ABSTRACT
Organizational identity research has proliferated in recent years, and the core community of identity scholars has steadily expanded to include institutionalists, ecologists, and strategy scholars. Although this growth and progress are encouraging, several recalcitrant and deep-rooted questions seem to repeatedly emerge in theoretical discussions of organizational identity. These questions, which also spill over into empirical identity research, include the following:
How can we reconcile the compelling idea that organizations have identities that are unique, internally generated, and self-possessed with the equally powerful observation that organizational identities are externally ascribed and categorical in nature?
In a similar vein, how can we reconcile the idea that organizational identity is a font of purposive action and a resource for agentic organizational behavior with the observation that it represents a key source of social constraint?
How can we reconcile the idea that organizational identity represents a shared set of foundational beliefs that serves a socially integrative function with the commonly observed reality of identity multiplicity, fragmentation, and conflict within individual organizations?
