Risks of Over-identification

The textbook warns about the risks of high levels of identification of employees (page 115) to the organization. This may manifest itself in over-conformity, a lack of creativity, and the risk of lack of risk-taking!

I believe the case of employees staying with one organization over the course of several years, perhaps decades or even a lifetime falls under this scenario. They grow so attached to the organization that they become mypoic and fail to realize that there exist various different cultural norms and that their organization represents only one among many such norms.

This shows the hazards of managers who stay with one company for such a long time that they begin to expect unopposed acceptance by employees of everything that management says, instead of encouraging their employees to challenge existing theories in the light of new facts. This has the unfortunate potential to hinder the improvement of an organization. As we saw in Chapter two of the textbook, it is only by constantly rising up to challenges that an organization evolves in a healthy manner.

What is Identity?

Page 109 of the textbook provides a historical account of identity - in ancient Greece, the etymological root of the term actually meant SIMILARITY rather than INDIVIDUALITY. The word referred to in the ancient context was that which connected various people, such as the people of Athens identifying themselves with the "Athenian Identity". Under this ancient definition of the term, as an MBA student at San Jose state University, I would identify myself with other students at San Jose State University (we share the same University) or as an MBA student, I would identify myself with MBA students in other universities (we are in the same discipline).

It is interesting that the term Identity when used in late eighteenth century Europe, started being referred to an individual self exhibiting Uniqueness rather than Similarity. This is the meaning of IDENTITY that we generally know and use today.