Mission accomplished? Organizational identity work in response to mission success

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (9) ◽  
pp. 1234-1263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila M Cannon ◽  
Karin Kreutzer
Keyword(s):  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Organizational Identity ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Mission Success ◽  
Identity Ambiguity ◽  
Conventional Literature

How do nonprofit organizations reinvent their identities after they have accomplished all or part of their missions? This comparative case study of two Irish peacebuilding organizations explores what happens when their raison d’etre is fundamentally challenged. A successful peace process in Northern Ireland resulted in reduced support for peacebuilding organizations and a perception of mission accomplished. Conventional literature on nonprofit organizations portrays mission success as positive. We show that mission success paradoxically threatens the very existence of the organization as it may lead to member and donor dissociation. We find that mission success leads to identity ambiguity, which catalyses organizational identity work including different rhetorical strategies of self–other talk. We develop a process model illustrating competitive versus integrative approaches to organizational identity work to understand nonprofits adapting to mission success. We draw out lessons for practitioners. Focusing on a renewed mission that is consistent with the organization’s history is more important than finding a quick financial fix. Social purpose organizations can efficiently and effectively be redeployed to address new challenges, rather than recreating new organizations each time.

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.

Manipulating Structure in Institutional Complexity Scenarios: The Case of Strategic Planning in Nonprofits

2020 ◽  
pp. 000765032092733
Author(s):  
Ziva Sharp
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Planning ◽  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Structural Components ◽  
Institutional Complexity ◽  
Shape Structure ◽  
Social Logic

Emergent structural approaches to institutional complexity tend to inhibit the role of agency in addressing logic multiplicity scenarios. Prior studies of logic multiplicity have documented a diverse set of outcomes, ranging from domination through hybridization, and characterized by various levels of conflict. A new stream of research has emerged that seeks to explain this heterogeneity through the structural components of complexity. These studies tend to minimize the role of agency in institutional complexity scenarios, positing that outcome diversity, and the organization’s ability to exert agency, can be accounted for by the interaction of exogenously determined parameters, such as centrality, compatibility, prioritization, and jurisdictional overlap. This article revisits the role of agency in these models, suggesting that agency is not only framed by, but may itself shape, structure. The article draws on a comparative case study in five Israeli nonprofit organizations, focusing on the introduction of the business logic through a strategic planning process, and the challenge that this represents for the legacy social logic. The case studies demonstrate that organizations regularly use a set of distinctive mechanisms to manipulate the structural components of complexity, and, in so doing, agentically regulate logic multiplicity outcomes.

scholarly journals Anti-identity strategizing: The dynamic interplay of “who we are” and “who we are not”

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Stanske ◽  
Madeleine Rauch ◽  
Anna Canato
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Identity ◽  
Qualitative Case Study ◽  
Strategy Selection ◽  
Discontinuous Change ◽  
Change Trajectories ◽  
Change Initiatives ◽  
Identity Ambiguity ◽  
Dynamic Interplay

In this article, we investigate the strategy–identity nexus by illustrating the interaction between organizational identity, anti-identity, and strategy. While extant research illustrates the potentially constraining role of organizational identity on change trajectories, less is known about the role of organizational anti-identity. Drawing on a qualitative case study of a leading German distributor’s 32-year history, we highlight the importance of organizational anti-identity for both continuous and discontinuous change initiatives, and illustrate how organizational members can overcome identity ambiguity by referring to “who we are not as an organization” rather than to “who we are as an organization.” We further show how managers who draw on identity reservoirs may have greater leeway when exploiting anti-identity, and how ambiguity and resistance may be overcome by referring to “who we are not” as an organization. Our findings broaden our understanding of the role of anti-identity for strategy selection and contribute to the burgeoning literature on the strategy–identity nexus.

Identity Ambiguity and Change in the Wake of a Corporate Spin-off

2004 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-208
Author(s):  
Kevin G. Corley ◽  
Dennis A. Gioia
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Identity ◽  
Collective State ◽  
Identity Change ◽  
Interpretive Case Study ◽  
Identity Ambiguity ◽  
Fortune 100 ◽  
Collective Experience ◽  
Experience Of Change ◽  
Independent Organization

We report on the findings of an inductive, interpretive case study of organizational identity change in the spin-off of a Fortune 100 company's top-performing organizational unit into an independent organization. We examined the processes by which the labels and meanings associated with the organization's identity underwent changes during and after the spin-off, as well as how the organization responded to these changes. The emergent model of identity change revolved around a collective state of identity ambiguity, the details of which provide insight into processes whereby organizational identity change can occur. Additionally, our findings revealed previously unreported aspects of organizational change, including organization members' collective experience of “change overload” and the presence of temporal identity discrepancies in the emergence of the identity ambiguity.

scholarly journals National Identity and Organizational Identity in Algeria: Interactions and Influences

M n gement ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofiane Baba ◽  
Omar Hemissi ◽  
Taïeb Hafsi
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Organizational Identity ◽  
Formation Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Qualitative Case Study ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
New Research

This article examines how national identity influences organizational identity. The interactions and influences between these two identity levels have been underexplored in the identity literature. However, given the national and geographical anchoring of businesses, national identity plausibly influences both their behavior and their organizational identity. This article presents a qualitative case study of the organizational identity of four family-run Algerian businesses, leaders in their respective industries. It theorizes a process model explaining the influence of national identity on organizational identity through three identity mechanisms: protection, justification, and adaptation. The findings suggest that organizational identity can be a social affirmation response whereby businesses demarcate their role in a challenging institutional context. This work opens new research avenues in this field by highlighting the interactions and influences that characterize these two dimensions of identity in a country actively engaged in the identity formation process, which exemplifies a dynamic and complex institutional context.

scholarly journals Strategic Responses to Grand Challenges: Why and How Corporations Build Community Resilience

2019 ◽  
Vol 161 (4) ◽  
pp. 835-853
Author(s):  
Ralph Hamann ◽  
Lulamile Makaula ◽  
Gina Ziervogel ◽  
Clifford Shearing ◽  
Alan Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Process Model ◽  
Community Resilience ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Strategic Responses ◽  
Case Study Analysis ◽  
Grand Challenges ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Building Community

AbstractWe explore why and how corporations seek to build community resilience as a strategic response to grand challenges. Based on a comparative case study analysis of four corporations strategically building community resilience in five place-based communities in South Africa, as well as three counterfactual cases, we develop a process model of corporate practices and contingent factors that explain why and how some corporations commit to community resilience building and whether they try to do so directly or indirectly. We thus help explain corporations’ strategic contributions to community resilience, and we emphasise the role of place-specific resources, social-ecological system viability, and limited statehood in motivating such organisational responses to grand challenges.

scholarly journals Nonprofits as Schools for Democracy: The Justifications for Organizational Democracy Within Nonprofit Organizations

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 910-930 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel King ◽  
Martyn Griffin
Keyword(s):  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Good Work ◽  
Workplace Democracy ◽  
Organizational Democracy ◽  
Organizational Processes ◽  
Social Mission ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intrinsic Good

Nonprofit organizations are often claimed to be schools of democracy: “that produce citizens able and ready to participate in society” (as stated by Dodge and Ospina in Nonprofits as “schools of democracy”: A comparative case study of two environmental organizations, 2016, page 479). This claim is predicated the external role nonprofits play in producing democracy, particularly by engendering civic action. In contrast, this article promotes nonprofits’ internal organizing processes to produce democracy within nonprofits themselves. Drawing on the workplace democracy literature, we explore three main justifications for workplace democracy: consequentialist, deontological, and virtue ethics. Rather than viewing workplace democracy as an extrinsic good—based solely on consequences external to the organization—we argue that it should be considered an intrinsic good, valuable in and of itself. We, therefore, argue for a broadened imaginary for how nonprofits are managed, that include the internal organizational processes and widening of the social mission of nonprofit organization for greater democracy and freedom, based on good work.

Banking for a Low Carbon Future

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 14-23
Author(s):  
Anna Eckardt ◽  
Diana D. Mazutis ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Governance Structures ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Corporate Strategies ◽  
Multi Stage ◽  
European Banks ◽  
Stage Process

We present a qualitative comparative case study of four European banks, investigating mechanisms that help or hinder the integration of climate change (CC) considerations in the banks’ corporate strategies. We find that strategic CC responses are dependent on the following factors: the initial interpretation of the CC issue, the language deployed to advocate for CC and the governance structures that are being invoked (or not) to spread attention to CC both within the bank and to external constituents. We contribute to research on corporate CC (in)action by developing a multi-stage process model of CC responses in a low salience industry.

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