From relationships to systems: Navigating organizational culture, identity and identification in organizing for pro-social goals

The papers in this dissertation examine, through three related theoretical angles, how actors build, shape, and maintain relationships between organizations and between organizations and individuals to pursue pro-social goals. The lenses of organizational culture as a toolkit (Chapters 2 and 3), organizational identity (Chapter 2), and identification (Chapter 4) are used to shed light on how actors relate to and collaborate with one another in organizing for pro-social goals in the setting of higher education (Chapter 2) and in an impact accelerator supporting social enterprises in low-income countries in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (Chapters 3 and 4). Jointly, the three papers surface how people develop and/or draw on a clear understanding of the demands, expectations, and potentialities of the organizations they serve, and the cultures and identities from which these arise. This allows actors to interweave demands on, respect and leverage differences between, and steer interpretations and enactments of the cultural and identity dynamics that underpin and propel these relationships. In this manner, actors build, shape, and maintain relationships that advance pro-social goals over time. Importantly, all three papers surface that these relationships unfold in larger ‘systems’ of interconnected cultures and identities (within natural and social systems) with which they interact. As a result, relationships entertained to pursue pro-social goals need to be seen in the larger, complex contexts in which they are embedded. Chapter 2 examines how an organization whose identity is subject to differing, including contradictory, demands stemming from two salient identity referents with which it stands in permanent relationships navigates these demands in the ongoing construction of its identity. Based on a qualitative study in the setting of higher education, the paper uncovers how members of the focal organization construct and sustain an organizational identity simultaneously looking different depending on the identity referent against which it is seen by interweaving (divergent) demands so that the organization can blend into, and thus maintain its relationships with, both referents. The study further adds to our understanding of the linkages between identity and culture by showing how the use of cultural strategies of action enables and enacts identity blending. Chapter 3 investigates how members of different organizational cultures bring these together to successfully address shared pro-social goals over time. Based on extensive observational, interview, and archival data collected with TRANSFORM, a joint initiative between Unilever, the UK’s FCDO (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office), and EY that supports social enterprises in low-income countries in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, the paper develops as its primary contribution the concept of a bounded, incrementally assembled, and dynamically updated inter-organizational culture. This informs our understanding of organizational action on problems spanning individual organizations and the relationships required to enable and sustain it. Chapter 4 examines how members of a collective entity with which they are connected through a relationship of identification actively shape its identity, and thus the relationship with the collective. Also based on my study of TRANSFORM, the paper theorizes a continually unfolding process of shaping the collective identity, as the target of identification. Members’ understanding of the collective identity as a process evolving over time, that is amenable to influence from them, bolsters and sustains the relationship of identification.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Gapp, Tirza

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Howard-Grenville, Jennifer
• Roulet, Thomas

• Identification
• Organization theory
• Organizational culture
• Organizational identity
• Pro-social goals

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/9f7f4566-17b5-4913-a776-a63cb4c85603/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.109213

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/369373