Narratives of Organizational Identity and Identification: A Case Study of Hegemony and Resistance

Abstract

This paper focuses on issues of identity and identification in a UK-based institution of higher education (Westville' Institute). It is suggested that identity, both individual and collective, and the processes of identification which bind people to organizations, are constituted in the personal and shared narratives that people author in their efforts to make sense of their world and read meaning into their lives. The research contribution this paper makes is threefold. First, it illustrates how an organization's identity narrative evolves over time, and the variety of identification narratives, including dis-identification, neutral identification and schizo-identification, in terms of which participants define their relationship to it. Second, it makes a contribution to what are still rather inchoate efforts to theorize the dynamics of individual-collective processes of identification and identity construction. Finally, it argues that the efforts of senior managers to control processes of organizational identity formation, and participant identification, are interpretable as hegemonic acts required for legitimation purposes.