No abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

We investigated the processes involved in forming an organizational identity, which we studied during the founding of a distinctive new college by using an interpretive, insider-outsider research approach. The emergent grounded theory model suggests that organizational identity formed via the interplay of eight notable processes, four of which occurred in more-or-less sequential, stage-like fashion —(1) articulating a vision, (2) experiencing a meanings void, (3) engaging in experiential contrasts, and (4) converging on a consensual identity—plus four recurrent processes that were associated with two or more of the sequential stages: (5) negotiating identity claims, (6) attaining optimal distinctiveness, (7) performing liminal actions, and (8) assimilating legitimizing feedback. The findings show that internal and external, as well as micro and macro influences affected the forging of an organizational identity. In addition, we found that both social construction and social actor views of identity-related processes were not only germane to the formation of organizational identity but that these processes were also mutually constitutive in creating a workable identity.

This study investigated the uses of sensemaking, influence, and symbolism in launching a strategic change effort at a university. It employed an ethnographic/interpretive approach in examining the ways that symbols, metaphors, and various subtle influence processes were used to lend meaning to concepts and possible courses of action by a task force instrumental to the strategic change process. Two distinct researcher perspectives were used: an “insider” perspective employing several informants along with an active participant-observer and an “outsider” perspective employing several researchers. Both perspectives were brought to bear as a means of countering the “researcher arrogance” that typifies organizational study by lending balanced voice to both insider and outsider interpretations of events. The findings showed that sensemaking and influence emerged as fundamental processes in the instigation of strategic change. Both processes were symbolically based and varied in directionality over the life of the task force (internally directed in the embryonic phases, and externally directed in the mature phases). Contrary to common wisdom, sensemaking and influence emerged as frequently coincident, interdependent processes that were difficult to distinguish from each other. The discovery of the common symbolic base for scnsemaking and influence also indicated that symbols served both expressive and instrumental roles: suggesting that the accepted view of symbols as predominantly expressive devices does not present a complete picture of their dynamic nature. The use of symbolism also was shown simultaneously to reveal and conceal different aspects of the change process, thus providing task force members the means to circumvent resistance while accomplishing desired action. Symbols and metaphors thus facilitated both cognitive understanding and intended action in attempting to “reinstitutionalize” a major public university via the strategic change process. Overall, the study suggests that efforts to stabilize an organizational system in flux from the systematic upheaval represented by strategic change can be understood as the symbolic interplay between sensemaking and influence.

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.