Identity Work and Organizational Identification

• Date: 01 July 2017
• Published date: 01 July 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12152
• Author: Andrew D. Brown

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 19, 296–317 (2017)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12152

Identity Work and Organizational

Identification

Andrew D. Brown

University of Bath, School of Management, Claverton Down, BA2 7AY, UK

Corresponding author email: a.d.brown@bath.ac.uk

In this paper, I analyse five approaches to identity work – discursive, dramaturgical,

symbolic, socio-cognitive, and psychodynamic – and show how these are helpful in

exploring the wayspeople draw on their membership of organizations in their construc-

tions of self, processes generallyreferred to as organizational identification. Collectively,

these approaches constitute a distinctive perspective on identities and identifications

which suggests that they are ‘worked on’ by embedded social actors who are both con-

strained and enabled by context. In so doing, I draw attention to issues of agency and

process, the always dynamic and complex, often fractured, and sometimes contradic-

tory nature of identities and identifications, and raise a series of issues and questions

for further research.

Introduction

Despite considerable attention being paid to

individual-level processes of identity construction in

organizations, much of it centred on the concept iden-

tity work, what constitutes identity work is under-

explored (Brown 2015, p. 17). In this paper, I analyse

five approaches to identity work – discursive, dra-

maturgical, symbolic, socio-cognitive, and psycho-

dynamic – and show how these aid understanding

of the ways people draw on their membership of or-

ganizations in their constructions of self, processes

generally referred to as organizational identification.

This is potentially useful for two primary reasons.

First, it serves to divert attention away from a sin-

gle dominant paradigm associated with Social Iden-

tity Theory/Self Categorization Theory (SIT/SCT)

in organizational identification research, and permits

focus on the multiple means by which individuals

construe their selves in relation to their organizations.

Second, it facilitates recognition that, arguably, these

often interrelated approaches collectively constitute

a distinctive perspective on identities and identifica-

tions which emphasizes that they are ‘worked on’

by embedded social actors who are both constrained

and enabled by context. This is important because

it clarifies that phenomena referred to under the um-

brella ‘organizational identification’ are best regarded

as processes of identity work.

Identification in organizations, most often con-

ceived as the extent to which an individual perceives

unity between him or herself and a collective, has

caught the imagination of scholars (Ashforth and

Mael 1989; Edwards 2005; He and Brown 2013).

Researchers concerned with organizational identifi-

cation increasingly recognize, in principle, that it

refers not just to a state but to multiple simultane-

ously occurring and inter-related dynamic processes

as people continuously reassess and revise their rela-

tionships with the organizations to which they belong

(Albert et al. 2000; Ashforth et al. 2008; Atewologun

et al. 2017; Cornelissen et al. 2007; Coupland 2001;

Haslam 2004; Hogg and Terry 2000, 2001; Oakes

et al. 1994). This said, even though SIT/SCT the-

orists acknowledge that identification relationships

can be dynamic, yet ‘empirical work to date [using

this approach] has largely ignored this possibility’

(Miscenko and Day 2016, p. 230). My integrative

project, which highlights distinctive ‘worked on’ ap-

proaches to identification, is valuable in part because

most studies are conducted by scholars fixated on

SIT/SCT. The dangers associated with this myopia

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Identity Work and Organizational Identification 297

have been admirably commented upon by Ashforth

(2016):

I believe that SIT/SCT may have been too success-

ful. My concern is that the more SIT/SCT is seen to

dominate the quantitative OB literature on iden-

tity and identification, the more SIT/SCT assumes

the institutional force of a paradigm, as if identity/

identification questions can only – and should only –

be addressed via SIT/SCT. (p. 368, emphasis in

original)

Recognition of multiple approaches to identity

work and processes of organizational identification

both brings clarity to a confused and confusing litera-

ture, and highlights issues for research that may prove

generative. Scholarship on identities in organizations

is not only amnesic and myopic (Knights and Clarke

2017) but, as Alvesson et al. (2008, p. 9) have argued,

‘largely disconnected’, and there is a requirement for

‘a more engaged conversation across metatheoretical

lenses’.

In studies of identities in and around organiza-

tions, identity work has emerged as a key explanatory

concept (Alvesson and Willmott 2002; Brown 2015;

Snow and Anderson 1987; Watson2009; Ybema et al.

2009). Referring to those means by which individ-

uals fashion both immediately situated and longer-

term understandings of their selves, identity work

is central to a broad range of individual and collec-

tive phenomena (Clegg and Baumeler 2010; Corlett

et al. 2015; Petriglieri and Stein 2012). Its importance

stems from the emphasis it places on ‘the experience

of agency’ (Gecas 1986, p. 140, emphasis in origi-

nal) and the opportunities it offers analysts to inves-

tigate the role of micro-processes in the production

of macro-consequences. As such, it is symptomatic

of what Phillips and Lawrence (2012, pp. 223, 224)

refer to as ‘the turn to work in organization and man-

agement theory’ in which the term ‘work’ has been

combined with various other words and phrases to fo-

cus on ‘ . . . actors’ efforts to affect a social symbolic

aspect of their context’. The phrase identity work is,

however, generally under-specified; in much research

it is referred to only implicitly, and some studies em-

ploy multiple distinct conceptions of it (Brown2015).

Building on recognition that identification is an emer-

gent process of identity formation (Ashforth et al.

2008; Scott et al. 1998, p. 304), I outline five ap-

proaches to identity work; concomitantly, I demon-

strate how they have been used to both inform theory

development and to guide empirical studies of how

people relate to social categories (i.e. identification

work) focusing in particular on organizational identi-

fication.

The aims of this article are threefold. First, the con-

cept identity work is explored. Second, five distinct

but overlapping and interrelated approaches to iden-

tity work and organizational identification – discur-

sive, dramaturgical, symbolic, socio-cognitive, and

psychodynamic – are outlined. Third,I discuss a num-

ber of key issues and questions raised by this review

relating to how processes of identity work and iden-

tification are best theorized and researched. Inspired

by what Toulmin (1990) refers to as an ‘ecological

style’ of thinking which embraces complexity, this

theorizing attends to the interrelatedness of things

and ideas, shows how traditional conceptions may

fetter progress, and is offered to promote new ways

of thinking and conversing about identity work and

organizational identification.

Methodology

The literature on identity and identification ‘is in-

creasingly vast, heterogeneous, and fragmented’ with

a growth rate in publications of over 600% over the

last 20 years (Miscenko and Day, 2016, p. 221). In

keeping with other review papers, to identify pub-

lished output relevant to my concerns I utilized a

protocol-driven methodology together with a ‘snow-

balling’ approach (Greenhalgh and Peacock 2005).1I

first employed Thomson Reuters Web of Science (So-

cial Science) database to identify those papers pub-

lished in business and management journals that used

the terms/phrases ‘identity/identities’ (2384 papers)

and ‘identity work’ (203 papers) in their titles. Sub-

sequently, I also searched for ‘organizational identi-

fication’ (plus variants) in the titles of all social sci-

ences journals (241 papers).2No paper included the

phrases ‘identity work’ and ‘organizational identifi-

cation’ in its title, though some papers did explicitly

1Research projects do not stand alone. This project is one

of several identity-related studies that I have conducted over

the past decade, and these other endeavours havealso shaped

this review.

2Thus the total number of papers initially selected for anal-

ysis was 2384+203+241=2828. Additional references rec-

ommended by the reviewershave also been incorporated into

this review. While the date range of the material cited in this

review is 1922–2017, older literature is generally located in

the broader social sciences. The business and management

literature on identities in organizations dates mostly from the

1990s, with a notable increase in volume since 2000 which

seems set to continue.

C2017 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.