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Impact of coherent versus multiple identities on knowledge integration

¹ Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium
² Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK
³ Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, and Vlerick Leuven Ghent Management School, Belgium

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

	Abstract

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

Key Words: case studies; knowledge integration; multiple social identities; organization theory; organization-wide social identity; social identity

First published on February 5, 2008, doi:10.1177/0165551507086259

Journal of Information Science 2008;34:370.

A more recent version of this article appeared on June 1, 2008


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