alterity/identity interplay in image construction interplay in image construction 51 (deducible and...

[18:48 17/1/2008 5082-Barry-Ch104] Job No: 5082 BARRY: The Sage Handbook of New Approaches to Organization Studies Page: 49 49–67

1.4Alterity/Identity Interplay in

Image Construction

B a r b a r a C z a r n i a w s k a

1. alterity n.The state of being other or different. (The ConciseOxford English Dictionary)

2. alterityTerm used in postmodern writings for the‘otherness’ of others, or sometimes the othernessof the self. (The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy)

Being different is hardly a postmoderninvention, so why is that ‘identity’ is a partof our everyday vocabulary, while ‘alterity’is reserved for esoteric writings, and eventhere only ‘sometimes’ related to the Self?I begin by sketching a historical process thatmight be an explanation of this development,and then argue that re-introducing alterityto the common vocabulary of organizationstudies might help us understand many of theinteresting phenomena that we observe butobscure by dealing with them under the labelof identity.

THE TYRANNY OF IDENTITY

The identity paradigmTo exist is to differ; difference, in a sense, isthe substantial side of things, is what they haveonly to themselves and what they have most incommon. One has to start the explanation fromhere, including the explanation of identity, takenoften, mistakenly, for a starting point. Identity isbut a minimal difference, and hence a type ofdifference, and a very rare type at that, in the sameway as rest is a type of movement and circle apeculiar type of ellipse. (Tarde, [1893]1999)

Why was identity taken as a starting point atthe turn of the previous century, when Tardewrote these words? Why does it continue tobe taken as a starting point now? Peter Brooks(2005) explained this with the emergence ofwhat he called an identity paradigm. Twophenomena were at the centre of attention inthe 19th century, especially the attention of


50 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF NEW APPROACHES TO ORGANIZATION STUDIES

the young nation states. One was urbanization:the enormous movement from the countrysideto the city. The previously content bourgeoisbecame frightened; criminality was on therise, and it was taking new, sophisticatedforms. As Brooks pointed out, the picturesquefigure of a ‘master criminal’ in a varietyof disguises was not only a figment of thevivid imaginations of novelists, but existed inreality, to the exasperation of police forces.Another 19th century phenomenon had to dowith the exigencies of running the colonies.How to tell the natives from one anotherif they all look alike to the eye of thecolonialists? Also, how to tell working-classpeople from one another, if they not onlywear the same clothes, but also imitate thebourgeoisie (or the other way around)? Theproblem, therefore, was too many differencesand too few differences. A search for varioustechnologies of identification was activatedduring this period: physiognomy, phrenologyand then photography and finger-printingwere put at the service of the police and thecolonial authorities. Of course, says Brooks,the question of mistaken identities has alwaysbeen a focus of interest of playwrights andnovelists from Homer to Shakespeare, but thesearch for certain marks of identity became anon-fictional matter, and an especially acuteone in the 1800s.

Whereas the issues of alterity and identitywere born in relation to persons, theywere transferred, by analogy, to the realmof abstract entities, such as legal persons(corporations; Lamoreaux, 2003) and nationstates. Thus, the emergence of the identityparadigm in the 19th century was also mostlikely connected to the rise of national-ism (Anderson, 1983/1991). People groupedwithin the new borders desperately neededto know what they had in common, as thetendency was for them to see too manydifferences. This attempt was so successfulthat, in the opinion of Ian Buruma, ‘identity’is behind most of the present world troubles:

Identity is a bloody business. Religion, nationality orrace may not be the primary causes of war and massmurder. These are more likely to be tyranny, or thegreed for territory, wealth and power. But ‘identity’

is what gets the blood boiling, what makes peopledo unspeakable things to their neighbors. (Buruma,2002)

The situation in organizations might not beas drastic. Nevertheless, organization theorydoes not deviate from the current publicdiscourse, with its focus on the phenomenonof identity construction (see e.g. Whetten andGodfrey, 1998; Schultz et al., 2000; Hatch andSchultz, 2003).

A corporate persona and its image

Although we have been saddled with thenotion of ‘organizations’, thanks to theorganization theorists’ interest in systemtheory in the 1960s (Waldo, 1961), most ofour reasoning circles, implicitly or explicitly,around the notion of a corporation – alegal person. This reasoning became evenmore valid in present times, when publicadministration units are encouraged or forcedto assume shapes of ‘real organizations’: thatis to say, corporations.

The history of corporations in the USA isa history of a competition, never concluded,between the school of thought that concep-tualizes corporations as natural persons, andthe one that sees them as artificial persons(Lamoreaux, 2003). According to the lattertheory, a corporation is a person only tothe degree bestowed on it by its legislator.Thus, an organization is a Super Person(Czarniawska, 1994), in the sense of beingbigger in certain ways than all the individualswho contribute to its existence; yet alsoa Limited Person. Were Gabriel Tarde anorganization theorist, he would say that eachperson employed in a company is muchbigger and much more complex than thecompany itself, the latter being a collectionof a repetition of one or few properties ofits employees and machines (Czarniawska,2004).

If one adopts a ‘natural person’ per-spective, an organization can have a self.Within an ‘artificial person’ perspective, towhich I subscribe, an organization cannothave a ‘self’, but can have, to borrow anexpression from narratology, a Character


ALTERITY/IDENTITY INTERPLAY IN IMAGE CONSTRUCTION 51

(deducible and observable from its deedsand self-presentations). In corporate law,Naomi Lamoreaux tells us, the two theoriestend to hybridize rather than clash. Wecan follow their example and agree on acommon point: what is compared in order toestablish an identity or an alterity relation isan organizational image. Whether this imagereflects the essence of an organization or isan ongoing social construction may remain apoint of discontent and personal belief. Thefact remains that organizational images areconstantly produced and reproduced by actorsand observers within and outside organiza-tions; they are used to control employees andthe investors and to legitimate and to attractattention. Thus, two research questions arise.How are organizational images constructed(both in the sense of process and product)?and, How are they used?

Organization theorists had no problemin accepting and translating to their ownuse the constructivist view on the characterof the self that would see it not as anessence to be located or expressed, but asan image of ‘I’ produced and reproducedin interactions (Mead, 1913). Such a self –individual or organizational – would bestable insofar there persists a memory ofpast interactions. The self is historical, andis both constituted by and constitutive ofa community (Bruner, 1990; Rorty, 1991).If members of the community conceive ofthemselves as forming an abstract system,as it is the case of formal organizations, theimage of this system will also be constructedin abstract terms.

It has also been accepted that ‘[i]dentitiesare performed in conversations. … whatwe achieve in conversations is positioningvis-à-vis other people’ (Davies and Harré,1990: 44), and against the background of aplot that is negotiated by those taking partin the conversation. Whether this backgroundis the history of the community or one’slife project may vary from one conversationto another. Thus, the self – individual andorganizational – is produced, reproduced andmaintained in discourses, past and present.It is community-constituted, as Rorty says,

in the sense of being created by those who takepart in a conversation; it is historical becausepast conversations are evoked in the course ofpresent ones.

While the idea that self is an imagethat is being constructed in and throughdiscourses was taking root, the attention –including that of Davies and Harré – focusedon identity construction as synonymouswith the self. This fashionable focus ofattention overshadows the simultaneous andunavoidable process of alterity construction,of constructing oneself as different. Indeed,whereas ‘identity’ entered everyday parlance,‘alterity’ remains a precious concept limitedto the circles of cultural studies. Yet there isno reason to suppose that the question ‘Whoam I like?’is more important than the question‘Who am I unlike?’ and, even more poignant,‘How am I different?’ Identity and alterityform the self, and their interplay results in animage – projected or received.

Alterity in social sciences

Both identity and alterity do appear in socialstudies – but usually in two versions, whichcan be situated on two extremes of theexclusion–inclusion dimension.

One version is typical for cultural studies,and is strongly influenced by Michel Foucault,who claimed that ‘the forceful exclusionand exorcism of what is Other is an actof identity formation’ (Corbey and Leerssen,1991: xii).1 The other end of the dimensionis represented by post-Hegelians who seethe interplay between identity and alterity asa dialectical move, resulting in ‘increasingexpansion and incorporation, assimilating orat least harmonizing all otherness in terms ofexpanding identity’(ibid. xi). Michael Taussig(1993) followed Benjamin in the belief thatmimesis means yielding into the Other. Thus,in the discourse of and on identity, alterityis either attributed (‘they are different andtherefore not us’) or incorporated (‘theyare actually very much like us’). The thirdpossibility, the affirmation of difference (‘weare different’), is omitted, with the exceptionof the work of Gilles Deleuze, who alone



continued the Tardean tradition (Czarniawska,2004).

The process of calling attention to distinc-tions has sometimes been called a negativity(‘what we are not’), or a game of internaldifference, as contrasted to ‘true alterity’, thatof the Other (Zahavi, 1999: 196). For theFoucauldians, negativity is uninteresting inthe face of the ‘true’, irremediable alterity,which, however, cannot concern oneself. Forthe post-Hegelians, it is but further proofof incorporation, of a harmonizing removalof differences in the process of identityformation. Deleuze’s anti-Hegelian projectsuggests that negativity is the last point onthe identity continuum constituted by TheSame, The Similar, The Analogous and TheOpposed, and needs to be distinguished fromaffirmation of difference (1968/1997: 265).

Although the simultaneous presence ofexclusion-inclusion movements has beenacknowledged before (Höpfl, 1992), thesimultaneous construction of identity andalterity of such collective images as ‘an orga-nization’ or ‘management practice’ requiresattention. The need to distinguish between thetwo is justified by the different places theyoccupy in different attempts at constructionof an image. Thus, following Deleuze’sargument, identity and alterity can be seen astwo dimensions (the alterity dimension beingnon-continuous).

Although The Same can be seen as an idealon the identity continuum, it is not so. It isonly The Primitive who returns to The Same,and therefore does not progress (de Certeau,1975/1988). The Primitive Other imitates;The Moderns emulate (and do it better than themodel). One can thus portray identity-alteritydimensions as a circle, the larger part of whichthe moderns have reserved for themselves.The Primitive Others are supposed to remainat the extremes; they repeat themselves, andthey are unlike anybody else. The Moderns arefree to engage in the identity-alterity interplayin many diverse fashions. (See Figure 1.4.1.)

The observation of actual practices tellsa different story, however. The whole fieldis open to everybody, even if fashion mightprefer some modes and some types of

interplay. The Primitive Other is but aninvention, a prop to be used in the interplay.

The analogy with corporations and ‘cor-porate citizenship’ is obvious. Actors andobservers constantly produce and reproduceorganizational images, which are used tocontrol the employees and the investors, tolegitimate, and to attract attention. Corporateleadership tries to convince employees thatthey have much in common, and convincethe customers that the other corporations aredifferent. The ‘unsophisticated’ organizationsare either impossible to tell apart, or areunique and therefore irrelevant. But whilepractitioners construct the images playing onboth identity (who are we like? and how?)and alterity (how are we different? and fromwhom?), scholars tend to concentrate only onthe former part of this process.

The dominant conceptualization of ‘iden-tity free of alterity’ has caused a significantsemantic gliding in studies of corporate imageconstruction. At one time merely denotinga relation (identity, like an alterity, is ajudgement resulting from a comparison),identity has become an attribute – somethingthat an organization can have or lack.A relational view of the identity/alterityinterplay in organizational image constructionpromises a more nuanced understanding ofthese complex phenomena. I illustrate ithere with the examples of three studies:city management (Czarniawska, 2000, 2002),business school management (Wedlin, 2006)and an IT company management (Strannegårdand Friberg, 2001). In accordance with thelogic of grounded theory, I present the firstcase in greater detail, whereas the other twoserve as a test and extension of the theoryof the interplay of identity and alterity in theconstruction of organizational images.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF CITY IMAGEAS AN INTERPLAY OF IDENTITY ANDALTERITY

City managers and politicians in Warsaw,Stockholm and Rome described to theresearchers their cities and their own work in

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The Same

TheSimilar

The Opposite

Uniqueness(affirmation ofdifference)

Partialdifference

Minimaldifference

The (Primitive)Other

TheModerns

ALTERITY

The Analogous

IDENTITY

Figure 1.4.1 Identity-alterity interplay (Czarniawska, 2002: 35)

relation to an image of ‘a modern Europeancapital’. Although this notion had many topicsin common, it also contained dramaticallydifferent visions of such a capital, given thatthe frame of reference differed from one cityto another. These different frames includeddifferent constellations of European cities,but also local stories of specific developmentsin the three capitals. These accounts wereintended to set the city apart – apart from allother cities and or apart from specific cities.The ways of identification (same, similar,analogous), of negation (opposite), and ofdifferentiation (unique or different) shifted inform and in content.

Images of ‘a European capital’in Warsaw

There were three dominant elements ofan image of a European capital that were

common in Warsaw: such a national capitalneeded a metro, water treatment plants, and acentrally steered infrastructure.

The construction of the subway was thetopic of the greatest controversy and thehighest hopes at the time of my study inthe late 1990s. I was continually askedwhether I was aware that there were onlytwo capitals in Europe without a subway –Warsaw and Tirana? Tirana, the capital ofAlbania, was Warsaw’s Opposite, and notonly in matters of transportation. My pointingout that Copenhagen had no subway hadno effect; quite rightly, as it turned out(Copenhagen built a subway at the end of the1990s). Everyone agreed that a subway wouldsolve many problems connected with urbantransportation.

The World Bank, however, comparingWarsaw to Johannesburg, had argued for aconstruction of an effective surface transport



system, and was ready to help with thatproject. This position gained few supportersin Warsaw, and the alterity aspect of the imageof the European capital became clear in thiscontext. Such a capital cannot be in any placeother than Europe, but one continent in whichit most emphatically must not be located isAfrica. Johannesburg was, at that time, animportant prop in the alterity construction,and this construction revealed, among manyother things, the untamed strength of racialprejudice. Western consultants were accusedof trying to ‘Africanize’ Poland. This accusa-tion had its root in the fact that many of theaid programmes had turned away from Africaand toward eastern Europe (Wedel, 2001). Butwhile Western liberals were despairing of theconsequences for African countries, at leastsome eastern Europeans were annoyed thattheir situation could be seen as parallelingthat of Africa. Johannesburg might be a moremodern city than Warsaw; but, alas, it is inthe wrong continent. Tirana may be a symbolof poverty and belatedness, but it is, at least,a European capital, The Opposite, not theOther.

The water quality problems were obviousas well. They were partly a result ofshallow intakes, dirty water, and obsoletetechnology; but primarily due to the fact thatWarsaw had only one water treatment plant,which collected wastewater from one side ofthe river. Warsaw had been classified by theHelsinki Convention documents and by theBaltic Water Protection Program as their mostdifficult case. A single-proprietorship citycompany, financed mainly with credit fromthe European Investment Bank, was createdto build another wastewater treatment plant.It was considered appropriate that a Europeanbank assisted in the Europeanization ofWarsaw. What provoked my interest, was thatthe model for water management had beenderived from the past – the 1930s in Warsaw –on the claim that although water quality andtechnology had both changed, the idea ofeffective management had not, and could bedirectly imported from the past. Warsaw wastoo different from other cities to rely on theirexperience.

There was also a strong conviction that theonly effective management of infrastructurewould be a centralized one. Some of myinterlocutors pointed out that the idea ofmunicipal corporations – an alternative tocentral control – had been borrowed fromGermany, where it was being applied tosmall towns rather than major cities. Thepopular assumption of the incompatibility ofdemocracy and efficiency revealed its sourcesin the memory of past emergency situa-tions. Such a tendency to expect threat andemergency is typical of ‘Mitteleuropa’, andatypical of Sweden, where this historicallyinduced sense of threat is unknown. This,among other factors, makes a tendency toimitate contemporary cities less pronouncedin Warsaw than in Stockholm, as will beseen below.

The image of an ‘ideal city’ has amultifaceted role in managerial practice inWarsaw: it motivated and legitimated, focuseddiscourse, guided action, and served asargument. Such an image was a compositeof pictures, some of which could probably betraced back to some professional producersof images, but many of which seem tobe produced by the actors evoking them.This composite used sameness (‘Warsaw isa European city’), opposition (‘Tirana is aEuropean city butWarsaw must not be like it’),difference (‘Warsaw is not an African city’),and uniqueness (‘Warsaw is different from allEuropean cities’). This composite would berecognizable but not usable in Stockholm.

Images of a ‘European big city’in Stockholm

By Warsaw standards, Stockholm fulfils allthe requirements of ‘the European capital’:it has a subway and water treatment plants,and its infrastructure is centrally managed(in a company form). But these images werenot those present in the minds of Stockholmpoliticians and managers. The ‘big Europeancity of the 21st century’, as they calledtheir image, had to fulfil quite another setof requirements. Because the big-but-not-capital cities like Milan, Stuttgart, Naples and

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Gothenburg rebelled against the hegemonyof capitals, the scope of identification couldbe extended. Stockholm was aware of beinga not-so-big big city, and watched the agilemoves of other not-so-big cities with interest.They also listened to what the ‘field servicing’organizations (Hedmo et al., 2005) suggested.Opening one of many OECD conferenceson ‘The City and New Technologies’ in1992, Michel Delebarre said that informationtechnology was the only way to increasethe efficiency of municipal services, whileattracting the computer industry to a bigcity that had disposed of its heavy and lightindustry. As a consequence, city managersbegan to market their cities within the frameof information technology: Osaka representeditself as City of Intelligence, Barcelona asCity of Telematics, Amsterdam as City ofInformation, Manchester as Wired City, andStockholm as Internet Bay (Dobers andStrannegård, 2001).

Although the image of an IT-city did notoriginate in Stockholm, it was in Stockholmthat it found a natural home. At the time ofmy study (1996–7), Stockholm City had putbig money into CityNet, a new optic-fibre netconnecting all municipal offices, a ‘new cityinfrastructure’. Stockholm had created a homepage early in the history of the Internet, and itspoliticians believed that computer educationwas the best way to deal with unemploymentcaused by a new immigration wave from thecountryside to the city. The IT industries couldnot but agree.

Another image of a global characteradopted in Stockholm was that of the city asa spectacle (Wilson, 1991). This is also an oldidea: modern city as a spectacle and moderncitizen as a spectator (flâneur) are images fromthe previous fin-de-siècle, which now seem tohave reached their full expression. Allan Pred(1995) recounted the story of three spectacularspaces on which hang the history of modernStockholm: the Stockholm Exhibition of1897; the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930; andthe multipurpose arena, the Globe, whichopened in 1989. Thus Stockholm, intent asit is on following present development inother cities, also followed its own tradition.

The latest spectacle Stockholm offered theworld was in 1998, in its role as CulturalCapital of Europe (Pipan and Porsander,2000).

One image that is used forcefully formarketing purposes is that of Stockholm asClean City, with fresh air and pure water(Adolfsson, 2005). The difficulty with thisenterprise lies in providing the evidence.A modern city cannot rely on impressionsof its tourists or its inhabitants, especiallyif these impressions are positive only in thenegative statement, ‘no pollution’. Thus animpressive apparatus for the measurementof air and water pollution, involving manypeople and machines, was constructed. Anobelisk showing the level of pollution of airand water has been opened by the King.

Unfortunately, no dramatic results can beshown – the neon light indicators rarelydarken. While ‘dirty cities’ (such as Romeand Warsaw) can show diminishing pollutionlevels, Stockholm’s measurements lie almostconstantly below the permissible EU norm.Although the city is truly clean, it is difficultto use it for either identity or alterityconstruction. As clean as … what other city?Cleaner than … any city?

There was a great supply of images of othercities in Stockholm as well as in Warsaw, butthey were different (although in the debateabout the traffic it has been said that, apartfrom Stockholm, only Tirana does not havean inner ring road). Gothenburg is usuallyseen as Stockholm’s at-home opposite, whileCopenhagen, Oslo, and Helsinki as similar oranalogous, which meant that any elements ofmanagerial practice in these cities might beimitated – although Stockholm really wishedto be imitated by others. Rome, on the otherhand, wished to be placed on a differentmap entirely.

Images of the ‘leading Europeancapital’ in Rome

There was a well-deserved grandiosity in cityimages present in Rome. Whereas Warsawwas painfully aware of its belatedness andStockholm of its small size and Nordic



location, Rome dreamed of joining thefashion leaders – Paris, Berlin and London.It shared with Warsaw the belief that rapidmodernization was needed, with Stockholman interest in the newest managerial fashion,and with Athens the pride of a unique pastincorporated and preserved in the city. Allthese elements found expression in the imagesof the leading European capital that seemedto be guiding both political visions andmanagerial practices.

There were some palpable similaritiesbetween the traffic issues in Warsaw andRome. One was the citizens’ love of theautomobile that results in a congestion of citytraffic of which the citizens of Stockholm,with all their complaints about traffic prob-lems, know little.Another similarity is the latearrival of the subway. By the time of the study,however, Rome already had two subway lines,and the subway construction problems weremostly primarily local and related to Rome’shistorical past. The uniquely Roman problemwas that the city did not have a traffic system.There never was an urban transport plan,and neither the tariffs nor the networks wereintegrated. Rome is truly a palimpsest city,as Bauman (1998: 40) defined it.

Big European cities like Paris and Rome,with effective public transportation systemswere seen as analogous. Berlin was especiallyattractive because its double networks of localtrains and subway were close to the Romanprogramme ‘to activate the iron’ – the manyunused railway lines that crisscross the city –and because of Berlin’s recent experiencesat joining its two parts again. There were,however, a great many difficulties involved ineven partially imitating Berlin (Czarniawska,2003). The sediments of the old regimeswere residing not only under the ground asarcheological monuments. It was, in manyways, a heroic enterprise to try to create atraffic system in a big city rather than merelyextending or modernizing an existing system.

On the other hand, the idea of city asspectacle was obvious to Roman politicians,officials, and citizens. If anything, they weretired of it, as the relief at having lost theOlympics and the general wariness about

the Jubilee of the Third Millennium ofChristianity clearly indicated. But with theapproach of this last spectacle, forced ontoRome by the Vatican, the city was determinedto make the best of it. The best had tobe more durable than the event itself, andthe past had to be turned into the mainasset of the present. The Jubilee was tobecome a marketing opportunity: an excellentopportunity for spreading the image of Romearound the world. Rome was to become a citythat offers its tourists all the modern comfortsso they can better enjoy the beauty of the past(Pipan and Porsander, 2000).

Another managerial novelty in Rome – amore pervasive and far-reaching one – wasthe privatization of public services, which inRome was perceived as a must for a modernEuropean capital, inspired by the example ofLondon. The first case in point was to be theprivatization of Centrale di Latte, the city-owned dairy monopoly, which was probablyseen as the easiest privatization target becauseit was such an obvious anachronism.2 Theprocess turned out to be far from easy.The citizens were against privatization, andunion protests and street demonstrationsfollowed. The subsequent privatization ofACEA, the conglomerate of water, sewerand city illumination proceeded slowly andcautiously. Mazza (2001) claims that Romeused Centrale di Latte as a learning casefor further privatization. The outcome ofthis learning is still controversial in practice,but it has undoubtedly contributed to thelegitimization of the privatization discourse inRome. Such a legitimization permitted the citymanagers to follow a global fashion with theacceptance of its local audience. Privatizationof public utilities in Rome can thus be seenas following a fashion in the world of publicmanagement, imitating those cities that areperceived as similar or analogous.

City management: Constructingidentity and alterity

The interplay of identity and alterity work wasvisible in all the city image constructions: onecould claim that such interplay was explicitly



demanded by the audience. As Orvar Löfgren(1993) pointed out, contemporary normsprescribing how identities should be built –national, regional, local identities – includethe paradoxical requirement that such anidentity should be built around the image ofuniqueness.

Thus Rome is comparable to Athensbecause of its cultural capital, but Athens isa city with many problems and no solutions,which Rome is not. London is the model ofprivatized municipal services, but its citizensdo not enjoy the ancient cultural heritage ofRome. Berlin has a model traffic system withthe railway at its centre, but German cities areover-organized, and the charm of Rome liespartly in its anarchy. Images of other citiesbecome fragmented, and those fragments areused to construct both the similarity and thedifference.

It was not always cities that supplied theimages: in the case of preparations for theJubilee and for the Cultural Capital year,the reference points were great events. Again,the Olympic Games in Atlanta were seen asopposite of what Rome wanted to achieve, andStockholm saw itself as analogous to Glasgowand Copenhagen, but not to Antwerp. Thus,in many cases alterity construction was infact subordinated to identity construction; inDeleuze’s terms, the Opposite is the extremeend of the identity continuum, but remainswithin it. The cities (or actions within themanagement net) differ, but on the samedimension.

An interesting example of a combinationof identity and alterity work was a frequentcomparison between Rome and Barcelona.Barcelona was a model to imitate – not as acity, but as a case of transformation from a pre-modern to a late-modern city. The managersin Rome did not want Rome to becomeanother Barcelona, but they wanted the samemanagerial success that their counterpartsin Barcelona enjoyed. Guje Sevón (1996)called this phenomenon, after René Girard,the imitation of desire. Rome was different,but desired the same success.

But alterity was not only an aid in identityconstruction. In the case of Stockholm,

there was also an affirmation of difference.Stockholm is the only truly Nordic and trulybig city; Stockholm combines, in uniqueways, Continental and Scandinavian tradi-tions; Stockholm is the only capital situatedboth at the sea and on a lake; Stockholm isdifferent. But in romantic terms, Stockholmis also the Venice of the North. In termsof management, Amsterdam, another city onwater, was Stockholm’s simile. The identityconstruction used The Similar (Amsterdam),The Analogous (Venice) and The Opposite (inthe case of London’s wrongly built ‘city net’)positions on the identity dimension.

The ‘uniqueness of Warsaw’ was a topicto which the interviewees often returned.Warsaw is different from all other citiesin Poland, because it is a capital; becauseafter the war it was dealt with by a specialDecree; because in 1990 it was exemptedfrom the Local Government Law. Warsaw isdifferent from any western European capitalbecause it has a different history; it is differentfrom any eastern European capital because ithas a different geopolitical position. Warsaw,in short, is different, and the affirmationof its difference dominated the city image.The identity moves were usually locatedon the Opposite point and consisted ofsuch politically incorrect negations as ‘unlikeTirana’. Warsaw’s management had identityproblems because a city unlike any othercannot legitimatize its actions by followingthe examples of others.An image built only onalterity is unclear. The ‘decisive difference’ –the one that supposedly determines theresult of any market competition – must bepositioned on a common dimension. Similar.Analogous. Opposite. But on the same scale.

This was exactly the idea behind theranking of business schools, and example towhich I now turn.

ALTERITY AND IDENTITY INTERPLAYIN BUSINESS SCHOOLS

Linda Wedlin (2006) studied the emergenceof ranking lists and league tables as aidsto the comparison and evaluation of higher



education in the media. She focused on busi-ness schools, as the attempt to internationalizemanagement education is one of the mostprominent cases of the present globalizationof university education. Her purpose was notto judge this activity, but to try to describehow and why the rankings were established,how they were met by business schools, andwhat were the observable consequences oftheir use. Limiting her interest to Europeanbusiness schools, she collected publishedmaterial on rankings and media coverage ofmanagement education in Europe since themid-1990s, conducted a survey of opinionsof European business school deans, andinterviewed selected top administrators andmedia representatives. It is especially theinterviews with the top administrators that areof interest to me, as they were summarized intwo ‘identity narratives’composed by Wedlin.While I concur with her analysis, I wish toshow how the issues of affirmed alterity (‘thisis how we differ …’) are subsumed under theidentity heading. In producing the image oftheir schools, however, the deans are clearly(and skilfully) engaging in an identity/alterityinterplay.

A University Business School

This ‘academic’ business school, as Wedlinchose to call it, is a relatively new (inexistence since 1990) but a fast-growing one(60 research and teaching staff in 2002). Itsspecificity is the fact that it is part of a largeand old university. One of the intervieweesstated that the aim of the school was to be oneof the leading international business schools,owing to a successful combination of teachingand research.

The identification was quite clear: theschool wanted to be a ‘true’ business school.This meant, in the first place, an MBAprogramme (‘… if you want to be a seriousmanagement/business school, you have tohave an MBA course’; Wedlin, 2006: 49).The MBA credentials attract the interestof alumni, students, other business schools,and corporations all over the world. Andthe MBA’s fees provide an important source

of income. Another trait common for businessschools is the close link to practice: viainclusion of corporate representatives into theadvisory board, via executive education, andvia consulting undertaken by the faculty.

But the differences should not be over-looked. Unlike many other business schools,this was a school within ‘an ancient,multi-faculty, inter-disciplinary university’(ibid.: 47). The excellence of this universitylies in the scholarly research that is closelyconnected to undergraduate and graduateteaching, and the business school had to beon the same level. This was a challenge,translated mainly into the high recruitmentstandards, but also a resource, consistingof easily formed links with other universitydepartments.

Here, however, another differentiationoccurred: in forging links with other univer-sity departments, the business school had to becareful to avoid becoming like (some of) them,that is ‘ossified, backward-facing’ (ibid.: 47);it had to be vibrant and fast, like otherinternational schools. Thus, the possibilitieswithin the identity/alterity circle were fullyexploited: the University Business School wasto be like all international business schoolsthrough MBA and corporate contacts; unlikeother business schools through scholarlyresearch and tight links to the university tradi-tion; but unlike other university departmentsand like business schools in terms of speedand vivacity.

A Business Business School

The other identity narrative that Wedlinpresented was that of a business schoolwithout ties to a university, establishedpartly outside of the national universitysystem. It was established in the sameyear as the University Business School, andhas the same faculty size. Being a ‘true’business school did not mean that its alterityclaims were non-existent; if anything, theywere even stronger. The school represented‘a dramatically different model’; differentfrom what? – ‘the classical model you(Wedlin) will study’ (p. 51). Further probing



revealed that there were, in fact, two classicalmodels from which a business school candiffer. One was ‘a typical university thatknows best’ (p. 53); the Business BusinessSchool was international (not parochial, likemany universities), practical (no ivory towershere), and customer-oriented (rather thanfaculty-oriented). These differences meantin practice that there were no departmentaldivisions based on disciplines, no academictitles, and no tenure (the two latter measuresintended to free time and energy from theusual academic power struggles, and divertit toward customer needs). The school alsohad a bonus system to attract and maintainhigh-level faculty.

Nevertheless, they claimed to be differentfrom a typical business school: ‘outstandingresearch, outstanding teaching, outstandingratings, but doing everything differently …’(p. 53). The main difference from other busi-ness schools was the focus on research, andthe interviewees claimed that the school man-aged to achieve what everybody dreams of:research that leads both to applicable resultsand to high-prestige academic publications.And, although they had an MBA programme,it was small and elitist, and it served primarilyas a marketing device.

Different ways of braiding identityand alterity

The two narratives have in common the activeinterplay of alterity and identity features, butin differing proportions and with differentresults. The University Business School putrelatively more weight on identity claims: theywere like business schools in some aspectsand like university in others. Their alteritywas partly established by the attributionof difference to the others, the ‘ossifieddepartments’. In contrast, and similar to thecity of Warsaw, the Business Business Schoolbuilt its narrative around a total alterityclaim: it was dramatically different fromeverybody. A reader employed in academiamight be sceptical about the degree of dramain such differences; yet at least one trait wasunique – bonuses as rewards for research.

Both schools claimed to have good results, andtheir rankings support their claims. One canspeculate, however, about a quicker facultyturnover at Business Business School, as itdoes not award tenure and its faculty membersteach more than other business school teachersdo (the University Business School facultyteach more than other university departments,but less than other business schools).

Wedlin interpreted the results similarly,although only in the vocabulary of identity(she spoke of similarities and differences,however). She pointed out that the propsfor constructing differences and similaritieswere truly effigies: ‘the traditional university’(which probably does not exist anywhereanymore) and ‘the real business school’(as to the character of which, opinions differ,depending on the contrast required).

AN ALTERITY ONLY?

Lars Strannegård conducted a prolongeddirect observation of an IT company inStockholm just before the ‘IT-bubble’ burstand during the crisis (October 1999–April2001). His results are reported in the form ofextensive quotes from field notes, discussedin theoretical terms, and illustrated by thework of an artist, Maria Friberg, who herselfmade a prolonged observation of youngbusinessmen in Stockholm (Strannegård andFriberg, 2001).

The IT whiz kids (or rather young men andwomen) that Strannegård observed engagedoften and spontaneously in self-image con-struction, both in words and in deeds. Whatstruck me in this image was that it seemed tobe constructed only upon alterity. They weredifferent; and in order to be different, theyneeded to construct a monolithical identity of‘the Other’, who were all alike and existed inorder to differ from:

They’re not competitors. They’re not innovative andthey’re still doing the same thing.

They’re just a bunch of old dummies.We’re doing something totally new. We solve

entire business problems and find new businesspossibilities. (p. 43)



Only one utterance was more conservative,but still in the same spirit: ‘Internet companiesdon’t do things all that differently. But it goesfaster and is more dynamic’ (p. 58).

Strannegård, inspired, among others, bymy writings (‘According to Czarniawska, thesimilarity dimension is the most importantaspect of identity construction …’, p. 68),looked for the similarity dimension, and foundnone. Instead he found this web documentdescribing the company’s ‘vision and values’(at least in that they were similar!):

We were founded in Sweden, but we’re notSwedish. We are a global company that providesglobal solutions for the global network economy.

We are building a new model.There is no model for our business. Or for our

kind of company. We have set our own standards.Created our own rules. And created our ownsuccess.

Until the 2000 stock market crash, ‘they’were rather unspecified traditional industrialcompanies, and in the manifesto above, ‘they’did not exist. The company was unique. Afterthe crash, ‘they’ changed identity, and thecompany image moved towards negativity(The Opposite):

But we’re nothing like the traditional dot-comcompany. In most cases they have no business plan.They’re not cohesive and in many cases not veryserious about what they’re doing, they’re just out tomake some quick money. They’ve been completelyexagerated (sic), spend huge amounts of moneyand haven’t followed the way the Internet hasactually developed. (p. 73)

The IT company is clearly an interestingcase, difficult to analyse because of itsclaim to uniqueness. There are some ele-ments resembling the colonial rhetoric inits contempt for ‘the primitive’ other – inthis case, traditional industrial companies.There is the claim of being completelydifferent, that resembles Warsaw’s claimsto uniqueness (‘we are like no other cityin Europe’). There are tones, especially inthe last, more guarded description, similarto the Business Business School claim tobe a real business school but dramaticallydifferent from all others. Observe, however,that the differences from ‘the traditional

dot-com company’ (how quickly do traditionsform!) seem to make the IT company similarto the ‘traditional industrial’ one with itsboring business plan, boring seriousness, andboring long-term planning. It is difficult tobe different without at least somebody beingsimilar.

THE IMAGE OF AN ORGANIZATION

The uses of an organizational image areas many as its users, but let me limit thisreasoning to the ways that management canuse an image of the organization they aremanaging. The cases described above allow usto discern the following ways that managersuse the image of the city/the school/thecompany:

• to attract tourists/students/clients;• to attract investors/sponsors;• to manage the inhabitants/the employees/

themselves;• to manage the legislators and the media;• to compete with other organizations.

Therefore a specific identity/alterity interplaymust be, intentionally or unintentionally,closely linked to strategy; it may become a partof it.As there are different ways of shaping thisinterplay, they must lead to different results.New institutionalists (Powell and DiMaggio,1991) taught us that organizations in thesame field of activity tend to acquire thesame forms; this phenomenon was named‘isomorphism’. Isomorphism assumes strongidentification mechanisms: managers imitateorganization forms because they see their ownorganizations as similar to their models. Yetthere is as clear a tendency to differentiation,at its peak becoming a quest for uniqueness.Therefore one could expect existence of allo-morphism (divergence of forms), but also ofautomorphism (Schwartz, 1997), an imitationof its own past (as in the case of Warsawwater management), or at least the past of theorganization of which one is a part (UniversityBusiness School). Figure 1.4.2 illustrates the

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ALLOMORPHISM(diversity of forms: Warsaw, BusinessBusiness School, IT company)

differentiation(alterity dimension: unique,identity dimension: opposite to)

AUTOMORPHISM(organizations handle the demands from theirenvironment by using the strategies appliedpreviously with some success: Stockholm,Rome, Warsaw, University Business School)

identification with own past(identity dimension: the same)

ISOMORPHISM(organizational forms in the same fieldbecome alike: Stockholm, Rome, businessschools)

identification with others(identity dimension: similar oranalogous)

Figure 1.4.2 Consequences of different forms of alterity/identity interplay for anorganization field

variety of mechanisms and their consequencesfor an organization field.

A dominance of a certain form might havefar-ranging consequences for an organizationfield. As we live in an identity paradigm,it is usually assumed that the first formand the resulting isomorphism are mostcommon. I would claim that the other two areequally frequent, but have not been studiedenough. It would be interesting to makecomparisons between different organizationfields, between different regions of the world,between different periods. Many noteworthythings could be said about contemporaryorganizations by allowing alterity to take itsplace together with identity.

NOTES

1 The anthology edited by these two scholars,Alterity, Identity, Image. Selves and Others in Societyand Scholarship, is an excellent example of this schoolof thought.

2 At the close of the 19th century and well intothe Depression of the 1930s, many cities ownedthe production or distribution of such organizationsas bakeries and dairies that were considered to besatisfying the basic needs of its citizens.

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Brooks, Peter (2005) The Identity Paradigm. A talk atthe Center for Cultural Sociology Spring Conference,6-9 May, Yale University, Yale, CT.

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de Certeau, Michel (1975/1988) The Writing of History.New York: Columbia University Press.

Corbey, Raymond and Leerssen, Joep (1991) ‘Studyingalterity: Backgrounds and perspectives’, in R. Corbeyand J. Leerssen (eds) Alterity, Identity, Image.Amsterdam: Rodopi. pp. vi–xviii.

Czarniawska, Barbara (1994) ‘Narratives of individualand organizational identities’, in S. Deetz (ed.)Communication Yearbook 17. Newbury Park, Sage.pp. 193–221.

Czarniawska, Barbara (2000) ‘The European Cap-ital of the 2000s: On image construction andmodelling’, Corporate Reputation Review, 3 (3):202–217.

Czarniawska, Barbara (2002) A tale of Three Cities, orthe Glocalization of City Management. Oxford, UK:Oxford University Press.

Czarniawska, Barbara (2004) ‘Gabriel Tarde and big citymanagement’, Distinktion, 9: 81–95.

Davies, Bronwyn and Harré, Rom (1990) ‘Positioning:The discoursive production of selves’, Journal for theTheory of Social Behaviour, 20 (1): 43–63.

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Deleuze, Gilles (1968/1997) Difference & repetition.London: Athlone.

Dobers, Peter and Strannegård, Lars (2001) ‘Loveablenetworks. A story of affection, attraction and treach-ery’, Journal of Organizational Change Management,14 (1): 28–49.

Hatch, Mary Jo and Schultz, Majken (eds) (2003)Organizational Identity. A Reader. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Hedmo, Tina, Sahlin-Andersson, Kerstin and Wedlin,Linda (2005) ‘Fields of imitation. A global expansionof management education’, in B. Czarniawskaand G. Sevón (eds) Global Ideas. How Ideas,Objects and Practices Travel in the Global Economy.Malmö/Copenhagen: Liber/CBS. pp. 190–212.

Höpfl, Heather (1992) ‘The making of the corporateacolyte’, Journal of Management Studies, 29 (1):23–34.

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'Environmental strategies as automorphic patterns of behaviour", Business Strategy and the Environment, in press, DOI: 10.1002/bse.567. 2006



Organizational Identity as an Emerging Perennial Domain

Dennis A. Gioia

Ours is a field full of fads. Little ideas pop up periodically, run through their 15 minutesof academic fame and fade from the scene. While they burn, they burn brightly, butthen they burn out quickly, leaving barely a dying ember, even in the form of a footnote15 years on. Even our good ideas or domains of work seem to have relatively short half-lives. They make an entrance, dominate the conversation for some period of time and thenjust sort of recede into the background – acknowledged as important, but exhausted (e.g.organizational culture). Others are deemed to be academically dead (motivation theory).Still others, however, seem to be perennials, that appear to regenerate interest becausethey are seen as pragmatically important and/or theoretically rejuvenated (leadership).

I confess that I have paid scant attention to ‘what’s hot’ in trying to decide what tostudy. I’d rather lose myself in an engaging issue or problem, so intrinsic interest in atopic has always been my game (although, as a Renaissance idealist, I have an intrinsicinterest in a lot of games – see Gioia, 2004). Nonetheless, I do try to read the glowingembers occasionally, so I can at least avoid working on a soon-to-be-dead area in whichno one will care what I might have to say.

With that little proviso in mind, I serendipitously found myself interested inorganizational identity in the early 1990s because it ‘emerged’ from one of my groundedstudies. Tracking backwards, I found that Albert and Whetten (1985) had made aconceptual statement about identity, but then the notion languished until Dutton andDukerich (1991) picked it up. That same year I published an identity study without overtlyrecognizing it as an identity study (Gioia and Chittipeddi, 1991). I pursued that line ofwork for some years (e.g. Gioia and Thomas, 1996), but by the latter 1990s my idea half-life sensors were screaming at me to ‘Get Out Now!’ because this domain was likely toflame out in interest right at about the turn of the millennium. I figured the field was readyfor a culminating statement by that time (the special issue of Academy of ManagementReview, 2000), so I made what I thought was my swansong statement (Gioia et al., 2000),and figured to get out while the getting was good – before the identity flame extinguished.

Boy, was I ever wrong!Organizational identity theory and research has just continued to burgeon. More scholars

are working in this area than ever before. Papers on identity have come to dominate theprogrammes of many of our conferences, and there is a steady stream of articles comingout in our best journals. The topic has seemed to fuel its own fire. Hmmm! Missing theend of a supposed trend cycle as badly as I missed this one has not only led me to have myhalf-life sensors re-calibrated, but also to muse on why interest in organizational identity islike the underground coal inferno in Pennsylvania that just keeps growing and spreading.Why is identity becoming an emerging perennial domain of interest?

Here’s what I think: The idea of organizational identity simply resonates. It resonateswith people in organizations, and it resonates with those of us who study organizations.It resonates because it constitutes the most meaningful, most intriguing, most relevantconcept we deal with in both our personal and our organizational lives. Identity is

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about us – as individuals and as organization members – and it inquires into the deepestlevel of our sensemaking and understanding. When you study identity you are delvinginto the inner reaches – of yourself and your subject of study. There is just somethingprofound about the idea itself, as well as the scholarly effort to study it. Identity also hasthe requisite mystery that characterizes all the great domains of study. Furthermore, itharbours the multifaceted, multilevel character that is the hallmark of perennial domains.It is a ‘built to last’ concept, and I prophesy that it will continue to emerge and re-emergein different guises over the coming years.

So, for a volume on emerging topics in organization study, why would I choose to focuson a concept already with us, rather than some demonstrably new concept? Well, it dependson how you construe what is ‘new’. First of all, the study of organizational identity is arelatively young field. Empirical work is barely 15 years old. More importantly, though,the emergence of identity as a domain of interest is a fine exemplar of Durkheim’s (1915)venerable and critical notion that ‘new knowledge’ is most often created by revising whatwe already know or think we know. In other words, transforming existing knowledge vianew modes of understanding constitutes new knowledge. That’s what I think is happeningin the short history of identity study. What is perhaps most intriguing about the studyof organizational identity, when viewed as a ‘new’ or ‘emerging’ area, despite its strongcurrent presence in the field, is that it looks to be capable of regenerating and continuouslyre-emerging in new forms. It holds this potential because it represents one of the greatthemes in the human – and now organizational – experience and, therefore, is not onlyendlessly fascinating, but also endlessly reinterpretable. Picasso once noted that goodartists borrow; great artists steal. What he meant is that the best artists reinterpret thegreat themes according to different tenets. Identity work will continue to be fresh mainlybecause it will attract the attention of some of our best scholars, who will work and reworkthe essence of the identity theme to generate new takes on it and make new sense of it.

Where, then, might organizational identity work be headed? I don’t have a clue. But,I do have some preferences. I’d like to see some work on identity creation. To date, we’veassumed away the genesis of organizational identity without doing a definitive study onhow it actually forms in the first place. I’d also like to see more work on identity change(e.g. Corley and Gioia, 2004). Yes, identity is deep and close-to-the-bone and difficultto change – so much so that it often appears unchanging. Yet, there can be no bona fidedeep change without identity change. How can an essential concept be both enduring bydefinition and yet also changeable? Oh, my!Areal conundrum!As the bard in Shakespearein Love put it, ‘It’s a mystery …!’ Resolving this mysterious paradox is perhaps the futureof work on organizational identity. Lastly, identity can be viewed as the centre of gravityof a nomological net. It’s connected to every other important organizational concept.So, let’s figure out what those connections look like – whether they be connections tolearning, to knowledge, to practice, to culture, to whatever. Looks like a fantasticallyinteresting set of curiosities that ought to keep this fire glowing incandescently for sometime to come, as it continues to (re)emerge as a key organizational concept.

REFERENCES

Albert, S. and Whetten, D. (1985) ‘Organizational identity’, in L.L. Cummings and B.M. Staw (eds), Researchin organizational behavior, Vol. 7: 263–295. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

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Corley, K.G. and Gioia, D.A. (2004) ‘Identity ambiguity and change in the wake of a corporate spin-off’,Administrative Science Quarterly, 49 (2): 173–208.

Durkheim, E. (1915) The elementary forms of the religious life: A study in religious sociology. London: G. Allenand Unwin Ltd.

Dutton, J.E. and Dukerich, J.M. (1991) ‘Keeping an eye on the mirror: Image and identity in organizationaladaptation’, Academy of Management Journal, 34: 517–554.

Gioia, D.A. 2004. ‘A Renaissance self: Prompting personal and professional revitalization’, in R.E. Stableinand P.J. Frost, (eds) Renewing research practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford Business Books. pp. 97–114.

Gioia, D.A. and Chittipeddi, K. (1991) ‘Sensemaking and sensegiving in strategic change initiation’, StrategicManagement Journal, 12: 433–448.

Gioia, D.A. and Thomas, J.B. (1996) ‘Identity, image, and issue interpretation: Sensemaking during strategicchange in academia’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 41 (3): 370–403.

Gioia, D.A., Schultz, M. and Corley, K.G. (2000) ‘Organizational identity, image and adaptive instability’,Academy of Management Review, 25: 63–81.



Is Identity in and of Organizations Just a Passing Fad?

Michael G. Pratt

A colleague asked me a few years ago whether I thought the ‘identity craze’ inorganizational studies was reaching its end. I was not sure then. However, even I – anadmitted ‘big fan’ – am amazed at the growth in this concept: from new research on theinner workings of identity construction to the emergence of organizational identity inpopulation ecology. But will this growth continue? Or will identity go the way of manyother organizational constructs and become a passing fad?

Of course, in some ways, asking whether identity will become a fad is a trick question.Not only is identity ubiquitous across all of the social sciences – it can even be representedmathematically! It is also tied to fundamental questions of human existence – such as‘Gnothi seauton’ (know thyself). While newer to organizational studies and stronglyarticulated in Albert and Whetten’s (1985) foundational piece on organizational identity,the history of identity in organizational research extends farther back. For example,Gouldner’s (1957) classic work on cosmopolitans and locals is framed in terms of latentidentities. But however deep its roots, it is hard to deny that identity is increasingly invogue these days. This has led some to question whether identity is being over-usedin organizational research, thus predisposing identity – or at least the label – towardsbecoming passé.

I think there are two conditions under which this might happen. The first is when a pre-occupation with capturing the term evolves into conceptual ‘turf wars’. There has been alot of energy (including my own) that has gone into defining what identity ‘is’and ‘is not’–which is either ironic, or highly fitting, for such a concept. However, if the conversationstays here – or worse, evolves into trying to prove that there is only one way to defineidentity – then the life and vitality of the concept is in peril. To begin, battles over definitiondominance tend to exclude rather than invite constructive diversity into the conversation.Similarly, turf wars obscure the point that no one field or set of researchers owns the term.Identity is too big for any one theory or discipline to encapsulate. In organizational studies,we are, at best, humble caretakers in an ongoing conversation about ‘who we are’ and‘who I am’. Thus, while people should be clear about how they use the term, conceptualwars over the ‘identity of identity’ would appear to have severely diminishing returns.

Second, identity is in peril of becoming a fad when it can mean anything. Having atheoretical ‘open dialogue’ for conceptualizing identity does not mean that anything canand should be identity (or identity-related). In some ways, this is the flip side of turf wars.A net analogy may suffice. When one only allows one definition, it is hard to captureidentity (or much else) because the net allows too little in – the holes are too small. Bycontrast, when anything can be identity, the net’s holes are too big and can capture – andlose – almost anything. This leads one to wonder what the purpose of the net was in thefirst place.

Going too far down either extreme appears dangerous. But perhaps their commonfocus – capturing what identity is – is dangerous, too. For identity to continue to flourishand enliven our field, perhaps we should change our question from ‘what is identity?’ to

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‘what does identity do?’ For example, I recently read March’s (1994) work on how wemake decisions and was surprised to find a fair amount there on identity. But his focus isnot on identity, per se; rather he uses identity to open our eyes to logics of appropriateness.Similarly, Sen’s (2006) book focuses on the role of identity – specifically the danger ofascribing singular identities to others – in fostering societal violence. This compellinganalysis of identity-in-use raises several issues for organizational scholars. For example,if single identities (either ascribed or claimed) limit choice, then multiple identities mayengender choice and freedom.

Even if the term, ‘identity’, went away, the question(s) that underlies it will continue tomanifest itself in other guises. But to ensure its continued contribution to the organizationalfield, I would encourage all of us to spend more time looking at identity-in-use. Thisinvolves more than re-framing a paper as an identity story. Rather, it examines howindividuals’, groups’, organizations’, etc. self-construals influence how they think, feel,make choices, coordinate, organize, and otherwise act.

REFERENCES

Albert, S. and Whetten, D. (1985) ‘Organizational identity’, in Larry L. Cummings and Barry M. Staw (eds),Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 7. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. pp. 263–295.

Gouldner, A.W. (1957) ‘Cosmopolitans and locals: Towards an analysis of latent social roles – I’. AdministrativeScience Quarterly, 2: 281–306.

March, J. (1994) A Primer on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen. New York: The Free Press.Sen, A. (2006) Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (Issues of our Time). New York: W.W. Norton.

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