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Strategies For Managing Multiple Organizational Identifications

A Case of Competing Identities

Gerald L. Pepper, ,

University of Minnesota Duluth

This case study reveals how organization members communicatively manage multiple targets and sources of identification during a time of company transition. Interview accounts are used to examine how members discursively construct understanding as they discuss two competing value-based identity structures. Results reveal three distinct discursive strategies—comparison, logic, and support—that members use to manage identity tensions, and eight corresponding communicative tactics used to enact those strategies. This focus on communicative strategies and tactics is important because identities are expressed through language, and discourse is the means available to organization members for negotiating various identity structures. Discursive strategies are central to the identity formation process and provide a window into the sensemaking of participants.

Key Words: identification • identity • structuration theory • case study • discursive strategies

Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 4, 528-557 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/0893318903251626


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