ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY

Locating a starting point irresistibly leads to stepping back and rediscovering the identity of one’s organization (Diamond, 1993). The questions are: “Who are we?” and “What do we do?” They must be answered to create a starting point for achieving organizational plasticity. This discovery process leads to the development of insights into how the people and parts of one’s current organization are connected together and how well they are functioning, thereby creating the basis for recasting organizational identity in new and possibly unfamiliar organizational terms. This organizational diagnosis explores the organization as a product of management and employee conscious and unconscious dynamics. Organizational culture is viewed to be a by-product of the subjective and intersubjective aspects of organizational life. Who we are is a question that yields an answer that is more than simply an “industry leading organization developing the finest product or services.” Who we are in this context describes the organization as it is known and experienced from within by the executives and employees who create it every day when they come to work. In sum, organizational identity represents the substance of workplace experience that includes functional and dysfunctional aspects of leadership and followership that enhance and inhibit organizational performance and adaptiveness. Exploring these elements of organizational identity permits inspection and reflection upon the fundamental nature of the organization. Called into question are human motivations and behaviors, some of which may be distressing to discuss if not foreboding and threatening when the thoughts, feelings and actions of powerful executives become the focus (Argyris, 1982). However, it is from just this level of analysis that the potential for achieving dynamic adaptiveness and organizational plasticity emerges. The discovery of organizational identity folds back upon dynamic workplace theory. The subjective and intersubjective nature of organizational life is the “stuff” of the theory. The psychodynamic nature of the theory resides in intrapersonal and interpersonal space where many usually unseen and uninspected conscious and unconscious dynamics cast many shadows upon the outward appearance of the organization and its performance. The theory, therefore, informs this discovery of organizational identity by providing a cognitive map. What it is like to work here is the nature of the experience of the moment, whether it is chaotic, bureaucratic, charismatic or balanced. It is in this space between the theoretical construct of organizational identity and dynamic workplace theory that discovery and creativity takes place to understand where we are and where we want to be. These perspectives also point to the direction and means of change to achieve organizational plasticity necessitated by the need to accept the limits of control imposed by human nature.