NTERNATIONAL R EVIEW OF I NDUSTRIAL AND O RGANIZATIONAL P SYCHOLOGY 2005 group memberships provide a basis for assessing the significance of particular

70 I NTERNATIONAL R EVIEW OF I NDUSTRIAL AND O RGANIZATIONAL P SYCHOLOGY 2005 group memberships provide a basis for assessing the significance of particular

events but that this assessment also depends on features of social context which imbue those group memberships with a particular meaning. When thinking of themselves in terms of social identity, people interpret the world (e.g., the capacity of events to threaten the self ) in relation to that identity, but in line with general self-categorization principles (e.g., Haslam & Turner, 1992; Turner, 1985), the nature of that identity itself depends on features of comparative and normative context.

Some more recent organizational work that is consistent with these argu- ments is reported by Van Dick and colleagues (Van Dick et al., in press). In this, schoolteachers’ identification with different entities (their current school, their profession, their own career) together with their willingness to engage in acts of organizational citizenship on behalf of their school was assessed in a range of conditions in which these different identities were made salient by means of manipulations of comparative fit. A teacher’s school identity was made salient by indicating that the researchers were comparing the organizational citizenship of teachers between schools; a teacher’s profes- sional identity was made salient by indicating that they were comparing the responses of teachers with kindergarden educators; personal identity was made salient by indicating that the study was looking at individual differ- ences between teachers. As predicted, these manipulations led to changes in the extent towhich the teachers defined themselves in terms of a specific social identity and also affected their willingness to engage in school-based organizational citizenship. School identification was highest in a comparative context in which schools were compared and statistical analysis also con- firmed that increases in citizenship were mediated by contextually induced increases in the salience of school identity.

Along similar lines, research by Haslam, Powell, and Turner (2000) has also shown that changes to normative context impact on employees’ levels of organizational identification and affect their willingness to engage in citizen- ship acts on behalf of that organization. In this research, staff in a geological institute completed a questionnaire which either did or did not refer to the high status and achievements of that organization. This manipulation was intended to increase the normative fit of organizational identity and, hence, to increase willingness to act in the interests of that organization. These pre- dictions were confirmed and accord with similar findings reported by Tyler and his colleagues (e.g., Tyler, 1999) in which an increased capacity to feel pride in an organization translates into higher organizational identification and enhanced citizenship.

Whether or not people internalize and act in terms of a given social identity thus depends critically on features of normative and comparative context. Moreover, as Levine’s work suggests, these same factors also affect the con- tent and meaning of that identity, so that context affects not just how much people identify, but also what they are identifying with. Along these lines,

71 research by Doosje, Haslam, Spears, Oakes, and Koomen (1998) has shown

S OCIAL I DENTITY IN I NDUSTRIAL AND O RGANIZATIONAL P SYCHOLOGY

that psychologists define themselves very differently when they compare themselves with physicists rather than with dramatists, or within a science rather than an arts community (Spears, Doosje et al., 1997). In comparison with dramatists, they see themselves as more scientific; in comparison with physicists, they see themselves as more artistic (Van Rijswijk, Haslam, & Ellemers, in press).

This point has clear relevance for the conceptualization of organizational culture and of the way in which this informs employees’ behavior. Tradition- ally, culture has tended to be understood as representing relatively stable work-related values (Hofstede, 1980; Schein, 1990) and, hence, to be amen- able to relatively objective quantification (e.g., O’Reilly, Chatman, & Caldwell, 1991; Rousseau, 1990). However, principles of self-categorization theory imply that, while history will contribute to patterns of accessibility that give culture an enduring and stable quality, this—like organizational identity itself—should also be potentially fluid and mutable. As contexts change, employees and their organization as a whole should be able to redefine both what they are ‘about’ and where they are going (see also Ashkanasy & Jackson, 2002; Gioia et al., 2000). This point is confirmed in research conducted by Nauta and Sanders (2001) among Dutch manufactur- ing companies. Here the stated goals of manufacturing, planning, and mar- keting departments (together with their employees’ perceptions of other departments’ goals and of the degree to which different departments were contributing to organizational goals) changed dramatically as a function of changes in the comparative context, which served to redefine the meaning of employees’ salient social identities. For example, employees in the planning department perceived their goals to be closer to those of the manufacturing department (e.g., tobe efficient) when comparing themselves with the mar- keting department, but closer to those of marketing (e.g., to deliver service reliably and quickly) when comparing themselves with manufacturing.

Furthermore, just as context defines content, so too it impacts on the capacity of particular exemplars of a category (e.g., individuals, ideas, goals) to represent, and be perceived to represent, that content (Turner, 1987). This point is most germane to the analysis of leadership (e.g., see Duck & Fielding, 1999, 2003; Ellemers, Van den Heuvel et al., in press; Haslam, 2001; Jetten, Duck, Terry, & O’Brien, 2002; Turner & Haslam, 2001; van Knippenberg & Hogg, 2003). Here a large and rapidly expanding body of research has challenged the view that particular individuals are inherently better suited to offices of leadership by virtue of their possession of specific attributes that can be defined and measured independently of context (e.g., charisma; Haslam & Platow, 2001b), or that leadership is determined by a simple matching of specific individuals (or ‘leader proto- types’; Lord & Maher, 1991) with specific contexts, as suggested by con- tingency theories (e.g., after Fiedler, 1964, 1978). Instead, research has