Organizational identification as a negotiated relationship: The dialectics of members' dialogue.

摘要

As organizations change, our relationships with them do also. As the final stage of the organizational socialization process, organizational identification has traditionally been represented as a linear and deterministic process. This study challenged that notion and presents organizational identification as a negotiated relationship with the organization. Identification as a negotiated relationship allows for a selective process that permits a two-way negotiation with the organization. As such, the member is able to influence change in the organization. Further, it supports a continually changing organizational environment as the relationship takes on many forms over time.;This research was grounded in dialectical and narrative theory. A small, multimedia production company in the mid-west is the subject of the study. Methodologically, the dialectical tensions that exist between the members and the organization in the initiation, maintenance, and dissolution of the organizational relationship are uncovered through a two-pronged approach. First, as members talk to each other in small discussion groups, they recovered the organization's story as they experienced it. Through this dialogue, members were able to articulate how they negotiated the tensions of identifying with the organization. Second, the organization's voice was discovered through a historiography of organizational documents that described "who the organization is.";The study acknowledged a relationship between the member and the organizational entity. In applying relational theory to the member/organization relationship, a new understanding of how individuals manage identification was explored. The dialogue and the organizational rhetoric revealed that the negotiating the dialectical tensions could occur throughout the history of the organizational relationship. The study presents a new model of organizational identification that represents a dynamic non-linear process. The model illustrates the multiple centrifugal and centripetal forces that pull organization members in different directions as they negotiate identification in the organization. Further, it demonstrates the fluid motion of the dialectical tensions at different times. Both negative and positive forces that influence organizational identification in this study are represented.