They Put Themselves Out There: A Longitudinal Study of Organizational Expressiveness
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
They Put Themselves Out There: A Longitudinal Study of Organizational Expressiveness Arild Wæraas1
© Reputation Institute and Springer Nature Limited 2019
Abstract This longitudinal study analyzes organizational expressiveness over a 35-year period. On the basis of 1307 official selfnarratives retrieved from employment advertisements published in a major Norwegian newspaper between 1980 and 2015, the study tracks the expression of organizational identity labels over time. It seeks to determine how organizational expressiveness evolves and changes in symbolic meaning, including which overarching identity—the utilitarian or the normative identity—becomes more prevalent over time. Specifically, expressed labels change (1) in terms of their prevalence, suggesting that some labels display increasing long-term trends, whereas others display declining trends, and (2) in terms of their composition and meaning, suggesting that organizations gradually rely on an increasing portfolio of labels to express who they are and what they represent. Over time, these changes weaken the expression of a utilitarian identity, whereas the normative identity is strengthened. Keywords Organizational expressiveness · Organizational identity · Organizational identity labels · Employment advertisements
Introduction Faced with growing pressures to manage reputation, build unique organizational brands, and attract customers and talented employees, modern organizations compete based on their ability to “put themselves out there, to convey who they are, what they do, and what they stand for” (Fombrun and van Riel 2004, p. 95). In so doing, organizations express their identities through labels that reflect their central, unique, and enduring features (Albert and Whetten 1985). The assumed enduring nature of organizational identity suggests that expressions of identity remain relatively constant over time. During the last 10–15 years, however, scholars have begun to treat organizational identity as an unstable and flexible phenomenon. Gioia et al. (2000) distinguish between the labels used by organizational members to express who they are as a collective, and the meanings associated with these labels, arguing that the labels persist * Arild Wæraas [email protected] 1
School of Business and Economics, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Christian Magnus Falsens vei 18, 1430 Ås, Norway
while the meanings gradually evolve. Others have noted that organizational identity is about determining “who do we want to be,” thereby reflecting a deliberate movement from one state to a more desired state (Dacin and Brown 2002; Dowling and Otubanjo 2011; Gioia et al. 2002). Again others have suggested that organizational identity is ongoing work-in-progress involving questions such as “how are we becoming” rather than “who are we,” highlighting the need for a process perspective on organizational identity (Schultz et al. 2012). If organizational identity changes over time, then the external expression of organizational identity is li
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