“Who are we Online?” Approaches to Organizational Identity in Social Media Contexts
Keywords:
organizational identity, social media, organizational communication, brandingAbstract
In the last year the conversation about organizing and organizations in digital contexts has seen theoretically valuable additions. This paper presents a contribution to this dialogue, looking at the strict separation between a functionalist, social constructionist, and postmodern perspective on organizational identity in the social media context. Through semi-structured interviews with social media marketing professionals who engage daily in the representation of their organizations online, and the concept of identity work as an interpretive lens, this article shows how the very discourse of organizational identity has changed as a result of the persistent, public, editable, and immediate context of social media platforms. The somewhat rigid theoretical approaches to organizational identity might be conflated in practice.
References
Albert, S., & Whetten, D. A. (1985). Organizational identity. Research in Organizational Behavior, 7, 263-295.
Alvesson, M. (1994). Talking in organizations: Managing identity and impressions in an advertising agency. Organization Studies, 15(4), 535-563.
Alvesson, M., Ashcraft, K. L., & Thomas, R. (2008). Identity matters: Reflections on the construction of identity scholarship in organization studies. Organization, 15, 5-28.
Alvesson, M., & Willmott, H. (2002). Identity regulation as organizational control: Producing the appropriate individual. Journal of Management Studies, 39, 619-644.
Ashforth, B. E., Harrison, S. H., & Corley, K. G. (2008). Identification in organizations: An examination of four fundamental questions. Journal of Management, 34(3), 325-374.
Balmer, J. M. T., & Greyser, S. A. (2006). Corporate marketing: Integrating corporate identity, corporate branding, corporate communications, corporate image and corporate reputation. European Journal of Marketing, 40, 730-741.
Bartel, C. A. (2001). Social comparisons in boundary-spanning work: Effects of community outreach on members' organizational identity and identification. Administrative Science Quarterly, 46(3), 379-413.
Baudrillard, J. (1998). The consumer society: Myths and structures (Vol. 53). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Limited.
Beech, N. (2008). On the nature of dialogic identity work. Organization, 15, 51-74.
Bimber, B., Flanagin, A., & Stohl, C. (2012). Collective action in organizations: Interaction and engagement in an era of technological change. Cambridge University Press.
Brown, T. J., Dacin, P. A., Pratt, M. G., & Whetten, D. A. (2006). Identity, intended image, construed image, and reputation: an interdisciplinary framework and suggested terminology. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 34(2), 99-106
Brown, A. D., & Humphreys, M. (2006). Organizational identity and place: A discursive exploration of hegemony and resistance. Journal of Management Studies, 43(2), 231-257.
Briones, R. L., Kuch, B., Liu, B. F., & Jin, Y. (2011). Keeping up with the digital age: How the American Red Cross uses social media to build relationships. Public Relations Review, 37(1), 37-43.
Bullis, C., & Bach, B. W. (1989). Socialization turning points: An examination of change in organizational identification. Western Journal of Communication (includes Communication Reports), 53(3), 273-293.
Burke, K. (1969). A rhetoric of motives (Vol. 111). Berkley, CA: University of California Press.
Cheney, G. (1983). The rhetoric of identification and the study of organizational communication. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 69(2), 143-158.
Cheney, G. (1991). Rhetoric in an organizational society: Managing multiple identities. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.
Cheney, G., & Christensen, L. T. (2001). Organizational identity: Linkages between internal and external communication. In F. M. Jablin & L. L. Putnam (Eds.), The new handbook of organizational communication: Advances in theory, research, and methods (p. 231-269). Thousand Oaks. CA: Sage Publications.
Cheney, G., & McMillan, J. J. (1990). Organizational rhetoric and the practice of criticism. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 18(2), 93-114.
Chreim, S. (2005). The continuity–change duality in narrative texts of organizational identity. Journal of Management Studies, 42(3), 567-593.
Corley, K. G., & Gioia, D. A. (2004). Identity ambiguity and change in the wake of a corporate spin-off. Administrative Science Quarterly, 49(2), 173-208.
Cornelissen, J. P., Haslam, S. A., & Balmer, J. M. (2007). Social identity, organizational identity and corporate identity: towards an integrated understanding of processes, patternings and products. British Journal of Management, 18(s1), S1-S16.
Coupland, C., & Brown, A. D. (2004). Constructing Organizational Identities on the Web: A Case Study of Royal Dutch/Shell. Journal of Management Studies, 41(8), 1325-1347.
Creed, W. D., DeJordy, R., & Lok, J. (2010). Being the change: Resolving institutional contradiction through identity work. Academy of Management Journal, 53(6), 1336-1364.
Curtis, L., Edwards, C., Fraser, K. L., Gudelsky, S., Holmquist, J., Thornton, K., & Sweetser, K. D. (2010). Adoption of social media for public relations by non-profit organizations. Public Relations Review, 36, 90-92.
DiSanza, J. R., & Bullis, C. (1999). “Everybody identifies with Smokey the Bear” Employee responses to newsletter identification inducements at the US Forest Service. Management Communication Quarterly, 12(3), 347-399.
Dukerich, J. M., Golden, B. R., & Shortell, S. M. (2002). Beauty is in the eye of the beholder: The impact of organizational identification, identity, and image on the cooperative behaviors of physicians. Administrative Science Quarterly, 47(3), 507-533.
Dutton, J. E., & Dukerich, J. M. (1991). Keeping an eye on the mirror: Image and identity in organizational adaptation. Academy of Management Journal, 517-554.
Dutton, J. E., Dukerich, J. M., & Harquail, C. V. (1994). Organizational images and member identification. Administrative Science Quarterly, 239-263.
Feather, N. T., & Rauter, K. A. (2004). Organizational citizenship behaviours in relation to job status, job insecurity, organizational commitment and identification, job satisfaction and work values. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 77(1), 81-94.
Fombrun, C., & Shanley, M. (1990). What's in a name? Reputation building and corporate strategy. Academy of Management Journal, 233-258.
Gilpin, D. (2010). Organizational image construction in a fragmented online media environment. Journal of Public Relations Research, 22(3), 265-287.
Glisson, C., & Durick, M. (1988). Predictors of job satisfaction and organizational commitment in human service organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 61-81.
Gioia, D. A. (1998). From individual to organizational identity. In D. Whetten & P. Godfrey (Eds.), Identity in organizations: Developing theory through conversations (pp. 17-31). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
He, H. W., & Balmer, J. M. (2007). Identity studies: multiple perspectives and implications for corporate-level marketing. European Journal of Marketing, 41(7/8), 765-785.
He, H., & Brown, A. D. (2013). Organizational identity and organizational identification: A review of literature and suggestions for future research. Group and Organization Management, 38(1), 3-35.
Hedges, J. P. (2008). The expressions and transformations of identity in Alcoholics Anonymous: A multimethod study of individual, group and organization. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
Hogg, M. A., & Terry, D. J. (2001). Social identity: Processes in organizational contexts. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press, A Member of the Taylor & Francis Group.
Humphreys, M., & Brown, A. D. (2002). Narratives of organizational identity and identification: a case study of hegemony and resistance. Organization Studies, 23(3), 421-447
Kelleher, T. (2009). Conversational voice, communicated commitment, and public relations outcomes in interactive online communication. Journal of Communication, 59(1), 172-188.
Kelleher, T., & Miller, B. M. (2006). Organizational blogs and the human voice: Relational strategies and relational outcomes. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 11(2), 395-414.
Kjærgaard, A., Morsing, M., & Ravasi, D. (2011). Mediating identity: A study of media influence on organizational identity construction in a celebrity firm. Journal of Management Studies, 48(3), 514-543.
Lee, A. S. (1991). Integrating positivist and interpretive approaches to organizational research. Organization Science, 2(4), 342-365.
Loseke, D. R. (2007). The study of identity as cultural, institutional, organizational, and personal narratives: Theoretical and empirical integrations. The Sociological Quarterly, 48(4), 661-688.
Lovejoy, K., & Saxton, G. D. (2012). Information, community, and action: How non-profit organizations use social media. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 17, 337-353.
Mael, F., & Ashforth, B. E. (1992). Alumni and their alma mater: A partial test of the reformulated model of organizational identification. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 13(2), 103-123.
Rosenau, P. M. (1992). Post-modernism and the social sciences: Insights, inroads and intrusions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Schultz, F., Utz, S., & Göritz, A. (2011). Is the medium the message? Perceptions of and reactions to crisis communication via twitter, blogs and traditional media. Public Relations Review, 37(1), 20-27
Scott, C. R. (2007). Communication and social identity theory: Existing and potential connections in organizational identification research. Communication Studies, 58(2), 123-138.
Scott, C. R. (2009). A whole-hearted effort to get it half right: Predicting the future of communication technology scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14(3), 753-757.
Scott, C. (2013). Anonymous agencies, backstreet businesses, and covert Collectives: Rethinking organizations in the 21st century. Stanford University Press.
Sluss, D. M., Ployhart, R. E., Cobb, M. G., & Ashforth, B. E. (2012). Generalizing newcomers' relational and organizational identifications: processes and prototypicality. Academy of Management Journal, 55(4), 949-975.
Sweetser, K. D. (2010). A losing strategy: The impact of nondisclosure in social media on relationships. Journal of Public Relations Research, 22(3), 288-312.
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of group relations (pp. 33-47). Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole.
Tracy, S. J. (2013). Qualitative research methods: Collecting evidence, crafting analysis, communicating impact. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Watson, T. J. (2008). Managing identity: Identity work, personal predicaments and structural circumstances. Organization, 15, 121-143.
Weick, K. E., Sutcliffe, K. M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing and the process of sensemaking. Organization Science, 16(4), 409-421.
Whetten, D. A. (2006). Albert and Whetten revisited: Strengthening the concept of organizational identity. Journal of Management Inquiry, 15(3), 219-234.
Whetten, D. A. (2007). A critique of organizational identity scholarship: Challenging the uncritical use of social identity theory when social identities are also social actors. In Identity in the modern organization. C. Bartel, S. Blader, A. Wrzesniewski (Eds.), Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 253-272.
Whetten, D. A., & Mackey, A. (2002). A social actor conception of organizational identity and its implications for the study of organizational reputation. Business & Society, 41(4), 393-414.
Williams, L. J., & Anderson, S. E. (1991). Job satisfaction and organizational commitment as predictors of organizational citizenship and in-role behaviors. Journal of Management, 17(3), 601-617.
Alvesson, M. (1994). Talking in organizations: Managing identity and impressions in an advertising agency. Organization Studies, 15(4), 535-563.
Alvesson, M., Ashcraft, K. L., & Thomas, R. (2008). Identity matters: Reflections on the construction of identity scholarship in organization studies. Organization, 15, 5-28.
Alvesson, M., & Willmott, H. (2002). Identity regulation as organizational control: Producing the appropriate individual. Journal of Management Studies, 39, 619-644.
Ashforth, B. E., Harrison, S. H., & Corley, K. G. (2008). Identification in organizations: An examination of four fundamental questions. Journal of Management, 34(3), 325-374.
Balmer, J. M. T., & Greyser, S. A. (2006). Corporate marketing: Integrating corporate identity, corporate branding, corporate communications, corporate image and corporate reputation. European Journal of Marketing, 40, 730-741.
Bartel, C. A. (2001). Social comparisons in boundary-spanning work: Effects of community outreach on members' organizational identity and identification. Administrative Science Quarterly, 46(3), 379-413.
Baudrillard, J. (1998). The consumer society: Myths and structures (Vol. 53). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Limited.
Beech, N. (2008). On the nature of dialogic identity work. Organization, 15, 51-74.
Bimber, B., Flanagin, A., & Stohl, C. (2012). Collective action in organizations: Interaction and engagement in an era of technological change. Cambridge University Press.
Brown, T. J., Dacin, P. A., Pratt, M. G., & Whetten, D. A. (2006). Identity, intended image, construed image, and reputation: an interdisciplinary framework and suggested terminology. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 34(2), 99-106
Brown, A. D., & Humphreys, M. (2006). Organizational identity and place: A discursive exploration of hegemony and resistance. Journal of Management Studies, 43(2), 231-257.
Briones, R. L., Kuch, B., Liu, B. F., & Jin, Y. (2011). Keeping up with the digital age: How the American Red Cross uses social media to build relationships. Public Relations Review, 37(1), 37-43.
Bullis, C., & Bach, B. W. (1989). Socialization turning points: An examination of change in organizational identification. Western Journal of Communication (includes Communication Reports), 53(3), 273-293.
Burke, K. (1969). A rhetoric of motives (Vol. 111). Berkley, CA: University of California Press.
Cheney, G. (1983). The rhetoric of identification and the study of organizational communication. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 69(2), 143-158.
Cheney, G. (1991). Rhetoric in an organizational society: Managing multiple identities. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.
Cheney, G., & Christensen, L. T. (2001). Organizational identity: Linkages between internal and external communication. In F. M. Jablin & L. L. Putnam (Eds.), The new handbook of organizational communication: Advances in theory, research, and methods (p. 231-269). Thousand Oaks. CA: Sage Publications.
Cheney, G., & McMillan, J. J. (1990). Organizational rhetoric and the practice of criticism. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 18(2), 93-114.
Chreim, S. (2005). The continuity–change duality in narrative texts of organizational identity. Journal of Management Studies, 42(3), 567-593.
Corley, K. G., & Gioia, D. A. (2004). Identity ambiguity and change in the wake of a corporate spin-off. Administrative Science Quarterly, 49(2), 173-208.
Cornelissen, J. P., Haslam, S. A., & Balmer, J. M. (2007). Social identity, organizational identity and corporate identity: towards an integrated understanding of processes, patternings and products. British Journal of Management, 18(s1), S1-S16.
Coupland, C., & Brown, A. D. (2004). Constructing Organizational Identities on the Web: A Case Study of Royal Dutch/Shell. Journal of Management Studies, 41(8), 1325-1347.
Creed, W. D., DeJordy, R., & Lok, J. (2010). Being the change: Resolving institutional contradiction through identity work. Academy of Management Journal, 53(6), 1336-1364.
Curtis, L., Edwards, C., Fraser, K. L., Gudelsky, S., Holmquist, J., Thornton, K., & Sweetser, K. D. (2010). Adoption of social media for public relations by non-profit organizations. Public Relations Review, 36, 90-92.
DiSanza, J. R., & Bullis, C. (1999). “Everybody identifies with Smokey the Bear” Employee responses to newsletter identification inducements at the US Forest Service. Management Communication Quarterly, 12(3), 347-399.
Dukerich, J. M., Golden, B. R., & Shortell, S. M. (2002). Beauty is in the eye of the beholder: The impact of organizational identification, identity, and image on the cooperative behaviors of physicians. Administrative Science Quarterly, 47(3), 507-533.
Dutton, J. E., & Dukerich, J. M. (1991). Keeping an eye on the mirror: Image and identity in organizational adaptation. Academy of Management Journal, 517-554.
Dutton, J. E., Dukerich, J. M., & Harquail, C. V. (1994). Organizational images and member identification. Administrative Science Quarterly, 239-263.
Feather, N. T., & Rauter, K. A. (2004). Organizational citizenship behaviours in relation to job status, job insecurity, organizational commitment and identification, job satisfaction and work values. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 77(1), 81-94.
Fombrun, C., & Shanley, M. (1990). What's in a name? Reputation building and corporate strategy. Academy of Management Journal, 233-258.
Gilpin, D. (2010). Organizational image construction in a fragmented online media environment. Journal of Public Relations Research, 22(3), 265-287.
Glisson, C., & Durick, M. (1988). Predictors of job satisfaction and organizational commitment in human service organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 61-81.
Gioia, D. A. (1998). From individual to organizational identity. In D. Whetten & P. Godfrey (Eds.), Identity in organizations: Developing theory through conversations (pp. 17-31). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
He, H. W., & Balmer, J. M. (2007). Identity studies: multiple perspectives and implications for corporate-level marketing. European Journal of Marketing, 41(7/8), 765-785.
He, H., & Brown, A. D. (2013). Organizational identity and organizational identification: A review of literature and suggestions for future research. Group and Organization Management, 38(1), 3-35.
Hedges, J. P. (2008). The expressions and transformations of identity in Alcoholics Anonymous: A multimethod study of individual, group and organization. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
Hogg, M. A., & Terry, D. J. (2001). Social identity: Processes in organizational contexts. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press, A Member of the Taylor & Francis Group.
Humphreys, M., & Brown, A. D. (2002). Narratives of organizational identity and identification: a case study of hegemony and resistance. Organization Studies, 23(3), 421-447
Kelleher, T. (2009). Conversational voice, communicated commitment, and public relations outcomes in interactive online communication. Journal of Communication, 59(1), 172-188.
Kelleher, T., & Miller, B. M. (2006). Organizational blogs and the human voice: Relational strategies and relational outcomes. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 11(2), 395-414.
Kjærgaard, A., Morsing, M., & Ravasi, D. (2011). Mediating identity: A study of media influence on organizational identity construction in a celebrity firm. Journal of Management Studies, 48(3), 514-543.
Lee, A. S. (1991). Integrating positivist and interpretive approaches to organizational research. Organization Science, 2(4), 342-365.
Loseke, D. R. (2007). The study of identity as cultural, institutional, organizational, and personal narratives: Theoretical and empirical integrations. The Sociological Quarterly, 48(4), 661-688.
Lovejoy, K., & Saxton, G. D. (2012). Information, community, and action: How non-profit organizations use social media. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 17, 337-353.
Mael, F., & Ashforth, B. E. (1992). Alumni and their alma mater: A partial test of the reformulated model of organizational identification. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 13(2), 103-123.
Rosenau, P. M. (1992). Post-modernism and the social sciences: Insights, inroads and intrusions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Schultz, F., Utz, S., & Göritz, A. (2011). Is the medium the message? Perceptions of and reactions to crisis communication via twitter, blogs and traditional media. Public Relations Review, 37(1), 20-27
Scott, C. R. (2007). Communication and social identity theory: Existing and potential connections in organizational identification research. Communication Studies, 58(2), 123-138.
Scott, C. R. (2009). A whole-hearted effort to get it half right: Predicting the future of communication technology scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14(3), 753-757.
Scott, C. (2013). Anonymous agencies, backstreet businesses, and covert Collectives: Rethinking organizations in the 21st century. Stanford University Press.
Sluss, D. M., Ployhart, R. E., Cobb, M. G., & Ashforth, B. E. (2012). Generalizing newcomers' relational and organizational identifications: processes and prototypicality. Academy of Management Journal, 55(4), 949-975.
Sweetser, K. D. (2010). A losing strategy: The impact of nondisclosure in social media on relationships. Journal of Public Relations Research, 22(3), 288-312.
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of group relations (pp. 33-47). Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole.
Tracy, S. J. (2013). Qualitative research methods: Collecting evidence, crafting analysis, communicating impact. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Watson, T. J. (2008). Managing identity: Identity work, personal predicaments and structural circumstances. Organization, 15, 121-143.
Weick, K. E., Sutcliffe, K. M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing and the process of sensemaking. Organization Science, 16(4), 409-421.
Whetten, D. A. (2006). Albert and Whetten revisited: Strengthening the concept of organizational identity. Journal of Management Inquiry, 15(3), 219-234.
Whetten, D. A. (2007). A critique of organizational identity scholarship: Challenging the uncritical use of social identity theory when social identities are also social actors. In Identity in the modern organization. C. Bartel, S. Blader, A. Wrzesniewski (Eds.), Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 253-272.
Whetten, D. A., & Mackey, A. (2002). A social actor conception of organizational identity and its implications for the study of organizational reputation. Business & Society, 41(4), 393-414.
Williams, L. J., & Anderson, S. E. (1991). Job satisfaction and organizational commitment as predictors of organizational citizenship and in-role behaviors. Journal of Management, 17(3), 601-617.
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