Psychological Bonds in Organizations

Although organizational scholars have developed a considerable body of knowledge on the psychological bonds that develop between individuals and organizations in general, and on the notion of organizational identification in particular, there remain to date different and competing explanations of why individuals identify and form strong psychological bonds with organizations. Thus, this chapter has four distinct objectives. Firstly, it discusses the nature of organizational identification and establishes common ground on what the concept is and how it differs from related concepts. Secondly, it critically examines the potential impact of organizational identification, and suggests a different stance which advocates the selection of more proximal outcome variables when testing its impact in organizational settings. Thirdly, it reviews the three key explanations found in the literature for the occurrence of organizational identification and integrates them into a theoretical framework used in the later empirical chapters. Fourth and finally, I discuss the current existing work on organizational identification in university settings and highlight the key findings of this stream of organizational research.