Perceiving meaningful coworker subgroups reduces identification with the larger organization

Evidence

In addition to this subgroup categorization measure, participants also completed a measure of organizational identity (e.g., “I feel strong ties with my organization”; α = .92; Smidts, Pruyn, & van Riel, 2001). Although the inclusiveness of the superordinate category (i.e., the organization) was not measured, it was presumed that the superordinate category would be perceived as highly inclusive because it must be more inclusive than the subgroup. With this assumption in mind, the authors predicted that the local employees would exhibit dueling identities, that is, the more they perceived the local–foreign categories to reflect a meaningful difference among employees, the less they would identify with the organization. Consistent with this prediction, analysis revealed that the more local employees perceived local and foreign coworker categories to be meaningfully distinct, the less the employees identified with the organization as a whole (r = −.26). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 683

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Weak member identification with a cooperative erodes psychological ownership and invites degeneration. — Adrian Josef Amon, Organizing the study of degeneration…, 86