“I Identify with Her,” “I Identify with Him”: Unpacking the Dynamics of Personal Identification in Organizations

Abstract

Despite recognizing the importance of personal identification in organizations, researchers have rarely explored its dynamics. We define personal identification as perceived oneness with another individual, where one defines oneself in terms of the other. While many scholars have found that personal identification is associated with helpful effects, others have found it harmful. To resolve this contradiction, we distinguish between three paths to personal identification-threat-focused, opportunityfocused, and closeness-focused paths-and articulate a model that includes each. We examine the contextual features, how individuals' identities are constructed, and the likely outcomes that follow in the three paths. We conclude with a discussion of how the threat-, opportunity-, and closeness-focused personal identification processes potentially blend, as well as implications for future research and practice.

Lone star or team player? The interrelationship of different identification foci and the role of self‐presentation concerns

“…This more detailed analysis contributes to calls to clarify the distinct and nested foci of identities (Millward & Haslam, ). Further, more recent conceptual attention has focused on the consequences of individual differences for identification (Ashforth et al, ) and enhancing understanding of mechanisms of self‐expression and social approval in identity construction (Highhouse, Thornbury, & Little, ). However, the role of self‐presentation needs has yet to be thoroughly investigated in an organizational context.…”

Growing Followers: Exploring the Effects of Leader Humility on Follower Self‐Expansion, Self‐Efficacy, and Performance

“… Previous researchers interchangeably use ‘self‐expansion’ (e.g., Aron and Aron, ), ‘self‐other overlap’ (e.g., Batson et al, ), and ‘inclusion of other in the self’ (Aron et al, ) to describe this psychological state. Aron and Aron () suggest that compared to using ‘including the other in the self’, using ‘self‐expansion’ could be more straightforward and reduce the awkwardness in English (Ashforth et al, ). Thus, we prefer the term self‐expansion in our paper. …”

Unpacking the Relationship Between Value and Empowering Behaviours of Leaders

“…Based on social identity theory [27] and value congruence [28] researches, leaders may have stronger willingness to empowering employees who have much more similar values and excluding employees with different values. In the future, scholars could try to investigate how the value dissimilarity among leader and subordinates influence the leader's empowering behavior, subordinates' psychology empowerment and performance.…”