A Temporal Perspective on Organizational Identity
提出一个概念框架,解释过去如何被唤起以影响当前身份重构和未来身份主张,并通过乐高集团的两次身份重构案例,揭示了记忆形式与时间视角、范围、深度之间的关系。
We offer as our main theoretical contribution a conceptual framework for how the past is evoked in present identity reconstruction and the ways in which the past influences the articulation of claims for future identity. We introduce the notion of textual, material, and oral memory forms as the means by which organizational actors evoke the past. The conceptual framework is applied in a study of two occasions of identity reconstruction in the LEGO Group, which revealed differences in ways that the past was evoked and influenced claims for future identity. Our study suggests that (1) a longer time perspective in the use of memory enabled a longer time perspective in formulating claims for future identity, (2) a broader scope of articulated identity claims for the future was related to the combination of a broader range of memory forms, and (3) the depth of claims for future identity was related to the way in which memory forms were combined. At a more general level, our paper illustrates how viewing identity construction from the perspective of an ongoing present adds a new dimension to understanding the temporal dynamics of organizational identity.