Metatheories and Metaphors of Organizational Identity: Integrating Social Constructionist, Social Identity, and Social Actor Perspectives within a Social Interactionist Model

• Date: 01 July 2017
• Published date: 01 July 2017
• Author: S. Alexander Haslam,Mirjam D. Werner,Joep P. Cornelissen
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12150

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 19, 318–336 (2017)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12150

Metatheories and Metaphors

of Organizational Identity: Integrating

Social Constructionist, Social Identity,

and Social Actor Perspectives within

a Social Interactionist Model

S. Alexander Haslam, Joep P. Cornelissen1and Mirjam D. Werner1

School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia, and 1Rotterdam School of

Management, Erasmus University, the Netherlands

Corresponding author email: a.haslam@uq.edu.au

This review examines three dominant metatheories of organizational identity that are

grounded in social constructionist, social identity,and social actor theorizing. It focuses

on root metaphors of framing, categorization and personification that are associated

with each metatheory and outlines differences in their assumptions, key constructs,

and forms of analysis. The review shows how the emphasis of each root metaphor

serves to direct research along a particular path in ways that often lead to a siloing

of research knowledge. However, while laying bare the foundations of each metatheory

and discussing the nature of the empirical projects by which they are supported, we

also seek to draw them moreclosely together. In particular,we do this by elaborating an

integrative social interactionist model in which organizationalidentity is understood to

be the product of recursive interaction between bottom-up and top-down processes of

identity consensualization and contestation.

The study of organizational identity is a central mar-

ketplace for organizational scholarship. As a result,

it encompasses a very broad range of theoretical tra-

ditions and reflects the diverse array of disciplinary

domains in which there is interest in organizational

issues (Alvesson et al. 2008; Corlett et al. 2017; He

and Brown 2013). This makes organizational identity

a focal topic for scholars in fields of organizational

behavior, corporate communication, marketing, and

institutional theory as well as multiple sub-disciplines

of psychology (social, organizational and personnel)

and management (human resource, strategic, and gen-

eral; e.g., Ashforth and Mael 1989; Cornelissen et al.

Work on this paper was supported by ag rant from the Aus-

tralian Research Council (FL110100199). We would like to

thank the editor and three anonymous reviewers for their

constructive feedback on earlier versions.

2007; Haslam and Ellemers 2005). Nevertheless, in

previously surveying the vast body of work in this

area, we argued that it is possible to identify a small

number of metatheoretical perspectivesor approaches

that have come to dominate conceptions of the topic

(Cornelissen et al. 2016).

In this paper we pursue three core goals that put

flesh on the relatively bare bones of the analysis pro-

vided in our previous reviews of work in this area

(Cornelissen et al. 2007, 2016). The first is to in-

terrogate the main metatheoretical perspectives that

dominate scholarship in the field and to clarify the

assumptions and constructs associated with these

frameworks that researchers have used to explore is-

sues of organizational identity. One particular way in

whichwedothisisbyexploringinmoredetailthan

our previous reviews the root metaphors that under-

pin each perspective – a framing metaphor in social

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Metatheories and Metaphors of Organizational Identity 319

constructionist accounts, a categorization metaphor

within social identity scholarship, and a personifica-

tion metaphor that is at the heart of a social actor

conception.

Our second goal is to compare and contrast these

metatheories, in part based on differences in their root

metaphors, with a view to highlighting the potential

for more informed and productive dialogue between

researchers who embrace different metatheories. In

particular, our review identifies two overarching di-

mensions of metatheoretical difference related to the

assumed status of organizational identity as subjec-

tive versus objective and as contextualized versus

decontextualized.

Then, third, a novel and more ambitious contri-

bution is to elaborate a social interactionist model

of organizational identity that interweaves different

strands of organizational identity scholarship in or-

der to understand how identities evolve dynamically.

This model suggests that the status of organizational

identity in any given time and space results from two

countervailing processes. On the one hand, processes

of consensualization lead identities to become es-

tablished and institutionalized (so that they appear

objective and decontextualized); whilst on the other

hand, processes of contestation lead identities to be

challenged and problematized (so that they appear

subjective and contextualized). This model is com-

patible with understandings derived from all three of

the main metatheories in the field but also points to

the need – as well as the opportunity – for more inte-

grative research in the future.

Metatheories and metaphors

in management and organizational

science

As suggested above, this paper interrogates the liter-

ature on organizational identity primarily at the level

of metatheory. More specifically, our primary con-

cern is to describe how, in efforts to develop the-

ory and thereby advance research on organizational

identity, researchers’ engagement with data is struc-

tured by predefined, but rarely explicitly articulated,

assumptions, models and constructs. Here we define

metatheory as a set of interrelated theoretical as-

sumptions and focal constructs that together orga-

nize empirical observations and explanations.Thisis

closely related to the concept of a research paradigm–

although where metatheories refer primarily to com-

monalities in conceptualization (e.g., in theorizing;

Corley and Gioia 2011), paradigms can be under-

stood to relate more to exemplars of practice (e.g.,

in methods; Figueroa 2014; Kuhn 1962; see also

Hacking 2012).

Metatheory represents an appropriate level of anal-

ysis because studies suggest that researchers’ engage-

ment with the subject matter of their discipline is

generally structured byan overarching framework that

informs not only their own endeavors but also those

of other relevant members of their scientific commu-

nity. Indeed, evidence suggests that researchers tend

not to reason directly through formal logic (e.g., de-

duction or induction), but rather to work from broader

conceptual frameworks which they cognitively con-

struct, manipulate, adapt, and evaluate as part of

their ongoing research activity (e.g. Darden 1991;

Nersessian 2008). Speaking to this point, historical

surveys of research domains in the social and natu-

ral sciences show, for example, that when building or

revising theory the imagining and modeling of broad

frameworks often comes first, followed by further ab-

straction into formal expressions of theoretical logic

and axioms (Chalmers 1978; Hesse 1966; Thagard

2012).

The existence of different metatheories addition-

ally speaks to the fact that researchers in any given

field alwaysmake choices (without necessarily recog-

nizing that they are doing so) about how to frame and

conceptualize the phenomena in which they are inter-

ested. These encompass the assumptions they make

about the worldin which the phenomena are observed,

the constructs they carve out and recognize, and the

relationships they presuppose and expect to see. Such

choices provide focus and precision for investigation,

but also delimit and constrain researchers’ scope and

analytical ambitions. In addition, the nature of these

metatheoretical frameworks gives precedence to par-

ticular forms of thought (e.g., formal reasoning ver-

sus hypothesis-driven experimentation) and activity

(e.g., observation, experimentation, description, ex-

planation) through which the phenomena in ques-

tion are approached and explored (Cornelissen 2005;

Cornelissen and Durand 2014).

One way in which we can approach this metathe-

oretical level of reasoning is by focusing on the

deeply rooted metaphorical ways of thinking that re-

searchers use to reason about abstract and complex

topics such as organizational identity (Cornelissen

2002, 2005, 2006). When researchers invokeand draw

upon metaphors to communicate and explore com-

plex ideas they observe conceptual parallels between

different phenomena – such as between the nature of

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