Organizational Persistence in Highly Institutionalized Environments: Unpacking the Relation Between Identity and Resilience

Despite growing academic interest in understanding the conditions under which resilient organizations adapt to challenging circumstances, little attention to date has been paid to the role played by ‘soft’ factors such as identity as an enabler or property of resilient behaviour. In this chapter, we propose that different forms of legitimacy contribute to the framing of acceptable identities affecting the endurance of central elements over time, thus shaping resilience. By splitting up forms of legitimacy and by analysing elements of organizational identity separately, we provide a novel framework that enables a deeper understanding of identity formation processes in complex environments on the one hand and their links with resilience on the other. Through a historically based analysis of a Nordic university over a 40-year period, we demonstrate the complex, dynamic relationship between external legitimacy, identity adaptation and resilience in the context of organizational transformation. By establishing a link between identity, legitimacy and resilience, the study provides critical insights into the conditions affecting organizational persistence within highly institutionalized organizational fields, such as higher education.

Because Individual Determinants Matter: A Theoretical Extension of Peterson’s Organizational Employee Persistence Model

The world is changing rapidly and the need to adapt and develop presses individuals in a tremendous way to make fast personal and professional decisions in order to face the new challenges. The constant evolution at a global level inevitably translates into changes in the organizational environment, where employees need to develop their authentic professional story, need to define their goals and become competent in the decision making process regarding their career paths.The self-perceived performance analysis, the relationships with co-workers, the employees’ interest about their career growth and work-life balance proved to be strategic contributions in explaining the turnover in the Model of Organizational Persistence proposed and validated by Shari L. Peterson (2004). Our paper proposes and tests an extension of Peterson’s approach by adding two more personality traits in the model: dispositional authenticity and motivational persistence, with the scope to define a more specific map of the dynamic relationships built between employees and their organization, as we believe that turnover could be managed not just directly by organizations, but also indirectly, by employees, throughout their career management decisions.This article’s findings could be valuable for both employees - who want to effectively manage their careers, and organizations, aiming to attract, understand, develop and retain talents.