Identity Change and Stability in Organizational Groups: A Longitudinal Investigation

Abstract

Research on identity in organizations takes endurance overtime as a taken‐for‐granted expectation, but then often explores how identity changes. Conversely, research on memory in organizations takes change as a taken‐for‐granted expectation and then explores how particular memories might be maintained by purposeful action. We used both of these literatures as a basis for exploring what happened to two aspects of an organizational group's identity over the course of its first seven years. One aspect of identity centered on the group's mission and the other on the group's internal processes. Based on analysis of the processes involved in the evolution of the group's identity, we suggest several factors that foster stability in identity and several factors that foster change in identity. From the identification of these factors, and based on Lewin's Field Theory approach, we suggest a more complex depiction of what identity stability or change might mean overtime.

Sharing and expanding academic and practitioner knowledge in health care

“…Another is through sharing stories of practice, a form of knowledge transmission that builds on the richness of the contextual details. 16 A third is through socialisation processes that echo typical master-apprenticeship relations. 4,17 In these types of interactions, called legitimate peripheral participation, 18 knowledge is passed on as a form of contextual practice, and newcomers learn their roles within the community in ways that only partially lean on the explicit formal knowledge that is typically produced by academicseven about academics' own practice.…”

Routines Resistance: How Conflicts Within Transactive Memory Obstruct Routinization

“…Hence, routines stored within TM need to be consistent with both the overall TM of an organization, and also with the superordinate identity grounded in TAM. These insights speak to research into organizational change and adaptation, and to what degree organizational memory and identity are more or less variable (Anteby and Molnár 2012;Meyer et al 2002). We suggest that part of the collective memory system-namely TAM-is deeply stable and integrated within a sense of shared identity.…”

Identities In Organisation: The Impact Of Identity Work On Job Performance

“…Ashforth and Kreiner (1999) suggested that identity stability enhances individual understanding of their selves which contribute to an increase in individual's work productivity. Numerous scholars venture in studies of identity stability, such as studies that involve workplace bullying (Lutgen-Sandvik, 2008), racial identity (Yip et al, 2010), organisational analysis (Meyer et al, 2002) and work related identity loss (Conroy & O'Leary-Kelly, 2014).…”