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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the area of identification from an organizational communication perspective. In so doing, the author attempts to achieve three major goals. First is an examination of the concept of organizational identification, where the author examines what this concept means, how scholars have defined this concept, how both the definition and nature of identification have changed over the past several decades, and why both scholars and practitioners should be interested in issues of identification. Second, the author examines how scholars have studied issues of identification and how, methodologically, there seems to have been a shift in how one uncovers employee identification with one or more organizational targets (e.g. profession, organization, department, team). Finally, the author concludes with a detailed analysis of several gaps in the area of organizational identification as represented within the literature, as well as suggestions for future research and how the nature of organizations has perhaps forced scholars to re-think, re-conceptualize, and re-model what it truly means for an employee to “become identified.”

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