Organizational Identity And Memory

Organizational Identity and Memory analyzes the relationship between organizational identity and organizational memory, in particular history and commemoration. The goal is to further our understanding of the role of this relationship in processes critical to today’s organizations: the evolution of organizational identity, the creation and use of organizational memory, organizational learning and change, and employee identification with organizations. The literature on organizational memory and organizational identity has developed independently and at times in separate disciplines. Scholars have debated whether organizational identity is mutable or enduring. In this debate, organizational history, a form of organizational memory, has been a key factor, but neither side of the debate has pursued indepth the well-developed literature on collective memory to understand this relationship and its impact on organizational identity. Organizational memory defined as commemoration and history has been connected to different forms of identity, both national and organizational, but this relationship and its impact on organizational memory processes has not been explored. Organizational Identity and Memory takes a multidisciplinary approach to explore and articulate the dynamic relationship between organizational identity and memory, drawing on work from anthropology, history, organizational studies, and sociology. A multidisciplinary theoretical framework for future research on organizational identity and memory is presented. Implications for managers are discussed with engaging insights from organizational research and practices in creating corporate museums, galleries, visitor centers, and other displays of this relationship.

Memory and Identity in the Learned World offers a detailed and varied account of community formation in the early modern world of learning and science. The book traces how collective identity, institutional memory and modes of remembrance helped to shape learned and scientific communities. The case studies in this book analyse how learned communities and individuals presented and represented themselves, for example in letters, biographies, histories, journals, opera omnia, monuments, academic travels and memorials. By bringing together the perspectives of historians of literature, scholarship, universities, science, and art, this volume studies knowledge communities by looking at the centrality of collective identity and memory in their formations and reformations. Contributors: Lieke van Deinsen, Karl Enenkel, Constance Hardesty, Paul Hulsenboom, Dirk van Miert, Alan Moss, Richard Kirwan, Koen Scholten, Floris Solleveld, and Esther M. Villegas de la Torre.

Conceived as the meanings that individuals attach to their selves, a substantial stockpile of theory related to identities accumulated across the arts, social sciences, and humanities over many decades continues to nourish contemporary research on self-identities in organizations. In times which are more reflexive, narcissistic, and fluid, the identities of participants in organizations are increasingly less fixed and less certain, making identity issues both more salient and more interesting. Particular attention has been given to processes of identity construction, often styled 'identity work'. Research has focused on how, why, and when such processes occur, and their implications for organizing and individual, group, and organizational outcomes. This has resulted in a burgeoning stream of research from discursive, dramaturgical, symbolic, socio-cognitive, and psychodynamic perspectives that most often casts individuals' efforts to fabricate identities as intentional, relational, and consequential. Seemingly intractable debates centred on the nature of identities - their relative stability or fluidity, whether they are best regarded as coherent or fractured, positive (or not), and how they are fabricated within relations of power - combined with other conceptual issues continue to invigorate the field. However, these debates have also led to some scepticism regarding the future potential of identities research. Yet as the chapters in this Handbook demonstrate, there are considerable grounds for optimism that identity, as root metaphor, nexus concept, and means to bridge levels of analysis has significant potential to generate multiple compelling streams of theorizing in organization and management studies.

Mapping the organizational identity (OI) field -- Critical perspectives on OI -- Integrative models of OI -- How individuals relate to OI -- Sources and processes of OI -- OI and the environment -- Implications of OI

Conceived as the meanings that individuals attach to their selves, a substantial stockpile of theory related to identities accumulated across the arts, social sciences, and humanities over many decades continues to nourish contemporary research on self-identities in organizations. In times which are more reflexive, narcissistic, and fluid, the identities of participants in organizations are increasingly less fixed and less certain, making identity issues both more salient and more interesting. Particular attention has been given to processes of identity construction, often styled 'identity work'. Research has focused on how, why, and when such processes occur, and their implications for organizing and individual, group, and organizational outcomes. This has resulted in a burgeoning stream of research from discursive, dramaturgical, symbolic, socio-cognitive, and psychodynamic perspectives that most often casts individuals' efforts to fabricate identities as intentional, relational, and consequential. Seemingly intractable debates centred on the nature of identities - their relative stability or fluidity, whether they are best regarded as coherent or fractured, positive (or not), and how they are fabricated within relations of power - combined with other conceptual issues continue to invigorate the field. However, these debates have also led to some scepticism regarding the future potential of identities research. Yet as the chapters in this Handbook demonstrate, there are considerable grounds for optimism that identity, as root metaphor, nexus concept, and means to bridge levels of analysis has significant potential to generate multiple compelling streams of theorizing in organization and management studies.

How do people identify with organizations? What role does organizational identity play in organizational strategy? Identity in Organizations investigates the fundamental character of organizational identity and individual identification with an organization. Through the use of an unconventional, conversational format the reader is drawn into a provocative discussion among key organizational scholars that focuses on three different paradigmatic views of identity: a functionalist perspective, an interpretive perspective, and a postmodern perspective. Similarities and distinctions among these ways of understanding are explored and numerous theoretical and practical insights are gained. This groundbreaking book concludes with a discussion of the relevance of identity as a construct in organizational study and observations on conversation and theory building. Many well-known scholars participate in the conversation, including Jay Barney, Denny Gioia, Mary Jo Hatch, Stuart Albert, Anne Huff, Judi McLean Parks, and Rod Kramer. Identity in Organizations will be of interest to professionals and students of organizational studies, human resource management, industrial psychology, sociology of work, psychology, and organizational communication.

We are now entering a new phase in the establishment of historical organization studies as a distinctive methodological paradigm within the broad field of organization studies. This book serves both as a landmark in the development of the field and as a key reference tool for researchers and students. For two decades, organization theorists have emphasized the need for more and better research recognizing the importance of the past in shaping the present and future. By historicizing organizational research, the contexts and forces bearing upon organizations will be more fully recognized, and analyses of organizational dynamics improved. But how, precisely, might a traditionally empirically oriented discipline such as history be incorporated into a theoretically oriented discipline such as organization studies? This book evaluates the current state of play, advances it and identifies the possibilities the new emergent field offers for the future. In addition to providing an important work of reference on the subject for researchers, the book can be used to introduce management and organizational history to a student audience at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The book is a valuable source for wider reading, providing rich reference material in tutorials across organizational studies, or as recommended or required reading on courses with a connection to business or management history. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.