Guiding Organizational Identity Through Aged Adolescence

TLDR

The article does not review existing literature or endorse a specific perspective on organizational identity. The authors aim to reflect on two decades of organizational identity research, promote pluralistic study, clarify definitions, and set a reference point for future work. The authors frame their inquiry around three key questions: the nomological net embedding organizational identity, its ontological status, and how it should be defined and conceptualized.

Abstract

In this article, the authors reflect on the past two decades of research on organizational identity, looking to its history and to its future. They do not provide a review of the literature, nor do they promote a particular perspective on the concept. Instead, they advocate pluralism in studying organizational identity while encouraging clarity and transparency in the articulation of definitions and core theoretical suppositions. Believing there is no one best approach to the study of organizational identity, their intent is to establish a reference point that can orient future work on organizational identity. They focus on three questions they feel are critical: What is the nomological net that embeds organizational identity? Is organizational identity “real” (or simply metaphoric)? and How do we define and conceptualize organizational identity? Last, they try to anticipate organizational identity issues on the horizon to suggest future directions for theory and research.