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Human Relations
[0018-7267(200101)54:1]
Volume 54(1): 113–121: 015578
Copyright © 2001
The Tavistock Institute ®
SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks CA,
New Delhi

Organization studies and identity:

Towards a research agenda
Andrew D. Brown

A postmodern agenda has surfaced identity as a key concept in the study of

human relations. While psychologists have long been preoccupied with indi-
vidual identity, now groups and organizations are increasingly being ascribed
identities (Albert & Whetton, 1985) together with cognates such as person-
alities (Stapley, 1996), emotions (Gabriel, 1998) and feelings (Albrow, 1996).
In this brief paper, I outline some interesting and potentially fruitful lines of
inquiry related to identity in organizations, and conclude with the suggestion
that current levels of interest in identity, from diverse communities of social
science scholars, may indicate that it has more scope for linking and cohering
different social scientific research agendas than has so far been recognized.
While research linked to notions of identity has a lengthy pedigree in
organization studies, it is only in more recent years that the term ‘identity’
itself has become widely deployed. General acceptance and usage of the term
reflects a new interest in issues centred on identity not just at the level of the
individual, but also as the concept applies to collectives (see, for example, the
recent special issue on organizational identity in Academy of Management
Review, 2000). That this should occur at the current time is not merely for-
tuitous. It is rather evidence of an evolving willingness if not to embrace then
at least to borrow concerns from a postmodern agenda that is crucially pre-
occupied with ‘the problematization of identity’ (Dunn, 1998: 2). While
sociological interest in identity as expressed in terms of the relationship
between individuals and society appears in the works of Durkheim, Simmel,
the early Marx and, in diffuse terms, Weber (Holzner & Robertson, 1980),
it is only with the comparatively recent diagnosis of modern society as one
in which commodification and technological change has led to an increas-
ingly fragmented, discontinuous and crisis-ridden world that identity has

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114 Human Relations 54(1)

been placed centre-stage (Giddens, 1991). In this analysis, as modernity ‘dis-

places, disturbs, deconstructs and redeploys’ so under ‘modern conditions,
the construction of a self is a struggle at best won only provisionally’ (Frosh,
1991: 191, 187). It is ‘because identity is problematic – and yet so critical . . .
that the dynamics of identity need to be better understood’ (Albert et al.,
2000: 14). If the lack of a clear cultural identity makes discovery of the indi-
vidual self a difficult (or even impossible) task, then what implications does
this have for the study of human relations?

Individual identity

This is a question only just beginning to be addressed by scholars in organiz-

ation studies. Most fundamentally, it focuses attention on the processes by
which individual identities (selves) are constructed in organizations. How do
the demands made upon people by modern work organizations affect their
self-conceptions (Epstein, 1973; Schlenker, 1982) and how do they influence
the processes of social comparison (Festinger, 1954) and self-presentation
(Goffman, 1959) by means of which our self-concepts develop? In organiz-
ations in which there is tremendous pressure to suppress our individuality
and conform to social norms, in which wearing a mask of ‘professionalism’
often means acting contrary to our immediate desires and beliefs, in which
responsibility can always be shirked (Sartre, 1957), and in which conflicts are
often sublimated in pursuit of economic gains, what does it mean to refer to
people as ‘sincere’ and/or ‘authentic’ (Trilling, 1973)? As work organizations
increasingly come to resemble Bentham’s panopticon, as locales in which the
individual’s scope for privacy and the expression of individuality is restricted,
and panoptic observation is carried out for purposes of control and sub-
ordination, what implications does this have for the emotional life of indi-
viduals (Lanzetta et al., 1976; Lanzetta & Orr, 1980; Hochschild, 1983), and
for personal intimacy and empathy with others (Tedeschi, 1981)? What are
the social, personal and economic costs of consequences such as role stress
(Cooper & Payne, 1978), the resort to individual and group fantasies (Janis,
1972; Gabriel, 1991), seemingly irrational, ritualistic and defensive behav-
iours (Brown, 1994, 1997) and other more overtly destructive forms of mis-
behaviour in organizations such as fraud (Punch, 1996)?
The issue of identity is central to our understanding of how individuals
relate to the groups and organizations in which they are participants. For
Cheney (1991: 9) ‘Contemporary organizations do more than manage issues
by inculcating values; they also manage identities’. One key issue here is how,
and to what extent, individuals come to construct their social identities in
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Brown Organization studies and identity 115

terms of the social categories to which they subscribe. Parker (2000: 1) has
recently proposed a view of organizations as ‘fragmented unities’, in which
‘members identify themselves as collective at some times and divided at
others’, while Elsbach (1999) has described multiple forms of individual–
organization relationships (identification, disidentification, schizo-identifi-
cation and neutral identification), which both hint at the latent complexity
of this area of inquiry, and suggest that there are far more (theoretical and
empirical) niceties to be elaborated.
According to social identity theory (Tajfel, 1972), processes of identifi-
cation involve relatively simple processes of categorization of the self and
others driven by an imperative for cognitive simplification and a need for self-
esteem. Those studies that have been conducted (e.g. Dutton & Dukerich,
1991) have, however, taken such a broad-brush approach that the subtleties
and complexities of the dynamics of these processes have rarely been ade-
quately captured. There is much work to be done examining the conditions
under which people are more likely to identify and resist identification with
groups and organizations, the role of factors relating to individual personal-
ity in determining identification with social categories, the various cognitive
and behavioural manifestations of identification and resistance, and the
implications of these individual-level efforts to define the self for groups and
organizations. The identity of individuals is also at stake in their interactions
with others, notably in terms of how they choose to present themselves to
others in order to manage both their perceptions of self and others’ impres-
sions of them (Goffman, 1959; Baumeister, 1986). The current level of
research interest in these issues perhaps symptomizes a realization of just how
significant such dynamics are to our understanding of human relations in
contemporary organizations (Tedeschi & Riess, 1981; Snyder et al., 1983;
Morrison & Biess, 1991).
While valuable, social identity and self-presentation approaches to
understanding issues of identity neglect processes of power, control and sur-
veillance that profoundly affect subjectivity (Foucault, 1980). Neither indi-
vidual nor collective identities are merely private matters, but are instead
‘intensely governed’ by social conventions, community scrutiny, legal norms,
familial obligations and religious injunctions (Rose, 1989: 1). Subjectively
construed identity is a power effect, a complex outcome of processes of sub-
jugation and resistance that are contingent and perpetually shifting (Clegg,
1994: 275; Jermier et al., 1994: 8). Cognitive perspectives on individual iden-
tity and identification could usefully recognize that the personal and social cat-
egories with which people associate are made available to them in a discourse
(Davis, 1983). Indeed, there is considerable theoretical utility in the as yet rela-
tively under-explored notion that what we term ‘identities’ are particular types
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116 Human Relations 54(1)

of (self-constituting) narrative. Based on an understanding that ‘man is in his

actions and practice, as well as his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal’
(MacIntyre, 1981: 201), and consequently appropriately described as Homo
narrans (Fisher, 1984: 6; cf. Burke, 1968; Barthes, 1977; Bateson, 1979;
Bruner, 1990), there is a prima facie case for co-opting and exploring Ricoeur’s
(1991: 77) contention that ‘the narrative constructs the durable character of
an individual, which one may call his or her narrative identity’ (cf. Josselson
& Lieblich, 1993). It is to be hoped that these broad sociological and
anthropological perspectives, which can provide a sophisticated understand-
ing of the historical development of identity in organizations, will in the future
be employed to contextualize narrow cognitive approaches.

Organizational identity

One of the most interesting developments in organization theory to occur in

recent years is the appropriation and application of the concept of identity
to groups and organizations themselves (Albert & Whetton, 1985; Brown,
1997). There is an emerging consensus that an organization’s identity is
bound up with its central, distinctive and enduring features (Albert &
Whetton, 1985; Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Whetton et al., 1992). Moreover,
some fascinating work on, for example, how organizations define their iden-
tities (Boje, 1995) and then defend them against perceived attacks (Elsbach
& Kramer, 1996), and the psychodynamics underpinning these processes
(Brown & Starkey, 2000), suggest that this line of inquiry has much to offer.
While some important conceptual distinctions have been drawn, such as that
between members’ perceived organizational identity and construed external
image (i.e. how members believe others see their organization) (Dutton et al.,
1994), our analytic tools are still relatively blunt. For instance, an important
issue that is yet to be fully addressed is how the concepts of identity and
culture relate to each other, their points of similarity and difference, and
potential to offer a distinctive analytic contribution to organization studies
(see, for example, Hatch, 1993; Hatch & Schultz, 1999; Parker, 2000).

Identity and organizational legitimacy

The exploration of organizational identities may also assist both empirical

and theoretical explorations of organization–environment relations. Con-
siderable work, much of it under the umbrella label of ‘new institutionalism’
in its sociological (Brinton & Nie, 1998) and organizational (Powell &
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Brown Organization studies and identity 117

DiMaggio, 1991) guises, suggests that organizations must achieve legitimate

status in their environments in order to guarantee resources and avoid claims
that they are negligent, irrational, or unnecessary (Dowling & Pfeffer, 1975;
Meyer & Rowan, 1977). It has also been suggested that organizations must
display ‘congruence’ (Dowling & Pfeffer, 1975) or ‘isomorphism’ (Meyer &
Rowan, 1977) with the social norms and values incorporated in the larger
social system (Beyer, 1981; Sproull, 1981; Suchman, 1995). Others have
argued that a favourable reputation can generate excess returns for a firm by
inhibiting the mobility of rivals (Caves & Porter, 1977), signalling product
quality (Klein & Leffler, 1981), attracting better applicants (Stigler, 1962),
enhancing access to capital markets (Beatty & Ritter, 1986), and attracting
investors (Milgrom & Roberts, 1986).
The clear implication of this research seems to be that organizations
need to adopt or possibly merely project identities that elicit legitimacy attri-
butions. Yet identity remains an implicit theme in all the new institutional
approaches, and little research into the specific identity attributes associated
with high legitimacy in particular settings has been conducted. Similarly, our
understanding of the dynamic processes by which legitimacy appreciating
and depreciating identities are formed, the degree to which they can, ought
and are managed, and the extent to which such identities are temporally con-
tinuous/discontinuous are largely unknown. One would anticipate that there
are important links between organizational success (however defined) and
decline, strategies deployed and core identity attributes, and this is an import-
ant field that again merits further inquiry. Scott and Lane’s (2000) recent
argument that organizational identity should be viewed as emerging from
complex, dynamic and reciprocal interactions between organizational
members and organizational stakeholders suggests a way forward here by
blurring the usual distinction between organizations and their environments.

Summary: Identity as an integrative agenda in social research

While issues centred on identity have long been a major, though not always
explicit, theme in organization studies, the influence of a broadly postmodern
agenda and the increasingly pivotal role the identity construct plays in cognate
fields such as sociology, social, cognitive and psychoanalytic psychology, and
social anthropology has served to raise its profile in the study of human
relations broadly defined. That identity currently attracts so much attention
in such diverse disciplines perhaps indicates that it has potential as a cohering
and linking concept between disparate social scientific communities that is yet
to be fully explored or exploited. The applicability of the identity concept at
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118 Human Relations 54(1)

multiple levels of analysis and its capacity for integrating analytical insights
at the micro-, mid- and macro-levels further underscores its cohering poten-
tial. As Albert et al. (2000: 13) have recently argued, ‘the power of identity
and identification derives from the integrative and generative capacity of these
constructs’. The challenge is to find ways of developing and deploying con-
cepts of identity which are attractive across traditional social scientific bound-
aries, offer the potential for multiple kinds of insightful analyses, and yet are
sufficiently well defined to promote inter-textual referencing.

Acknowledgements

The insightful comments of Chris Grey, Mike Humphreys and Ray Loveridge are
gratefully acknowledged.

Note

This paper was written while the author was on sabbatical at the School of Busi-
ness, University of Hong Kong.

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Andrew Brown is Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Uni-

versity of Nottingham Business School. His current research interests
focus on issues of identity.
[E-mail: andrew.brown@nottingham.ac.uk]