Organizational Identification in Public Organizations: Effects of Message Characteristics and Identity Narratives in Communication

Organizational identification (OI) – the extent to which an organizational member defines herself/himself with reference to her/his organizational membership (Ashforth & Mael, 1989) – has gained traction as a “root... [ view full abstract ]

Organizational identification (OI) – the extent to which an organizational member defines herself/himself with reference to her/his organizational membership (Ashforth & Mael, 1989) – has gained traction as a “root construct” in Management research that has important impacts on performance-related behavior and organizational outcomes (Ashforth et al. 2008). However, in Public Administration research, OI has received limited attention (see discussions in Hassan, 2012 and Campbell, 2015). Recently, management scholars have started to explore in what ways and to what extent organizations can influence the OI of their employees. Tanis & Beukeboom (2011), for example, have demonstrated that employees’ OI could be improved by manipulating the peripheral characteristics of organizational communication messages. Nevertheless, it is still unclear whether these strategies can be applied to non-employment relationships in public organizations and generate positive outcomes.

This study extends Tanis & Beukeboom’s (2011) field experimental design. We focus on the department–alumni and department–students relationships in a public university, testing whether the manipulation of peripheral characteristics and contents of organizational communication can improve OI and bring other benefits. We hypothesize that the members’ OI (original DV in Tanis & Beukeboom) and their willingness to support the organization (our additional DV) can be increased by the presence of (a) organizational identity cues and personal focus (original IV in Tanis & Beukeboom), and (b) narratives of organizational identity (our additional IV) in organizational communication letters/emails. A population of 5300 alumni, and around 570 undergraduate and 250 graduate students of the Department of Public Policy of City University of Hong Kong will be involved in the experiment. They will be randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups of a 2 (identity cues and personal focus: not present, present) × 2 (narratives: not present, present) between subjects factorial design. Factorial ANOVA and factorial logistic regression will be performed to test the effects. Effect sizes calculation will be conducted.