Corporate Reputation Review

Volume 6 Number 2

Academic Research Key Issues in Organizational Identity and Identification Theory

Davide Ravasi ` Commerciale Istituto di Strategia ed Economia Aziendale, Universita L. Bocconi, Italy Johan van Rekom Faculteit Bedrijfskunde, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, The Netherlands

ABSTRACT The constructs of organizational identity and identication are attracting greater and greater recognition among scholars and practitioners. An increasing number of researchers in organizational behavior, organizational theory and strategic management are turning to these concepts to improve their understanding of the behavior of organizations and their members. In May 2002, David Whetten and Cees van Riel invited a group of researchers to a workshop in order to take stock of the current state of the eld and to discuss future directions. This paper summarizes the fundamental issues discussed at that meeting: the various intellectual roots of organizational identity and identication theory, the interplay between dierent levels of analysis, the conceptualization of organizational identity, its measurement, and nally, its relevance. Identity appears a promising concept to bridge dierent levels of analysis, and to analyze apparent paradoxes that arise when organizations confront simultaneous pressures for similarity and uniqueness, sameness and dierentiation. INTRODUCTION The concepts of organizational identity and identication have gained increasing popularity. Identity research represents a diverse and fruitful area in organization studies. Identity researchers have diverse cultural

Corporate Reputation Review, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2003, pp. 118132 # Henry Stewart Publications, 13633589

and business backgrounds, draw on diverse sets of theories, and apply them at dierent levels of analysis, approaching the same set of issues from dierent perspectives. This research area is now well past its infancy, not only in the academic domain, but also in the corporate world. In the academic domain, recent special issues of Academy of Management Review (Albert, Ashforth and Dutton, 2000) and the European Journal of Marketing (Balmer, 2001), and a number of edited books (eg Whetten and Godfrey, 1998; Schultz, Hatch and Larsen, 2000; Soenen and Moingeon, 2002) witness the attempts of a growing community of international scholars to capitalize on their diversity and experience to move the eld of organizational identity research forward. Also, recent developments in theory and practical application have made organizational identity and identication and the related concepts of image, reputation, and corporate branding more comprehensible and appealing to managers. They have become concepts that oer practitioners a comprehensive view of their company. Research on organizational identity and identication however, still faces a number of open issues. Agreement regarding what organizational identity operationally means, for instance, is not widespread.

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Recently, Cees van Riel and David Whetten joined forces to organize a workshop to tackle the sticky conceptual and operational issues in research on organizational identity and identication. A number of scholars engaged in research in these related domains have debated the open issues and tried to outline promising pathways for research in the near future. This paper summarizes the key issues emerging from the discussion.1 These are organized around the ve fundamental issues that the present scholars of organizational identity and identication identied for theory construction or empirical research. These issues are: 1 Theoretical background: what are the intellectual sources that we can draw upon in order to increase and rene our understanding of our object of study? 2 Level of analysis: identity and identication may be studied at dierent levels (individual, group, organization, industry, society). What are the dierences and commonalties across these levels? Can models and methods developed at one level be applied to other levels? 3 Conceptualization: what are the fundamental issues to address as we propose a denition of organizational identity and identication? What are the dierences between organizational identity, and similar concepts like culture, vision, and mission? 4 Methodology: what are appropriate sources of data, data-gathering techniques, analytical tools and procedures, and validity checks in organizational identity and identication research? 5 Relevance: what practical problems do the concepts of organizational identity and identication help us to solve? What is the added value of using organizational identity as an interpretive frame for organizational phenomena?

How can the concept of organizational identity help us to promote or manage change in organizations? Figure 1 summarizes these issues and their connections, and attempts at organizing open questions in the eld into a coherent research agenda that may facilitate the dialogue between students of organizational identity and identication and orient future research in the eld.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Researchers on organizational identity and identication share a common concern: understanding how individuals in organization perceive and categorize themselves as members of a group, an organization, or a larger encompassing community. Most articles in the eld refer to the seminal articles of Albert and Whetten (1985) and Ashforth and Mael (1989). A study of issues of identity and identication in organizations however, may nd a rich range of intellectual sources in contiguous domains such as psychology, social psychology and sociology. As one of the participants observed, sociological approaches mostly oer a way to interpret structures and patterns within which identity-related processes unfold, while psychological approaches seem more helpful in understanding the corresponding processes at the level of the individual. The theories that inspired the participants for their work were grouped into broad categories, ranging from strictly individual experiences of one self to society-wide phenomena. The paper will start with the most individually oriented literature and concludes with the most general approaches. Theories on Identity Stemming from Psychology Personal identity theories (eg Erikson, 1968; Markus, 1977) focus on the individual schemas and knowledge structures

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Figure 1: Open issues in identity and identication research

Theoretical background What are the intellectual sources? What are the relevant notions? Levels of analysis What are the relevant levels of analysis? What are the interrelations between them?

Related concepts What differentiates identity and eg culture or vision?

Conceptualization What is unique about identity? Process or thing (or both)? Cognition or practice?

Method How to operationalize the constructs? What sources of data? Whose interpretations matter?

Relevance What is the added value? What problems do we solve?

that underpin the self-concepts of individuals. Erikson (1968), for instance, developed an eight-stage model of development, that applies to the whole human life span (Ashforth, 2001). Of particular signicance was his observation that the disturbances of army personnel after the Second World War might be derived form their loss of continuity with their previous lives. This led Erikson to introduce the concept of identity as a sense of sameness over time (Albert and Whetten, 1985).
Social Identity Theory Social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1985; Ashforth and Mael, 1989; Brewer and Gardner, 1996) and self-categorization theory (Turner et al., 1987) focus on the self-categorization of individuals as members of groups. Social categorization serves the related purposes of providing a way to

systematically classify others, and to locate oneself in the social environment. The link between individuals and the group or organization they are part of is the domain of social identity theory. The theory itself, however, focuses on the perceptions of individuals.
Symbolic Interactionism and Identity Theory Symbolic interactionism (Mead, 1934; Goman, 1959) observes how identity is constructed in social interaction, and maintained in relationships and comparisons with other people. A unique identity results from a complex bundle of dierences and similarities. It contends that ones sense of self is largely grounded in the perceptions of others (Mead, 1934). Mead and Gomans work have inspired the work of some scholars, interested in the interrela-

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tions between organizational identity and image (Dutton and Dukerich, 1991; Gioia, Schultz and Corley, 2000; Hatch and Schultz, 2002). A related stream of research, role theory, investigates how people assume an identity in the course of social interaction (Stryker and Serpe, 1982; Ashforth, 2001). To the extent that a role cues or connotes a certain person, we can speak of a role-based identity, or simply, role identity (Ashforth, 2001). A person has multiple identities, which each constitute a dierent answer to the question who am I? Ones identities are arrayed in a hierarchy of salience, dened as a readiness to act out an identity (Ashforth, 2001: 26).
Communities of Practice The study of so-called communities of practice (Brown and Duguid, 1991) organizational professional sub-groups, bounded together by intense mutual interaction, a collective understanding of what their community is about and a shared repertoire of language, routines and stories (Wenger, 1998) has highlighted the connection between identity and learning, and the role that practice plays in constructing and perpetuating individual and collective identities. Shared Mental Models/Transactive Memory Recent research in psychology has revisited and rened notions of group mind. Positing group-level cognitive structures, such as team mental models (eg Klimosky and Mohammed, 1994) and transactive memory systems (eg Wegner, 1987) are promising avenues of research that may help us explain how identities are shared, and where and how shared identity perceptions are held (see Pratt, 2003). Object Relations Theory Object relations theory links (ego-) structure with developmental, genetic and dynamic aspects of mental functioning

(Kernberg, 1980: 18). It arises from the study of the relation between the infant and the mother, but can be applied to a much broader set of situations (Kernberg, 1980). An implicit assumption in identity research is that we observe fundamentally adult behavior; yet insights may be gained by the study of the relations between humans and organizations through the lenses of object relations theory, with the individual in the role of the infant and the organization in the role of the mother.
Structuration Theory Within sociology, structuration theory (Giddens, 1979; 1984) has investigated the relations between actors and the social system. Giddens (1984: 282) considers routine as the predominant form of day-today social activity. Social identities, and the position-practice relations associated between them, are markers in the virtual time-space of structure. He is concerned about the reproduction and articulation of social systems across time and space (Cohen, 1989), a concern he shares with scholars in the area of identity and identication. Discourse Analysis Building on the work of Michel Foucault (1972), other researchers (eg Fairclough, 1992; Potter and Wetherell, 1987) have investigated how individual and collective identities are shaped by a broader discursive activity that takes place in society ie by emerging collective understandings that are reected in the meaning attached to texts and concepts. In this respect, discourse analysis rests on and extends a social constructionist approach (Berger and Luckmann, 1966), analyzing the role of language in dening subjective positions. Narrative Analysis Czarniawskas (1997) narrative approach to organizations departs from an anthropological standpoint (eg Geertz, 1973). She con-

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siders anthropology a moral imperative rather than a methodological safeguard. The imperative is, that we have to listen to other peoples accounts, not because they have privileged access to their own motives but because they are humans like ourselves (Czarniawska, 1997). It alerts us to the ways in which the stories that rule our lives and our societies are constructed. It can generate unusual insights by bringing organization studies closer to culture studies and literary theory. Assuming that organizations have identity presupposes a whole chain of metaphors, among them the essentialist self metaphor. The focus is on organizational autobiographical acts: organizations self-presentations as narratives (Czarniawska, 1997).
Institutional Theory Studies on institutional theory often return to Meyer and Rowans (1977) early formulation of the institutional perspective (Glynn and Abzug, 2002). Organizations themselves created their own institutional rules. These institutional rules function then as myths which they incorporate. These rules create a strong tendency for organizations to become alike. This alikeness provides organizations with the legitimacy needed in order to operate and gain resources, stability and enhanced survival prospects (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Communication Theory Communication theory (Burke, 1985; Cheney, 1983) is an often-underestimated source of insights on how issues of identity and identication aect social interaction. Communication theory has an important focus on rhetoric. Coleman (1974) introduced the idea of the corporate actor, observing how organizations increasingly tend to matter more than people in public speech. Burkes work underscores how a persons aliation aects the credibility of his or her words. Burkes theory empha-

sizes the individual act of identifying, with or without the help of a rhetor (Cheney, 1983). A recent attempt to link communication theory to organizational identity can be found in Cheney and Christensen (2001).
Philosophy Dierent philosophers at dierent points in history have addressed issues of identity. The tradition goes back to the work of Plato (Williams, 1989). This identity question is phrased: is X the same as Y? A more or less denitive answer so far has been provided by Bertrand Russell (1956), who thought the solution to that question was to state the descriptions of X and Y in terms of verb phrases. For instance: the man wearing the gray coat is the same man as the man who fell down the staircase. This approach applies across all levels of aggregations, humans or organizations. Overall, the approaches to identity that have been drawn upon represent an enormous variety in paradigms and in levels of analysis. The paper will now turn to this latter aspect, as it seems particularly relevant to approaches toward identity. LEVELS OF ANALYSIS Most of the theories that have inspired identity researchers apply to dierent levels of analysis. For instance, social identity theory focusses on the perception of individuals, whereas other theories take organizational level or even society-level phenomena into account. Consequently, empirical research on identity and identication has touched dierent levels of analysis. Processes of identication have been investigated at the level of individuals (eg Bergami and Bagozzi, 2000; Pratt, 2000; Haslam, 2001), organizations (eg GoldenBiddle and Rao, 1997; Rao, Davis and Ward, 2000; Glynn, 2000; Labianca et al., 2001), and nations (Barth, 1970). Organiza-

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tional identity is in itself an interface between micro and macro levels of analysis: at any level, in fact, shared identity (or identities) may represent a context within which processes of identication and categorization take place at lower levels. The following three issues are the primordial open questions regarding the levels of analysis that challenge identity researchers: Does the concept of identity address the same phenomenon across levels of analysis? To what extent can we apply the same theoretical frameworks and empirical methods across levels? At times, scholars tend to anthropomorphize organizations, yet identity-related processes may follow dierent rules in large entities. What are the main dierences between the individual actor and the corporate actor? For instance, how does physicality aect identity-related processes? What are the main dierences between individual and collective memory? In organizations, members change over time. How does this fact aect identityrelated processes? From a legal point of view, there are important dierences in accountability between individuals and organizations. But how do issues of accountability and responsibility in organizations aect identity and identication? What, if any, common features exist that we can use to build an identity framework that can be used the same way at multiple levels of analysis? In principle, approaches that rely on traits or descriptions have the potential to apply in a same way across levels of analysis. However, the critical factor is how identity is conceptualized at each level.
CONCEPTUALIZATION Most studies in the organizational eld refer to the original denition of organiza-

tional identity provided by Albert and Whetten (1985) as what is central, distinctive and enduring about an organization. However, some dierences persist. While Albert and Whetten (1985) conceive organizational identity as a set of claims and sustainable stories about the unique nature of an organization, others (eg Gioia et al., 1994) refer to organizational identity as a common understanding, shifting the attention from what is explicitly stated to the set of shared cognitive structures of organizational members. Furthermore, although recent contributions (eg Hatch and Schultz, 2000; Pratt and Foreman, 2000; Pratt, 2003) have tried to introduce clear distinctions, the meaning some scholars attach to the concept of organizational identity often tends to overlap with what other scholars refer to as culture, image, vision, mission, dominant logic, corporate identity, corporate brand and reputation. In this respect, we may need a more rened conceptualization of organizational identity that addresses the following issues: What is unique about organizational identity? What is uniquely organizational about identity? What separates organizational identity from other domains like culture, vision, and mission? In absence of a more precise conceptualization, organizational identity may become an umbrella concept, under which a multiplicity of concepts and meanings will thrive, at the expense of the validity of the concept itself. Is identity a process or a thing? Identity can be interpreted either as something organizations have: a feature, potentially an asset or a resource (Fiol, 1991; Gioia, 1998); or as a continuous process, as something that happens in organizations and is continuously in development (eg Gioia, Schultz and Corley, 2000; Hatch and Schultz, 2002).

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The former approach would focus on identity in terms of being, the latter on identity in terms of becoming. Can it be both at the same time just as light sometimes acts as a wave and sometimes as a particle? What are the implications of taking a process versus outcome approach to organizational identity? Is organizational identity about behavior or cognition? Most theories of organizational identity assume, explicitly or implicitly, that organizational identity rests on a combination of cognitive processes, interpretive schemas, knowledge structures, shared understandings, aect, and common values. Some studies have highlighted the role of behavior in shaping and perpetuating organizational identity (Fiol, 2002; Pratt, 2000). The traditional assumption in organizational identity research is that the way I perceive myself aects what I do. A still underexplored domain however, may be: how does what I do aect the way I perceive myself? (Pratt, Rock and Kaufmann, 2001) The reader may have noticed that these questions mainly concern the concept of organizational identity, the conceptualization of which seems to evoke more questions than the conceptualization of identication. Identication is a property of individuals. It can be dened as the extent to which members of an organization incorporate key organizational identities into their identity (cf. Dutton, Dukerich and Harquail 1994). Aggregate measures of identication can therefore be thought of as emergent properties of organizations or subunits within organizations. Pratt (1998) provides an overview of questions regarding the conceptualization of this latter concept. A fundamental issue in the study of identication regards

the distinction between identication and commitment: while identication seems to be mainly related to a particular social group or organization, commitment and job involvement are more easily generalizable to other groups and organizations. If transferred to other organizations, people will probably be committed to them too. But leaving the organization that a person identies with necessarily involves some psychic loss (Ashforth and Mael, 1989: 23).
METHOD Research on organizational identity and identication has been conducted for over a decade. We do not however seem to have yet established methodological guidelines, at least for what concerns the study of organizational identity. As one participant observed, the theory in many of the identity papers is on the level of the collective, whereas the data collected are on the level of the individual. Much work is to be done here. In fact, research on organizational identity and identication seems to have adopted fairly dierent approaches, summarized in Table 1. Methodological dierences may be related to the dierent phenomenological nature of the two constructs. While identication may be conceived as a property of a group based on an aggregate, a concept akin to climate, job satisfaction, etc. organizational identity refers to a global property, like strategy, or mission. From this fundamental dierence, dierent methodological approaches follow, with respect to:

Sources of information: a critical issue in identity research is what are legitimate and appropriate sources of the data? In other words, again quoting one of the participants, who in the organization we are studying says what counts? Whom should you ask for information?

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Table 1: A Comparison of Methodological Issues in Identity and Identication Identication Phenomenological nature Emergent property (kin to climate, job satisfaction etc) Respondents Scales Organizational identity General set of claims and sustainable stories about an organization Informants (informed insiders) Autobiographies Interviews Archival research Description (search for characteristics, dimensions etc) An open issue

Source of information Data collection

Data analysis

Validity issues

Measurement (appraisal of a degree of; a matter of more or less) Statistical check

Whose words matter? The founders? The managers? The employees? Again, there seems to be a dierence between research on organizational identity and identication: while students of identication often work with respondents sources of data that researchers use to verify their theories, research on organizational identity often relies on informants experts who, because of their role, are assumed to know more about the organization than the researcher. The latter approach is based on the implicit assumption that in order to obtain a faithful representation of a global property such as organizational identity is, the researcher does not have to interview everybody in the organization. Data collection: research in the eld of organizational identity and identication gives dierent answers to the fundamental question: how do we operationalize organizational identity? While research on identication has mostly made use of scales and questionnaires, research on organizational identity has mostly explored multiple sources of data: case studies (Dutton and Dukerich, 1991), corporate histories

(Whetten and MacKey, 2002), interviews (Gioia and Thomas, 1996), participant observation (Gioia et al., 1994), and archival data (Whetten and MacKey, 2002). Other tools, such as narrative analysis, focus groups or the laddering technique, are adopted from other domains. Participants to the discussion, however, have observed how these methods dier in their capacity to distinguish organizational identity and identity claims. They observed a dierence between what organizations actually do and what they claim to be (see Mitchell, 2002). Looking at what organizations claim at the collective level, and how they act at the individual level may yield completely dierent results. This leads us again to the open issue of, to use the words of one of the participants, what counts as organizational identity? Data analysis: closely related to issues of data collection are issues of data analysis. The fundamental dierence here between research on identication and research on identity is that while in the rst case there is an eort to measure the core construct, in the second, researchers attempt to obtain a descrip-

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tion, a representation of the phenomenon and its characteristics or dimensions. In this respect, measurement of identication in organizations is often (see Pratt, 2000), to quote one of the participants a matter of less or more, an appraisal of a degree of. Conversely, the analysis of an organizational identity seems to be based on a descriptive search for core, enduring and distinctive features on the basis of the pieces of information gathered from informants, observation, archival research etc while measurement is attempted only for properties, or characteristics of the identity itself (homogeneity, embeddedness, abstractness, centrality of values etc). As most participants agree upon, however, quantitative measurement cannot precede a qualitative phase in which the essential traits of the identity of an organization are identied and described. The interpretive nature of identity research, however, opens up at least two critical issues: 1 One of the participants expressed the rst one as follows: Who counts in dening what the identity of an organization is? This question can be broken up into a few subquestions: Who has the right to interpret the data? The researcher? Members of the organization? If so, which members? 2 The second, no less important, issue regards how pieces of evidence can be brought together in a coherent picture of the identity of an organization. According to some participants, a potential solution may lie in the denition of some sort of a template: a guiding framework, outlining an appropriate way of coming to describe an identity with a set of characteristics. Some

proposed to refer to established conceptualizations of cognitive or cultural patterns in organizations (eg values, beliefs and artifacts), relying on the available classication schemes to describe how the organization looks. The issue, however, is still open to debate. Validity issues: The interpretive nature of identity research also raises concerns about the validity of the researchers claims about what they observed. While in the eld of identication, the validity of research tools (scales, questionnaires) has been established through statistical methods (eg Bergami and Bagozzi, 2000; Haslam, 2001), the fundamentally qualitative nature of most research on organizational identity requires dierent validity checks. As already observed, what organizations explicitly claim to be central and distinctive about them, does not always correspond to an otherwise observable reality. Therefore, how can the researcher tell genuine expression of identity from a purposeful attempt to manipulate image? One of the participants proposed to shift focus from content to function. Identity has to do with profound experience. The litmus test for the validity of identity would then be: could organization members have made a decision with something else than identity as a legitimation? To phrase it in terms of the attribution theory: if no external attributions are identiable, then the organization members decision must be an expression of identity.
RELEVANCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY In the end, the discussion moved on the relevance of organizational identity for theory and practice. The fundamental questions debated were: What is the added

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value of using the identity concept? What theoretical and practical problems can we solve, that we could not solve otherwise? One of the participants observed that, in essence, the concept of identity is about similarities and dierences at the same time, and thus seems to reconcile the sociological fascination with similarity and the economic fascination with dierence. Research on identity, therefore, may generate insights and increase our understanding of how organizations in various situations choose what they want to be similar to and what they want to be different from (Deephouse, 1999) a position that, in studying individuals, Brewer (1991) referred to as optimal distinctiveness, observing how individuals tend to identify with that social group that best balances their opposing needs for belonging and for uniqueness. The concept of organizational identity, for instance, may increase our understanding of the processes that underlie the foundation of a new rm. Within the eld of entrepreneurship, the concept of organizational identity has been applied to the study of how legitimacy and social categorization aect the capacity of newly founded rms to attract resources (Aldrich, 1999). Soon after their birth, in fact, organizations must put forth explicit claims about their identity in order to secure the resources they need. As a participant observed, a newly founded rm looking for resources has to face two main questions: 1 What business are you in (what category do you belong to? To what other similar organizations can we compare you with, to make sense of what you are)? 2 How are you going to make money (how will you be dierent)? In this situation, uniqueness only makes

sense in context with similarity. Organizational identity may be a key concept in understanding how founders can manage these tensions, while leaving their imprint on the company. But also here, further research may answer the following questions: What are the dierent costs and benets associated to being conservative by selecting from a menu of existing forms as one participant put it, or being bold attempting at something radically innovative, and in itself unique? In which conditions, are these strategies relatively superior? Another area of relevance of organizational identity and identication is organizational change. A number of studies (eg Reger et al., 1994; Brown and Starkey, 2000; Gioia and Thomas, 1996; Gioia et al., 1994) have highlighted the role of organizational identity and identication in promoting or delaying strategic change in organizations. Several open issues remain. First of all, can identities change at all? And if so, under what conditions? What are the events that mark a transition in the identity of individuals and organizations? Is everything changing or is there something that does not change, even in a transition? Is it not that identity is that which does NOT change even during a transition? Gagliardi (1986), for instance, observed that often organizations change in order to preserve their most important aspects. Can we conceptualize identity change as a variation over time of the importance of the same core features? The issue is not only purely theoretical in nature, but also practical. If an identity change is indeed required, how can identity change be implemented? Should organizations follow a gradual evolution? Or, should they adopt a more radical and disruptive approach? Are the mechanisms that underlie identity change in individuals the same in organizations? To what extent can we borrow concepts and techniques from

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the elds of psychology? Change in organizations is often associated to a change in people. Organizations however still face the same set of external constituents. Their functioning relies on the same set of roles. How does this fact aect identity-related processes? Finally, numerous scholars have observed how organizational identity aects the various actions and decisions that inuence how the organization is perceived externally. Shared values and principles shape the set of visual attributes that form a corporate identity (Hatch and Schultz, 2000), the policies that promote a corporate brand (De Chernatony, 1999; Hatch and Schultz, 2001; Schultz and de Chernatony, 2002), and the routines and practices that induce the formation of corporate images (Dowling, 2001) and reputations (Fombrun, 1996). Even the marketing literature (eg Aaker, 1996) distinguishes between brand image the set of external associations to a name or a loge and brand identity dened as a unique set of associations that a company intend to produce. Although scholars tend to agree on the interrelations between internal understandings and external perceptions however, they have only begun to explore how identity inuences image and reputation. The inuence of identity and identication on external perceptions highlights what one of the participants referred to as the function of organizational identity. Besides helping us to understand what organizations are, organizational identity may indeed improve our understanding of the behavior of organizations and organizational members and how shared understandings impact on their actions. Research adopting this perspective may lead to an increased understanding of the inuence of identity and identication2 on change and renewal in organizations, addressing issues such as whether a strong, coherent organizational identity facilitates or hinders a

change process, or how identity-related issues aect corporate restructuring such as mergers, acquisitions and spin-os.
CONCLUSION The fascination of the concept of organizational identity for both practitioners and scientists is its promise of a comprehensive and comprehensible view that it can oer of organizations. Identity crisis may explain why seemingly minor environment jolts, like a modest budget cut in a major university, can provoke emotionally charged discussions among organizational members regarding the moral requirement to preserve salient organizational identities (Whetten, 1998). We believe that the research agenda of identity researchers should focus on those aspects where the concept of organizational identity oers most potential to explain the phenomena we observe at organizations, while taking care that we as researchers do not transform it into an umbrella concept that cannot explain anything because it pretends to explain everything. This potential of the concept of organizational identity is sustained and at the same time thwarted by the variety of intellectual roots, from which scientists bring contributions to its theoretical development, its conceptualization and its empirical investigation. Writings about organizational identity have dealt with individuals, individuals in interaction with each other and their organizations, and with organizations in their overarching society. The concept of organizational identity could survive and thrive because of its potential to link phenomena at the levels of individual humans, their organizations and the larger society. It deals with how humans and organizations are the same as their peers and dierent at the same time. All participants to the discussion agreed, that organizational identity has a unique potential to bridge the gaps

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between these levels of analysis. This provides an important focus to our research agenda. The richness of the diverse contributions, however, poses the major challenges for future research. A more in-depth investigation of the commonalties and dierences between the dierent levels, however, is required in order to further develop the concept of organizational identity. Therefore, rst of all, a more in-depth investigation of the commonalties and dierences between the dierent levels of analysis may oer a fruitful step into the further development of the concept of organizational identity. The dierent operationalizations of organizational identity should be investigated more in-depth. For instance, the approach to organizational identity as a thing should be compared with the approach to organizational identity as a process. The perspective on organizational identity as action-related should be compared with the perspective on organizational identity as perception. A lot of progress can be made here. Organizational identity has been the subject of a lot of theorizing, but much less so of empirical measurement. Organizational identity has been the subject of much theorizing, but much less empirical measurement. Empirical research seems to suer from a lack of agreement about the operationalization of the constructs and about its measurement, and would benet from contributions aimed at clarifying the controversies that vex the eld. Among the most important questions is how the source of data may aect researchers interpretation: to what extent and under what conditions the voice of top managers may be considered a faithful and credible account of the identity of the organizations is still an open issue. If only the managers are heard, research outcomes may be completely dierent from what may result if the whole workforce is heard.

Related to this question is the practical application of the litmus test proposed by Albert and Whetten (1985) to dene organizational identity: the three criteria of central character, distinctiveness and continuity over time. None of the participants had any pretension to answer all these questions within a short term and in a denitive way. Every partial answer to any of the questions discussed however, may contribute to the development of the concept of organizational identity into a fruitful tool for organizational analysis. It can help organizations establish how they are similar to and dierent from their competitors at the same time. It can help organizations coping with conicting pressures for change and stability. The promises of research on identity and identication have become clearer and clearer in the past decade. Now, the time has arrived for further conceptual and methodological ne-tuning, which will help scientists in making the promises of the concept of organizational identity to come true.
NOTES
1 The participants in the discussion outlined here were: Blake Ashforth, Maureen Blyler, Craig Carroll, Kevin Corley, Mary Ann Glynn, Celia Harquail, Mary Jo Hatch, Jerey Kaufmann, Judi McLean Parks, Michael Pratt, Davide Ravasi, Violina Rindova, Kevin Rock, Yolanda Sarason, Majken Schultz, Johan Van Rekom, Cees Van Riel, David Whetten, Judith B. White. 2 The reader may have noticed that the issues of relevance mainly concern organizational identity. An overview of the reasons of relevance of identication can be found at Ashforth, 2001: 8285.

REFERENCES
Aaker, D. (1996) Building Strong Brands, The Free Press, New York, NY. Albert, S. (1998) The denition and metadenition of identity, in Identity in Organizations: Building Theory Through Conversations, D.A. Whetten and P.C. Godfrey (Eds), Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 112.

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