Planned Organizational Identity Change

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cees B. M. van Riel ◽  
Mamta Bhatt ◽  
Marijke Baumann
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Identity ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Care Organization ◽  
Identity Change ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Employee Alignment ◽  
External Stakeholders ◽  
Shed Light

In this chapter, drawing from past research on organizational identity change and our observations at several companies that have engaged in such an effort, we develop a framework of planned organizational identity change. In particular, we shed light on how organizations use new identity claims to bring about a deliberate change in their identity. Our framework suggests that such initiatives focus on communicating identity to both internal and external stakeholders. Further, while these initiatives aim at ensuring employee alignment in the internal audience (i.e., organizational members), the goal in the case of external audience is managing reputation. We illustrate the framework with an example of a Dutch funeral insurance and care organization—DELA—that brought about identity change in this manner. Finally, we discuss several research and practice implications based on the framework.

Responding to business model innovation: organizational unlearning and firm failure

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 190-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuliya Snihur
Keyword(s):  
Business Model ◽  
Organizational Identity ◽  
Extreme Case ◽  
Business Model Innovation ◽  
Identity Change ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Top Managers ◽  
The Right ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Shed Light

Purpose This paper aims to examine Borders response to business model innovation (BMI) by Amazon in the bookselling industry. The case illuminates potential causes for protracted periods of organizational unlearning, explaining why organizational unlearning, although beneficial in many documented cases, can also be insufficient to prevent failure. Design/methodology/approach Archival data are used to study Borders’s historical evolution from 1995 to its 2011 bankruptcy. Theoretical inferences are drawn from this case to shed light on the process of organizational unlearning. Findings Borders failed because its top managers were unable to adjust its traditionalist superstore identity to respond in an adequate manner to the changes in their environment. Instead, the company went through protracted phases of weathering the storm, denial and unlearning, resulting in bankruptcy. This extreme case of failure explains why sometimes, organizational unlearning might be insufficient, resulting in organizational demise rather than renewal. Research limitations/implications A longitudinal study of an extreme case allows the author to build links between the research on organizational unlearning and the scholarship on organizational identity. Practical implications Organizations may survive longer if their top managers engage in the process of organizational identity change in response to BMI in their industry. The article proposes a few actions that organizations might usefully take to react to BMI before it is too late. Social implications Better understanding of failure may enable preventive behavior. Originality/value This article explains how organizational identity prevents learning the right things and augments the dangers organizations face during unlearning.

scholarly journals Beyond cultural and geographical proximity: delving into the factors that influence the dynamics of academic relationships between students in higher education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
José-Vicente Tomás-Miquel ◽  
Jordi Capó-Vicedo
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Academic Networks ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Specific Stage ◽  
The University ◽  
Proximity Dimensions ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractScholars have widely recognised the importance of academic relationships between students at the university. While much of the past research has focused on studying their influence on different aspects such as the students’ academic performance or their emotional stability, less is known about their dynamics and the factors that influence the formation and dissolution of linkages between university students in academic networks. In this paper, we try to shed light on this issue by exploring through stochastic actor-oriented models and student-level data the influence that a set of proximity factors may have on formation of these relationships over the entire period in which students are enrolled at the university. Our findings confirm that the establishment of academic relationships is derived, in part, from a wide range of proximity dimensions of a social, personal, geographical, cultural and academic nature. Furthermore, and unlike previous studies, this research also empirically confirms that the specific stage in which the student is at the university determines the influence of these proximity factors on the dynamics of academic relationships. In this regard, beyond cultural and geographic proximities that only influence the first years at the university, students shape their relationships as they progress in their studies from similarities in more strategic aspects such as academic and personal closeness. These results may have significant implications for both academic research and university policies.

What is NORML? Sedimented Meanings in Ambiguous Organizational Identities

2021 ◽  
pp. 017084062110577
Author(s):  
Matthew C.B. Lyle ◽  
Ian J. Walsh ◽  
Diego M. Coraiola
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Identity ◽  
Identity Change ◽  
National Organization ◽  
The Past ◽  
Organizational Identities ◽  
Key Points ◽  
Identity Threats ◽  
History Of ◽  
Identity Labels

Organizational identity scholarship has largely focused on the mutability of meanings ascribed to ambiguous identity labels. In contrast, we analyze a case study of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) to explore how leaders maintained a meaning ascribed to an ambiguous identity label amid successive identity threats. We found that heightened dissensus surrounding meanings attributed to the organization’s “reform group” label at three key points spurred theoretically similar manifestations of two processes. The first, meaning sedimentation, involved leaders invoking history to advocate for the importance of their preferred meaning while mulling the inclusion of others. The second, reconstructing the past, occurred as leaders and members alike offered narratives that obscured the history of disavowed meanings while sharing new memories of those they prioritized. Our work complements research on identity change by drawing attention to the processes by which meaning(s) underlying ambiguous identity labels might survive.

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

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-105
Author(s):  
David Oliver ◽  
Heather C Vough
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Organizational Identity ◽  
Process Model ◽  
De Novo ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Strategic Decision ◽  
Strategic Decision Making ◽  
Identity Change ◽  
Important Concern ◽  
New Firm

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.

scholarly journals The civics test: a political or educational tool for creating the perfect citizen? A historical overview of forms and processes of naturalization in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 205-220
Author(s):  
Sarah Van Ruyskensvelde ◽  
Mary Kathryn Ketch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Past Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Memory Testing ◽  
Educational Tool ◽  
American Citizenship ◽  
Solid Foundation ◽  
And Control ◽  
Shed Light

Naturalization, or the process through which citizenship is granted to a foreigner, is a process that has begun to increasingly look like that of the school. In the United States, as in many other countries, one of the main features of the naturalization is the civics test. This paper aims to document the historical development of naturalization procedures in the United States and shed light on how schoolish tools were introduced to decide who can be offered or denied American citizenship. Much of past research has critiqued the civics test for its unreliability, or difficulty for even natives. We argue, however, that the current civics test is rather a product of a system that began without a solid foundation. In an attempt to avoid fraud and control efficiency, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has promoted the use of a test that devalues the importance of the choice to re-align loyalties to a country and regulates it to memory testing.

scholarly journals Becoming through doing: How experimental spaces enable organizational identity work

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-49
Author(s):  
Neva Bojovic ◽  
Valérie Sabatier ◽  
Emmanuel Coblence
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Identity ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Cognitive Tools ◽  
Social Setting ◽  
Identity Change ◽  
Work Space ◽  
Organizational Identities ◽  
Magazine Publishing

This qualitative study of a magazine publishing incumbent shows how organizational identity work can be triggered when organizational members engage in business model experimentation within the bounded social setting of experimental space. The study adds to the understanding of the strategy-identity nexus by expanding on the view of business models as cognitive tools to business models as tools for becoming and by understanding the role of experimental spaces as holding environments for organizational identity work. We show how an experimental space engages organizational members in experimental practices (e.g. cognitive, material, and experiential). As firms experiment with “what they do,” organizational members progressively confront the existing organizational identity in the following ways: they engage in practices of organizational identity work by coping with the loss of the old identity, they play with possible organizational identities, and they allow new organizational identity aspirations to emerge. In these ways, experimental spaces act as an organizational identity work space that eventually enables organizational identity change. We identify two mechanisms (i.e. grounding and releasing) by which an organizational identity work space emerges and leads to the establishment of a renewed organizational identity.

Pollution Stigma and Manufacturing Firms’ Disengagement Effort: Interactive Effects of Pressures From External Stakeholders

2019 ◽  
pp. 108602661989396
Author(s):  
Jia Xu ◽  
Jiuchang Wei ◽  
Haipeng (Allan) Chen
Keyword(s):  
Social Norm ◽  
Returns To Scale ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Joint Effect ◽  
Interactive Effects ◽  
Normative Pressure ◽  
The Social ◽  
External Stakeholders ◽  
Polluting Firms ◽  
Positive Effect

Firms’ stigmatization due to deviation from social norms has received extensive attention in recent years. The increasing significance of the social norm requiring firms to protect the natural environment contributes to the emergence of pollution stigma over the heavily polluting firms. We apply the stigma theory to the National Specially Monitored firms of China and expand past research by developing a framework to understand the interactive effects of external stakeholder’s pressure on the tendency for these firms to disengage from the pollution stigma. We find that (a) there is diminishing returns to scale in the joint effect between hard and soft regulative pressure and in that between regulative and normative pressure, (b) the positive effect of mimetic pressure from environmental protection exemplary firms is exacerbated when dilution of stigma responsibility is low, and (c) dilution of stigma responsibility weakens the positive effect of stigma intensity on firms’ disengagement tendencies.

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