Beyond Text: Constructing Organizational Identity Multimodally
| Published date | 01 December 2007 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2007.00516.x |
| Author | David Oliver,Johan Roos |
| Date | 01 December 2007 |
Beyond Text: Constructing Organizational
Identity Multimodally
David Oliver and Johan Roos
*
HEC Montreal, Management Department, 3000 Chemin de la Coˆ te-Sainte-Catherine, Montreal, QC, Canada
H3T 2A7, and
*
Stockholm School of Economics, Sveava
¨gen 65, 113 83 Stockholm, Sweden
Email: david.oliver@hec.ca; johan.roos@hhs.se
Organizational scholars have proposed a broad range of theoretical approaches to the
study of organizational identity. However, empirical studies on the construct have relied
on text-based organizational identity descriptions, with little exploration of multiple
intelligences, emotions and individual/collective identity representations. In this paper,
we briefly review the empirical literature on organizational identity, and propose a novel
method for empirical study involving structured interventions in which management
teams develop representations of the identities of their organizations using three-
dimensional construction toy materials. Our study has five main implications. By
engaging in a method that draws on multiple intelligences, participants in this study
generated multifaceted and innovative representations of the identities of their
organizations. The object-mediated, playful nature of the method provided a safe
context for emotional expression. Because it involved the collection of both individual
and collective-level data, the technique led to collective constructions of highly varying
degrees of ‘sharedness’. Finally, the organizational identity representations integrated
unconscious or ‘tacit’ understandings, which led to the enactment of organizational
change.
Introduction
In the slightly more than 20 years since Albert
and Whetten (1985) launched the study of
organizational identity, the field has become a
prominent domain of inquiry in the management
literature, inspiring numerous scholarly articles,
edited books (e.g. Whetten and Godfrey, 1998)
and a special topic forum of Academy of
Management Review (January 2000). A variety
of explanations have been proposed for this
intense interest. The notion offers a conceptual
bridge across traditional analytical distinctions
such as micro and macro, agency and structure,
and individual, group and organizational levels
of research (Porter, 2001). The phrase ‘organiza-
tion identity’ is understandable and salient to
both academic and practitioner audiences, pro-
viding scholars with the tantalizing possibility of
a concept that can cross the theory–practice
divide (Gioia, Schultz and Corley, 2002a) or link
disparate social scientific communities (Brown,
2001). As workforces become increasingly hetero-
geneous and externalized bureaucratic structures
are dismantled, the notion of an internalized
cognitive structure or ‘rudder’ of what the
organization stands for – residing in the heads
and hearts of its members – has become attractive
(Albert, Ashforth and Dutton, 2000).
Despite a considerable amount of scholarship,
the concept of organizational identity has been
defined in a variety of ways (Corley et al., 2006),
and the topic’s ontological and epistemological
status remains the subject of debate. A recent dis-
cussion in this journal focused on organizational
identity’s usefulness as a knowledge generating
metaphor in organization studies (Cornelissen,
2002a, 2002b; Gioia, Schultz and Corley, 2002a,
2002b). Others have subsequently argued that
instead of an imperfect organization–person
metaphor, organizational identity is one form of
social identity, and thus describes a social reality
British Journal of Management, Vol. 18, 342–358 (2007)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2007.00516.x
r2007 British Academy of Management
of organizational life (Haslam, Postmes and
Ellemers, 2003). Such a perspective appears to
be supported by Luhmann’s theory of social
systems, which claims that organizational fea-
tures do not have to be traced back to individual
features but can be considered real sui generis
(Seidl, 2003).
These debates over the nature of organiza-
tional identity have generated an impressive
volume of theoretical work. While the number
of empirical studies has increased significantly of
late, several areas of theoretical discussion have
yet to be extensively explored empirically. In this
light, our purpose in this paper is twofold. First,
we briefly review the existing peer-reviewed
empirical studies on organizational identity,
noting the reliance on text-based descriptions of
the concept. Second, we complement this work
by exploring a novel, non-text-based method for
generating identity descriptions among practising
managers in organizations. Using a standardized
technique that involves constructing organization
identity using hands-on, playful construction
materials, we conducted interventions in three
organizations to generate identity descriptions
quite different from those possible through use of
traditional text-based techniques alone. We report
our findings in this paper and propose implications
with the potential to shed light on the empirical
study of organizational identity more broadly.
What is meant by organizational
identity?
Organizational identity was originally defined as
that which members believe to be central,
enduring, and distinctive about their organiza-
tion (Albert and Whetten, 1985), although more
recently the extent to which an identity must be
enduring has been questioned (Corley et al., 2006;
Gioia, Schultz and Corley, 2000). Other defini-
tions of organization identity state that it reflects
an organization’s central and distinguishing
attributes – including its core values, organiza-
tional culture, modes of performance, and
products (Elsbach and Kramer, 1996) – or refers
to a collective, commonly shared understanding
of the organization’s distinctive values and
characteristics (Hatch and Schultz, 1997).
The definitional variety stems from some fun-
damental dichotomies related to whether one
sees organizational identity as shared beliefs or
institutionalized claims (Whetten and Mackey,
2002), a process or a thing (Ravasi and van
Rekom, 2003), a macro or micro phenomenon
(Brickson, 2000), or a social construction or core
essence (Corley et al., 2006). Others have
classified studies of organizational identity into
three broad ontological/epistemological perspec-
tives (Gioia, 1998, p. 25; Gioia, Schultz and
Corley, 2000); that is, functionalist or social
realist studies (e.g. Elsbach and Kramer, 1996),
interpretative or constructionist studies (e.g.
Pratt and Rafaeli, 1997), and post-modern or
semiotic studies (e.g. Sveningsson and Alvesson,
2003). Such distinctions influence how organiza-
tional identity may be described and critiqued.
For example, while functionalists may be inclined
to evaluate organizational identity in terms of its
metaphoric value (Cornelissen, 2002a), interpre-
tivists may be more inclined to focus on its
production and reproduction through social pro-
cesses in organizations (Haslam, Postmes and
Ellemers, 2003).
We have a social constructionist view of
organizational identity, believing that organiza-
tional identity is an emergent property consti-
tuted out of the process of interaction (Weick,
1995), involving both organizational members
and top management (Hatch and Schultz, 1997).
It can thus be thought of as a social accomplish-
ment rather than an essential quality of orga-
nizations – a product of intersubjective, shared
perceptions and views of ‘who’ an organization
is. These shared views in turn indicate an
orientation that implies what is appropriate,
natural and valued for an organization (Ka
¨rre-
man and Alvesson, 2001).
Despite its lack of core essence, we view the
concept of organizational identity as an organi-
zational phenomenon or social fact (Haslam,
Postmes and Ellemers, 2003) having a significant
impact on organizations in a variety of ways. In
this respect, our ontology is consistent with
scholars who have found that organizational
identity influences the way issues, emotions and
actions within organizations are interpreted
(Dutton and Dukerich, 1991), constrains organi-
zational actions and decision-making processes
(Fombrun, 1996), provides organizations with
the confidence to be proactive (Gioia and
Thomas, 1996), provides institutional legitimacy
necessary to attract resources (Brown, 2001),
Constructing Organizational Identity Multimodally 343
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