On the ‘Organizational Identity’ Metaphor
| Published date | 01 December 2002 |
| Author | J. P. Cornelissen |
| Date | 01 December 2002 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.00242 |
‘And if they were all one member, where were the
body? But now they are many members, but one
body.’ (I Corinthians XII, 19–20)
Introduction
Ever since the early 1980s, concepts such as
‘organizational identity’ and ‘corporate personal-
ity’ have come to the fore in organization studies,
following a surge of interest in symbolic and
ideational dimensions of organizational life (e.g.
Pondy et al., 1983) coupled with a greater atten-
tion to the role of language and metaphor in
representing organizations (Daft and Wiginton,
1979). The ‘organizational identity’ metaphor
in particular has received a huge amount of
academic interest as a device for capturing and
explaining these symbolic and ideational dimen-
sions of organizational life (e.g. Gioia, Schultz
and Corley, 2000a; Whetten and Godfrey, 1998),
but, remarkably enough, its heuristic value as a
metaphor has only marginally been explored. In
a sense, since the watershed article of Albert
and Whetten (1985, p. 293) raised the issue of
whether we can metaphorically project the idea
of an ‘identity’ upon organizations to describe
and explain their dynamics, the field of organiza-
tion studies has moved on, largely ignoring the
theoretical and methodological issues laid bare
herewith.
In fact, while a significant literature on the con-
cept has evolved in recent years (e.g. Academy of
Management Review, 2000; Albert and Whetten,
1985; Ashforth and Mael, 1989; Dutton and
Dukerich, 1991; Whetten and Godfrey, 1998), this
work concerns ‘organizational identity’ as a
metaphor only indirectly, if at all. Yet, researchers
who have acknowledged the concept’s precepts as
a metaphor have only done so in passing, refer-
ring to the ‘extensions’ from individual to organ-
izational ‘identities’ (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1994;
Gioia, Schultz and Corley, 2000b) that serve as a
means of knowledge generation. None have yet
offered a comprehensive account of the mech-
anics and validity of the ‘organizational identity’
concept as a metaphor for the subject that it
supposedly illuminates – one that starts with
developing an understanding of the role and use
of metaphor in organization studies and subse-
quently evaluates the use and heuristic value of
the ‘organizational identity’ concept.
The present article therefore reviews the use
of metaphor in organization theory with the
British Journal of Management, Vol. 13, 259–268 (2002)
© 2002 British Academy of Management
On the ‘Organizational Identity’
Metaphor1
J. P. Cornelissen
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCOR), University of Amsterdam,
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam, The Netherlands
This article reviews and evaluates the heuristic status of ‘organizational identity’ as
a metaphor for the generation of knowledge about the subject that it supposedly
illuminates. This is done by drawing out the general uses and utility of metaphors
within organizational theory and research, on the basis of which the article assesses the
‘organizational identity’ metaphor with the objective of providing insight into whether
this particular metaphor is warranted and has any heuristic value for our understanding
of organizational life.
1Thanks are given to Scott Taylor, Iina Hellsten and
the editor of BJM for their valuable comments upon an
earlier version of this paper.
06_Cornel 26/11/02 1:11 pm Page 259
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