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SOCIAL IDENTIFICATIONS IN ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
Daan van Knippenberg and Michael A. Hogg
It has long been recognized that being a member of an organization can, sometimes to a significant extent, become part of how people see themselves. Such organizational identification is not without consequence. In organizational psychology and organizational behavior, the study of organizational identification took off when Ashforth and Mael (1989) proposed a conceptualization of it based on social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Since then, the study of social identity processes in organizations has flourished, in part because it has continued to draw on research in social psychology outside of the organizational domain (e.g., Hogg & Terry, 2000). In this chapter, we outline the development of the social identity perspective in organizational psychology and organizational behavior, noting along the way how this has been infused and continues to be infused by work in social psychology.
Origins of the Social Identity Perspective in Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior
Group memberships to a greater or lesser extent influence how we see ourselves. People not only have a sense of “I” as a unique individual separate and different from others, but also a sense of “we” as part of a group defined by characteristics they share with others in the group. This sense of “we,” this self-definition in terms of what we share with our group, is captured by the concept of social identity, and social identification reflects the process through which a group membership becomes part of our identity (Abrams & Hogg, 2010; Hogg, in press; Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987). (Note that social identity research generally uses the terms social identity and social identification interchangeably, but research in management and organizational behavior tends to draw a sharper distinction between organizational identification as individual self-definition and organizational identity as a shared perception of the organization’s characteristics that are central, enduring, and distinctive; Pratt, Schultz, Ashfort, & Ravasi, 2016.)
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Social identity theory was originally developed as a theory of intergroup relations (e.g., Tajfel, 1978). The core notion was that people have a natural tendency to categorize self and others, with the most fundamental categorization being the distinction between ingroup and outgroup, between “us” and “them.” Such us–them distinctions can be highly consequential, because they may invite intergroup biases; perceiving self and others in terms of “us” and “them” can sponsor a tendency to view ingroup members more positively than outgroup members, to trust ingroup members more than outgroup members, and to treat ingroup members better than outgroup members, out of a desire to positively distinguish “us” from “them.”
Research in organizational psychology and organizational behavior has much more of an individual and intragroup focus than an intergroup focus. The emphasis in developing the social identity perspective within organizational behavior was much more on individual and group processes than on intergroup processes (even though the earliest applications of social identity theory in organizations were to intergroup relations; Brown, 1978).
Early research on organizational identification by and large treated organizational identification as a loosely defined concept without a clear underlying theory (Rotondi, 1975). All this changed when Ashforth and Mael (1989) proposed in their seminal Academy of Management Review article that organizational identification was best understood from the perspective of social identity theory – as a self-definition that revolved around a view of the self in terms of a social group membership and the characteristics associated with that membership. This conceptualization not only sparked the development of a measure of organizational identification that has become the most widely used organizational identification measure (Mael & Ashforth, 1992; cf. Mael & Tetrick, 1992; van Knippenberg & Sleebos, 2006), but also powerfully introduced the social identity perspective to the study of organizational behavior by articulating implications for such outcomes as performance and turnover.
In the following section, we first provide a review in broad strokes capturing the application and development of social identity research in organizational psychology and organizational behavior. This review revolves around five areas of research: (a) individual attitudes and behavior capturing a focus on serving the organization’s best interest, as evidenced first and foremost in performance, prosocial behavior, and reduced turnover; (b) the interface of social identity and social exchange; (c) leadership; (d) organizational change; and (e) intergroup relations. We then follow up with a more future-oriented look at the possible further development of the field.
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Social Identity and Organizational Behavior: A Review in Broad Strokes
Serving the Organization’s Best Interest
At its heart, social identification is an individual level concept; it captures the extent to which the individual conceives of the self in terms of a certain group membership. Perhaps not surprisingly, the research following directly in the footsteps of the Ashforth and Mael (1989) argument for a social identity conceptualization of organizational behavior tended to focus on individual level outcomes. One of the key influences of social identification from an organizational behavior perspective is that it leads individuals to experience collective interest as self-interest (i.e., the interest of the “collective self”; Brewer & Gardner, 1996). Accordingly, organizational identification can be expected to result in a motivation to pursue the organization’s collective interest (Ashforth & Mael, 1989; Dutton, Dukerich, & Harquail, 1994; van Knippenberg, 2000).
One key implication of this is that people who identify more with the organization should be more motivated to perform well in their jobs, as well as to display prosocial behavior (e.g., organizational citizenship behavior) that helps others and the organization as a whole to function effectively. Higher identification should also result in more loyalty to the organization, as evidenced in lower turnover and turnover intentions. Research has consistently supported this proposition for turnover (intentions) (Mael & Ashforth, 1995; van Knippenberg & van Schie, 2000) as well as discretionary prosocial actions such as alumni’s financial support for their school and employee citizenship behavior (Mael & Ashforth, 1992; van Dick, van Knippenberg, Kerschreiter, Hertel, & Wieseke, 2008). A meta-analysis by Riketta (2005) established these conclusions quantitatively in a comprehensive review of the empirical evidence available at the time.
Importantly, however, for what is perhaps the outcome of core interest to many students of organizational behavior – performance – the overall effect size in the Riketta (2005) analysis was very small. This is consistent with the notion that the relationship between identification and performance is moderated by, and contingent on, a number of factors; these include the extent to which social identity is salient, high performance is perceived as group-normative, and high performance falls within the individual’s knowledge, skills, and abilities as well as resources and opportunities (van Knippenberg, 2000). Indeed, both experimental and field research have painted a picture of the identification–performance relationship as moderated.
The core idea here is well captured by Hekman and associates’ suggestion to view organizational identification as a source of “unchanneled” motivation to serve the organization’s best interest, with situational influences moderating how this motivation is channeled towards certain behaviors (Hekman, van Knippenberg, & Pratt, 2016). In their own research, Hekman et al. illustrated this by distinguishing between two types of performance behaviors typical of professional occupations, building on Higgins’ (1998) work on regulatory focus – promotion-focused diagnosis behavior and prevention-focused treatment behavior. They show that the extent to which identification promotes diagnosis behavior or treatment behavior is contingent on the extent to which they see their membership group norms as valuing either behavior. In other words, perceived group norms channel identification-based motivation towards norm-consistent behavior (cf. Johnson, Chang, & Yang, 2010).
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Van Gils and associates established that the same logic holds for other desirable behavioral outcomes such as moral decision-making (van Gils, Hogg, Van Quaquebeke, & van Knippenberg, 2017). Their research showed that organizational identification was positively related to moral decision-making to the extent that the organizational had an ethical climate (cf. group norms). The notion of situational influences to channel identification-based motivation thus is not limited to performance as an outcome.
Moderating influences are not limited to group norms either (also see van Knippenberg, 2000, for a review of the older literature in this respect). Individual differences can also moderate, such as in the evidence that people with a prosocial value orientation behave cooperatively regardless of their level of identification, whereas individuals with a proself orientation behave more cooperatively under higher identification (i.e., to the extent that they experience collective interest as self-interest; De Cremer, van Knippenberg, van Dijk, & van Leeuwen, 2008).
In a twist to such an individual difference focus, Dietz and colleagues found that level of analysis was associated with different influences of identification (Dietz, van Knippenberg, Hirst, & Restubog, 2015). They focused on the interaction of (team) identification and performance goal orientation, and found that, because performance orientation motivates competition, it would be more positively related to individual performance under low identification (i.e., when individuals focus on interpersonal comparison and competition), but more positively related to team performance at high levels of identification (i.e., when comparison and competition would be understood at the intergroup level).
The state of the science as it currently stands is that identification motivates organization-serving attitudes and behavior. This conclusion comes with the further qualification, however, that how this motivation expresses itself in behavior is contingent on moderating factors that channel the identification-based motivation towards certain behaviors. This is not to deny the basic logic of the social identity analysis, but rather to recognize that the notion of motivation to serve the organization’s interest cannot mechanically be applied to all positive organizational attitudes and behavior unconditionally.
Multiple organizational identifications. Work in which the influence of identification itself has been placed center stage also recognizes that organizational membership typically involves multiple embedded group memberships. Employees typically are not only a member of the organization, but also of their department, work group, or team – and smaller units may actually be part of larger units that are again part of the organization as a whole, such as departments embedded in business units that together make up the organization. Organizations may not simply invite organizational identification; they may also invite multiple organizational identifications, such as organizational identification and team identification.
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Van Knippenberg and van Schie (2000) argued that this recognition of multiple foci of identification is important, because the membership group that would typically invite the stronger identification is not the organization but individuals’ immediate social environment – the team, work group, or department. Drawing on social psychological research in the social identity tradition that suggests social identifications only affect attitudes and behavior to the extent that they are salient (i.e., cognitively activated; Turner et al., 1987), van Knippenberg and van Schie argued that people’s stronger identification with their team as well as their day-to-day interaction with fellow team members as opposed to members from the organization as a whole has significant consequences. Employees’ team identification would typically be more salient to people than their organizational identification and therefore more predictive of attitudes and behavior than organizational identification. Results of the van Knippenberg and van Schie study support this conclusion.
The stronger identification with the team was meta-analytically replicated by Riketta and van Dick (2005). These authors also extended this analysis with the meta-analytically supported proposition that organizational identifications would be most predictive of outcomes that are conceptually associated with that level of identification – team attitudes and behavior are more strongly predicted by team identification, organizational attitudes and behaviors are more strongly predicted by organizational identification (also see Olkkonen & Lipponen, 2006).
In a further development of the multiple identifications analysis, van Dick et al. (2008) show that organizational identification and team identification interact in predicting job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behaviors, such that these two identifications augmented each other’s influence. The logic here is that because team identification is nested within organizational identification (i.e., being a member of the team implies being a member of the organization) self-definition is more aligned and thus the level of identification has a stronger influence when both identifications are similar in strength. Accordingly, they predicted and found that high levels of one type of identification were more strongly associated with positive outcomes when accompanied by high levels of the other type of identification.
In a different twist to this notion of alignment, Hekman, Steensma, Bigley, and Hereford (2009) focused on organizational and professional identification. They proposed that the implications of one group membership may conflict with the implications of the other. This could for instance occur when group norms differ between the professional group and the organization. Taking such potential identity tensions as a starting point, Hekman et al. predicted that organizational identification would be more predictive of work outcomes among those with lower professional identification. Also bringing in the notion of group-normative expectations, they showed that management expectations to adopt new work behavior were more strongly related to the adoption of this behavior the more people identified with the organization, and this interactive influence was stronger with lower professional identification. There is thus a clear basis to conclude that multiple social identifications at work influence organizational behavior, and that these cannot be treated interchangeably (even when they may sometimes have very similar effects; Hekman et al., 2016).
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Social Identity and Social Exchange
Organizational identification reflects the psychological linkage between individual and organization. It is, however, not the only concept proposed to reflect this linkage – indeed, the social identity conceptualization of organizational identification only emerged on the scene when there were already two well-established ways of thinking of this psychological linkage: organizational commitment and social exchange.
There is substantial research on organizational commitment (Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002; Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 1982). Organizational commitment is an attitude without accompanying theory (Solinger, van Olffen, & Roe, 2008), which does not make it the most useful platform on which to build an understanding of the psychology of organizational membership. In recognition of the established status of organizational commitment, early social identity studies of organizational identification established conceptually (Ashforth & Mael, 1989; Pratt, 1998) and empirically (Mael & Tetrick, 1992; van Knippenberg & Sleebos, 2006) that the key difference between commitment and identification is that identification reflects self-definition whereas commitment reflects an attitude towards the organization – even when identification may be an antecedent to commitment (Johnson & Chang, 2006; Johnson, Chang, & Yang, 2010). There is a taxonomy of types of commitment (Meyer et al., 2002), but taxonomy is not theory and lacking theory there is not much insight to be gained in further pursuing the differentiation of organizational identification and organizational commitment.
The social exchange perspective on the employment relationship is a different issue. The social identity perspective is, so to speak, the new kid on the block and the minority voice in the study of the employee–organization relationship that is dominated by the social exchange perspective (van Knippenberg, 2012). The social exchange perspective understands social relations – including the employee–organization relationship – as governed by the norm of reciprocity. A high-quality exchange relationship is one in which parties repay benefits received in kind, exchange valued benefits, and build mutual trust in reciprocity with the other party.
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The core implication of the social exchange perspective for the employee–organization relationship is captured by research on perceived organizational support (POS; Eisenberger, Huntington, Huchison, & Sowa, 1986; see Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002, for a meta-analytic review). POS is understood to reflect the organization’s contributions to the social exchange relationship with the employee, and following the social exchange logic organizations can expect higher POS to be repaid with positive outcomes (e.g., loyalty, citizenship, performance; cf. Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002).
Van Knippenberg, van Dick, and Taveres (2007) contrasted the social identity and the social exchange perspective, arguing that the key difference between the two was that whereas the social exchange logic was contingent on the employee perceiving the self and the organization as two separate psychological entities, the social identity perspective understood organizational identification to reflect a psychological merging of self and organization (Mael & Ashforth, 1992). Accordingly, van Knippenberg et al. proposed that POS would be less predictive of employee outcomes with higher organizational identification. To test this prediction they focused on turnover intentions and found support for the prediction.
At the same time, however, there is evidence that treatment by the organization, as understood through an organizational justice lens, may have a stronger relationship with positive outcomes for those with a stronger social identification with the organization – with, e.g., procedural justice having stronger effects for those with a collective identification, or interactional justice having stronger effects for those with a relational identification (Johnson, Selenta, & Lord, 2006). These observations also fit with a conceptual argument that identity orientations affect the nature of social exchange rather than its importance (Flynn, 2005). In a sense building on these perspectives to provide an alternative reading of the van Knippenberg et al. (2007) findings, Tavares, van Knippenberg, and van Dick (2016) developed this analysis further to propose that high identification would not render one insensitive to POS, but rather would change what one would view as acceptable “currencies of exchange”: the influence of POS would be visible on different outcome variables under high versus low identification. The higher one’s organizational identification, the more one would consider negative behavior like turnover as inappropriate in response to low POS (i.e., being poorly treated by the organization). However, with higher identification one would be more likely to see it as appropriate to respond to low POS by withholding positive behavior like organizational citizenship behavior. That is, identification would weaken the relationship between POS and negative outcomes like turnover, but strengthen the relationship between POS and positive outcomes like citizenship. This was exactly what Tavares et al. found.
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Hekman, Bigley, Steensma, and Hereford (2009) conducted a study that in a sense integrates part of this social identity versus social exchange analysis and the analysis of multiple identifications, focusing on the interplay of organizational identification, professional identification, and POS. They too predicted that POS would be more predictive of citizenship behavior with higher organizational identification (cf. Tavares et al., 2016). Consistent with the Hekman, Steensma, Bigley, and Hereford (2009) argument regarding conflicting identifications, they extended this analysis with the prediction and evidence that the stronger POS influence with higher organizational identification would hold more with lower professional identification.
In sum, the emerging picture is a complex one. Organizational identification is a positive influence, but its influence is contingent on other identifications, situational influences that channel identification-based motivation towards behavior, and social exchange processes.
Social Identity and Leadership
The social identity analysis of organizational behavior may have started out placing organizational identification center stage, but the social identity perspective is broader than purely a focus on the influence of social identification. In research in organizational psychology and organizational behavior, this has been particularly evident in the study of leadership. Leadership research may be one of the areas with the longest histories in the behavioral sciences. Traditionally a strong focus in social psychology, the emphasis in leadership research shifted from social psychology to organizational psychology and organizational behavior. Regardless of its disciplinary focus, however, there has been a long tradition of studying leadership with an understanding of leaders as somewhat set apart from the groups they lead. The social identity theory of leadership (Hogg, 2001; Hogg, van Knippenberg, & Rast, 2012a; van Knippenberg & Hogg, 2003) in a sense anchored on this observation to argue that this ignores an important fact that leaders typically are also a member of the group they lead, or at least share a group membership with subordinates within the greater context in which the group is embedded (e.g., the organization; for instance, even when the CEO is not a member of one’s team, the team and the CEO share membership of the organization), and this shared group membership may provide a powerful backdrop informing perceptions of and responses to leadership.
Core to the social identity theory of leadership is the concept of leader group prototypicality. The group prototype is a mental representation that captures what is defining and distinctive of the group – the prototype captures the understanding of the shared social identity. The group prototype is a potentially important source of influence because it captures what is group-normative; it captures the shared social reality of the group including beliefs and values, dos and don’ts. Leader group prototypicality reflects the extent to which the leader is perceived to embody the group prototype – the extent to which the leader is not only “one of us” but also represents what is core to us. To the extent that followers identify with the group (i.e., the social identity is core to their self-perception) and social identity is salient, the perception that the leader is group prototypical instills trust in the leader and an openness to the leader’s influence.
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As recent narrative reviews indicate (Hogg et al., 2012a; van Knippenberg, 2011), the social identity analysis of leadership is well-supported with evidence from the lab and the field, with different operationalizations of prototypicality and different indicators of leadership effectiveness (e.g., performance; van Knippenberg & van Knippenberg, 2005; creativity; Hirst, van Dick, & van Knippenberg, 2009), and with evidence from different countries on different continents. These conclusions are meta-analytically supported – there is a large overall relationship between leader prototypicality and leader support (Barreto & Hogg, in press).
The analysis has also been further developed beyond the initial evidence that leader group prototypicality is more strongly related to leader effectiveness with higher social identification and social identity salience (Hains, Hogg, & Duck, 1997; Platow & van Knippenberg, 2001). Further developments, for instance, show that when leaders are not perceived to be group prototypical they can gain credentials by group-serving actions (Platow & van Knippenberg, 2001; van Knippenberg & van Knippenberg, 2005) – or put differently, leader group prototypicality substitutes for behavioral evidence of group-serving intentions (Giessner & van Knippenberg, 2008). More recent developments in social psychology have put great emphasis on the uncertainty reduction function of social identity (Hogg, 2007, 2012), and integrating these insights into the social identity analysis of leadership has also shown that individual differences and contextual influences on the desire to reduce uncertainty make followers more sensitive to leader group prototypicality (Pierro, Cicero, Bonaiuto, van Knippenberg, & Kruglanski, 2005).
Research in the social identity theory of leadership emphasizes what happens at higher levels of group identification, but it has also recognized that other processes not tied to social identity may govern responses to leadership at lower levels of identification and social identity salience. These include the interpersonal relationship between leader and follower (Hogg et al., 2005) and the extent to which the leader matches stereotypical perceptions of leadership (Hains et al., 1997).
The primary role for identification in the social identity theory of leadership is as a moderator, but leadership research more generally has also pointed to the role of leadership in building organizational identifications as a way to stimulate positive outcomes (i.e., a mediator role for identification). Early analyses along these lines followed in the charismatic-transformational leadership tradition (Shamir, House, & Arthur, 1993) that has been discredited because of conceptual and empirical validity problems (van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013). More recent research has, however, moved beyond charismatic-transformational leadership and has also linked identification to other aspects of leadership, such as leader fairness (Ullrich, Christ, & van Dick, 2009; see van Knippenberg, van Knippenberg, De Cremer, & Hogg, 2004, for a review). This focus on leadership as a cause of identification is an important bridge between the leadership stream of research described in this section and the stream of research on the influence of organizational identifications described in the previous section. Interestingly, part of what this research shows is that leaders are also influenced in their behavior by their social identification (Giessner, van Knippenberg, Sleebos, & van Ginkel, 2013; Johnson, Venus, Lanaj, Mao, & Chang, 2012; van Dick, Hirst, Grojean, & Wieseke, 2007).
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Social Identity and Organizational Change
Large-scale organizational change is challenging to implement successfully, and it has long been recognized that one of the reasons employees are often resistant to change is identity concerns (Rousseau, 1998). Organizational practices and the way in which an organization is structured can easily become experienced as an expression of the organization’s identity, and organizational changes can thus be experienced as threats to a valued identity. Organizational identification may thus invite resistance to change (also see Fiol, 2002), and change may weaken identification because employees experience a discontinuity of identity (van Dick, Ullrich, & Tissington, 2006; van Knippenberg, van Knippenberg, Monden, & de Lima, 2002). Mergers and acquisitions become a focal point in this stream of research, because a merger with another organization can be a sudden disruption of organizational identity (for a review, see Giessner, Ullrich, & van Dick, 2011).
This research underscores the point that organizational change may have identity implications – or at least that employees may respond to the change from the perspective of the identity implications they perceive. This research shows that pre-merger organizational identification is more likely to transfer to the post-merger organization for members of the dominant (e.g., acquiring) organization than for members of the dominated (e.g., acquired organization), presumably because the former will have a stronger sense of continuity of identity (van Knippenberg et al., 2002; cf. van Leeuwen, van Knippenberg, & Ellemers, 2003). The research also shows that the perception of permeable group boundaries attenuates negative identification effects from a merger among low status group members (Terry, Carey, & Callan, 2001), and that persuasive motives for a merger (i.e., the perception that the merger is necessary) can substitute for such perceived continuity of identity (Giessner, 2011) – arguably because if survival is at stake, merging ensures continuity of identity better than not merging.
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Research in social identity and organizational change also links with the social identity analysis of leadership to show that more group prototypical leaders are better able to overcome resistance to change because they are seen more as agents of continuity of identity (van Knippenberg, van Knippenberg, & Bobbio, 2008; cf. Pierro, Cicero, Bonaiuto, van Knippenberg, & Kruglanski, 2007; van Knippenberg & van Knippenberg, 2005). This leadership of change research connects with a different research tradition that adopts an organizational identity perspective in qualitative research to show that leaders may effectuate change when they are able to change employees’ understanding of the organizational identity (Chreim, 2005; Corley & Gioia, 2004; Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991; Ravasi & Schultz, 2006; for a review, see van Knippenberg, 2016).
Research in social identity and organizational change thus points to a leadership role that may be particularly relevant in engendering change: leaders as shaping people’s understanding of the shared social identity (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001). Beyond qualitative research, this is a largely unexplored aspect of leadership that is worthy of further attention in developing the social identity analysis of leadership and organizational behavior.
Social Identity and Intergroup Relations in Organizations
Social identity theory started out as a theory of intergroup relations in social psychology. Its core notion in this respect was that the mere categorization of self and others as ingroup and outgroup could be sufficient to invite intergroup biases favoring own group over other groups to the detriment of intergroup relations (Tajfel, 1978). Not surprisingly, studies of intergroup relations were among the earliest social identity studies in organizational psychology and organizational behavior (see van Knippenberg, 2003, for a review). These studies showed evidence for the social identity perspective on intergroup relations – for instance, in showing that work group identification was a negative influence on intergroup relations (Brown, 1978; Brown, Condor, Mathews, Wade, & Williams, 1986; Brown & Williams, 1984) whereas organizational identification would be a positive influence (Hennessy & West, 1999), and in showing that lower-status groups were more prone to bias than high-status groups in a merger context (Terry & Callan, 1998).
Follow-up research has pointed to the interplay of organizational identification and work group identification, noting that the focus on the organization as a whole, reflected in organizational identification, can counteract the negative influence that work group identification may have on intergroup relations (Richter, West, van Dick, & Dawson, 2006). This is a view that is consistent with notions in social psychology that intergroup relationships may be more positive when there is emphasis not only on the superordinate (e.g., organizational) identity but also on the group (e.g., department) identity (i.e., “dual identity”; Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000). It is also consistent with evidence from the study of multiple foci of identification (see the discussion in a previous section) that organizational identification and work group identification typically are positively related rather than in opposition (even when they in principle can vary independently; cf. van Dick et al., 2008).
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More recent developments in this line of research by Hogg, van Knippenberg, and Rast (2012b) have drawn on the state of the science in social psychology, however, to argue that the combination of work group identification and organizational identification may invite a process of ingroup projection (Mummendey & Wenzel, 1999): members of a group within the organization (e.g., the department) may see their own group identity as capturing the identity of the organization as a whole and react negatively to other groups within the organization as deviating from that ideal type identity. That is, even when work group identification and organizational identification may be positively related, this relationship may be based on a mental representation of the organizational identity that recognizes the work group as the core of the organizational identity and other groups as more peripheral; this in turn may invite intergroup biases rather than intergroup harmony. Accordingly, Hogg and colleagues (2012b) argued in their analysis of intergroup leadership that the more effective and sustainable approach to managing intergroup relations is not a focus on the overarching identity (i.e., the organizational identity) or on dual identity, but on intergroup relational identity – i.e., self-definition in which the group identity is understood as based in important part in the group’s relationship with other groups. Intergroup relational identity is the collective identity counterpart of the notion of relational identity identified at the interpersonal level (Brewer & Gardner, 1996). Hogg et al. outline how in contrast to relational identities, personal and collective identity are comparative – that is, focused on distinguishing the self (personal) or group (collective) from other individuals (personal) or groups (collective), which is associated with a striving towards superiority of the self or ingroup. Relational identities, both interpersonal and intergroup, are instead defined around salient and positive relationships and this offers a much more sustainable and natural basis for positive interpersonal or intergroup relationships than comparative identities.
The current state of the science in the social identity study of intergroup relations in organizations is thus that there are competing cases for the identity emphasis that would be most effective in building positive intergroup relations – organizational identity, dual identity, and intergroup relational identity. The latter case is the newest development in this line of research and the least tested. Future research would advance our understanding here by systematically exploring the merits of these different cases and their contingencies.
A different area of research that draws on social identity from an intergroup relations perspective is that of organizational (team) diversity. Research in this area has mainly focused on team diversity in demographic and function-related attributes. It has emphasized both the potential benefits of diversity as an informational resource, and the potential downside of diversity as a source of interpersonal tensions and disrupted team process (van Knippenberg & Schippers, 2007; Williams & O’Reilly, 1998). The understanding of these potentially negative effects is strongly grounded in the social identity analysis of intergroup relations. Initially, this was mainly evident in the argument that similarities and dissimilarities between people may spark intergroup biases that disrupt team processes (see Williams & O’Reilly, 1998, for a review).
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Later work incorporated insights from social psychology research on the salience of social categorizations (Turner et al., 1987) to identify key contingencies of the extent to which diversity would invite intergroup bias. This perspective was also important in integrating the informational resource perspective that highlights the positive effects of diversity and the social identity perspective that tended to highlight the negative effects of diversity in the proposition that intergroup biases disrupt group information processing (van Knippenberg, De Dreu, & Homan, 2004). The latter understanding currently seems to represent the state of the science in diversity research (van Knippenberg & Mell, 2016).
Looking Forward: Important Next Steps in Developing the Social Identity Perspective
Social identity research in organizational behavior shows that from a narrowly defined perspective of an ingroup, group identification is a positive influence on group life. Research in multiple identities, intergroup relations, and change suggests important qualifications to this overly simplified conclusion, however. An organization is not a stable, homogeneous group, but is better viewed as a network of groups, with smaller groups nested within larger groups (e.g., departments within the organization as a whole, different subgroupings within a department), and moreover a group that changes over time in ways that may be experienced as disruptive to members’ sense of identity. Recent developments advancing the concept of intergroup relational identity (Hogg et al., 2012b) also underscore that group identities can be defined in ways that are more competitive or harmonious vis-à-vis other individuals or groups.
What this points to for us as a key direction for future research that may integrate several of the themes reviewed here, is the issue of the social construal of one’s sense of identity. Research in the social identity analysis of leadership has outlined how leaders may be entrepreneurs of identity (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001), actively shaping people’s understanding of the shared social identity. Recent social identity research in leadership of change has argued how this also would include a role for leaders as agents of continuity (van Knippenberg et al., 2008) actively shaping people’s understanding of the identity implications of organizational change. In a related vein, Hogg et al. (2012b) have argued that the core of effective intergroup leadership is the active construal of a relational intergroup identity. Whereas these are all examples from leadership research, the key issue for us here is that these are all examples of the active shaping of one’s sense of identity. Leadership may be an important influence here, but it need not be the only influence. A key challenge and exciting opportunity for the future development of the social identity perspective in organizational behavior is to develop our understanding of influences on, and the process of, social identity construal from a recognition that organizational behavior is contingent on identity definition in a context of multiple foci of identification that may change over time.
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Conclusion
In the almost 30 years since Ashforth and Mael’s (1989) seminal study, the social identity perspective has established itself as a well-supported and broad-ranging perspective on organizational behavior. Our review shows how the social identity perspective is well-positioned for integration with other perspectives to build broader-ranging theory, such as with social exchange perspectives in employee–organization relationships and leadership, organizational justice research in leadership, and group information processing research in diversity. This is not an invitation for social identity researchers to lean back and be content, but rather an invitation to recognize the strength and potential of the social identity perspective and develop it further.
In terms of further developing the social identity perspective in organizational psychology and organizational behavior, it is important to recognize that the social identity perspective in organizational psychology and organizational behavior not only has its roots in social psychology, but has repeatedly been stimulated in its further development by drawing on developments in social psychology (Hogg & Terry, 2000; van Knippenberg et al., 2004). Importantly, however, organizational psychology and organizational behavior is not just an area of application for social psychological theory; social identity research in organizational behavior has been a source of new social identity theory in its own right. Recent examples of this include the theory of intergroup leadership proposed by Hogg et al. (2012b) that not only advances a new theoretical perspective of leadership but also proposed a further development of our understanding of social identity as including intergroup relational identity. It also includes integrations of theories of social exchange and organizational justice with the social identity perspective (e.g., Johnson et al., 2006), and developments of the social identity analysis of leadership integrating social psychological and organizational behavior perspectives on leadership (see van Knippenberg & Hogg, 2003, for a review). Social psychology would do well to treat organizational psychology and organizational behavior as a source of new social identity theory, and not just as an area where social psychological theory is applied.
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