Memories of the Past and Visions of the Future: The Influence of Temporal Depth on Health Care Professionals' Identification

摘要

Why do some employees identify closely with their organizations and others less so or not at all? Of the three dimensions of such identification, affect, behavior, and cognition, this study focuses on cognition using the framework developed by Dutton, Dukerich, and Harquail. The approaching transformation of the U.S. health care industry provides a fertile background for research: how will health care professionals decide where and how they will fit in the new order? Specifically, will "temporal depth" — how far a person looks back or forward in time — be a factor? A quantitative study using data from 210 health care professionals analyze responses to a series of questions designed to probe temporal depth in relation to four hypotheses. Temporal depth does, in fact, influence identification with an organization, but the findings are more complex than this simple conclusion.