sample of 2632 teachers embedded in 203 Romanian schools. The results replicate previous findings regarding the negative association between SDL and empowerment and identification and show that FDL has an overall positive association with leadership support, identification, and empowerment, as well as with job satisfaction and work performance reported by teachers. SDL had a negative indirect association with job satisfaction mediated by leadership support and with work performance mediated by organizational identification. The association between FDL and job satisfaction was significantly mediated by leadership support, identification, and empowerment within schools. Finally, the association between FDL and work performance was significantly mediated by organizational identification within as well as between schools.

How Organizational Justice Affects Young Pioneers' OCB: A Mediation Analysis of Organizational Identity

How Organizational Justice Affects Young Pioneers' OCB: A Mediation Analysis of Organizational Identity