Organizational Identity and Identification in Contemporary Work Environments: The Role of Leadership

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Erk P. Piening
• Subject Area: Operations Management and Computer Science for Business Administration
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 527673968

The world of work and employment is rapidly changing. Contemporary organizations have become dynamic and open systems in which roles, responsibilities, and boundaries are increasingly blurring, with many employees working from home, regularly switching between multiple projects and job assignments, and operating outside formal job descriptions and authority structures. While more flexible and agile forms of work are generally desirable, they may also have unintended consequences for organizations and employees. Scholars have particularly warned that these developments lead to an erosion of the employee-organization relationship. Accordingly, the state of continuous flux many organizations are in, lack of formal structures, and limited interaction with coworkers and mangers make it difficult for employees to develop a clear sense their organization’s identity. Employees who do not know what an organization stands for and in which direction it is going, in turn, are less likely to develop a sense of oneness with and belonging to the organization or, in other words, to identify with it. This raises the question of how organizations can maintain a strong organizational identity that provides a basis for identification? The literature suggests that leadership is a primary means through which organizations exert influence on employees’ organizational identity perceptions and identification. There is a growing body of research on "identity leadership" suggesting that organizations come to be known to a significant extent through the words and deeds of leaders. According to this perspective, leaders can be seen as identity ambassadors who have the capacity to influence identity construction within organizations and mobilize others by virtue of representing, advancing, creating, and embedding a sense of social identity that is shared with potential followers. However, while research on identity leadership has progressed steadily over the last couple of years ist 1) leader-centric perspective that neglects the fact that leaders and followers mutually influence each other, 2) focus on formally appointed leaders, and 3) lack of context-sensitivity limit our understanding of this phenomenon. Against this background, the main purpose of this grant proposal is to provide a better understanding of how, when, and why (formal and informal) leadership influences identity and identification processes in contemporary organizational work settings. Combining quantitative and qualitative data analyses, we specifically seek to provide a contextualized and relational understanding of identity leadership.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants