Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Organizational Identification

Organizational identification is the process by which individuals come to adopt or assume the identity of an organization or group to which they belong (or seek to belong). This process tends to result in an alignment among an individual’s personal values and beliefs and those embodied by the collective organization; this process occurs both formally and informally and is inherently communicative in nature. The impact of organizational identification on individuals includes shifts in self-perception, self-identity and the sense of belonging, enjoyment, and meaning associated with individuals’ work and organizational membership. The identification process subsequently is expected to impact decision making as individuals consider the values, preferences, and needs of the organization and weigh the potential impact of their decisions on the organization and its internal and external stakeholders.

Through the process of organizational identification, individuals make connections to an organization and its members, choosing to commit personal and professional resources to these organizations either in a volunteer or paid capacity. Individuals become vested in an organization’s success through the commitment of personal resources such as time, intellectual or emotional energy, and social or financial capital. These investments are made, perhaps subconsciously at times, as individuals come to value and seek to contribute to an organization’s achievement of short- and long-term objectives. Furthermore, organizational identification has been found to positively correlate with desirable organizational outcomes including enhanced employee cooperation, satisfaction, commitment, and retention. This entry examines how and why people identify with organizations and considers some of the problems that arise when people overidentify with an organization. This entry also examines research methods commonly deployed to investigate organization identification.

Identification in Action

An example of the identification process is provided by the following narrative about Emily, which is expanded upon in this entry. This particular example was selected to strategically bridge personal and professional organizational domains. It was designed to illustrate organizational identification in connection with social, political, and economic issues with organizational connections to children. This example will resonate for past, present, or future parents as it integrates a range of complexities associated with the identification process. These complexities naturally emerge as individuals make decisions which interact with multiple, and often competing, organizational environments simultaneously. In doing so, individuals often find themselves renegotiating perceptions of themselves and others.

Foster Care Children, Their Families, and the Agencies That Work to Protect Them

Emily is committed to social justice and advocates for community involvement and civic engagement. She is ideologically committed to empowering disenfranchised and marginalized individuals. She attempts to consciously make personal and professional decisions consistent with her core values: equity and respect. When she became a parent, she found herself increasingly concerned for the well-being of children living in poverty. As such she donated money to organizations such as UNICEF, the American Red Cross, and faith-based organizations with documented records of alleviating the suffering of children around the world. Recently, however, she became concerned with the plight of children placed in the local foster-care system when removed from the homes of biological mothers, fathers, or other caregivers due to neglect and/or abuse. Emily read about the dire need for legally approved foster parents. She elected to go through foster-care training and then opened her home to a child “at risk.” In doing so, Emily’s personal values of equity and respect appear to have become aligned with the agency’s goal to provide a safe, nurturing environment for every child in its legal custody. During training, Emily connected emotionally with some of the other prospective foster parents in her training group. She began to sympathize with the social workers whose job it is to place and monitor the progress of these children as there are so many children in need of care and so few families willing to provide foster homes.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution