Résumé

Transformational changes in the life of an organization—whether prompted by internal initiatives or external shifts—risk disrupting organizational members’ relationship with the organization they identify with. While a growing body of studies have examined how employees revisit their identification in response to organizational breaches, we know far less about how organizational initiatives—even those perceived as positive—may challenge an intact identification. We shed light on this topic through a three-year ethnographic case study of a multinational engineering company, observing a range of identification responses following an initially endorsed strategic change. Specifically, our case points to the process of change, rather than its objective, causing gradual yet substantive erosion of identification for affected employees. The process characteristics drive what we term identification limbo and identification ambiguity, leading to distinct identification responses that shed a new light on how schizo-, split-, de-, and dis-identification may co-occur in reaction to the same strategic change. We contribute to the expanded identification literature by providing a theoretical model that reflects how employee identification may wax and wane in response to bona fide organizational change.

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