Organizational Identity Orientation: Forging a Link between Organizational Identity and Organizations' Relations with Stakeholders

Abstract

To better understand the connection between organizational identity and how organizations relate to their stakeholders, this paper introduces the construct of identity orientation, previously applied at the individual-level of analysis, at the organizational-level of analysis and proposes that organizations have three distinct identity orientations: individualistic, relational, and collectivistic. In a field study using qualitative and quantitative methods and including 1,126 participants from 88 organizations in the legal services and non-alcoholic beverage industries, I assess the construct's viability, explore its properties, and analyze its predictors at multiple levels of analysis. Results reveal that organizations' relations with stakeholders constitute a prominent feature of organizational identity, that relations with external and internal stakeholders are perceived as tightly coupled, that both pure and hybrid identity orientation types are relatively common, and that identity orientation varies widely among business organizations. Further, specific organizational variables bearing on organizations' stakeholder relations appear to be stronger predictors of identity orientation than general organizational-level or individual-level variables. Implications for a range of literatures addressing organizations' external (stakeholder management, interorganizational relations) and internal relations (human resource management, psychological contracts) are discussed.