Do New Organizational Forms Threaten Social Identity and Learning?

Despite the growing technical possibilities for individuals and organizations to be connected through networks, the restructuring of many workplaces has detached people from a long-term stable association with employing organizations (Littler, 2000; Cascio, 2002). This creates insecurity and anxiety for many. It has often been accompanied by a breach of the trust which prevailed between employers and employees (Child and Rodrigues, 2004), and it therefore weakens the sources of work-related social identity. Albert, Ashforth, and Dutton (2000: 13–14) comment that ‘given the massive corporate downsizings of recent years, the decrease in long-term relational contracts in favor of shorter-term transactional ones, and the growth in boundaryless careers . . . the notion of identification with and loyalty to one’s employer, workgroup, or occupation may seem quite quaint, even naïve.’ Insofar as identification with organizations is a condition for people to contribute to learning within them, this would be ironic because learning is one of the key processes that new organizational forms are intended to promote.

One feature in this trend is the disappearance of the former supports for occupational identity as new organizational forms are adopted. Previously, many specialists could rely on occupational credentialism (Collins, 1979) to provide an assured income stream and career progression within traditional functionally structured organizations. Today, many more people with specialized competencies have to rely on contract work secured on the basis of their standing in the labor market. The rise of a new educated managerial elite, and of new non-traditional specialties such as brand developers, software designers, and financial analysts, has added to the ranks of knowledge workers and further blurred the traditional lines of occupational identity. Some knowledge workers are typically located within the core of an organizational system, such as senior managers and key technical personnel. Others are today more usually hired in on contract in a consulting capacity, and this can even apply to groups who used to occupy core roles such as HRM specialists and maintenance engineers. These developments move the source of specialist identity away from the organized profession, skilled trade union, or other occupational association and towards the self-standing individual or specialized firms through which people offer their services in the market. The shift away from a credentialist occupational identity may assist organizational learning by increasing the willingness of specialists to work flexibly with others in learning-directed inter-disciplinary teams and work units. On the other hand, the forced removal of people from core to periphery, or the fear that they may be the next to go, is not likely to motivate them to contribute enthusiastically to the organizational learning process. Marketization is likely to limit their loyalty to a given organization and may qualify the extent to which they are willing to disclose their proprietary knowledge and skills.

By contrast, national identity appears to have been enhanced rather than weakened by the impact of globalization, and the modern information and communication technologies that facilitate it. Paradoxically, at the same time as national transactional boundaries weaken there is a increased awareness of cultural differences and a growing celebration of cultural diversity (Robertson, 1995). New technology dramatically improves communication between the members of cultural groups and provides opportunities for their self-expression. It also appears that people’s awareness of their own culture and identity is promoted by the provision of more information about other societies or communities, which enables comparisons that clarify cultural distinctiveness. This enhanced awareness of national identity may add to the difficulties of achieving learning that relies upon integration between different national groups.

It thus appears that the nature and configuration of national and occupational identities are changing in the contemporary world. Much of this change is associated with the evolution of new organizational forms. They are presenting new challenges for aligning group social identities with the goal of organizational learning. Indeed, the greatest impact on organizational learning may actually come though the way that new forms reduce the identification people have with any one organization and the commitment they are willing to give to it. This puts people into a situation where they may have to devote considerable effort to re-establishing their identities through learning new inter-subjective meanings (Corley and Gioia, 2003). Many organizations are outsourcing activities and hollowing themselves out. This places a premium on the ability of the remaining core groups to achieve a requisite level and quality of learning though harnessing contributions from others that have become externalized. The issue becomes particularly acute with the ‘virtual organization.’

According to Mowshowitz (1994: 270), ‘the essence of the virtual organization is the management of goal-oriented activity in a way that is independent of the means for its realization. This implies a logical separation between the conception and planning of an activity, on the one hand, and its implementation on the other’. This concept could readily deny any sense of identification with the collective activity to people in the system other than those in the leading core group. It is partly for this reason that many corporations have been devoting considerable effort to enhancing their public identities, in the form of corporate images and brand names. For, in addition to the market appeal of strong images and brands, it is essential for the leaders of virtual organizations to create some basis of identification with, and understanding of, their goals if they are to generate the will and purpose to compete with more integrated companies. More specifically, there is a danger that the further an organization moves towards a virtual form, with arms length relationships based on contract rather than personal relationship, the less readily can it communicate the tacit knowledge that is essential for successful collective learning.