Reference no: EM133175497

Identity and the Organization Member

LO1: Distinguish between organizational identity and identification.

LO2: Recognize how management strives to guide employees' socialization into the organization so employees strongly identify with the organization.

LO3: Understand the processes by which organization members come to identify with the organization and incorporate that affinity into their self-identities.

LO4: Grasp the postmodern and critical concern that managerial interests can use organizational identity and identification to sustain their control.

Question 1: In the exercises for Section 8.1 "Identity and the Organization" above, you were asked you to think of an organization to which you have belonged-perhaps a sports team on which you played, a club that you joined, a company where you worked, a church or mosque or synagogue where you have worshipped, or the college you now attend. In section 8.1 we asked you to explore that organization's identity; now we ask you think about your own identification with that organization. Describe how the organization guided your socialization, first through the anticipatory socialization phase prior to your actual joining, and then through the phase of your formal entry and assimilation. What methods did the organization use in encouraging you to strongly identify with that organization?

Question 2: Thinking of the same organization you analyzed in Exercise 1, switch your gaze from the ways it tried to socialize you and instead consider your own responses. Following Ashforth and Meal's framework: Did the organization's distinctiveness make you, as a member, feel unique? Did its prestige boost your self-esteem? As you became aware of other similar organizations, did the comparisons highlight what was different about your organization? Did that make you feel more a part of the "in" group? Was this feeling heightened by any actual or perceived competition with the other organizations? And as Tompkins and Cheney suggested, did your organizational identification increase as you spent more time with other members who also identified with the organization? Did you ultimately conform to the organization's values and practices, without being told, because you felt they were your own?

Question 3: Finally, consider again the organization you analyzed in Exercises 1 and 2. Now refer to Table 8.5 "Identity Regulation: Alvesson & Willmott" above which lists the targets and discourses that organization leaders and managers can use to engage in identity regulation. The left column lists discursive targets, the second lists discursive modes, and the third lists examples given by Alvesson and Willmott. Make a chart of your own and, in the third column, list your own examples of how the organization to which you belonged may have engaged in identity regulation. After listing your examples, jot down some thoughts on how these discourses may have shaped your identity work and influenced your self-identity in the organization.