Willem, A. Scarbrough, H. Buelens, M. () (Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School)
Abstract
This paper addresses the influence of two competing views of social identity on knowledge integration within organizations. One view sees social identity primarily as a coherent characteristic of organisations, which can leverage knowledge integration by developing loyalty, trust, shared values and implicit norms (Kogut and Zander, 1996). The opposing view considers social identification as multiple and fragmented (Albert, Ashforth and Dutton, 2000; Alvesson, 2000). This fragmented view emphasises the problematic nature of social identity for knowledge integration. The aim of this paper is to examine these competing accounts and to develop insight under what conditions coherent respectively multiple social identities are advantageous for knowledge integration by the comparative analysis of two polar case studies. Our case studies reveal the different effects of a coherent versus multiple identity on knowledge integration and the need for a coherent company-wide social identity to leverage knowledge integration between organizational units.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.