Making connections: A process model of organizational identification

Abstract

Organizational identification is conventionally defined as a sense of oneness. Yet this is static and inhibits a process view of identification, in which organizational identity is continuously adjusted. Most studies of organizational identification are of members and not stakeholders, despite evidence that suggests that stakeholders have a significant role and that organizational identity and image are reciprocally connected. We ask the question: how is organizational identification discursively constructed? We suggest that stakeholders play a key role in organizational identification processes. The forward movement of the process, from Performative to Instrumental to Interactional to Reciprocal, is one of reinforcement in which soft power enrols a virtuous circle of willing support. The backward movement of the process, from Reciprocal to Interactional to Instrumental to Performative, is one of functional justification involving hard power as coercion by communicating the organization’s expectations to the individual.