Implications of Organisational Identification - Literature review Example

Adam Selwood Assessment 3- Critical Essay Organisational Behaviour 200- External Curtin University- Semester 2 Student Number- 12898491 Assignment Task- ‘Critically discuss implications of organisational identification’. Introduction: Organisational identification is very important to the growth and success of any organisation. Through identification, an employee or client can display his or her commitment to the organisation, which identifies them with that actual organisation and creates positive attitudes and feelings. In the case of an employee, identifying themselves with the organization can result in greater co-operation behaviour, positive attitudes towards their duties, lower absenteeism and greater job satisfaction. When there is an enhanced client relationship, the quality and acceptance of the product and services are elevated, leading to greater business potential within the workplace and the organisation. Therefore, organisational identification exhibited by project managers has a greater effect on the relationship between managers and clients, reducing the performance vagueness therefore heartening the client’s responsibility for the consequences. This form of identification is applied to the ‘social identity theory’. Social identification is that a person does not have one self but instead has several selves that has correspondence to a wide group of people and become a member ,this is in other words the perceived membership to a particular social group (McShane, Steven, Olekalns and Travaglione ,2010.p,18). There are varied degrees at which employees identify themselves with their organisation. This can be dependent on the number of groups that are in that specific organisation. Since it has been elucidated in the past that employees identify themselves to certain groups within an organisation, these levels that can take place include- the divisional level, work group level and the overall organisational level. On the other hand, marketing research indicates that there are cues that are observable that determine the degree of identification. For instance, with a sales person appearance, it appearance actually reflects the degree at which he or she identifies with the organisation. The variables involved in this study include the control variable of time, the client’s location, the client loyalty and client satisfaction. Therefore, this study will critically study and discuss the implications of organizational identification by reviewing literature of similar studies. Organizational identification according to (Jones and Volpe 2011, 414) is the perceived belongingness to an organization such as being an alumni member of an institution. It is also the congruence of values between the organization and the individual employee. Analysis: In the article by Webber (2011, 119), he studies the ‘social identification theory’ to the project manager and the client relationship, which is exhibited in the service sector. The study explores the impact of dual identification, the client co-location on the satisfaction, along with the loyalty shown by the client. As Webber (2011, 119) puts it down to the growth of the service sector, the clients have become more demanding. Therefore, this sector has been forced to change the way they render their services, to ensure they have sustainable client loyalty. A strategy employed to attain this include, making the client a participant in the production process. By integrating a client’s views and ideas to the product, creates an engagement of the client in the process, which results in the acceptance of the products and services rendered by the organisation. This will consequently widen the business potential of the organisation. According to Webber (2011, 119), ‘social identities theory’ reiterates that individual clients can develop a perception of belonging to an organisation as identification. This theory has also been likened to the working environment where an employee could be working in the client’s place or environment, thus making the employee identify him or herself with the client’s organisation. This social identity according to Webber (2011, 119) usually applies to contract workers and hence it indicates that the employees who work on a contract basis do develop dual identities. Social identity theory can also be applied to groups or teams who as a result develop a dual identification with their individual teams. This dual identification has only been displayed in ‘social identification theory’; however, it has not expansively been investigated in empirical or theoretical tests. Webber (2011, 120) also examines the aspect of business-to-business strategy, which could help in the attainment of the client engagement, as well as placing the services in the client site temporarily. This becomes significant to enhance product design and service delivery, by bringing the organisation much closer to the clients. This facilitates more profound client engagement for excellent service solution, along with a better relationship between the organisation and clients in general. The Webber (2011) studies further empirically examine the positive results that could be attained from the co-location and impact on employee/client identification, their satisfaction and loyalty. Social identification purports that identifications do take place when employees or clients categorize themselves individually to a specific group or as part of a group in an organisation or the organisation as a whole. This could be enhanced by the level of contact between individuals and the groups of the organisation. In regards to identification, the Bartels; Peters, Jong and Pruyn; Molen (2010) study defines organisational identification as “the perception of oneness with an organisation where an individual identifies him or her self in terms of membership” (Bartels et al 2010, 210). Their study represents organisational identification in a model that crosscuts vertically throughout all organisational levels, as there are different ideas that manifested at various levels of the organisation. The study identifies the levels as lower order identification, which comprise of the job, work group and profession. These identifications according to Bartels et al (2010, 210) are relatively tangible and close, as employees play their roles or duties within their work groups or their job environment. The higher order level comprises of the more super-ordinate levels, which include business units, divisions and organisations. These components are approximately distal. The study reiterates that the main purpose for organisational identification within the order-identities could be different. This is further supported by the fact that communication has a lot of influence to identification in the lower order level rather than in the higher order level identities. In their studies, Bartels et al (2010) concentrated more on the higher-level order identities, as organisation identification and denoting the lower level identities as the professionals. Therefore, their study focused on the degree at which the employees identify themselves with the profession in which their work or duties lie, and its common characteristics. In terms of hierarchy positions, organisational communication is a major focus with regard to individuals who send the information to the individuals who receive it. This includes the content and form of the communication being dissipated. The aspect of communication has several collective components that are exhibited in the working environment. For instance, the perceived accessibility of management with regard to employee needs, as well as the effectiveness and the reliability of information that is communicated within the organisation, are crucial areas that should be constantly monitored. Horizontal and the vertical communication channels that occur within every organisation cause these influences. According to the study by Cole and Bruch (2006), the relationship an individual has with the organisation that they are employed by in the past, has been known to have a tremendous impact on the attitude, personality and behaviour of the individual. This study puts more focus on the constructs of organisational identification strength, as well as organisational commitment. Organisational identification strength is a psychological construct that is theoretically different from the other constructs, such as organisational identification in general. This is due to the fact that it reflects the degree in which an individual reflects the feeling of the identification to the organisation as ‘special’ (Cole and Bruch 2006, 587). Organisational identification is a particular form of social identification, thus it reflects on the individuals in terms of how they identify themselves with a specific organisation ‘as members’. Identification intensifies when there are purported benefits of the individual from the work group and the organisation as a whole (Cole and Bruch 2006, 588). Organisational commitment is the individual emotional attachment to the organisation the individual works for (Cole and Bruch 2006, 588). These constructs do have a relationship with the turnover intentions and are influenced by organisational hierarchy (Cole and Bruch 2006, 591). The study by Yurchisin and Damhorst (2009) investigate a salesperson’s appearance and organisational identification. They lament that a salesperson’s impression is based on observations of cues that are presented throughout the workplace. Within the retail context investigation, it indicates that an individual working within this context uses apparel items to show their identity to others as they work. These apparels may include formal business wears such as suits and top end accessories, or the most appropriate clothing that runs in line with the organisation they are working for. Therefore, in the retail industry, an employee’s appearance usually conveys information about the store (Yurchisin and Damhorst 2009, 460). On the other hand, employees could be more satisfied when the organisation they are working for is consistent with their personal identity or personal image. This requires a lot of flexibility from the organisations behalf. (Yurchisin and Damhorst 2009, 460). According to the ‘symbolic interaction theory’, it is a fact that people attach a meaning to existent things such as products, stores and other people. This attachment can also extend to actions that occur in the real world. The meaning of these things is individually created through a social interaction process (Yurchisin and Damhorst 2009, 461). The apparel products that are worn by the employee determine the cues, such as appearance. This worn product becomes a symbol that creates an assumption to others on what type of the individual the person portrays to be. Therefore, they respond to the person according to this assumption or stereotype. A relationship is developed between a person’s appearance and identity portrayed by the cues. The theory of symbolic interaction permits for a link to exist between individual appearance and individual identity; hence, it is valid to address the issue of the relationship that exists between individual appearance and organisational identification. (Yurchisin and Damhorst 2009, 460). Furthermore, the salesperson appearance serves as a symbol of individual traits, which sometimes differs from the store traits that the person is working in. ‘It may be a requirement that the salesperson will have to take up the store traits in order to display the characteristic traits of the store through apparels’ (Yurchisin and Damhorst 2009, 461). Organisation identification studies by Jones and Volpe (2011) indicates that as identification in past studies are founded on social identities and symbolic interaction constructs, their study cite out that a persons centrality in a social network is quantified by the size of their network or various other networks that a person interacts with. Increased identification with people of the same peer group, divisions and work group, are associated with the individual’s centrality in an organisation (Jones and Volpe 2011, 420). The results indicated that other than perceptions of organisational identification distinctiveness, the affiliated networks size also has a positive influence on the strength of the individual, with identification enhancing communication with other people as a way of identity interpretation and enactment (Jones and Volpe 2011, 422). The study further found that the relationship intensity or strength had an amplification effect on the organisation prestige in the identification process. It should be noted however, that organisation prestige alone has no known direct effect on organisational identification. The study of the organisational identification versus organisational commitment Knippenberg and Sleebos (2006) cite that the psychological link that is exhibited between an individual and organisation can be understood in both identification and effective commitment. The identification is said to reflect the psychological attachment, while the commitment is the relationship that develops between distinct psychological entities (Knippenberg and Sleebos 2006, 578). The study concludes that although identification and commitment are very distinct, they both reflect the unique aspects of the relationship that an individual of an organisation works with. The psychological link that is exhibited between an individual and the organization is beneficial to both identification and commitment (Knippenberg and Sleebos 2006, 579). Evaluations: The review above indicates that the organization identification has various definitions with regard to the constructs that it is linked. According to the review above Webber (2011, 119 and Bartels et al (2010, 210) agree that organization identification is a social identification that culminates from the individual perception of oneness with the employee organization and further enhanced by the communication hierarchy in the organization. Their view on the organization identification is furthered by Cole and Bruch 2006, 588; Yurchisin and Damhorst 2009, 460; Jones and Volpe 2011,420. Who view the organization identification as an individual relationship with the organization that he or she works. Nevertheless, does the organization identify it self with the client needs, doest it position it self in a manner that attract client. The sentiments elucidated from the Cole and Bruch 2006, 588; Yurchisin and Damhorst 2009, 460; Jones and Volpe 2011, 420, whose focus is mainly on the employee relationship with the organization as the main path towards cultivating client loyalty, trigger this line of thought. In other words, there should be a psychological link between the organization and the client. Thus, the clients, the organization and the employee are interrelated and the perception of one can affect the other. However, as Knippenberg and Sleebos (2006) organizational commitment is a distinct psychological attachment of different entities thus, the organizational identification can also be viewed in the commitment perspective. Moreover, organization identification has been viewed as having a psychological link that an individual is associated to especially the groups and teams or the entire organization. Identification has further been observed with other constructs such as commitment thus reiterating that identification is the psychological attachment to the organization. Yurchisin and Damhorst (2009) in their investigation on a salesperson’s appearance and organizational identification cite that the cue such as the physical appearance has consequent results with regard to the client attraction. Although this sentiment can be valid the organizations quality and the price of their services has more effects on the client perspective to the store. Conclusions: The reviews above have deliberated that the organizational identification has a mediated role in the job satisfaction for the employees and the commitment. This is so because the article reviewed have not demonstrated the importance and the strength that link the job satisfaction with the organization commitment this vagueness is caused by lack of attention paid to the potential mediation impact that is caused by some variables such as the psychological variable. Some research have shown that organization identification is also a variable and by linking the job satisfaction with the organization identification and hence with the organizational commitment and thus I conceptualize the organization identification as a cognitive and has emotional significance. Therefore, organization identification does take place when an individual member of an organization adopts the defining traits of the organization as his own characteristics and thus view their duties to the organization as part of self. However, organization identification has it own benefits to the employee; this is because he or she is able to attach emotionally to the organization thus enabling an efficient working. The use of apparels belonging to the employing company make the employee feel proud as a member of the company and does not shy from exposing or displaying their company through their wears thus boosting their confidence in their role to the company. Therefore, organization identification may trigger a positive or negative response towards the organization. For instance, it may trigger a positive perception that enable the employee to continue working for the organization or a negative perception that lead to resigning from the organization. References: Candace Jones and Elizabeth Hamilton Volpe.2011.Organizational identification: Extending our understanding of social identities through social networks J. Organiz. Behav. 32, 413–434 Daan Van Knippenberg and Ed Sleebos .2006 Organizational identification versus organizational commitment: Self-definition, social exchange, and job attitudesJ. Organiz. Behav. 27, 571–584 Jennifer Yurchisin and Mary Lynn Damhorst 2009.An investigation of salesperson appearance and organizational identificationJournal of Fashion Marketing and Management Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 458-470 Jos Bartels;Oscar Peters, Menno de Jong and Ad Pruyn;Marjolijn van der Molen.2010. Horizontal and vertical communication as determinants of professional and organisational identification Personnel Review Vol. 39 No. 2,pp. 210-226 Michael S. Cole and heike bruch. 2006 Organizational identity strength, identification, and commitment and their relationships to turnover intention: Does organizational hierarchy matter? J. Organiz. Behav. 27, 585–605 McShane, Steven, Mara Olekalns and Tony Travaglione. 2010. Organizational behavior on the Pacific Rim. 3rd ed. North Ryde NSW: McGraw-Hill Australia Sheila Simsarian Webber.2011.Dual organizational identification impacting client satisfaction and word of mouth loyalty Journal of Business Research 64 119–125 Read More