ReputationInstitute

This morning’s Plenary included two great talks on Identity.

What makes people proud to be associated with an organization? People say “I was an IBMer for 13 years” with pride. Would people say the same thing about working at Halliburton? And how would either identification change people’s behavior? In the first of the two talks Dr. Janet Dukerich (University of Texas) focused on these types of questions by looking at Multiple Professional Identities in Hospitals.

Her overall premise is that having a strong identification with a hospital system leads to support of that system (such as referring patients to a specific system over competing systems, and speaking well of the system).

Additionally, and just as importantly, Dr. Dukerich looked at the attractiveness of both a system’s identity (What does this system stand for?) and image (What do people say about it?) in determining the strength of identification. Dr. Dukerich’s research shows a positive relationship between the attractiveness of a system’s identity, external image, and strength of organizational identification. In addition, strong organizational identification was positively related to the support indicators listed above.

As with much identity and reputation research this finding reinforces the essential idea of perceptions about an organization being closely linked to how people act towards an organization. In addition, Dr. Dukerich’s findings re-iterated the need for recognizing that there are multiple identity targets in organizations and some may be in conflict with each other. So, it is essential to have a deep understanding of both what an organization stands for as well as how people think others see the organization.

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Why do people have very strong, polarized opinions about certain people and organizations? Ask people what they think about Wal-Mart or George W. Bush and it is certain that your will get many emotional responses. This is what Dr. Marlena Fiol, (Professor of Strategic Management, University of Colorado at Denver, Graduate School of Business Administration) looked at in her talk on Managing Intractable Identity-Reputation Conflicts These intractable identity conflicts are those where each group involved has framed a very emotional cause for its existence, often explained in polarizing stereotypes, with success seemingly only possible at its adversary’s demise.

Dr. Fiol’s specific research focuses on these conflicts in the relationship between doctors and hospital administrators in the U.S. The key means to resolve these types of conflicts, Dr. Fiol argues, is decoupling That is, recognizing that the ‘other’ is not all bad, ‘we’ are not all good, and there are areas of mutual interest. Her preliminary results indicate that the process of decoupling (at a specific medical center where her research was conducted) showed a decrease in complaints from both sides, a decrease in how ‘painful’ the work environment was perceived to be, and an overall increase in satisfaction.

To conclude, Dr. Fiol argues, that if an organization’s Reputation enhancement initiatives seem to be failing, one of the key things to look at is the identities that may be threatened. So, it is essential to decouple and acknowledge other organizations’ identities before attempting to project an organization’s own positive image. This is a key take-away for practitioner’s who are a) building a strategy for enhancing reputation with its stakeholders (you need to have a deep understanding of what your stakeholders expect before engaging) or are b) seeing poor results from existing initiatives (stop and confirm that your engagement has a primary focus on stakeholder expectations rather than just what you want to project).