Telework as a Means of Organizational Identity Change: Investigating Japanese Collectivist Culture in an ICT Company

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.

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

Strategic Organization ◽

10.1177/1476127019863642 ◽

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.

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Generative Organizational Identity Change: Approaching Organizational Authenticity as a Process

Exploring Positive Identities and Organizations ◽

10.4324/9780203879245-26 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 385-408

Keyword(s):

Organizational Identity ◽

Identity Change

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Becoming through doing: How experimental spaces enable organizational identity work

Strategic Organization ◽

10.1177/1476127019864673 ◽

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.

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