Organizational identification after a merger: A social identity perspective

Abstract

An analysis of the social identity processes involved in organizational mergers suggests that organizational identification after a merger is contingent on a sense of continuity of identity. This sense of continuity, in turn, is argued to be contingent on the extent to which the individual's own pre‐merger organization dominates, or is dominated by, the merger partner. In support of this analysis, results of two surveys of merged organizations showed that pre‐merger and post‐merger identification were more positively related for members of dominant as opposed to dominated organizations, whereas perceived differences between the merger partners were more negatively related to post‐merger identification for members of the dominated compared with the dominant organization.