The Role of Social Identity in Organizational Communication Over Time

This chapter examines theories, conceptualizations, and research concerning social identity, organizational identification, and organizational communication over time. The first section focuses on the development of social identity theory, selfcategorization theory, and the introduction of multiple organizational identities (the 1970s). The second section describes how organizational identification is perceived from a management and a communicative perspective (the 1980s and 1990s). These two streams developed in parallel over time and show both differences and shared elements. The role of communication in organizational identification is also extensively described in the chapter’s third section, both from a management/organizational behavior perspective and a communication-centered perspective (beginning of the 21st century). The final section focuses on the role of social media in organizational identification over the past decade. It discusses identification as a result and as an antecedent of social media usage in organizations. The chapter concludes with some challenging ideas for future research. However, the question “Which came first, the chicken (organizational identification) or the egg (organizational communication)?” remains unanswered. In short, we may call this book chapter a brief history lesson on the development of social identification in organizational communication research, with an intentional open ending.