| Modern business has entered the era of VUCA.The rapid development of economy and technology has made organizations more dynamic and individual work more mobile.Internet buzzwords such as "Workers" and "Social animals" also allude to the lack of organizational identity of contemporary young people and the confusion about the future selves.Identity can guide individual life paths and decisions,allow people to draw strength from their connection with the collective,and enhance the internal cohesion of a company and a country.In an era of dynamic organizations and flowing individual work,how to find belongingness in pursuit of ideal self is an important issue for individuals.And how to promote employees to transform “I”into “We” is crucial to the organizations.As a basic concept in the field of social science,identity is widely used in social behavior researches.Identity is the basis for understanding individual behaviors and is a core concept for understanding organizational processes.As the universal domain of individual life,the organization is an important source of meaning and selfdefinitions.Therefore,this paper holds that employee organizational identity is the core concept of linking individuals and organizations to discuss these issues.Adjustments to identity occur over time,and employee organizational identity is an everchanging process.So how does the construction of employee organizational identity unfold?How do individuals and organizations influence this construction process? What is the evolutionary mechanism of employee organizational identity? Although past studies have verified the causes and consequences of employee organizational identity from different perspectives,which is helpful for us to understand the construction process and evolution mechanism of employee organizational identity,it is not sufficient enough.And the research conclusions are still inconsistent,so the topic of employee organizational identity construction mechanism is worth further exploration in the academic community.This paper firstly introduces the research background,research significance(including theoretical and practical significance),research methods and research framework,and research innovation points of employee organizational identity.Then,the literature of employee organization identity and employee organization identity construction process are reviewed.Based on previous literatures,this paper will look at the organizational identity of employees from the perspective of social construction.On this basis,this paper summarizes the characteristics and shortcomings of existing research,and puts forward research questions.The shortcomings of existing studies are mainly three points.First,the employee organizational identity explored in previous studies is relatively static and stable,which has not changed in a short period of time.This is inconsistent with the dynamic assumption of employee organizational identity.Second,the literature on identity construction within the organization focuses on the managers or leaders of the enterprises,and the attention to the employee is not high.Third,most of the researches on the construction process of employee organizational identity discussed the strategies and practices of individuals or organizations in the construction process,ignoring the synergy between individuals and organizations.Employee organizational identity is constructed through the interaction between employees and organizations,so it is necessary to explore the common influence of individuals and organizations on the organizational identity of employees,so as to better reveal the construction mechanism of employee organizational identity.Based on the literature review,this paper integrates the theoretical viewpoints of social identity theory,self-categorization theory and role identity theory,and conducts the theoretical research on the process of employee organizational identity construction.This study puts forward the theoretical path of employee organizational identity construction,puts forward theoretical propositions for different stages of employee organizational identity construction,and reveals the core individual process of employee organizational identity construction,namely,identity motivation,identity work,identity cognition and identity confirmation.The situational stimuli can stimulate individual identity motivations that drive individuals to social categorization and social comparison.The individuals form social identity and role identity through the cognitive process of depersonalization and self-verification.Social identity and role identity are important components of employee organizational identity.In order to better explore the process of constructing employee organizational identity,this paper focus on the relationship between employees and organizations,and identifying possible connections between individual micro-level behavior and organizational macro-level characteristics.This article collects cases of employee organizational identity construction through an open questionnaire,analyzes the case materials using the grounded theoretical analysis method.The grounded theory model obtained from the case analysis results shows that the process of employee organizational identity construction is driven by individual motivations,and the identity is formed through the interaction of individual identity work and organizational identity regulation process,which goes through four stages: identity motivation,identity construction,identity assessment and identity confirmation.It reveals the interaction between the individual and the organization and its members in the process of employee organizational identity construction.Based on the process model obtained from the above qualitative research,combined with the existing literature evidence,this study extracts a quantitative theoretical model corresponding to the process model.In this paper,the quantitative theoretical model is divided into two parts for verification.First,based on the perspective of social identity theory,this paper explores how employees’ self-enhancement motivation drive them to construct the organizational identity,the role of identity work behaviors and learning outcomes in this process,and the decisive effect of organizational entitativity,which verifies the validity of grounded theory model.This paper conducted a three-wave questionnaire and a two-round cross-lagged questionnaire on the online survey platform in China to test the hypothesized model.The results show that:(1)Selfenhancement motivation positively affected employees’ identity work,and then enhanced their role learning outcomes and social learning outcomes,and finally promoted employees’ organizational identity;(2)Organizational entitativity positively moderated this continuous mediating effect.This study combines social identity theory to explore the specific process of employee organizational identity construction at the individual level,and clarifies the intrinsic motivation that drives individuals to continuously construct organizational identity — selfenhancement motivation.This study clarifies the organizational characteristics that play a decisive role in the construction of employee organizational identity — organizational entity,combines the subjective initiative of individuals with the influence of organizational characteristics,jointly explores and verifies,and reveals the interaction mechanism between employees and organizations in the process of organizational identity construction.This study combines identity work,role learning results and social learning results to elaborate and confirm the construction process of employee organizational identity,and clarifies the two behavioral dimensions of identity work(information seeking behavior and relationship building behavior),which jointly promote employees to improve themselves from both role and social aspects,and ultimately promote the formation of their own organizational identity.This result combines the social organic and role mechanical identity forms in the process of identity construction,and considers the dynamic changes of the individual’s organizational identity construction process from the perspective of role and relationship,which further broadens scholars’ understanding of the employee organizational identity construction mechanism and verifies the four-stage model of the employee organizational identity construction.Second,this paper focuses on the key mechanism of interpersonal processes in the employee organizational identity construction,and explores how the interaction between employees and other members of the organization affects employee organizational identity.This chapter draw upon social identity theory to argue that employees’ relationship-building behaviors can promote employees’ connected self,subsequently influencing their organizational identities.This effect is more pronounced for employees who more frequently engage in social comparisons because they are more sensitive to social influence.This paper collected data vis-à-vis questionnaires of employees using a two-wave research design in China.The results indicate that relationship-building is associated with the higher level of connected self,especially for employees who engage in more social comparison behaviors,and the higher level of connected self is associated with a higher-level employee organizational identity.This part integrates the process of social categorization and social comparison in social identity theory,and expands the theory of social identity.By introducing the connected self as an mediator variable,this study reveals the key mechanism of self-concept in the construction of employee organizational identity.Finally,this paper summarizes the theoretical contribution,practical significance,shortcomings of this research,and the prospects for future research in view of these deficiencies,and gives final conclusions.The whole research develops the understanding of the mechanism of employee organizational identity construction and provides new ideas and inspirations for the research and practice of employee organizational identity.The specific theoretical contributions include the following three points.First,this paper regards employees’ organizational identity construction as a continuous dynamic process and clarify the intrinsic mechanism.The construction of employee’s organizational identity is divided into four stages including identity motivation,identity construction,identity evaluation and identity confirmation.The meaning enriches the content of the construction process of employee organizational identity.Second,this paper expanded and extended the social identity theory.Previous research has been a separate discussion of the cognitive process within the individual subject.The integration of individual identity work and organizational identity regulation expands the explanatory boundary of social identity theory.Based on social identity theory,this study explored the influence mechanism of interpersonal interaction on employees’ organizational identity,which reveals the mechanism of organizational identity construction from the perspective of self-concept,and expands the interpretation path of social identity theory to the process of individual identity construction.Third,this paper contributed to the study of identity and self-concept.This study combines the process of identity construction with self-concept mobility to help understand the complex and dynamic processes of employee organizational identity construction.Since individual identity and collective identity belong to both ends of a continuum,and the self-concept of the individual is fluid.In this paper,the process of employee organizational identity construction is regarded as the employees’ selfconcept shifting from “I” to “We”.The employee develops organizational identity by expanding self-concept including the connection with others and form the collective self,which reveals the key mechanism of self-concept and enriching the research on the fluidity of self-concept. |
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