Toward a Functional Understanding of Organizational Identity: How Organizational Identity Enables and Shapes Organizing and Organizational Value Creation

Part of the Lubar Research Seminar Series

Speaker: Shelley Brickson, University of Illinois – Chicago

Utilizing a “polar type” comparative organizational study, I examined whether and how organizational identity (OI) shapes wide-spread organizing patterns at multiple levels of analysis as well as the types of value derived by members as a function of organizational membership. Specifically, I drew from the organizational identity orientation framework to include one individualistic, one relational, and one collectivistic law firm, each with strongly contrasting OI content, centering around excellence, care taking, and community, respectively. Findings revealed that OI content shaped the content of both organizing practices and of various types of value derived by members. They also revealed that, despite marked divergence between firms in the content of organizing patterns and forms of value created, the value creation process was consistent across firms. It entailed the cyclical interplay between identity schemas (both organizational and individual), organizing practices embedded in relationships at various levels of analysis, and value emerging from organizing practices. These findings advance our understanding of the profound impact of OI, which appears central to not only shaping the content of organizing and value generated through organizing, but to actually enabling coherent organizing and value creation. Beyond advances to the OI and value creation literatures, the study also contributes to organizational studies, generally, by furthering our understanding of organizations as agentic, heterogeneous, coherent, and potentially positively impactful actors uniquely capable of organizational value creation.