Corporate Culture and Employee Identity: Cooption or Commitment through Contestation?
Existing studies provide limited perspectives on consequences of corporate attempts to co-opt employees' identities and gain their commitment to management-espoused, values-based culture change, especially when employees perceive that managers are not living the required values. We conducted a...
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| Format: | Journal Article |
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Henry Stewart Publications
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/34966 |
| _version_ | 1848754367454248960 |
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| author | Price, Christine Whiteley, Alma |
| author_facet | Price, Christine Whiteley, Alma |
| author_sort | Price, Christine |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Existing studies provide limited perspectives on consequences of corporate attempts to co-opt employees' identities and gain their commitment to management-espoused, values-based culture change, especially when employees perceive that managers are not living the required values. We conducted a grounded, empirical study within the Australian financial sector and explored employees' narrated experiences of living through a strategic cultural change programme, one which fostered strong social identification with the organization. Employees' informal folkloric activities privately validated (or otherwise) the corporate values through management's enactment of them: a derived and interpretative process we describe as employee ‘received practice’. When employees negatively experienced critical incidents, they had no legitimate avenue for contested meaning-making activities to resolve their concern; there was no available ‘negotiated practice’. Employee disengagement, diminished commitment and loss of discretionary energy resulted. Contributing to theory building, this paper presents ‘commitment through contestation’ as a sustainable, co-created corporate culture process. We propose that design of a conducive and situated environment, which validates folkloric discourse and includes employees in controversial dialogue within a relationship of mutuality, may foster sustainable cultural change by the addressing of value-threatening events and by allowing reaffirmation of both employee identification and their conditional commitment to the organization. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T08:39:17Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-34966 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T08:39:17Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | Henry Stewart Publications |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-349662017-09-13T15:29:34Z Corporate Culture and Employee Identity: Cooption or Commitment through Contestation? Price, Christine Whiteley, Alma identity corporate culture Contestation folkloric commitment Existing studies provide limited perspectives on consequences of corporate attempts to co-opt employees' identities and gain their commitment to management-espoused, values-based culture change, especially when employees perceive that managers are not living the required values. We conducted a grounded, empirical study within the Australian financial sector and explored employees' narrated experiences of living through a strategic cultural change programme, one which fostered strong social identification with the organization. Employees' informal folkloric activities privately validated (or otherwise) the corporate values through management's enactment of them: a derived and interpretative process we describe as employee ‘received practice’. When employees negatively experienced critical incidents, they had no legitimate avenue for contested meaning-making activities to resolve their concern; there was no available ‘negotiated practice’. Employee disengagement, diminished commitment and loss of discretionary energy resulted. Contributing to theory building, this paper presents ‘commitment through contestation’ as a sustainable, co-created corporate culture process. We propose that design of a conducive and situated environment, which validates folkloric discourse and includes employees in controversial dialogue within a relationship of mutuality, may foster sustainable cultural change by the addressing of value-threatening events and by allowing reaffirmation of both employee identification and their conditional commitment to the organization. 2014 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/34966 10.1080/14697017.2014.896391 Henry Stewart Publications restricted |
| spellingShingle | identity corporate culture Contestation folkloric commitment Price, Christine Whiteley, Alma Corporate Culture and Employee Identity: Cooption or Commitment through Contestation? |
| title | Corporate Culture and Employee Identity: Cooption or Commitment through Contestation? |
| title_full | Corporate Culture and Employee Identity: Cooption or Commitment through Contestation? |
| title_fullStr | Corporate Culture and Employee Identity: Cooption or Commitment through Contestation? |
| title_full_unstemmed | Corporate Culture and Employee Identity: Cooption or Commitment through Contestation? |
| title_short | Corporate Culture and Employee Identity: Cooption or Commitment through Contestation? |
| title_sort | corporate culture and employee identity: cooption or commitment through contestation? |
| topic | identity corporate culture Contestation folkloric commitment |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/34966 |