Exploring How Organizational Identity is Affected By the Arrival of New Members

This paper shows that the arrival of new members does not affect identity understandings in an organization to the point that its overall conceptualization can no longer be confirmed. Though an overall meaning of the organization relates to members’ understandings, these understandings exist, to a certain extent, irrespectively of the individuals holding them; they relate ultimately to membership logics existing independently of new members’ arrival. This knowledge qualifies managers in their ability to handle multiple understandings of an organization, because they understand how to provide a sense of unity through how members’ departmental and functional affiliations shape identity understandings.