Implications of Organisational Identification - Essay Example

A clear and meaningful strategy supported by the staff is a key component of organization’s functional efficiency and financial success, if the organization is a for-profit business. So, the question managers frequently ask themselves is how to achieve that state of business performance when the company is totally supported by its employees in all of its goals and urges. Devotion, loyalty, hard work, passion and efficiency is what each business wishes to see in its employees. However, it is not always easy to hire or bring up employees that feel themselves as a part of the company.

Still, a potential solution exists. The concept of organizational identification is what can help an employer to achieve such a goal. Since organizational identification is a rather important aspect of organizational behaviour, the goal of this paper is to research and analyse various aspect of organizational identification. In particular, the given work will present the concept of organizational identification in relation to employees’ performance, business communication and corporate social responsibility.

Body According to Dutton, Dukerich and Harquail (1994, 240), organizational identification refers to how a person perceives one’s own identity and self-concept in relation to organizational identity. It means that organizational identification is about how an individual sees oneself in the organization, how organizational goals and strategies are aligned with those of the individual. So, it can be said that organizational identification is the degree to which employees associate themselves with the employing organization, as well as what common attributes the organization and the individual have.

Belonging to a certain group, such as family, race, sex, company or society, for instance, forms social identity of an individual – that is person’s knowledge and feeling of belonging to some social group (Tajfel 1972, 31). On the other hand, individuals are the ones who help such groups to survive. The positive effect of person’s feeling as a part of some group is in-group favouritism (Bartels 2006, 1). Such favouritism leads to individual’s being cooperative towards other members of the group, singling that group out, and showing corporate citizenship behaviour in an organization.

So, in relation to corporate environment, such in-group favouritism is called organizational identification. Mael and Ashforth (1992, 104) define organizational identification as person’s “perception of oneness with or belongingness to an organization, where the individual defines him or herself in terms of the organization(s) of which he or she is a member” (Mael and Ashforth 1992, 104). The resent studies prove that strong and positive organizational identification has a very positive impact on organizational behaviour and performance.

In particular, employees with positive organizational identification show better performance, lower absenteeism, and higher levels of job satisfaction (Riketta and van Dick 2005, 490). For that reason it might be suggested that companies devote more attention to the level and state of their employees’ organizational identification. This will improve individual performance of the people, as well as the performance of the whole organization. A research conducted by Efraty and Wolfe in 1988 tends to