Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Identity is one of the most prominent issues of contemporary organizations. Like individuals, organizations increasingly talk about “having” identities, seeking identities, expressing identities, and even changing identities. And the emphasis on identity is not idle talk. Having become an arena of managerial attention and concern, identity-related activities consume a growing amount of organizational resources and involve a wide variety of disciplines and practices across the organizational spectrum. In spite of this development, the question of what identity means in the context of an organization is far from settled. It is commonplace to think of corporate or organizational identity as an answer to the question: who are we as an organization? Yet, this question immediately raises additional questions: who poses and answers this question? What purposes does the answer serve? Does an organization only have one identity? And (how) do organizational identities change over time? These questions and a number of conceptual issues occupy a remarkable place in the literature and indicate that corporate or organizational identity has become a highly contested terrain (→  Organizational Communication ; Corporate Communication ). Our everyday language is often equivocal when we talk about identity. On the one hand, we use the notion of identity to describe the special or unique features ... log in or subscribe to read full text