Athletes, Best Friends, and Social Activists: An Integrative Model Accounting for the Role of Identity in Organizational Identification
提出一个理论模型,解释组织身份和成员身份如何影响成员对组织的认同评估,通过两种身份比较(自我连续性和自尊动机)揭示社会比较过程,对组织研究和利益相关者理论有启示。
Organizational identification links together organizational and member identity, yet we currently lack theory explicating the role of organizational and member identity variations in members' evaluations of organizations as identification targets. In this theoretical paper, I outline a model of organizational identification that aims to do three things—account for the role of identity in the identification process, integrate and extend disparate approaches to organizational identification, and illuminate social comparison processes underlying members' organizational evaluations. The model proposes that members undertake two identity comparisons to assess the value of organizational membership for identification purposes. In one, they compare the organization's current identity with their own identity, allowing them to assess the organization's ability to meet their motivation for self-continuity. In the other, they compare the organization's current identity with its expected identity, allowing them to assess the organization's ability to meet their motivation for self-esteem. After introducing the identity congruence framework, I apply to it the identity orientation lens to make specific predictions about how organizational and member identity shape the nature and outcomes of the specific social comparison content drawn upon in each of the two identity comparisons. This analysis reveals how the metrics used to evaluate organizations fundamentally vary by organizational and member identity. Implications for organizational studies are addressed, including those related to organizing and stakeholder theory.