Workplace identity

There have been a limited number of studies carried out on employee workplace identity. There have been many studies carried out on organizational change; however, they have been carried out mostly from an instrumentalist perspective where the topic of organizational change has been treated in isolation from other aspects of organization. The question of how a relationship exists between employee workplace identity and organizational change has been left unanswered. This thesis applies narrative theory as a conceptual bridge across identity and change. By considering how employees derive a sense of workplace identity from the workplace narratives, and organizational change as the destruction of existing workplace narratives and adoption of new workplace narratives, it is possible to gain new understandings of these concepts. A theory is developed which explains how narrative theory creates a relationship between identity and change. This new theory is further developed to explain how narrative theory creates a relationship between organizational identity, culture, leadership, conflict, and change. The new extended theory is applied to a narrative presentation of empirical data, which offers a powerful explanatory lens for understanding the relationship between these chosen aspects of organization.