Strategies For Managing Multiple Organizational Identifications

Abstract

This case study reveals how organization members communicatively manage multiple targets and sources of identification during a time of company transition. Interview accounts are used to examine how members discursively construct understanding as they discuss two competing value-based identity structures. Results reveal three distinct discursive strategies—comparison, logic, and support—that members use to manage identity tensions, and eight corresponding communicative tactics used to enact those strategies. This focus on communicative strategies and tactics is important because identities are expressed through language, and discourse is the means available to organization members for negotiating various identity structures. Discursive strategies are central to the identity formation process and provide a window into the sensemaking of participants.

Public Diplomacy and the Clash of Satellites

“…It is also interested in the study of identity construction and changes of identities at both the national and transnational levels (Wodak, 2002, p. 18). The relevance of CDA to this study emanates from the assumption that discourse shapes as well as expresses identities (Larson & Pepper, 2003), and its interest in the social processes and structures surrounding the production of a text which, consequently, influences how individuals or groups create meaning in their interaction with the text (Wodak, 2002, p. 12). This means that it pays attention to certain questions such as, who is communicating, with whom and why.…”

Ingroups and Outgroups in Complaints: Exploring Politic Behaviour in Nurses’ Discourse

“…The two group memberships resulting from this discursive practice construct Eve as an ingroup member with the nurses, and as ingroup member of the management team. This has significant relational implications as we is instrumentally used to fulfil the interpersonal purpose of enhancing the sense of belonging of the nurses with the ultimate goal of shaping their behaviour in a positively valued way (Larson & Pepper, 2003). In this light, it could be argued that we is employed by Eve as a mitigating strategy when she evaluates the situation (line 7) and shares her decisions regarding the continuation of short changes (lines 8-9).…”

“…In this case, then, we is actually excluding (rather than including, as often argued, see Enyedy and Goldberg, 2004) Eve's interlocutors while she indexes a group affiliation with members who are not present. For transactional purposes, such instances of the collective pronoun we seem to legitimise Eve's decisions by showing how these are also supported by a non-present other (Nick), which strengthens her argument and reestablishes her authority in the matter (Larson & Pepper, 2003).…”

Organizing and Disorganizing Strategic Communication: Discursive Institutional Change Dynamics in Two Communication Departments

“…Individuals within organizations engage in discursive activity to generate new meanings that can help -or hinder -the enactment of particular strategies, ideas or practices. They also reflect upon and challenge socially ascribed roles (Holmer-Nadesan, 1996) and discursively negotiate these roles or even multiple roles (Larson & Pepper, 2003).…”