Module Directory

This elective module will provide students with an advanced understanding of theory and research into the subject area of organizational identity.

Drawing on relevant debates surrounding identity formation, maintenance and conflict, it will explore identity as both an organisational property and as a site of individual and collective employee cooperation and conflict.

The aims of this module are:

• To provide students with an understanding of the nature and complexities of organisational identity.


• To enable students to be able to critically evaluate and contrast alternative theoretical perspectives on the question of identity; individual, collective, and organizational.


• To illustrate the ways in which identity formation and contestation are integral to the relationship between, for example, organisational control and resistance.


• To equip students with a critical conception of how managers might leverage issues of identity and take into account its importance for workplace culture and performance.

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to demonstrate:

1. A critical understanding of the nature and complexities of organisational identity.


2. The capacity to critically evaluate and contrast alternative theoretical perspectives on the question of identity, both individual and organizational.


3. The ability to illustrate the ways in which identity formation and contestation are integral to the relationship between, for example, control and resistance.


4. A critical conception of how managers might leverage issues of identity and take into account its importance to workplace culture and performance.

The module will examine questions of identity as they relate to the management and lives of individual employees, professionals and managers. How recent changes in, and reforms of, organizational environments have had implications for the ways in which individuals conceive of themselves as particular types of working subjects will be considered. The central theme here is that individual identity is practiced in light of distinctive organizational conditions that privilege particular identities, or 'ways of being', over others. This, in turn, we will then be linked to questions of motivation and personal identification with organizational aims and aspirations.

The module will also consider the formulation and management of identity at an organizational level; that is, how firms and corporations represent themselves and seek to manage their public persona. It will critically evaluate the forces, both economic and cultural, that drive the contemporary fascination with the manufacturing of organizational and corporate identities. In particular, attention will be directed towards those material practices, including the landscaping of a range of both human and non-human artefacts, which serve to constitute symbolic and aesthetic markers of such identities aimed, in turn, at a range of potential stakeholders including both employees and clients.

Indicative Syllabus 

Wk. 1. Understanding Organizations, Workplace Identity and the Self - The historical emergence of complex  organizations has been instrumental to shaping our understanding of the self.  This session will introduce the concepts of organization, identity and the 'self' in order to provide a framework of understanding for future sessions.

Wk. 2. The Importance of Organisational Identity - In this second session we explore the background and concept of organizational, or corporate, identity and its implications for how we might understand and critically analyse organizational activities.

Wk.3. Diversity, Recognition and Identity – In this session some of the ways in which identity and issues of workplace diversity management are considered. In particular, we explore how demands for recognition at work are often intimately entwined with struggles over the external imposition of normalised workplace identities.

Wk. 4. Aesthetics and Organisational Identity Production – This penultimate session focuses on the ways in which organizational leaders and managers endeavor to manufacture and sustain organizational identities though the landscaping of organisational materiality and symbolism.

Wk. 5. Virtual Identities Within and Beyond the Workplace – In this final session, the module returns to a focus on the emergence of workplace identities and the impact of various forms of ICT and the importance of social media for how we might consider and contest established notions of identification and identity production.

This module will be delivered via:

• Three hours per week, over five weeks.

Students will be expected to prepare for each session, which will be broken down into a lecture and group work/discussion sections. The former will utilise both multi-media resources and interactive exercises. Formally assessed questions, set the previous week, will guide aspects of this activity.

Group discussions will centre on the critical evaluation of relevant case studies, organisational media, and social reflections on organisational identity within popular culture. Weekly comprehension exercises will also form part of these sessions as well as contributing to the formal assessment strategy.