Legitimating Nascent Collective Identities: Coordinating Cultural Entrepreneurship

TLDR

Collective identity is a key concept in organizational theory, yet the legitimation of nascent collective identities has received limited study. The study argues that membership expansion does not automatically legitimize a nascent collective identity; instead, cultural entrepreneurship and the stories told by members mediate legitimacy, and it proposes a theoretical framework to explain this. Legitimacy is more likely when members articulate a clear defining collective identity story that specifies the group’s purpose and core practices, and the framework explains how expansion influences the evolution of such stories. The authors find that while membership expansion can threaten legitimation, growth stories mitigate this risk by coordinating expansion.

Abstract

The concept of collective identity has gained prominence within organizational theory as researchers have studied how it consequentially shapes organizational behavior. However, much less attention has been paid to the question of how nascent collective identities become legitimated. Although it is conventionally argued that membership expansion leads to collective identity legitimacy, we draw on the notion of cultural entrepreneurship to argue that the relationship is more complex and is culturally mediated by the stories told by group members. We propose a theoretical framework about the conditions under which the collective identity of a nascent entrepreneurial group is more likely to be legitimated. Specifically, we posit that legitimacy is more likely to be achieved when members articulate a clear defining collective identity story that identifies the group's orienting purpose and core practices. Although membership expansion can undermine legitimation by introducing discrepant actors and practices to a collective identity, this potential downside is mitigated by growth stories, which help to coordinate expansion. Finally, we theorize how processes associated with collective identity membership expansion might affect the evolution of defining collective identity stories.