Identity after death: how legacy organizational identity and death form each other

Abstract

Users who downloaded this article also downloaded: (2015),"The mediating role of burnout on the relationship of emotional intelligence and selfefficacy with OCB and performance", Management Research Review, Vol. 38 Iss 1 pp. 2-28 http:// dx.If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to explore how legacy organizational identity and death relate to each other and, thereby, contribute to closing the gap in knowledge on organizational identity constructions in times of death. Design/methodology/approach -The paper opted for an exploratory study relying on primary data from in-depth narrative interviews with 20 organizational members of a bank that went bankrupt. The primary data, as well as documents like websites, newspapers, magazines, booklets, minutes, and reports, were complemented by secondary interviews with other members of the financial industry. Findings -The paper finds that members of a dead organization construct a bankruptcy narrative that is also a legacy organizational identity narrative including a legacy organizational identity transformation and several identities that have positive and negative aspects and are conflicting but integrated into a coherent narrative. Furthermore, the paper provides empirical insights on how members of a dead organization draw upon their legacy organizational identity to justify their (lack of) past interpretations and responses to an unfolding bankruptcy. Finally, it provides empirical evidence on ways that legacy organizational identity from a dead organization play a substantial role in a living organization. Research limitations/implications -Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Practical implications -The paper holds insight that can help practitioners understand members of a dying organization -including the ways they come to form and perform in a new organizational context; an understanding that is a prerequisite for helping and supporting these members in coming to perform satisfyingly in the new organization. Originality/value -This paper addresses an apparent gap in the literature on identity and death; exploring identity narratives in a bankrupted bank, the paper considers co...

The Generative Mechanism of Boomerang Intention: From the Perspective of Legacy Identification

“…Although legacy identification is the continuity of organization identification, it does not necessarily preclude change. It’s a constant process of being remade according to the change of the environment ( Walsh and Glynn, 2008 ; Gerstroem, 2015 ; Eury et al, 2018 ). Therefore, legacy identification is different from organizational identification in connotation and degree.…”

Loyal after the end: Understanding organizational identification in the wake of failure

“…The failure of an organization can have a powerful impact on its members, mirroring the experience of a close friend or family member’s death (Harris and Sutton, 1986; Sutton, 1987), inducing in them a sense of grief and displacement as they struggle to make sense of its transition from an active entity to a defunct one (Shepherd, 2003; Walsh and Bartunek, 2011). Scholars have suggested that such episodes of retrenchment incline individuals to focus on and cling to organizational identities (Albert and Whetten, 1985; Gendron and Spira, 2010; Gerstrom, 2015; Rousseau, 1998; Walsh and Glynn, 2008). As they do so, however, they are likely to experience a significant level of dissonance as the criticism and blame that are surfaced by an organization’s failure stand in sharp contrast to the positive evaluations of its identity in which their identification was grounded (Ashforth et al, 2008; Frandsen, 2012).…”