The Construction of Organizational Identity. Comparative Case Studies of Consulting Firms

Mats Alvesson () and Laura Empson ()
Additional contact information
Mats Alvesson: Department of Business Administration, School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Postal: Box 7080, SE-220 07 Lund, Sweden
Laura Empson: Saïd Business School, Postal: University of Oxford

No 2006/3, Working Paper Series from Lund University, Institute of Economic Research

Abstract: Despite the great interest in organizational identity, empirical studies are relatively rare. As yet, there have been no major comparative case studies of this phenomenon. Single case studies have yielded in-depth understanding of the process of identity construction in specific organizations, but very little is known about how organizational identity is constructed more generally. This paper explores how organizational identity is constructed in four very different firms within the consulting industry. The study suggests four broad dimensions that organizational members refer to in constructing their organizational identity: knowledge work, management and membership, personal orientation, and external interface. We identify multiple themes within these broad dimensions of identity construction and highlight several broader identity-related issues, specifically: the extent to which shared ideas of a distinct organizational identity are present or absent in organizations, the relationship between organizational identity and the individual, and the balance of reality and fantasy in identity construction.

Keywords: Organizational identity; Consulting; Professional service firms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2006-03-23
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-cbe
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lri.lu.se/pdf/wp/2006-3.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to www.lri.lu.se:80 (No such host is known. )

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhb:lufewp:2006_003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Lund University, Institute of Economic Research Institutet för Ekonomisk Forskning, Box 7080, SE-220 07 LUND, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Elsbeth Andersson ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).