Reengineering Identity | CU Experts

Recent theoretical work in organizational identification has developed two themes: that members of complex organizations have multiple social groups with which they identify and that acts displaying members’identifications contribute to the construction of collective identities. Using a multimethodological and longitudinal approach, this case study of a planned organizational change found that (a) members central in the communication network identified similarly across four social groups, whereas others concentrated on subsets of these identities; (b) members’ use of discursive resources to explain a contentious event both displayed structured interests and made claims on the collective’s identity; and (c) members’preferred identity structures were more local than distant following the event. These findings contribute to scholarship and practice by illustrating the multiplicity and duality of identification, by introducing a procedure to assess multiple identity structures simultaneously, and by calling attention to the influence of activity patterns in shaping identities, particularly during planned change.

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