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Corley: Identity ambiguity in the wake of corporate spin-off

10 important questions on Corley: Identity ambiguity in the wake of corporate spin-off

Corleys inductive, interpretive case study of organizational identity change in the spin-off of a company. What did the findings revealed?

Previously unreported aspects of organizational change including organization members' collective experience of 'change overload' and the presence of temporal identity discrepancies in the emergence of the identity ambiguity.

Summarize the article of Corley.

with organizational change come unknowns. With unknowns come ambiguities. When those ambiguities concert the organization's identity, it becomes difficult for members to make sense of 'who we are as an organization'. Especially when traditional referents for understanding that identity lose their relevance.

What is a spin-off (Corley)?

Identity change of an organizational entity from its parents. During a spin-ff, issues of change and identity converge on a single, interrupting and potentially profound event. The creation of an independent organization seeking its own survival, growth and success. Such changes are often accompanied with ambiguity. Ambiguity might be a feature of most change efforts, but when ambiguity extends the organization's identity, change becomes a precarious enterprise (onzekere onderneming).
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What is the leaders' responses to sensegeving imperative? (3)

1. Refine the desired future image
2. Branding efforts
3. Modeling behaviors

Formulate the identity change context 4 (Slides)

1. Identity ambiguity: we're not sure who we are right now and we need to figure it out soon
2. Sensegiving imperative: a sense of urgency that definitive action was needed
3. Change overload: information overload
4. Identity tensions: multiple views about who the company was becoming

What are three triggers of identity change? (slides)

1. Social referent change: other companies that organization members use as a comparison to help them determine who they are as a company
2. Temporal identity discrepancies: inconsistency between expressed and implied identity
3. Construed external image discrepancies: incongruities between members view organizations and their perceptions of how outsiders saw their organization.

According to Corley it is possible to conceive of at least two basic ways in which organizational identity change can occur through:

1. Change in the labels used to express identity: such as a shift from describing the organization as a "computer company" to a "technology solutions company".
2. Change in the meaning underlying those labels: what is means to be a "technology solutions company" today is different from what it meant previously.
> Both forms of identity change can be adaptive for an organization, but each takes on a different form depending on whether change is occurring at the level of the labels or at the level of meaning.

What do identity labels represent? (Corley)

The symbolic expression of how organization members collectively answer the question: who are we as an organization?

What is organizational identity according to Corley?

The members' collective shared sense of who they are as an organization. Insiders' perceptions and beliefs about what distinguishes their organization from other and provides foundation for presenting the organization to external audience.

What is identity ambiguity according to Corley?

A collective state wherein organization members found themselves without a good sense of who they were as independent organization during and after the spin-off or a sense of what the future held for them as an organization. It implies possible interpretations about which core features should define the changed organization.

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