Reaching organizational identity fusion: Developing newcomer’s organizational identification in the Army - Wednesday WIP with Lucas Dufour
When and Where
Speakers
Description
The seminar will run on Bb Collaborate.
Abstract: Historically, the socialization literature has considered that the best way to favor newcomer’s organizational identification was through encouraging newcomers to adjust their identity to fit with the organization’s requirements (Bauer, Morrison & Callister, 1998). Recently, however, studies have demonstrate that newcomers are increasingly driven towards workplaces in which they are able to express their identity (Cha et al., 2019) and that such identity expression could have positive impact on individual and organizational outcomes, including in terms of organizational identification (Monzani, Bark, van Dick & Peiró, 2015). This paper investigates the ideal balance that an organization needs to find in order to maximize newcomer’s organizational identification. Based on 71 longitudinal interviews of cadets, instructors, members of the staff of an Army training camp completed by observation data and archival data, we found that the army combined the two approaches by offering the possibility for cadets to express their previous individual and collective identity while also encouraging cadets to adopt a new identity – an identity presented as attractive and as the expression of their true self.