Impact of coherent versus multiple identities on knowledge integration

Authors:
Annick Willem;Harry Scarbrough;Marc Buelens
Affiliations:
Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, GhentUniversity, Belgium;Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK;Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, GhentUniversity, and Vlerick Leuven Ghent Management School, Belgium
Venue:
Journal of Information Science
Year:
2008

Citing 10
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Abstract

This paper addresses the influence of two competing views of social identity on knowledge integration. One view sees social identity primarily as a coherent characteristic of organizations, which can leverage knowledge integration by unconditional cooperative behaviour, shared values, mindsets, trust, and loyalty. The opposing view considers social identity as multiple and fragmented. This fragmented view emphasizes the problematic nature of social identity for knowledge integration and states that social identity is an additional barrier to knowledge integration in organizations. The aim of this paper is to examine these competing accounts and to develop insight into the underlying mechanisms that lead to the different effects of social identity on knowledge integration. Two polar case studies illustrate the different effects of a coherent versus multiple identity on knowledge integration and the need for a coherent company-wide social identity, instead of a multiple community or group based social identity, to leverage knowledge integration in organizations.