Abstract Although managing organizational identities of employees has been becoming an important means of organizational control, academics cannot achieve agreements on the issue about how the organization identity is formed. Drawing upon Alvesson and Willmott's (2002) discussion, this paper further exposes the dynamic interaction process of identity work and identity regulation through an exploratory case study, in which a group of managers’ work experiences were investigated and interpreted in depth. Findings reveal that the interaction between identity work and identity regulation is actually a negotiation between organizations and individuals on whether identity definitions or role definitions should be obeyed or updated, and the personal development as well as the organizational development could be achieved through this continual negation and improvement process.
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