The thesis explores narratives constructed by participants about an organization’s identities. I examine how identity-relevant statements were deployed as exercises in power, serving to legitimize and promote their authors. Framed within an interpretive paradigm, the research adopts reflexive approaches to consider participants’ understandings. I draw on organizational identity theory and empirical studies to explore the multiplicity and conflicting nature of identity in organizations. Literatures on organizational narratives, storytelling and power are also considered. The ethnography is set in a public sector organization in which I worked: the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority (PADA). Its role was to deliver the Government’s reforms to private pension provision in the UK; the reforms came into force in October 2012. The narrative data constructing the research were collected through semi-structured interviews with 60 members of the organization, transcripts of organizational events and a diary I recorded for a year. These data are augmented by a series of vignettes that weave in accounts of my experiences while working for and researching PADA. The analysis of narrative data is constructed in three chapters, each of which explores identity-relevant narratives from different perspectives. The first analysis chapter examines narrative data through five concepts: reflexivity, voice, plurivocity, temporality and fictionality. The second analyses identity narratives in two organizational events and the third explores my understandings of the organization’s identities from an autoethnographic perspective. The discussion chapter provides three readings that interpret the data through different lenses: narrative and storytelling, organizational identity and autoethnographic erspectives. I then make concluding remarks, including ideas for future research and the contribution of my research to the study of organizational identity. The primary contribution of the ethnography is to scholarship at the intersection of identity and power in organizations and specifically how identity-relevant narratives are deployed as exercises in power by participants. There are also contributions to narrative research methods, including the value of researching identity ethnographically. Additionally, I suggest practical contributions to literature on understanding issues of culture and sense-making in public bodies and how employees from different sector backgrounds (public and private) interact within a public sector context to deliver government reforms.

The concept of the team identity transformation in entrepreneurial process was addressed in this thesis. In order to effectively and delicately descript the formation and transformation process of the team identity, Qualitative research and single case method were explored that an electronic component manufacturer (thereafter called F company) in Kaohsiung was chosen. I collect the first-hand data not only by interviewing with interviewees but emailing or talking via phone. In aspects of interview, formal interviews took 17hours, informal interviews took about 10hours and 2 hours was used to get data via telephone communication. Except for first-hand data, we collect the secondary data as well. With comparison on differences of technological team identity(ies) between in and after business creation, three categories grounded on interviews was developed, including think¡Bwork and learn. Based on these, we would try to analyze the reasons of transformation. After almost year of observation and data collection, I conclude these below: 1¡BThere is existence of technological team identity in initial stage of entrepreneurship and this will be beneficial to drive the entrepreneurship. The mechanism of formation is how to pick up the members to make them highly consistent in thinking and behaviors. 2¡BAs changes of contexts and self adaptation, the technological team identity would be transformed as the figure6.1 shown. 3¡BI found that the team identity would transform into organizational identity, and that would make the border between technological team and the other groups more and more unspecific. 4¡BIn the process of team transformation, managerial action and machismo play an important roles to harness how the process goes to make the organization more flexible and actively response to the complex environments.

Thesis advisor: Michael G. Pratt / This dissertation draws on interviews, observation and archival materials, to explore how a Jewish Services Organization changed its purpose due to external and internal pressures. Past research shows that organizations can change their purpose, but how they do so has not been explicated, and further knowledge of which would help organizations adapt to their changing realities more efficiently. This dissertation explores the underlying mechanisms of organizational purpose change in organizations that have historically operated with a clear and intentional raison d'être, which is widely embraced by organizational members. The purpose change process is shown to be (a) co-creative such that multiple stakeholders, both internal and external, are involved in this process; (b) conflict-laden such that the change process can lead to latent identity splits within organizations to resurface; (c) dynamic such that it leads to continuous changes around the meaning and interpretation regarding purpose in the organization; and (d) most successful when focused on renewal such that it allows organizations to maintain continuity with their past and their identity while embracing new directions. By explaining this process, this dissertation contributes to our understanding of purpose change in organizations and elaborates on theoretical interlinkages of organizational purpose with organizational identity content and organizational identity complexity, an understanding of which can lead to successful (or unsuccessful) efforts to change the purpose of an organization. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Management and Organization.

This dissertation explores how various versions of a university's identity"including the leadership-sponsored brand as well as alternate rhetorics of organizational identity"shape the policies and practices of the university itself through the lenses of rhetoric and power. While the concept of organizational identity has been studied from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including marketing, organizational communication, graphic design, and organizational behavior, they all seem to have a common goal: maintaining the status-quo of management's control over all perceptions of the organization's identity. Most organizations however, do not have a single monolithic identity, especially large, decentralized organizations like universities. Alternate rhetorics of identity exist, but these management-centered approaches do not allow for their role in shaping organizational identity or practice. The rhetorically-grounded approach that guides this dissertation, however, which is based on identity-formation through identification as well as the role of rhetoric as a method of determining the most appropriate and effective ways of moving people to action, acknowledges the role of these alternate identity-rhetorics in organizational life and recognizes their potential impact on organizational activity. Through three cases of organizational decision making and policy creation at Virginia Tech, this dissertation explores the ways that the various rhetorics of identity within the university (including the official, leadership-sponsored brand and other versions of organizational identity held by university members) contradict, reflect, and co-construct each other and organizational practice. Through ethnographic interviews with members of the Virginia Tech community, participant-observation of a brand training program, and analysis of various visual, verbal, and multimodal texts related to each case study, this project explores these many rhetorics of organizational identity as they struggle for the power to shape the institution. This dissertation encourages researchers, teachers, and practitioners of professional and technical communication to recognize alternative organizational identity-rhetorics because of their potential power to shape the organization. Specifically within educational institutions, this project suggests that branding initiatives be critiqued as potentially hegemonic forces that repress these alternative identity perspectives, which may provide necessary incentives or conduits for organizational growth. / Ph. D.

Bakgrund och problem: Lärande inom organisationer har effekt på hur organisationer hanterar förändring och anpassar sin organisation för en förbättrad effektivitet, vilket kan leda till konkurrensfördelar. Det är intressant att se på ideella organisationer och deras lärande funktion då organisationsformen skiljer sig från den privata sektorn där företag i större utsträckning arbetar med lärande mer strukturellt medan ideella organisationer ofta baserar sin lärande funktion på lösa samtal. Vår undersökning tar avstamp från detta och mer specifikt i den ideella organisationen KFUM Sverige. Eftersom det är en organisation som sysslar med en rad olika aktiviteter har vi valt att smala av undersökningsområdet till de basketföreningar som har koppling till KFUM. Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur KFUM arbetar som lärande organisation och hur de lokala KFUM-basketföreningarna har arbetat för att öka medlemsantalet. Potentiellt kan vi få en bild av hur en ideell organisation arbetar som en lärande organisation och huruvida de tar tillvara på intern kunskapsförmedling mellan sina underföreningar. Metod: Vår studie grundar sig i en djupare förståelse för dels människors agerande men även rutiner och arbetssätt inom olika föreningar, valde vi att genomföra intervjuer med personer från basketföreningar med KFUM-anknytning samt en intervju med personen som arbetar som kommunikationsansvarig hos KFUM Sverige, vars arbetsuppgifter behandlar kommunikation med KFUM:s föreningar i hela Sverige. Resultat och slutsats: Efter genomförd studie kan vi dra slutsatserna att KFUM:s basketföreningar är förändringsbenägna och de arbetar som lärande organisationer på individuell nivå men att KFUM Sverige, på nationell nivå, har brister i sin lärande förmåga. Vi anser att detta skulle kunna förbättras genom införande av system som gynnar kunskapsdelning och att organisationen i sig behöver arbeta för att förbättra sin organisatoriska identitet då detta är ett sätt för organisationen att få en organisationskultur som främjar lärande mellan de lokala föreningarna.

Studien syftar till att från den anställdes perspektiv skapa en större förståelse för relationen mellan organisationens identitet och den anställdes förtroende för ledaren. Då studiens syfte har varit att skapa en ökad förståelse för relationen mellan dessa två begrepp så valdes en kvalitativ metod. Vid datainsamlingen har semistrukturerade intervjuer utförts. Dessa genomfördes med 10 anställda fastighetsmäklare i Stockholm, Gävle och Sandviken och datan har sedan analyserats genom en tematisk analys. Vidare presenteras och diskuteras resultatet. Resultaten indikerar att den anställdes förtroende för sin lokala ledare påverkar dennes identifikation och organisationsidentiteten. Vidare ser vi även tecken på att identifikationen och organisationsidentiteten påverkar varandra. / Aim: The aim of the study is to from the employee’s perspective create an increased understanding of the relationship between the organizational identity and the employee´s trust in its leader. Method: Since the aim of the study is to increase the understanding of how organizational identity and trust for the leader is experienced a qualitative method have been chosen. For the data collection semi-structured interviews have been used and the ten persons who have been interviewed are employed as real-estate agents in Stockholm, Gävle and Sandviken. The material has later been analyzed through a thematic analysis and the results have been presented and discussed. Result & Conclusions: The study's results demonstrate that the employee’s trust in their local leaders affect their identification with the organization as well as the organizational identity. Furthermore, the study indicates that identification and the organizational identity influence each other.

Master of Arts / Department of Communication Studies / Sarah Riforgiate / Internships provide students with valuable learning experiences in their chosen fields. Considering that one of the most important components of students’ learning experiences during an internship is learning how to socialize and assimilate into organizational settings, an internship stage model should be able to account for this particular process – organizational assimilation. This study contends that existing internship stage models overlap and can be enhanced by organizational assimilation theory (Jablin, 1987). Therefore, this qualitative study includes data from 13 semi-structured interviews with students who participated in formal internships in order to explore students’ assimilation experiences during the course of their internships. Additionally, how interns view the host organization’s identity and its impact on their assimilation experience was examined. Findings indicate that students are more adaptive to socialization than individualization in terms of their responsibilities and roles during organizational assimilation. Further, the concept of organizational identity was so complex and intricate that students could not grasp their host organizations’ identity during the course of their internships; instead, through their organizational assimilation experience, participants learned the culture of the organizations.

<p>In 2017, Shea Moisture, a company that created natural hair products targeted primarily toward Black women, released an online video in which ostensibly white and multiracial women discussed the struggles they encountered in accepting their natural hair. This video led to a public relations crisis for the organization as a result of its perceived exclusion of the organization’s core public--Black women with 4C hair, who arguably experience the highest levels of discrimination on account of their natural hair. This study explored the role of identity and identification in this crisis by conducting a qualitative content analysis of identification types in Black men and women’s online responses to the video. Emotions present in the online posts were used as rhetorical indicators of deidentification, ambivalent identification, identification or disidentification. The findings of this study, contextualized within the socio-political context of the crisis, suggest that responses to Shea Moisture’s video were informed by : its public’s identification with one another, their construal and co-construction of the organization’s identity as a Black business, and their identification with the organization on the basis of this identity. This study reinforces the role played by publics in co-constructing an organization’s identity and reveals the importance of sociopolitical realities and uneven power relations to publics’ identification. This study also introduces the concept of “protected identification” to describe a mode of identification that informed by a socio-political context wherein marginalization exists, comes with a unique set of expectations for the actions of an organization. </p>

Thesis advisor: Michael G. Pratt / Through two inductive qualitative studies, this dissertation explores the surprising emergence, and members’ subsequent responses, to value-laden claims regarding “why we exist” – what members themselves and scholarship refers to as organizational purpose. Study One finds that, although unintended, the implementation of specific practices within this organization generated powerful emotional energy amongst members. Leaders subsequently grafted this energy into organizational symbols and engaged in meaning-making to articulate what this energy meant for why the organization existed. This study advances theories of organizational identity formation and Selznick’s institutionalism by highlighting an alternative unit of analysis focused on features of shared experiences rather than discourse, documenting an alternative generative mechanism focused on emotional energy, and recasting leaders not as ideological visionaries engaged in sensegiving, but by setting in place conditions to build, harvest, and articulate emotional energy. Study Two examines members subsequent responses to these value-laden claims, finding that members either broadly rejected claims finding them akin to a desired projected image or broadly accepted claims finding them to be real and implicating of the organization itself. These responses varied depending on various ways members construed the credibility of the organization, as well as the plausibility of the organization’s claims. This study advances theories of how members accept or reject organizational meanings by highlighting the ways in which members anthropomorphize organizations – treating them as if they were human beings – and evaluating claims in light of what they see as organizational traits, motives, and intentions. I addition, this study advances theory by identifying the critical importance of perceiving how products and services – “what we do” – is linked to claims regarding “why we exist.” / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Management and Organization.

This longitudinal case study examines how the process of radical organizational change unfolded within EES Consulting (EES). EES was an international engineering and environmental services consulting firm that experienced significant internal cultural difficulties in the early 1990s, such that OCI Consulting predicted the firm would fail within 18 months. This study focuses upon the Canadian operations, and their experience in becoming a top company to work for in Canada following their adoption of the Balanced Scorecard in 1999. The study employed a mixed-methods methodology, involving semi-structured and informal interviews, participant observation, third-party survey data, and internal corporate documents. Based upon this data, EES’ experience did not conform to that described by traditional change models (Lewin’s three-stage, punctuated equilibrium, or organizational development models) in terms of the pace, sequence, or linearity of change. Rather, EES’ experience was more consistent with recent conceptualizations of change as a continuous, emergent process, involving loops and iterations. Although EES members suggested that change was attributable to their adoption of the Balanced Scorecard, this technology merely served as the catalyst for subsequent organizational social dynamics that produced change. Specifically, change at EES occurred through negotiated redefinition of the social structures governing members’ actions. Thus, radical organizational change represented an act of social construction between members. This study’s key contribution is the development of a theoretical extension to Giddens’ (1984) structuration theory, involving a synthesis with the concept of organizational identity. Organizational identity is defined as the key interpretive scheme mediating the relationship between the institutional realm and action. Modifying identity enables alternative conceptualizations of structure, which consequently enable new courses of action by members. However, lasting change depends upon the continued legitimation and reproduction of these alternative structures, combined with the abandonment of previous structures. / Organizational Analysis