Identity types
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Identity Types and Organizational Contexts:
An Inquiry into Physicians in Organizations
Introduction
Identity in organizations has been conceptualized in many ways, including but not limited to
organizational identification (Cheney, 1983; Cheney & Tompkins, 1987; Scott, Corman &
Cheney, 1998; Simon, 1976), social identity in groups and organizations (Ashforth & Mael,
1989; Pratt and Rafaeli, 1997; Tajfel & Turner, 1986), identification with multiple targets
(Barker & Tompkins, 1994; DiSanza & Bullis, 1999; Russo, 1998; Scott, 1997), as well as more
postmodern interpretations (Gergen, 1991; Holstein and Gubrium, 2000). The essence of these
interpretations of organizational members’ psychological bond with various organizational,
occupational and professional entities is that individual identity is influenced to some degree by
involvement with social collectivities. Some have argued that organizational members’
decisions and behaviors are influenced by their degree of identification with the group or
organization (Ashforth & Mael, 1989; Barker & Tompkins, 1994; Simon, 1976) while others
have commented on the fragmented nature of identity in an age of multiple identities (Gergen,
1991).
However, these various perspectives on identity in organizations do not help us
understand the way individual organizational members operate within distinct identities. These
perspectives often fail to emphasize that identity is an “individual” construct at its core and, as
such, not all organizational members view the world in which they live and work in the same
way. Moreover, the relationship between identity and identification has not always been made
clear.
The purpose of this study is to investigate identity in organizations, in particular, to
examine differences between the identities of organizational members and to see if a general set
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Convention