Identities, Genres, and Organizational Forms

Abstract

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. I n recent years, there has been an increasing emphasis within organizational ecology on identity as a fundamental basis for the conceptualization and identification of organizational forms. This paper highlights the benefits of an identitybased conceptualization of organizational forms and outlines an identity-based agenda for organizational ecology. We begin by discussing fundamental properties of organizational identity, drawing extensively from the formal-theoretical conceptualization proposed by . We then build on this foundation by proposing a number of systematic ways in which forms can be specified and differentiated in terms of identity. We also address the challenge of measuring forms by discussing various approaches researchers may use to assess the beliefs contemporaneous audiences hold regarding organizational identities. This paper concludes with a discussion of research questions revolving around three issues core to an ecological approach to organizations: (1) the emergence of identities, (2) the persistence of identities, and (3) the strategic trade-offs among different types of identities. Key words: identity; organizational forms; organizational ecologyOver the past two decades, macro research on organizations has converged on a research strategy of analyzing the life histories of (all) organizations in specified populations, regarded as collections of organizations with common forms. Developing and refining this populationbased strategy has been beneficial in promoting certain craft standards once largely lacking in organizational research and in increasing the comparability of findings across studies. Yet, continued progress requires that the theoretical foundations of this approach be reworked.In particular, the basic concept of form lacks a clear specification. Current work continues to refer to initial formulations that spelled out only partial definitions (Hannan and Freeman 1977, 1984). As a result, guidelines for a crucial step in empirical research-the specification of meaningful population boundaries-are less than clear. As this style of research has diffused broadly beyond the relatively homogeneous group of organizational ecologists, such lack of clarity has become increasingly problematic.Fortunately, several recent strands of work have advanced our understanding of the issues involved in specifying forms and populations. As this work has progressed, it has opened new avenues of theory and empirical research on core issues in organization theory. This pap...

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