Organizational identity, image, and adaptive instability

Pg 63 – “Essential to most theoretical and empirical treatments of organizational identity is a view, specified by Albert and Whetten (1985), defining identity as that which is central, enduring, and distinctive about an organization’s character.”

~ The identity of a culture is central to the culture’s image.

Pg 64 – “Core features of identity are presumed to be resistant to ephemeral or faddish attempts at alteration because of their ties to the organization’s history.”

~ The core features of a culture do not change, only smaller aspects of the culture. This is because the culture’s history links the core features of the culture to the definition of the culture. This could also be said of identity and personal history.

Pg 65 – “Thus, a sense of continuous formulation and preservation of the self through interaction is essential to notions of individual identity.”

~ Continual formation/redistribution of identities are essential to the global self.

Pg 65 – “Similarly, Giddens (1991) noted that self-identity presumes reflexive awareness over time (i.e., identity must be actively created and sustained…”

~ Love this! Totally what I was thinking!

Pg 65 – “It is also important to recognize that identity, even at the individual level, is a social construction (Gergen & Davis, 1985), deriving from repeated interactions with others (Cooley, 1902).”

~ Identity is socially constructed.

Pg 72 – “According to postmodernists, the usual portrayal of identity within a modernist tradition is one emphasizing the influence of origin (founding) and asserting that the sense of identity is held at a deep level in the cultural surround of an organization (Schultz, 1992). In this traditional view there is a relatively fixed notion of the historical development of identity that assumes the persistence of an essential identity, despite changing events, times, and perceptions.”

~ The importance of identity lies in its formation. This is where most knowledge of the identity’s core features come from. This is what one refers back to when changing the identity.

Pg 72 – “Identity no longer holds a distinct and persistent core of its own but becomes a reflection of the images of the present moment.”

~ Identity is transient. I think this might take it a little too far, though. I think there still is a persistent core of global self for identity. If there was no persistent core to an identity there would be no way to say it was an identity.

Pg 74 – “Identity change can occur either reactively or proactively. The interpretation of an organization’s projected image(s) by outsiders most often results in a reactive examination of identity.”

~ Identity change occurs through cognitive processes, not just through actions.

Pg 75 – “Such a proactive tack can facilitate change in an organization that is not (or is not likely to be) ready for the changes inevitably occurring in the environment, and it is based on the belief that an organization cannot change if it is complacent about its self-definition-a self-definition held to be maladaptive. To induce change, the organization must be destabilized and convinced that there is a necessity for a different way of seeing and being.”

~ To change an identity has to feel threatened.

Pg 78 – “Instead, identity management now must involve the simultaneous formation of identity and image by linking internal preferences with internal and external projections and perceptions in a dynamic process.”

~ This is how identity change is managed through the global self. VERY IMPORTANT.

Gioia, D. A., Schultz, M., Corley, K. G. (2000). Organizational identity, image, and adaptive instability. The Academy of Management Review, 25(1). Retrieved October 17, 2008 from JSTOR database.