Transitional Identity as a Facilitator of Organizational Identity Change during a Merger

Abstract

We adopted an interpretive, grounded theory approach to study the processes by which organizational identities changed during the initial phases of a merger between two formerly rival healthcare organizations. Our investigation of two top management teams attempting to instigate this major change effort and lead their organizations toward completion of the merger revealed that the emergence of a transitional identity—an interim sense held by members about what their organizations were becoming—was critical to moving the change process forward. The transitional identity allowed executives in the two organizations to suspend their preexisting organizational identities and work toward creating a shared, new identity. The transitional identity appears to have been effective because it was ambiguous enough to allow multiple interpretations of what the merged organization would become to eventually coalesce into a common understanding, but not so ambiguous as to be threateningly unfamiliar. Overall, we present a process model of organizational identity change during a major change event that spanned two organizations, with the concept of transitional identity as its centerpiece.

Path dependence and the stabilization of strategic premises: how the funeral industry buries itself

“…This was not a linear process; instead, I iteratively moved between the developed codes and emerging patterns to develop conceptual categories (Eisenhardt 1989). The tools for constant comparison that the qualitative data analysis software contains provided considerable assistance in identifying further category nestings (see also Clark et al 2010;Dacin et al 2010). Based on this analytical procedure, I formed higher-order categories that facilitated an interpretation of the data at a more abstract level (Van Maanen 1979).…”

As Identidades Fragmentadas No Cotidiano Da Feira Do Produtor De Maringá

“…Mesmo com todas essas abordagens, pudemos constatar, no transcurso do levantamento bibliográfico desta pesquisa, a tendência dominante nos estudos organizacionais (EO) em considerar a identidade organizacional vinculada aos atributos centrais, distintivos e duradouros da organização, mesmo quando complementadas com outras perspectivas (MACHADO-DA-SILVA; NOGUEIRA, 2001;GIOIA, 2004;ASHFORTH;ROGERS;CORLEY, 2011;CLARK et al, 2010;GIOIA et al, 2010;SCHULTZ;HERNES, 2013 Albert e Whetten (1985) "generaliza-se o que a alta administração descreve como identidade, ocultando-se a existência dos outros atores organizacionais. Ocultam-se possíveis diferenciações e fragmentações da identidade".…”

Organizational identity challenges in a post-merger context: A case study of an information system implementation project

“…Organizational contexts can be defined by the concept of organizational identity (Clark, Gioia, Ketchen, & Thomas, 2010). Organizational identity represents the ensemble of perceptions shared by organization members about whom they are as an organization (Gioia, 1998).…”

“…Therefore, collaboration across knowledge boundaries, symbolic representations of organizational identities, and specific degrees of integration imposed by the upper-management of an organization during the PMI phase, are likely to be continually negotiated in a process that involve multiple relationships at different levels of analysis (Clark et al, 2010). The dynamics of collaboration-identity during IS implementation efforts in a PMI context, in particular, have seen no empirical research.…”

“…To do this, we draw on the literature on organizational identity (Albert & Whetten, 1985;Clark et al, 2010) and on the "sensemaking" perspective (Weick et al, 2005) to analyze an IS implementation project in a large teaching healthcare center resulting from a merger. Our analysis suggests that divergent organizational identities, which with team members' alternative interpretations of others' practices, norms and organizational symbols, coexist during PMI at different levels of analysis.…”