Organizational Identity Change in Cross-Institutional Contexts.

This paper draws on an in-depth longitudinal investigation of organizational identity change within a business firm that became increasingly embedded in long-term partnerships with UK hospitals, education authorities and schools over a 12-year period. The study illustrates how becoming embedded in a new institutional environment can lead a business firm to develop a more complex hybrid organisational identity wherein utilitarian and normative self conceptions begin to co-exist. The grounded model of identity change presented in this paper illustrates how this process of identity change unfolded along two interrelated paths which encompass purposeful leader-led identity work at the centre of the organization - e.g. institutional bricolage, identity claiming, symbolic acts - and naturalistic changes at the boundaries of the organization - e.g. identification with public service partners' goals and processes of institutionalization. When combined, these mutually reinforcing process encouraged a radical shift in members' collective self conceptions. The findings advance our understanding of organizational identity by delineating how organizational identity change can occur in more complex institutional environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]