Exploring Organizational Identity in Strategy Work: Towards an ...

Exploring Organizational Identity in Strategy Work:
Towards an Embodied Metaphor Perspective
Claus D. Jacobs
The concept of organizational identity
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Organizational identity:
concept and perspectives
• Organizational identity refers to the collectively held
self-concept of “who we are as an organization” (Sillince, 2006)
• Initially, Albert and Whetten (1985) suggested organizational identity
convergent, objective set of central, enduring and distinctive
characteristics of an organization
• However and in challenging these premises,
others have suggested it as a social accomplishment in terms
of a “temporary, context-sensitive and evolving set of constructions”
(Alvesson et al., 2008: 6)
• Such social constructionist, processual view puts identity work
as the forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening or revising
identity-related constructions (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003)
at the heart of scholarly interest
Organizational identity, strategy and metaphors
• The relevance of identity to strategy depends, to a large extent,
on the specific concept of strategy
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