ABSTRACT
Plato, quoting Heraclitus, observed that, “everything flows, nothing stands still.” A less elegant although more popular rephrasing of the sentiment argues that, “the only constant is change.” Although there is certainly some truth underlying these beliefs, especially in the realm of organizations, does it necessarily hold all the time? Take for instance an organization’s identity; not only does the original conceptualization of this phenomenon include the notion of enduringness or consistency (Albert & Whetten, 1985), but also several authors have noted the virtues that arise when companies “stick to your knitting” (Peters & Waterman, 1982) or stay true to “timeless core values” (Collins & Porras, 1994). Even when we see an organization undergo some form of identity change, it is often change in the service of not changing, or as Gagliardi (1986) explained it, “organizations must change to remain what they have always been … [they] must change in order to preserve identity.”
