Ya-Ru Chen

Self-categorization theory and social identity theory suggest that internal unity among organization members as well as positive external organization differentiation will contribute to members’ organizational identification. I posited that when people represent their organization together with other organization members in a work team to compete for important organization outcomes, both factors would be operative to influence their identification with the organization. In support of the theoretical assertions in the existing theories, results from a scenario study and a field study showed positive relationships between these two factors and organizational identification. However, in both studies the impact of relative organization performance (obtained by the representative team) was moderated by the perceived unity of the work team: The significant positive effect of relative team (and organization) performance only appeared when participants perceived the unity of their work team to be high as opposed to low. Furthermore, results in Study 2 showed that the joint effect between unity and relative performance of the representative team on organizational identification was stronger among those who perceived their organization to be of lower status than of higher status in the inter-organization competition. Theoretical implications of these findings to literatures in organizational identification, social identity, and social cognition are discussed.